THE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA is the oldest surviving record of the Alibata, the ancient alphabet common to several languages of the Philippines. Published in 1593, the Doctrina is a rudimentary catechism in Spanish, Romanized Tagalog, and Alibata—it is, in fact, the Rosetta Stone of this ancient alphabet. The Philippine languages are some of the rare few that continue to be in use without their original textual basis, existing, in effect, as echoes, transmogrified artifacts, or self-translations. They are spoken by close to ninety-one million people, most of whom may neither recognize the ancient text, much less be able to read it.

Ferdinand Magellan, the man who discovered the Philippines for the Europeans, planted a wooden cross on Mactan Island in 1521. The original cross allegedly still stands there today, in spitting distance to the very spot where Magellan was hacked to death by fierce warriors of the chieftain Lapu-Lapu.

The act of planting a cross in the name of the conquering monarch, in this case the young heir to the Spanish throne, Philip the Second, signified the inaugural moment of creation, the banishment of darkness—and, in the case of the Philippines, where virtually all record of the past was destroyed within the next fifty years—the birth of historical time. A mere generation after the massacre of Magellan’s fleet, waves of new conquistadors would continue to batter the islands. Through pillaging, cunning, and connivance with the natives—and a massive campaign to obliterate any evidence of culture among them—Magellan’s re-created universe would finally take hold.

No recorded history of the Philippines exists before 1521. In 1522, Maximilianus Transylvanus, secretary to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, officially recorded Magellan’s expedition based on interviews with the surviving crew, and in 1525, Magellan’s chronicler and one of the 18 survivors of the expedition, the Italian Antonio Pigafetta, wrote of the fabulous, dreamlike, savage islands—and refuted some of the claims of the Transylvanus script. It was, one might say, a rivalry to interpret this recreated world, which nonetheless serves only the European imagination. No memory of the Filipino is possible beyond these texts—beyond mere speculation. By the end of the 16th century, the extinguishing of the Alibata was the final act of re-creation. Unable to write himself, the Filipino would be the new Adam, a flickering reflection of the Cosmocrator.

And as I write these words today, I am aware that I am bound by language to this unforgiving silence.