So thanks to Ernie and the RAAW blog, I was pointed to a blog post about a clueless white person poking fun at a street named Lapu Lapu in the South of Market (SoMa) district in San Francisco, not realizing that Lapu Lapu is seen as a Filipino anti-colonialist hero known for allegedly lopping off Magellan’s head — the first European to attempt to circumnavigate the world — and raising the ire of many Filipinos around the area.
However, there’s one small problem — unbeknown to most people, it’s not exactly known if Lapu Lapu was actually the guy who killed Magellan. The details of this are only known by a couple of accounts from Magellan’s crew, but who actually killed Magellan is lost to history. It is known that Lapu Lapu was known as being the first ruler from the islands known now as the Philippines to resist colonial rule, but since he was the one who led this drive, the killing of Magellan has been historically attributed to him, even if he wasn’t the one who actually wielded the machete.
Does this make the clueless white person any less of a douchebag? Not really. He could’ve been a little bit more aware of the history of SoMa, and how it is one of the major Filipino communities in San Francisco, even if it has been obliterated by gentrification and the Metreon. At the same time, those of us who do protest should be made aware of all the facts before we react to said douchebags. (And that concludes my API Public Service Announcement for the weekend.)
