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BY GO BON JUAN
Editor’s note: The Sixth Dr.
Jose P. Rizal Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held
at 2 p.m., June 14, at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda
and Cabildo streets, Intramuros, Manila.
In Cavite province, there is a
small town called Ternate located at the southern coast of Manila
Bay facing Corregidor Island.
On February 1, 2008, I attended
the book launching of Esteban de Ocampo’s The Ternateños: Their
History, Languages, Customs and Traditions at the National
Historical Institute. It was only then that I learned about the
interesting history of Ternate, especially its relation with the
famous Chinese general, Koxinga. Koxinga had threatened to attack
the Philippines in 1662, and it was this threat that triggered one
of the massacres of the Chinese in the Parian in 1662 that left
about 2,000 dead. How did it happen?
Here are excerpts from The
Ternateños:
“After the Dutch were driven
from Formosa by Kue-Sing [Koxinga], the latter sent an ambassador to
Manila, demanding that the Philippines submit to his rule and become
one of his tributary states. Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, then
governor and captain-general of the Islands, refused to submit to
this demand, and fearing an invasion, ordered the Spanish soldiers
to abandon Zamboanga and other parts of Mindanao as well as that of
Ternate in the Moluccas—which had been taken by the Spaniards in
1606—and to reinforce the menaced capital, Manila. The garrison of
Ternate thus transferred to Manila in 1663, and with it probably was
a contingent of Mardica warriors.”
“It was mentioned that ‘200
Mardicas had left Ternate [in the Moluccas] for Manila. In the
latter city, they established themselves in Bagumbayan or what is
now Ermita. Stories had it that Kue-Sing died and the proposed
Chinese invasion of the Philippines did not materialize.’
“The Mardicas ‘established
there [in Ternate] probably not later than 1700.’
“Those who originally settled
in Ternate, or what was formerly called ‘Barra de Maragondon,’
numbered seven families. Other data, however, indicated 14 families
. . . Upon their arrival at the coast of Maragondon, the Mardicas
chose as the site of their new home a place near the mouth of the
Maragondon River, which they called Gala-la, from the name of a tree
which grew in that place . . . The Mardicas cleared the land and
tilled the soil. Being near the river and the bay of Manila, they
engaged actively in fishing which, up to the present, is their chief
occupation. In due time, they intermarried with the people of the
neighboring villages and when their community was organized into a
pueblo or town they chose the name Ternate in memory of their
far-away home in the Moluccas Islands.”
Thus, a new town was born, a
legacy of a historical incident that happened in 1662, an indirect
result of the expulsion of the Dutch from Taiwan by Koxinga in that
year.
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