On September 25, 2009, the state of California officially declared October as “Filipino American History Month” to honor the first Filipinos to set foot in California 426 years ago this week. Starting in January of 2014, thanks to a law authored by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American elected to the State Legislature, California’s school children will learn more about Filipino American history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQ-xnleWc4&feature=share After learning about Filipino American history in California, people may conclude that Filipinos “discovered” California, which would be true but only in the same Eurocentric sense that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America in 1492 and Ferdinand Magellan “discovered” the Philippines in 1521. Unamuno’s unrecognized discovery Almost a century after Columbus discovered the Bahamas Islands (which he thought was India) and claimed this “New World” for the king of Spain, Spanish Captain Pedro De Unamuno “discovered” California on the other side of that American continent while on a voyage from Manila to Acapulco. Although Columbus’ discovery is celebrated this October 14 as a national holiday in the United States, which Native Americans celebrate as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”, no such honor is accorded Unamuno for his “discovery” of California on October 18, 1587. In fact, his discovery is not even recognized by Spain and is only commemorated by the Filipino American community because Unamuno reported in his ship’s logs that his deck crew was composed of “Luzones Indios”. Unamuno’s odyssey as revealed in those logs he kept was first reported in Henry R. Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the Read More …
