Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions.

Roland Barthes

Magellan made his fateful landfall in the Philippines at Cebu on March 16, 1521; and, with the signal exception of his slaying some six weeks later, it has seemed possible to read the bulk of Philippine history as a series of capitulations. Politics became Spanish, religion became Spanish (the Islands were an Archdiocese before 1600), and in 1850 when, to ease tax-collecting problems, Governor-General Narciso Claveria decreed that all indios be given Spanish surnames, even given names became Spanish. One of the Philippines' greatest modern writers, Nick Joaquin, has said: