Lapu-Lapu

The Tide That Broke the Spears

Lapulapu was a chieftain of Mactan in the Philippines who, in April 1521, refused submission to the Spanish crown and met Ferdinand Magellan's force on his island's shallow shore. In the battle that followed, his warriors overwhelmed the armored intruders in the surf and Magellan himself was slain, halting the expedition's conquest. Honored today as the first Filipino to resist foreign colonization, Lapulapu endures as an emblem of native defiance.