The Pacman Cometh

In his prize-winning play, The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill presents a drama about the human need for hope and illusion as a response to the conditions of despair. If ever the Filipino people needed a distraction from the wearying conditions of despair that surround them, now is the time and Manny “the Pacman” Pacquiao is the man to provide the hope and illusion. He is our Iceman.

With his spectacular victory over Miguel Cotto on November 14, Pacquiao has won an unprecedented 7titles in 7 weight class divisions. No one is ever likely to challenge that historic accomplishment - to go from a 112 pound flyweight prince to a 145 pound welterweight king in 10 years. Remarkably, it would have been 8 titles if he had won the light flyweight championship at 106 pounds when he started his fighting career.

With an electrifying performance which made believers out of even the most cynical of doubters, Pacquiao has cemented his claim as the best pound-for-pound boxer of our time. Whether or not his fight with Floyd Mayweather, Jr. materializes is immaterial to the claim because Mayweather has made a habit of avoiding the best boxers while they were at their prime (Margarito, Cotto, Mosley, to name a few). But not Pacquiao “the Mexecutioner”.

Pacquiao has also achieved the unimaginable for a Filipino. He is now up there in that rarefied territory of elite athletes who made history, achieved global fame, and transcended their respective sports. Think Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, David Beckham, and Michael Phelps. His promoter, Bob Arum, though often given to hyperbole, was really not exaggerating when he said Pacquiao is the best boxer of all time, better than Mohammad Ali.

Even before the Cotto fight, commercial interests were already voting with their dollars and lining up behind Arum’s post-fight statement. Nike’s famous swoosh was ubiquitous with special Pacquiao shoes selling briskly for $135 on retail and $500 on EBay. Even reputable publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times featured articles about the Pacman. Time kicked it up a notch and put him on the cover of Time Asia.

But Pacquiao achieved something else very noteworthy: He has made his very ethnic, very indio-like, brown Filipino face – with no trace of any Mestizo-ness whatsoever – seem “cool” and attractive to Filipinos. Consider all the TV and movie stars of the Philippines today, virtually all of whom showcase light European features. But now they all bow to the brown king Pacman.

Pacquiao’s appeal has crossed over to mainstream America. His easy smile with eyes that light up, the religiosity in his pre-fight motions, the charming grace under pressure, the humility in his words, have made Americans who have seen him on TV overlook his heavily accented and grammatically- challenged English. By all indications, the American public has been smitten with him as his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live showed.

In the process, Pacquiao has instilled national pride among Filipinos who, at the same time, are also finding out on their own that with talent and tenacity, success is possible even with an ethnic face and an accented English. This pride is evident in shirts and jackets and accessories all proudly sporting Pacquiao’s image and Team Pacquiao logos. It is evident in water-cooler conversations all across America – with Filipinos talking of their sense of affinity and similarities of provenance with The Filipino People’s Champ.

How did this poor boy from the poverty-stricken streets of General Santos City in the island of Mindanao get to this point? For sure, he could not have done it in sports like golf or tennis for, although they too are individual sports, the monetary costs of achieving competence in those fields are prohibitive. He certainly could not have achieved it in the sport he loves, basketball, where height is a major factor in success.

Truth be told, savage and primitive though it may appear to some, boxing is probably the most democratic and most meritocratic of all sports. It is “cheap”: poor kids dabbling in it just borrow gloves from each other and practice on their own without the need for any real expense. It is also capable of instant feedback: you get your butt kicked if you can’t hack it, and if you’re not willing to give it your all, you’re better off dabbling in something else before you get into real physical trouble.

For all the good things Pacquiao brings to the country, there is a dark side. In a country of 90-million plus, an overwhelming percentage of which is comprised of poor impressionable kids all dreaming of becoming the next Pacquiao, makeshift boxing gyms and unregulated boxing matches supposedly feeding into the hopes of these poor boys are on the rise all over the land. Most of the Pacquiao wannabes will discover, soon enough, that studying real science subjects in school is a lot easier than learning the “sweet science” of boxing.

In The Iceman Cometh, broken men with hopeful dreams await the arrival of the big-spending Iceman, Theodore Hickman. When he arrives, he encourages his cronies to pursue their ambitions, believing that only failure will make them face reality. “To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything…The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober,” he says.

Let's ride this pipe dream as long as we can. All hail King Pacman!

Fil-Am History Month

If you google "Chinese American History Month" or "Japanese American History Month", the search engines will all direct you to "Asian Pacific American Heritage Month" which, you will be informed, was enacted on October 28, 1992 to honor the achievements of Asian/Pacific Americans and to recognize their contributions to the United States.

All 30 or so Asian ethnic groups in the US were lumped together as “Asian Pacific Americans” and given one month – May – to celebrate our collective and individual cultures, histories and heritage in the United States. May was selected because the first Japanese immigrants arrived in the United States on May 7, 1843 and the transcontinental railroad, which employed hundreds of Chinese immigrant laborers, was completed on May 10, 1869.

The month actually started stated out as “Asian Pacific American Heritage Week” when Pres. Jimmy Carter signed the Joint Resolution on October 2, 1978. It became a month-long celebration in 1992 when Pres. George H.W. Bush signed the law permanently designating May of each year as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

As a publicly elected official in San Francisco for 18 years, I regularly attended the annual kick-off celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in San Francisco’s City Hall since 1992. It would always be awkward for me when Japanese Americans would recount the day in May of 1843 when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in the US and when Chinese Americans would recall the day in May of 1869 when the Chinese-built transcontinental railroad was completed and I couldn't very well reminisce about that day in May of 1898 when Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish Fleet which later resulted in the US invasion and colonization of the Philippines.

For years since its founding in Seattle, Washington in 1982, it was always the goal of the Filipino American National History Society (FANHS) for Filipino Americans to be given our very own month to celebrate our history and culture in the United States.

At its biennial national conference in 1988, FANHS members unanimously passed a resolution to "establish Filipino American History Month to be observed annually and nationally throughout the United States and its Territories during the Month of October commencing in the Year 1992 to mark the 405th Anniversary of the Presence of Filipinos in the Continental United States.”

The resolution also expressed the belief that such a month long celebration would be “a significant time to study the advancement of Filipino Americans in the history of the United States, as a favorable time of celebration, remembrance, reflection and motivation, and as a relevant time to renew more efforts toward research, examination and promulgation of Filipino American history and culture in order to provide an opportunity for all Americans to learn and appreciate more about Filipino Americans and their historic contributions to our nation, these United States of America.”

Just as Japanese Americans could celebrate the day the first Japanese immigrants landed in California in May of 1843, Filipino Americans could now also proudly commemorate the day the first Filipinos (“Luzon Indios”) landed in California on October 18, 1587, more than 33 years before the first English Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620.

After the FANHS resolution was publicized, Filipino Americans began celebrating October as Filipino American History Month with celebrations and festivities throughout the US. Various states, aside from California and Hawaii, would routinely pass resolutions as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granhom did when she proclaimed “October 2006, as Filipino American Heritage Month in Michigan, and I encourage all citizens to recognize, applaud and participate in this celebration of the many contributions made by Filipino Americans that enhance the quality of life in Michigan.”

But the celebration in various states somehow just wasn’t enough. As the Wikipedia entry on this subject noted, “October as Filipino American History Month has not yet attained the prestige of other similar minority celebrations, such as the Black History Month in February, Women's History Month in March, and the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May. This is evidenced by the fact that no United States Congress has ever resolved to recognize Filipino American History Month.”

The Wikipedia entry now needs to be updated.

On November 3, 2009, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) stood up on the House floor to announce that on October 29, 2009, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had unanimously approved House Resolution (H.R.) 780 celebrating October as Filipino American History Month. It was originally sponsored by Rep. Bob Filner (D-California) with over 50 members of the House signing on as co-sponsors, he said. Rep. Lynch also announced that the US Senate had unanimously passed a similarly worded resolution (S. 298) on October 1, 2009. He asked for the unanimous consent of the House to make the bill into law.

Before the vote could take place, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R- North Carolina) stood up and deplored the lack of substantive resolutions being passed by the House but joined Rep. Lynch in asking for the unanimous consent of the House for HR 780.

When the call was made for the vote, it passed unanimously. October is now Filipino American History Month in the United States! Hurray!

Overpopulation and the Catholic Church

Senator Noynoy Aquino leads in all the presidential polls that have been taken in the Philippines in the last month, receiving more preferential votes than all his opponents combined.

But before his supporters can start planning a yellow-themed celebration in May of 2010, there are still formidable obstacles standing in his way and they are not Manny Villar, Erap Estrada, or Gibo Teodoro.

The first obstacle is the P7.7-billion automated electronic voting machine system contract that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) awarded to Smartmatic, a company that allegedly has ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

There is a pervasive fear that automated voting machines can be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses. The voting system source codes can be obtained from the company and manipulated to award votes to a particular candidate. The voters may be at the mercy of computer programmers.

The second obstacle is the Philippine Catholic Church, which issued a “veiled warning” to Senator Aquino indicating that the senator's support of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill could be detrimental to his presidential aspirations.

Other Church officials like Fr. Robert S. Embile have even threatened excommunication to anyone who endorses or supports the RH bill. In a letter published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on October 20, 2009, Fr. Embile wrote that “any believer who does not abide with the teachings 100 percent is not a genuine Catholic.”

In a visit to Cebu City on October 17, 2009, Senator Aquino reiterated his support for Senate Bill 3122 (The Reproductive Health and Population Development Bill) explaining that it can help provide the sex education that present and future generations need. It is an attempt “to come up with a defined national population policy framework.”

Senator Aquino said he supports the plan to have government health centers ready to let the public avail themselves of contraceptives and that parents should take responsibility for birth spacing. He told the Cebu press that if the Catholic Church will boycott him in the 2010 elections because of his support for the RH Bill, he said he would rather heed his conscience.

“I believe we have a population problem. I believe I have a responsibility to help so that our children have the opportunity to live better lives,” he said. He cited the fact that the Philippine population has “probably doubled” since the first Edsa revolution. Not quite but close.

The Philippine population in 1906 was 6 million people. By 1949 it had increased to 19.3 million; by 1970, the population passed the 38.5 million mark, and by 1989, it had risen to 63.8 million. It was 70 million in 1991, and since 50 percent of the people are under the age of 18, the projection is that the figure will pass 100 million shortly after the year 2010.

As environmentalists have pointed out, while the population has exploded, “the mangrove swamps are being destroyed, and 80 percent of the coral reefs, which are among the richest ecosystems on the planet, have been severely damaged. A third of the soil is severely damaged, two thirds are partly damaged, and the rain forest that once covered over 90 percent of the area will, it seems, soon be totally gone—only 10 percent survives now.”

The issue of Philippine overpopulation came to the fore recently with what blogger Dean Bocobo called the “sheer apocalyptic scale of the Ondoy-Pepeng diluvial calamity.”

As Dean pointed out in his blog, “Overpopulation created our overcrowded cities with their teeming slums and urban sprawl. Overpopulation filled full our waterways with our own garbage, that later submerged the neighborhoods of rich and poor alike. Overpopulation created the thousands of pockets of vulnerable millions that have suffered Ondoy and Pepeng.”

“Overpopulated societies foster poverty and unemployment, and the widespread lack of proper food and water, since whatever is available is being diminished by an ever growing denominator of millions more mouths to feed, clothe, and shelter. And rescue! Overpopulation magnifies the woeful inadequacy of the government to deliver emergency relief and long term reconstruction. Every reconstruction plan and every attempt to achieve a secure ‘preparedness’ against the next Ondoy or Pepeng is forced to deal with a population that is increasing at a rate of more than 2 million people per year.”

The controversy around the Reproductive Health bill attracted the attention of the New York Times which described the problem of poor Filipino women unwilling to have more children but helpless to stop it (“Bill to Increase Access to Contraception is Dividing Filipinos,” Carlos Conde, October 26, 2009). The bill would “require governments down to the local level to provide free or low-cost reproductive health services, including condoms, birth control pills, tubal ligations, and vasectomies. It would also mandate sex education in all schools, public and private, from fifth grade through high school.”

According to one research study cited by the New York Times, 54 percent of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines in 2008 were unintended with 92 percent resulting from not using birth control and the rest from birth control that failed. Those unintended pregnancies, the study found, contributed to an estimated 500,000 abortions that year, despite a ban on the procedure which is mostly performed clandestinely and in unsanitary conditions.

While the bill seeks to prevent unwanted pregnancies that results in a massive number of abortions, the opposition from the Catholic Church is based on the belief that the bill would legalize abortion by promoting the use of abortion-inducing drugs. In Catholic churches across the country, signs have been posted that read: “Yes to Life! No to RH Bill!”

The New York Times reported that various Catholic officials have been calling on opposition Senator Aquino to renounce his support of the RH bill but he has refused their pleas. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, on the other hand, has said that she will let her Catholic faith guide her. Presumably, her anointed presidential candidate, Defense Secretary Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro, will toe the same religious line in his attempt to woo the Catholic Church.

The battle lines for the 2010 Philippine presidential elections have been drawn.

The First Nobel Prez Winner

Barack Obama is not the first nor the youngest US president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. That distinction belongs to Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt who was awarded the honor in 1906 for his role ending the Russo-Japanese War. But “Peace” has never been a word associated with Roosevelt’s policies and world view, especially as they affected the Philippines.

Roosevelt was a young author (“The Naval War of 1812”) and noted adventurer in 1891 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison when he and close friends Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan and Commodore George Dewey had lunch in Washington DC to discuss the question: “How can we be a first-rate nation if we are a second-rate military power?”

Their solution was for the US to “become a first-tier naval power.” In Roosevelt’s words: “We build modern cruisers to start with…Then we build more powerful fighting vessels” which he proposed to call “coastal defense battleships.” They agreed that the US need to establish a string of naval bases from the Hawaiian Islands to the Philippine Islands so that the US could become a Pacific power.

To implement their imperial ambitions, Roosevelt secured an appointment from US Pres. William McKinley to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy in January of 1898. After securing the appointment, Roosevelt wrote Mahan: “What this country needs is a war – any little war will do.”

Their dream of war would be realized when the USS Maine was “blown up” in Havana harbor on February 16, 1898. The Spanish authorities who investigated the explosion determined that it was an accident in the boiler room of the American naval ship. But Roosevelt did not care what caused the explosion as it was the answer to his prayers.

On February 25, 1898, US Secretary of the Navy John Long took the afternoon off to see his physician. Taking advantage of Long's absence, Roosevelt immediately sent a cable to his friend, Commodore Dewey, ordering him to assemble the Asiatic Squadron in Hongkong and prepare it for offensive operations in the Philippine Islands in the event of a declaration of war with Spain. He then issued orders to US squadron commanders throughout the world to “keep full of coal”. He ordered ammunition in war-sized quantities to be purchased and he sent requests to both houses of Congress to pass bills authorizing the recruitment of enough sailors to man the expanded naval fleet he envisioned. He did all this in one afternoon.

As Roosevelt would later write, “Whenever I was left as Acting Secretary, I did everything in my power to put us in readiness. I knew that in the event of war, Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from a leash, I was sure that if he were given half a chance he would strike instantly and with telling effect.”

When Sec. Long came back to work the next morning, he was shocked “because during my short absence, Roosevelt had come very near causing more of an explosion than happened to the Maine.” But, politically, neither Sec. Long nor Pres. McKinley could reverse the orders issued by Roosevelt.

The lust to avenge the Maine explosion, fanned by the yellow press of William Randolph Hearst, with cries of “Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!” pushed the US Congress to declare war on Spain on April 24, 1898, just as Roosevelt had calculated.

Admiral Dewey was dispatched to Manila on May 1, 1898 with orders to destroy what was left of the Spanish Navy which he accomplished without losing a man, making him a national hero overnight.

The Filipinos had waged a war of independence against Spain since 1896 and were on the verge of successfully driving the Spaniards out of their isolated fortress in Manila in August of 1898 when the Spaniards worked out a deal with the Americans to surrender to them if they would keep the Filipinos out of Intramuros. The Spaniards and the Americans then negotiated and signed the Treaty of Paris on December 12, 1898 where Spain "ceded" the Philippine Islands to the US for $20-M.

On December 21, 1898, Pres. McKinley issued his Benevolent Assimilation proclamation ordering his military forces to seize control of the entire Philippine archipelago in order to "Christianize" the population.

When the US had enough soldiers in Manila in February of 1899, newly promoted Rear Admiral Dewey trained his cannons on the Filipino positions and began the naval bombardment that signalled the start of the Filipino-American War. The US would send a total of 130,000 soldiers to invade and colonize the islands suffering casualties of 1,250 men. Estimates are that anywhere from 250,000 to 600,000 Filipinos were killed resisting US colonial occupation.

After the Spanish-American War broke out, Roosevelt resigned his post and led a small US Army regiment in Cuba called “the Rough Riders” earning the Medal of Honor at the Battle of San Juan Hill. As a war hero, Roosevelt returned to New York and was elected governor. Two years later, he was nominated for and elected Vice-President of the US. After Pres. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt at 42 became the youngest US president in history and in 1906, the first and youngest to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, one year younger than Obama is today.

After Roosevelt received his Nobel Peace Prize, he dispatched the US Great White Fleet (16 Navy battleships of the Atlantic Fleet) on a worldwide tour to showcase US military might.

If Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, had instead established the Nobel War Prize, Roosevelt would have been hands down the perfect choice for the award in 1906.

422 Years Ago

Almost a century after Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Bahamas Islands on October 12, 1492 and claimed for the king of Spain what would later be called “the Americas ”, Spanish Captain Pedro de Unamuno “discovered” California on the other side of the continent.

Although Columbus’ discovery is celebrated as a national holiday in the United States, in Spain , and throughout South America, no such honor is bestowed on de Unamuno for his discovery of California on October 18, 1587.

In fact, de Unamuno’s historic voyage has been largely ignored by historians and is only commemorated by the Filipino American community and only because de Unamuno reported in his ship’s log that his crew was composed of “Luzon Indios”.

This historical fact was revealed in Henry R. Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century which was published by the California Historical Society in San Francisco in 1929. The book included an English translation of de Unamuno’s account of his voyage to California.

The Spanish interest in finding California stemmed from the development of the Manila-Acapulco trade route, through which Chinese goods were ultimately delivered to Spain. In 1565, with Father Andres Urdaneta at the helm, a return route to Acapulco was found that passed by what we now know as the California coast. On the way back, Urdaneta sighted land, but lost sight of it in the mist.

Over the next 20 years, Urdaneta’s route was used by more Spanish vessels- mostly Manila galleon ships made in Philippine islands - and staffed by crews of “Luzon Indios.”

In 1585, Archbishop of Mexico Pedro Moya de Contreras dispatched Spanish Captain Francisco Gali to proceed to Manila from Acapulco and, on his return voyage, “to reconnoiter down the coast” in hopes of finding the land that Urdaneta and others reported sighting.

Archbishop Contreras also instructed Gali not to stop by China, mindful of the intense interest by Acapulco merchants in establishing direct commercial trade with China instead of having to go through the Spanish “middle men” merchants in Manila .

The Acapulco merchants had given money to Gali’s second in command, Pedro de Unamuno, to make the trade connections with China. Fortuitously for the merchants, Gali died while in Manila , giving command of his two ships to de Unamuno. Before leaving Manila in 1586, the Spanish authorities there reminded de Unamuno again of the Archbishop’s order not to go to China under any circumstances.

De Unamuno’s crew on his return trip to Acapulco was composed mostly of Luzon Indios who were conscripted by the Spanish authorities in Manila to build the galleon ships and to man the crews that would sail on those ships.

The church authorities in Manila were concerned that if the merchants in Acapulco established direct trade relations with China , they would not need to go to Manila to pick up Chinese goods and the Spanish colonial outpost in the Philippine islands would be abandoned.

Despite repeated warnings, de Unamuno disregarded the instructions of the Acapulco Archbishop and the Manila authorities and proceeded to Macao, a destination he later claimed was due to “bad weather and lack of supplies.”

The Portuguese authorities saw direct Spanish trade with China as inimical to their own trade interests so they confiscated de Unamuno’s ships and reported his China incursion to the Spanish authorities in Manila. The Royal Audiencia in Manila dispatched Captain Juan de Argumedo to Macao to arrest de Unamuno and his cohorts and to recover the two Spanish ships. The penalty for de Unamuno’s insubordination was death.

But de Unamuno and his men were able to elude capture and managed to connect with two Franciscan priests who wanted to return to Mexico . One of the priests, Father Martin Ignacio de Loyola (the nephew of the founder of the Jesuit order), loaned de Unamuno money to buy a small Portuguese-built ship in Macao , which de Unamuno christened “Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza”.

With his new ship loaded with Chinese goods purchased with the funds provided by the Acapulco merchants and with his crew of Luzon Indios, a few Spanish soldiers, and two priests, de Unamuno sailed for Acapulco from Macao on July 12, 1587.

En route to Acapulco, the mast of his ship broke which compelled de Unamuno to dock in the nearest land to replace the broken mast and to replenish his food supplies. When his crew sighted land on October 18, 1587, de Unamuno entered the bay of what he called “Port San Lucas”. He took possession of the port and the land in the name of the Spanish king much as Columbus did on the other side of the continent a century before.

De Unamuno dispatched his Luzon Indios to act as his scouts as he explored the new land. Two days later, on October 20, his crew encountered natives who attacked them. In the battle that ensued, a Spanish soldier and a Luzon Indio were killed, before de Unamuno's crew was able to safely return to their ship.

On October 21, de Unamuno decided to leave and continue on to Acapulco. About a month later, de Unamuno wrote: “We entered the port of Acapulco on November 22 whence we wrote to Your Excellency and reported at length on the events and hardships of our voyage.”

After researching navigational maps of California and the geographic descriptions provided in de Unamuno’s narrative, members of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) determined that de Unamuno’s “Port San Lucas” is the city of Morro Bay.

On October 18, 1995, Morro Bay City Mayor William Yates officially dedicated a historical marker to commemorate de Unamuno’s landing. In part, the marker reads: “ A landing party was sent to shore which included ‘Luzon Indios’ marking the first landing of Filipinos in the Continental United States.”

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.

(This article, in its original form, first appeared in the Op-Ed page of the San Francisco Chronicle on October 17, 1997.)

First Filipinos to Set Foot in California

Almost a century after Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Bahamas Islands on October 12, 1492 and claimed for the king of Spain what would later be called “the Americas ”, Spanish Captain Pedro de Unamuno “discovered” California on the other side of the continent. Although Columbus ’ discovery is celebrated as a national holiday in the United States , in Spain , and throughout South America, no such honor is bestowed on de Unamuno for his discovery of California on October 18, 1587.

In fact, de Unamuno’s historic voyage has been largely ignored by historians and is only commemorated by the Filipino American community and only because de Unamuno reported in his ship’s log that his crew was composed of “Luzon Indios”.

This historical fact was revealed in Henry R. Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century which was published by the California Historical Society in San Francisco in 1929. The book included an English translation of de Unamuno’s account of his voyage to California.

The Spanish interest in finding California stemmed from the development of the Manila-Acapulco trade route, through which Chinese goods were ultimately delivered to Spain. In 1565, with Father Andres Urdaneta at the helm, a return route to Acapulco was found that passed by what we now know as the California coast. On the way back, Urdaneta sighted land, but lost sight of it in the mist.

Over the next 20 years, Urdaneta’s route was used by more Spanish vessels- mostly Manila galleon ships made in Philippine islands - and staffed by crews of “Luzon Indios.”

In 1585, Archbishop of Mexico Pedro Moya de Contreras dispatched Spanish Captain Francisco Gali to proceed to Manila from Acapulco and, on his return voyage, “to reconnoiter down the coast” in hopes of finding the land that Urdaneta and others reported sighting.

Archbishop Contreras also instructed Gali not to stop by China , mindful of the intense interest by Acapulco merchants in establishing direct commercial trade with China instead of having to go through the Spanish “middle men” merchants in Manila .

The Acapulco merchants had given money to Gali’s second in command, Pedro de Unamuno, to make the trade connections with China . Fortuitously for the merchants, Gali died while in Manila , giving command of his two ships to de Unamuno. Before leaving Manila in 1586, the Spanish authorities there reminded de Unamuno again of the Archbishop’s order not to go to China under any circumstances.

De Unamuno’s crew on his return trip to Acapulco was composed mostly of Luzon Indios who were conscripted by the Spanish authorities in Manila to build the galleon ships and to man the crews that would sail on those ships.

The church authorities in Manila were concerned that if the merchants in Acapulco established direct trade relations with China , they would not need to go to Manila to pick up Chinese goods and the Spanish colonial outpost in the Philippine islands would be abandoned.

Despite repeated warnings, de Unamuno disregarded the instructions of the Acapulco Archbishop and the Manila authorities and proceeded to Macao , a destination he later claimed was due to “bad weather and lack of supplies.”

The Portuguese authorities saw direct Spanish trade with China as inimical to their own trade interests so they confiscated de Unamuno’s ships and reported his China incursion to the Spanish authorities in Manila. The Royal Audiencia in Manila dispatched Captain Juan de Argumedo to Macao to arrest de Unamuno and his cohorts and to recover the two Spanish ships. The penalty for de Unamuno’s insubordination was death.

But de Unamuno and his men were able to elude capture and managed to connect with two Franciscan priests who wanted to return to Mexico . One of the priests, Father Martin Ignacio de Loyola (the nephew of the founder of the Jesuit order), loaned de Unamuno money to buy a small Portuguese-built ship in Macao , which de Unamuno christened “Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza”.

With his new ship loaded with Chinese goods purchased with the funds provided by the Acapulco merchants and with his crew of Luzon Indios, a few Spanish soldiers, and two priests, de Unamuno sailed for Acapulco from Macao on July 12, 1587.

En route to Acapulco, the mast of his ship broke which compelled de Unamuno to dock in the nearest land to replace the broken mast and to replenish his food supplies. When his crew sighted land on October 18, 1587, de Unamuno entered the bay of what he called “Port San Lucas”. He took possession of the port and the land in the name of the Spanish king much as Columbus did on the other side of the continent a century before.

De Unamuno dispatched his Luzon Indios to act as his scouts as he explored the new land. Two days later, on October 20, his crew encountered natives who attacked them. In the battle that ensued, a Spanish soldier and a Luzon Indio were killed, before de Unamuno's crew was able to safely return to their ship.

On October 21, de Unamuno decided to leave and continue on to Acapulco . About a month later, de Unamuno wrote: “We entered the port of Acapulco on November 22 whence we wrote to Your Excellency and reported at length on the events and hardships of our voyage.”

After researching navigational maps of California and the geographic descriptions provided in de Unamuno’s narrative, members of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) determined that de Unamuno’s “Port San Lucas” is the city of Morro Bay.

On October 18, 1995, Morro Bay City Mayor William Yates officially dedicated a historical marker to commemorate de Unamuno’s landing. In part, the marker reads: “ A landing party was sent to shore which included ‘Luzon Indios’ marking the first landing of Filipinos in the Continental United States.”

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 .

(This article, in its original form, first appeared in the Op-Ed page of the San Francisco Chronicle on October 17, 1997.)

Beating Ketsana-Ondoy

It was billed as Ondoy-Ketsana, which is O-K, only it wasn’t. Ketsana-Ondoy is more appropriate because it was a walloping K-O that this tropical storm unleashed on the Philippines, akin to what Manny Pacquiao inflicted on Ricky Hatton last May. Only much, much worse.

The photos of the devastation in the hard-hit areas of Metro Manila were harrowing and heart-wrenching: shanties shattered and shorn of whatever little dignity they started with; children wet and shivering, their hapless parents looking fear-stricken and ever more helpless; emaciated animals either dead or scampering; cars and trucks submerged, upended or piled on top of each other; and all sorts of human detritus -- cheap roofing materials, clapboards, furniture and fixtures, textiles and clothes, children's toys, and varying implements of daily living -- strewn all over, pleading to be picked up and cleaned.

And all these against a backdrop of brown, murky water seemingly everywhere, the motif dominant beneath an ominously gray sky, lurking and threatening to unleash yet more pain with more rain.

With water everywhere, the cruel irony is that the aftermath will highlight the very serious problem of lack of water. Clean water, that is, because water reservoirs, water treatment plants, pipes, tanks, and underground wells could not have escaped severe damage or contamination due to the storm.

With the death toll so far rising to more than 300, more deaths are expected in the ensuing months because of diseases related to unsafe water and poor sanitation. With muck, garbage, toxic chemicals, human waste, and God knows what else, all mixed up in this unprecedented massive flood which almost submerged the entire Metro Manila, the next likely chapter is dealing with diseases like typhoid, diarrhea and cholera.

Typhoid and cholera outbreaks occur where water supplies and sanitation are inadequate. People get sick after ingesting water or food that has been contaminated by the feces of infected persons. As always, children are the most vulnerable: according to theWorld Health Organization, on a regular basis, 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 to 14, and about 43% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea alone.

Not counting the psychological trauma that accompanies every disaster of this magnitude, the damage to private property, public infrastructure, crops and vegetation, and the costs to the economy as a whole, are immense and are still being tallied. The task is monumental. The early figures are out but are grossly understated. Many of the big companies are hobbled, but worse, many small businesses will be closed for good. Tens of thousands of the formerly employed will remain formerly employed.

The images of devastation make the comparison to Katrina easy, but Katrina was a super cyclone (tropical storm 4) while Ketsana-Ondoy was only a baby storm (tropical storm 1). And yet more rain water poured into Metro Manila in 12 hours onSeptember 26 than would normally fall in a whole month in the rainy season, more than what Seattle would experience in total from September through December. Marikina, the hardest hit Metro Manila city, has almost twice the population of New Orleans and is 23 times more dense per square mile.

How did a baby storm cause so much damage? According to Neal Cruz, “the unprecedented amount of rain... caused the rivers to swell and dam reservoirs to fill up. Water had to be released from the dams to prevent the pressure of water from breaking them. This water released from the reservoirs swelled the rivers downstream, causing them to overflow their banks and flood surrounding areas. With the creeks and rivers overflowing with water, there was no place for the rain water to go. So they went to the streets and to the houses and yards of low-lying villages.”

Because this was the “mother of all disasters”, the Philippines needs international help as it has never needed before. The European Community donated 2 million euros ($2.5M), with Germany adding an additional $500,000. Australia came through with $1M, Japan with $220,000 and China with $160,000. But of all the responses so far, the US has been the most underwhelming, with a donation of a measly $100,000 -- a pittance and a source of shame for the 4 million Filipinos in America.

At the end of the day, however, it will boil down to us, Filipinos of all stripes and colors, wherever located and however situated in life, to pull together and help our Motherland and our kababayans get back on their feet.

Below are 10 suggestions on how we can help the Philippines:

1. Get involved with any effort to help the Philippines. Engage your friends, Filipinos or not, and use your networks -- school, church, work, social, familial, Facebook, Twitter or Myspace. If you live in the SF-Bay Area, attend the regular weekly community task force meetings on Wednesdays at 7 pm at the Philippine Consulate. If there is no organized group in your community, create one.

2. Contact the White House (202-456-1111 or www.whitehouse.gov), the US Department of State (202-647-6575 orwww.state.gov), and your local Senator & Congressman (www.house.gov), and tell them that the US's $100K donation is pitifully small and that the US needs to give more.

3. Contact a relative or friend in the Philippines who needs help and send whatever money you can spare to that relative/friend and his/her family.

4. Send canned goods, camping equipment, clothes, blankets, flashlights, transistor radios or anything that might be useful, bring them to your local Philippine Consulate or to LBC and its 60 branch offices throughout the US.

5. Send money to the Philippine National Red Cross (redcross.org.ph), Ayala Foundation USA (af-usa.org), ABS-CBN Foundation (abscbnfoundation.org), Gawad Kalinga (ancopusa.org) or other reputable organizations that have set up operations to provide relief aid to the Philippines.

6. Ask your employer to set up a matching fund to match what you and your fellow employees can raise to send to the Philippines.

7. Ask your church to set up a special collection to raise funds to send to the affiliate church in the Philippines to help the victims of this calamity.

8. If you're a doctor, join a medical mission that will go to the Philippines to help the victims. In the meantime, gather some antibiotics, including the freebies given by the pharmaceutical companies, and bring them to the Philippine Consulate to send to the Philippines.

9. Buy Philippine-made products. Hard-hit Marikina is the "shoe capital of the Philippines" and exports many of its products to the US and other countries.

10. Speak positively about the Philippines, and ask people for a moratorium on bad-mouthing the Philippines and previous aid-relief efforts. You can’t ask people to help someone you are putting down. If you have nothing good to say about the Philippines, then don't say anything and let those who love the country do whatever can be done to help it recover.