All about Enrique, who was not a Filipino

BECAUSE of all this recent public interest and debate about the legacy of Magellan and 1521 (which makes me happy because people are beginning to talk about what happened to us because of colonization), I now turn to “Enrique,” who was Magellan’s interpreter when he reached the Philippines in March 1521.

He was the slave that Magellan had bought when he was still a Portuguese soldier in the Portuguese colony of Malacca (a port city in present-day Malaysia, not to be confused with the Moluccas or Maluko, also known as Spice Islands in Indonesia) prior to his return to Europe; thus, he was known in history as “Enrique de Malacca.”