#Filipinas | indiohistorian (2024)

On 11 February 2019, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, while speaking in a public event in Buluan, Maguindanao, said, verbatimly, and I quote this in full:

“Wala na tayong magawa. Philippines. Philippines because it was discovered by [Ferdinand] Magellan using the money of King Philip. Kaya pagdating ng ulol ginawang Philippines. Pero okay na ‘yan, balang araw palitan natin… Actually, tama si [Ferdinand] Marcos. Panahon ni Marcos, tama talaga si Marcos. Gusto niya palitan [ng] Maharlika… the Republic of Maharlika. Gusto niya palitan it means… more of concept of serenity and peace.”

The statement itself is incoherent, historically. The name Las Islas Filipinas was given, not by Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in Mactan in 1521 by the forces led Lapu-Lapu, but by another explorer that came after Magellan, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos (1543), who named the islands in honor of the then Prince of Asturias and later, the Spanish king, Philip II. Contrary to Duterte’s claim, Magellan named our islands Las Islas de San Lazaro. Unfortunately, the name did not stick, that by the time of Villalobos, it was called Islas del Poniente (Islands of the West).

But this is besides the point. What interests me is the President’s fixation on the name Maharlika. The name itself has been conjured time and time again in our history, inadvertently by ultranationalist leaders who wish to assert our national identity separate from our colonial past. The word “Maharlika” as conjured by these people come from a romantic and embellished version of our precolonial past, always used in the context of patriotism. While well-meaning, history’s concern is—what do the primary sources say?

We are grateful that several historians have tackled this issue before. William Henry Scott made a name for himself when he published several works on the pre-colonial history of the Philippines. Scott was also able to debunk the Code of Kalantiaw, supposedly a pre-colonial legal code written in 1433 by a Datu Kalantiaw. Scott was able to prove it a hoax through his dissertation, defended in front of a panel of Filipino historians composed of Teodoro Agoncillo, Horacio de la Costa, Marcelino Foronda, Mercedes Grau Santamaria, Nicolas Zafra and Gregorio Zaide in 1963.

*William Henry Scott, historian (1921-1993)

It is on his work and other varied sources where my position is drawn from… that No. The country should never entertain a change of its name to Maharlika.

Why?

1. Maharlika is anachronistic; a pre-colonial Tagalog concept.

William Henry Scott, in his book, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (1994), notes that like the pre-colonial Visayans, the pre-colonial Tagalogs had three social strata—the elite, called the Maginoo and the Datus, the non-slave followers of the datu, called the Timawa, and the slaves, called Alipin. Scott noted that while Timawa was a shared term for freemen (for lack of a better word to describe them), only one sixteenth century account mentions Maharlika, the earliest written record that dates back to 1589: Las costumbres de los indios tagalos de filipinas by Fray Juan de Plasencia. It is understandable that Scott lumps the term Maharlika together with Timawa because they are almost the same—these freemen could not be legally bought nor sold like slaves, could not marry someone in the datu/maginoo class, could exercise certain rights on portions of barangay land, and were exempted from paying tribute/taxation.

Maharlika was derived from Sanskrit, maharddhika, noted Scott, “...a man of wealth, wisdom, or competence.” But Scott further distinguished Maharlika from Timawa:

“Technically, they [Maharlika] were less free than the ordinary timawa, since, if they wanted to transfer their allegiance once they were married, they had to hose a public feast and pay their datu from 6 to 18 pesos in gold—’otherwise… it could be an occasion for war.”

What does this mean? One, Maharlika was a class almost similar but lower than the ‘free’ Timawa, hence contradicting the false concept of Duterte and Marcos that it was the class of pre-colonial Filipino nobility, or the more far-fetched “serenity and peace.” Two, Maharlika was a pre-colonial Tagalog concept, and if we insist that this be the name of the country, we are imposing an outdated (anachronistic) pre-colonial Tagalog concept on the diverse histories of the peoples of the Philippine archipelago.

*Some of the 75 colored illustrations of early Filipinos from the Boxer Codex (circa 1590). The upper row were depictions of the Tagalogs.

2. Maharlika ignores the history that has always referred to the country as Pilipinas.

It is true that the name Philippines or Pilipinas come from our colonial past under Spain’s king. While it is admirable to assert our own identity by changing our name, separating ourselves from our colonial past is next to impossible—precisely because this colonial past is part of who we are. Our names alone, American English first names, and Spanish surnames, speaks so much of this colonial past, enmeshed in the very identity of being Filipino. The Malacañan Palace was a palace of the Spanish Governor General before it was turned over to the Americans, and then to Filipinos. One could say that the Spanish dominion over the Philippines unified us, created our maritime borders for us. The Philippine Revolution of 1896 against the excesses of the colonial apparatus was our own assertion of who we are and our insistence that we must be the one to carve out our own path separate from our colonizers.

That revolution of arms was also a revolution of identity in the mind. Several historical figures that dreamt our independence & emancipation, and shaped our national history toward that goal, have explicitly used F/Pilipinas, snatching it from our colonizers and making it their own. Just look at the writings of Jose Rizal and Apolinario Mabini, among others, or our patriotic songs, from Jose Corazon de Jesus up to the present. It was thanks to their own usage and sense of ownership of the term that from their efforts we draw our meaning and transform a colonized name into a decolonized one that is ours.

It is similar to how the Filipino imprint on everything our people touched had asserted itself over Spanish cultural influences in the Philippines under the colonial period. Look at our old heritage structures—they are Spanish-looking, superficially, but one could see the Filipino handiwork in their architectural styles.

Going back to the name change, should we then set aside a large part of our history in favor of an outdated and misconstrued anachronistic name?

In this sense, I agree with what one historian told the press when it comes to the change of name—that that window of opportunity had long passed. Bonifacio attempted to change our name to Haring Bayang Katagalugan, as did Artemio Ricarte’s suggestion of Rizaline Islands. But so much time have passed, that the very utterance of “Philippines” or “Pilipinas” would always refer to OUR people who share a common history and national experience. And that isn’t something to be shoved under the rug.

The United States of America never advocated a name change, despite being named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Kiribati also never did, despite being named after the local pronunciation of the surname of a British explorer Thomas Gilbert. Colombia was named after Christopher Columbus. Should these countries change their names too?

Identity is so much more than a mere name. Who we are is who we are. We change and transform the meaning of the name we possess by the actions we make as a people.

3. Maharlika was proposed before and it failed miserably.

It was former Senator Eddie Ilarde who filed the Parliamentary Bill No. 195 in the Interim Batasang Pambansa in 1978, proposing to change the country’s name to Maharlika. Perhaps this was made in support of then dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who have utilized the name in all government propaganda.

*Movie poster of“Maharlika” (1971) starring Paul Burke, Dovie Beams, and Farley Granger, depicting the fake story of Marcos as World War II hero. The movie was used to push the Marcos propaganda. Beams was also allegedly involved in an affair with Marcos, exposed by the press to the public.

“Plans for the rechristening proceeded apace until an academic pointed out that the word was probably derived from Sanskrit. Fine, its proponents said, Sanskrit is a non- imperialist language. Yes, replied the scholar, but Maharlika was most likely derived from the words maha lingam, meaning "great phallus." That was the end of the campaign.”

While I find the meaning of “Maharlika” as cited in this TIME article as inconclusive (the word may only be similar in phonetical pronunciation to the Sanskrit word that really means “great phallus”), the name-to-be needs to take into account the meaning and perception of the contemporary public.

4. Maharlika is linked to the fake guerrilla unit of Ferdinand Marcos during World War II

The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), mandated to advice the President on matters of historical issues, released a position paper in 12 July 2016 with regards to why Ferdinand Marcos should not be buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery). Duterte’s primary reason for burying him there was because he became a soldier who fought for the country during the Second World War. Consulting various declassified documents from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Commission found out [I quote this lengthy Executive Summary] that:

1. Mr. Marcos lied about receiving U.S. medals: Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, and Order of the Purple Heart, which he claimed as early as about 1945.

2. His guerrilla unit, the Ang Mga Maharlika, was never officially recognized and neither was his leadership of it.

3. U.S. officials did not recognize Mr. Marcos’s rank promotion from Major in 1944 to Lt. Col. by 1947.

4. Some of Mr. Marcos’s actions as soldier were officially called into question by upper echelons of the U.S. military, such as his command over the Allas Intelligence Unit (described as “usurpation”), his commissioning of officers (without authority), his abandonment of USAFIP-NL presumably to build an airfield for Gen. Roxas, his collection of money for the airfield (described as “illegal”), and his listing of his name on the roster of different units (called a “malicious criminal act”).

Aside from making a strong case against the Marcos burial on a site intended for heroes as the LNMB name suggests, the NHCP makes it clear that history attests to the falsehood of the Ang Mga Maharlika, supposedly Marcos’s guerrilla unit. Hence, the name Maharlika itself is mired with a lot of mythmaking, falsehood, and inconsistencies, making it unfit to become the name/banner upon which our people should be called or rallied upon.

5. Maharlika will bring about confusion and expensive rebranding.

Every coin, every emblem, every logo, every publication (books, etc.), every school name, every company and government agency— will have to rebrand if we insist on change our country’s name. This will be an unnecessary and enormous expense, one that should have no place in our lawmakers and president’s priorities, especially that there are a lot more pressing national problems and concerns to tackle and solve. Let us not create problems out of thin air. We cannot afford to make them, much less solve them.

I hope this humble attempt to make my case against the name change have convinced you, dear reader. Our policy makers cannot ignore the whole weight of history upon which many seek and aspire to be represented to this day. As citizens, let us encourage them (including our President) to focus their attention on national matters that have great impact on the actual lives of people on the ground and not on trivial things such as a name change.