--- Based on the insurrection of the Zamboangueño rebeldes led by General Vicente Alvarez y Solis against the Spanish colonialists in Zamboanga, 1899 A.D. --- 

            This fort in Zamboanga city of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Saragoza was the last bastion of Spain in Southeast Asia. Today, over three and a half centuries later, it stands as strong as ever; it was first called La Fuerza Real de San Jose back in 1635. So, why  did the Spanish colonists build a fort to last for centuries in the swamps and marshland, there at the tip of Zamboanga peninsula, its coral rock foundation sank among the legions of cagang-cagang, or fiddler crabs?

            We learn that for three and a half decades, from July 1599 to middle of 1635, Moro pirates and marauders were raiding the coastlines of Mindanao, to the Visayas, and up to southern Luzon. Christianized Indios of Mindoro and even in Taytay abducted, and their towns burnt and plundered by Moslem pirates of Sulu and Maguindanao.

            With fifty caracoas and 3,000 tribesmen, Datu Salinga of Buhayen and Datu Salikala of Sulu pillaged and burnt the houses and churches of the coastal towns of Panay, Negros, and Cebu: 800 villagers were taken captives for the slave markets of the East Indies.

            A year later, in 1600, with a much bigger force of 70 caracoas and 4,000 men, Salinga and Salikala scoured the coastal villages of the Visayas islands. Again, the datus took hundreds of Christian captives. Two years later, not yet satiated with blood and the loot from these pueblos, an evil trio, Datu Silanga, his brother Buizan, and their nephew, the Raja Mura of Maguindanao, gathered a much bigger armada. It was made up of 145 vessels and thousands of tribesmen. For the first time, they had allies from the neighboring islands: tribesmen from the Moluccas, Sangil, and Tagolanda.

            Beyond the waters of Mindanao, they split into two flotillas: Salinga and Raja Mura pillaged and burnt the Christian towns of Cuyo and Calamianes islands; and Buizan struck Balayan and Mindoro, in the Southern Luzon provinces, and in Bicol region. Thus, not only in the Visayas but also in Luzon already, where the Spanish colonists had their capital, Manila.

            In those ravaged places, the Spanish colonizers had very few sea vessels and troops. When other Moro datus saw how easy it was to capture Christians for the slave markets in the East Indies, they joined in the raid and plunder: indeed, all coastal towns now were at their mercy.

            After a year and five months went by, Datu Buizan, on October 29, 1603, this time without Salinga and the other datus, but with fifty war canoes and 1,000 tribesmen, sailed for Dulag, east of Leyte. He was joined by his foreign allies, Sangils and Tarnatans of the Moluccas. Swooping down upon the town of Dulag, they feasted on the helpless townsfolks like hungry carrion-eating vultures. As in those past raids, the Moro pirates burnt the town and razed its church to the ground. Hundreds of its settlers were taken captives.

            In 1621, forty-three years later, Governor Hernando de los Rios Coronel wrote  the King of Spain that the "Moros were building war vessels and making inroads among these islands ... to commit depredations ... captured many Indians and their wealth and became more skillful and daring through the exercise of war."

            And he added in his letter to his King what was the sentiment of the Indio islanders who had lost their faith in the Spanish government. He quoted them saying:

            "Let us be free and let us have arms, and we shall be able to defend ourselves, as we did before the advent of the Spaniards!"

            The Mindanao Island, though beautiful and rich in resources, was very much neglected and isolated, then as it is now.  Even news, and gossips of Manila, reached the island not from its own colonial imperialist capital of Manila, as should be expected, but from newspapers brought in by foreign ships, British, Dutch, and German. These ships would pass through Basilan Straight bound for home or the East Indies.

            When the piratical raids and pillaging reached Luzon already, not just Mindanao and the Visayas, the governor-general of the Spanish colony of Las Islas de Felipenas sent a military expedition, one of many, euphemistically calling the military expedition "punitive."

            The first of these expeditions under the command of Sergeant Major Juan Xuarez Gallinato was sent to Sulu, not to Maguindanao. And yet, only Salikala was from Sulu; the three other infamous Moro raiders  --- datus Buizan, Silanga, and the Raja Mura, all came from Maguindanao 

            But the powerful, main Moro allies were from Borneo and the Moluccas islands,  just across Sibutu Passage from Sulu but hundreds of miles opposite across the Moro Gulf to Maguindanao. The fearless and barbaric Commun pirates were from Jahore. The mere mention of "Communs" clogged blood icily in one's veins. More and more guns and foreign warrior-pirates were pouring into Sulu Archipelago through these islands.

            For twenty-five years after Gallinato's successful invasion of Jolo, the Spaniards did not return to Mindanao. During these years, the Moro pirates and raiders were like unleashed mad dogs: at will they growled, mauled, and chewed at the Christian towns. Into recesses and holes of their pueblos, the helpless Christians crawled. For the mad dogs of piracy were on their shores!

            Only in the last quarter of the 19^th century when the Spanish navy patrol acquired steamboats were piracy, kidnapping, and looting stopped completely. 

            During those abominable years, the Moros abducted over 35,000 Christianized Indios and later sold as slaves to Chinese, Bornean, Mollucan, and Indian merchants and traders.

            Without weapons, the Christianized Indios were like clams in the shallow waters and shore: easily picked up and turned over helpless on their backs. After so many and desperate appeals, the Spanish government in Manila woke up.

            Governor general Juan Cerezo de Salamanca would put up a fort  in Mindanao to defend the island’s Christianize inhabitants.

            Unlike his predecessors that devoted their time at bailes and fiestas, Don Salamanca devoted his to the colonials’ welfare of the isolated islands. However, where would he put the fort? In Maguindanao, the Visayas, or where the Jesuits had put up the first Jesuit Residencia in Mindanao: a place called Butuan.

            Father Pedro Rodriguez, rector of the Jesuit residencia there, proposed the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula. He recalled that in 1597, Don Juan Ronquillo abandoned the naval base at La Caldera on the western coast of Zamboanga. This left Basilan Straight (Taguima, to the antiquary) unprotected. The Straight is a narrow channel that runs between the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula and the island of Basilan. Not soon afterwards, the Moro marauders were using the unprotected channel on their way to raid the coastal towns of the Visayas and southern Luzon. Pirate’s traffic here was busiest during the southeast monsoon season. Southwestward, the channel at this time of the year was outside of the path of the strong southeasterly winds.

            After this quite long verbiage, Governor General Salamanca listened to the Father Rector, him that loved drama and oratory.            First, geographically located, it would split the two sultanates in the middle; second, deny Sultan Kudarat the Basilan Straight passage to the north; and lastly, would take Sibuguey from him and Basilan Island from the Sultan of Sulu.

            So,  in April 6, 1635, there arrived at the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula 300 Spanish troops and 1,000 Visayan auxiliary soldiers, and with Captain Juan de Chavez in command. Along with the soldiers and workers was the fort’s architect-geometrician called Melchor de Vera: a Jesuit.

            The construction workers consisted of the Visayan auxiliary force, the island’s native Subanons and the Lutaos.

            Two and a half months before the start of the construction of the fort, Captain Chavez and his troops cleared the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula of Moros and pagans. No work in the building of the fort would start without them harassing the construction workers.  He had to get rid of them.

            While the construction of the fort was going on, the three main islands of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao were being raided by Moro pirates and their abducted inhabitants sold in the slave markets. Often heard was the terrifying cry: "Cuidao, ay Moros en la a playa!" --- "Watch out, there are Moros on the beach!"

Months after the completion of the fort, the Spanish colonists set fire all the surrounding sitios and barrios, and the inhabitants taken to a community created southwest of the fort. Here the Samals and animists turned-instant-Christians had the protection of the Spanish guardia civil, soldiers, and the cannon of the fort. The rallying cry: “All-out war outside [of the settlement and fort], and peace within the range of the artillery.”

            Thus, built just outside the fort, the community grew into a real village. The fort, plus a fortified area attached north of it, and the new community formed the three incipient tableaus of New Samboangan.

            But this fort, which we see today, is not the original fort, this we now know: as other structures built for “permanency” --- the fort was eventually rebuilt. It passed two colonial Spanish governors, two commandants, and two engineers. Moreover, between these two constructions passed eighty-four years or so.

            The two governors were Don Juan de Salamanca, a no-nonsense governor, who ordered the occupation of the southern tip of the Zamboanga peninsula in 1634, thus paving the way to the construction of the fort the following year; and the other, Don Fernando Manuel de Bustillo who re-established the fort in 1719 (Spoehr in his Zamboanga and Sulu has it 1917, an obvious error in encoding: in his time --- a typographical), and made the change from Real Fuerza de San Jose to Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa. 

            And the two engineers were Melchor de Vera, in the original construction, and, the second, Juan de Ciscara; the latter hardly mentioned when we speak of the construction of Fort Pilar: yes, the builder ... not the re-builder.

            Also, the fort passed in the hands of two Spanish military commandants who headed the expedition to build the fort there: first, Captain Juan de Chavez, 1635, and second, Gregorio de Padilla y Escalante. We don’t know where from came Captain Chavez, from Visayas or Luzon itself, northward of the peninsula. But with Don Padilla, we know that he came from Cavite (where at that time there was the Spanish baradero or shipyard), and reached port here on April 1, 1719. Continuing in like manner, there is on record how many Indio volunteers (an old hat for the euphemistic conscripted or forced labor) and Spanish Peninsulares came with Captain Chavez; no mention with regard to the other expeditionary force.

            Built as a bastion and a citadel to stop Islam progress and Moro piracy in Las Islas de Felipenas from spreading like the wild grasshopper weeds, the fort was not lacking many times defending itself from local and foreign assaults. The Moros led the domestic assault, with crazed screams, wooden shield rattling, and spears shaking; while the Dutch and the British the foreign, with repeat-rifles and cannonade. But indestructible and unconquered, the bastion remained until the prophet of Democracy, the Norte Americanos, came with iron ships and inscrutable smiles wider than a Chinese opium trader’s. Nor was the fort shy in its missionary work, both by the cross and the sword. From La Caldera Bay up to the west coast of the peninsula to Siocon and to the northernmost region of the peninsula, to the island of Basilan, ancestral home of the Yakans, to the island of Sulu, southeast, the land of the headstrong Tausugs, the relentless missionaries, Jesuits all, smothered or sweet-talked the Samals (not Islam yet), Lutaos, Yakans, and the natives of Zamboanga, the Subanons to the Christian faith.

            More constant than any of the invaders were the Moro pirates. Two major attempts were lunged to capture Fort Pillar: in 1720 and again in 1734. A notorious Moro pirate Datu Balasi, who fashionably called himself king of Bulig, nearly crushed the defenders with the biggest invading force assembled then: 3,000 screaming-their-heads-off Moro pirates. If not for the timely reinforcement of over 1,000 Mindanaoans, the Spaniards and their Indio allies would have found themselves either beheaded or hanging on a tree. Most ironical if it were the latter option, since the Spaniards were not known to be shy to hanging. Moro pirates, particularly the datus, were regularly hanged on a tree as an example to show the gravity of punishment of those who resisted the Cross as well as the Sword. 

            In 1646 the Dutch, Spain’s in-grown toe nail in Southeast Asia, attacked the fort but was repulsed. No other attempt was made by the Dutch, although both the Dutch and Spain kept crossing swords and hurling insults at each other in the Celebes region.

            Quite strong and sturdy was this original fort, the Real Fuerza de San Jose, even 24 years after the garrison was abandoned. Governor Manrique de Lara had ordered  the Spanish contingent to augment the defense of Manila. Lara feared that Manila would inevitably be the next fodder after Taiwan to the insatiable Chinese pirate Koxinga. But the rash abandonment when played out turned into an opéra bouffe.

            The French buccaneer (a euphemism for pirate) Dampier crossing the Pacific from the west coast of Mexico sailed into Mindanao by way of Guam. 

            From the Mindanao river, present day Rio Grande, he sailed southeasterly, and then to Zamboanga. His account:

            “The next day we were abreast of Chambongo [misspelling for Samboangan] .... On the 17th day [of January 1687], we anchored on the east side of all these keys in 8 fathoms water, clean sand.... A little to the westward of these keys, on the island Mindanao, we saw an abundance of coconut trees: Therefore, we sent our cannon ashore, thinking to find inhabitants, but found none, nor sign of any, but great tracts of hogs, and great cattle; and close by the sea there were ruins of an old fort. The walls were of good height, built with stone and lime: and by the workmanship seemed to be Spanish.’

            And so, there stood the fort, enduring and indestructible, in spite of having been abandoned rashly twenty-four years ago by the Spaniards.

            The then fort commander, Don Fernando de Bobadilla, had in 1662 entrusted the fort to the head of the Samboangan Voluntarios, a Christian convert called Fernando Macombong: son of Felipe Macombong, hero of Palapag, and probably the only Indio officer buried with honors at Paco Cemetery in Intramuros, Manila. The redoubtable sultan of Jolo, Saliganya Bungsu, was his grandfather, and his grandmother was Nayac the Most Beautiful Subana princess. Through affinity and arranged marriages, the Jolo sultan was a kin of the ‘disciple of the false Prophet’ Sultan Kudarat of Maguindanao.

            Before sailing to Manila, the commandant Don Bobadilla told the Samboangan Voluntario officer to defend the fort against all enemies. Said Macombong, without batting an eye, likely speaking in the nascent Chabacano: "Contra todos enemigos, si ...pero, unico uno que no puedes defender: Sultan Kudarat."

            In 1719, the Spaniards returned to rebuild the fort they had abandoned in haste and fear. Without a soul seen on its ramparts for two generations, the interior of the fort was a picture of a place hastily abandoned for no reason: like a hencoop with all the birds having flown away. Broken utensils, water jars, pieces of coral blocks and plaster of masonry were strewn here and there. In some places, particularly after the north and northeast entrances, and before the curtain of the orillon --- excretions of goats and cows caked the stone-cobbled floor.

            However, before the reconstruction, the fort's outer walls remained impregnable to both nature's and man's intrusion. Even the interior walls, Engineer Ciscara observed, needed few repairs. If a few cannonballs struck them, he must have thought, the fifty-six years or so of abandonment and neglect wouldn't cause the walls of the fort to collapse still. Of the four bastions, the orillon, as the expression goes, was as good as new. Even the three bastions looked strong and were not in need of repair. When the bastions were rebuilt, it was to enlarge them, extended outwardly, and not to put in repairs. With this extension, each bastion became big enough to hold more cannon. The bastions' raison d´etre was more than enhanced: then each cannon could blow to ‘Kingdom Come’ any fool Moro pirates intruding by chance into the Basilan Straight. On the other hand, greedy for world power as Spain, the other colonists, the Dutch, Portuguese, and English, had always craved for a piece of the peninsula.

            Now the rebuilder Ciscara was ready to rebuild the fort, not looking once at Caldera Bay. He knew a century and one score years earlier, Juan de Ronquillo, who succeeded Marquis Estéban Rodriguez de Figueroa, had put up a garrison at the bay, which was withdrawn to Cebu in 1599.

            Ciscara started first with the repair of the interior structures, and then the joints of the walls.

            At the center of the interior court, a deep well was dug up, disturbing over half century of indefatigable quiet and peace; and a guardhouse, barracks, munitions magazine, and a chapel built as separate buildings flanking the four walls. A moat was installed surrounding part of the fort, and the fortified area outside it. Water came from the river Tumaga, several kilometers (kms.) northeast, one of the tributaries of the river Pasonanca, seven kms. from the New Settlement of the Lutaos and the Subanons and the fort itself. Each tributary took its name from the barrio it passed or transgressed. On the most seaward side of the fort was a terreplein. There were two entrances to the fort, the northeast and western entrances. The northeast entrance would be closed in the 18^th century, about the time a shrine at the exterior curtain was sculptured for the namesake of the fort: Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa.

            Southwest of the fort and separated from it only by its moat was a fortified area. A long curtain of palisades rose along its southwest side, and here the moat ran around it completely. Only a bridge eastward that connected it to the fort broke it.

            Though unlikely that land forces would assault the fortified area, it was protected on the northwest side by a masonry curtain. Flanked at one end of it was an orillon, named Santa Catalina, and at the other end by a cavalier named Santa Barbara. Northeast was the moat and the impenetrable mangrove swamps beyond.

            Invaders assaulting the fortified area by land would find themselves either lost in the great swamps or cut to pieces by grapeshot from guns of the orillon and the cavalier. Retreating northwardly to the hills and mountains wouldn't be wise, as there were tribes there that were not quite friendly. One animistic tribe was cannibalistic, and another known to indulge in human sacrifice during one of its rituals, called buklog, to their diwata god. And this wasn't just rumors.

            The governor's house, a hospital, and living quarters were located inside the fortified area.

            To seaward was the village of the Lutaos and the Subanons. The fort of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa, the palisade area, and the new settlement were the genesis of the modern town of Zamboanga.

            Like a square-shaped monster, the fort has two pairs of claws either to pounce or crash its victims. This is in the features of four bastions in straight flanks, and one is in the form of an ace of spades: an orillon. A kind of a deadliest tool of a beast as fangs and paws are to lions was the orillon, and thus around it the fort’s defenses were centered and oriented. It was also the heart in which the fort thrived and lived. Pointed toward the sea, the orillon upon sighting pirates and raiders heedlessly venturing within sight would beat and throb as a heart would, sending juices to the other bastions. And the monster in the fort would awaken, and with its fangs and paws clawed and crashed whatever living thing had ill advisedly wished to harm it.

             Though not as large as the forts in Europe or Spain used to repel Moors from pueblos like Cataluña and Estremadura, it was the biggest hereabouts in the Spanish colony of Las Islas de Felipenas or in Southeast Asia. It covered an area of 7,282 square meters. The curtains connecting one bastion to the other is slightly 50 meters long. Its aboveground exterior masonry of cut blocks of reef made up the lower wall, cornice, and parapet.

            A distinguishable feature can be noticed of the lower wall to this day still (2006 A.D.), although now it is weathered to a dark grey and climbers have partially cloaked it. Save for the northwest curtain, all the lower walls are battered, sloping downward and outward: 1.00 meter outward for each 5.00 meters of vertical height. Not for esthetic reason, hermano, but to deflect cannon balls and to give the monster of a fort a firm hold on mother earth with a wider base.

            Fort Pilar was a major construction work. It is indeed a square-shaped monster by the sea and the swift currents of Taguima Straight ... antiquarian name for Basilan Straight.

            Eighteen thousand five-hundred forty dressed coral blocks for the exterior masonry of the curtains, and for the interior 12,744 blocks: a total of 31,284. But that isn’t all yet. Forty-nine gun platforms, the interior ramp, two entrances, and miscellaneous stone features would require at least an additional 4,500 blocks. Thirty-five thousand seven hundred eighty-four coral blocks is a minimum estimate for the masonry.

            Think of this: human hands hewed each all those coral blocks pushed and plastered with lime mortar.

            Once again, let us look at the fort’s fangs and claws: the bastions. The most impressive feature of the fort no doubt is the orillon. It is shaped in the traditional form of an ace of spades; its points rounded, to deflect cannonballs. From the top of the ramp to its outer point, the orillon measures some 30 meters, the floor slopes about 26 cm. downward from the center of the parapet. Sloping and vertical is the inner face of the parapet, save for the two small sections which face the southwest and southeast curtains. Only on this part of the fort does this feature occur.

            There are nineteen gun embrasures here, as there were cannon. And before each embrasure a coral block gun platform, sloping 19 cm. from its inner to its outer edge. Strongly built since the heavy cannon were retracted from the embrasures for reloading, and ready to once again claw and crash the infidel Moros and foreign invaders threatening the fort and the New Settlement of the Christianized Indios.

            Though not so formidable as the orillon, the other three bastions facing northwest, northeast, and southeast had coral blocks at their corners that are massive. One such block measured 75-cm. X 75 cm. X 42 cm. They are identical and slightly diamond-shaped; each had ten embrasures (ten cannon), four of which cover the adjoining curtains. 

            All in all, the fort had forty-nine cannon, each capable of sinking an intruding ship; and if a landing force were able to land on Samboangan shores to perforate them with grapeshot.

            Originally, the main entrance to the fort was the site of the present shrine of La Virgen de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragosa. Of architectural interest, at the top of the shrine is a niche in the masonry. Set in it is a stone figure of the Virgin and Child. Exactly when the shrine was placed there nobody knows; but we have the month and the year.  For immediately below the niche is a plaque, which reads:

            “Governando este presidio el Sr. Don Juan de La Torre Bustamante. Este Frontispico fue construido el Enero de año 1734.”

            A second plaque interrupting the line of the cornice but set above the top of the former entrance reads:

            “Rigiendo las Españas la Catoloica Magestad de Don Felipe V, Emperador del Nuevo Mundo Americano, y Gobernando estas islas el muy ilustre Sr. Mariscal de Campo Don Fernando Bustillos Bustamante y Rued Gobernador y Capitan General se establecio y reedifico esta Real Fuerza de Ntra. Sra. del Pilar de Zaragoza lo que hizo el ilustre General Don Gregorio Padilla y Escalante a 8 de Abril de 1719.”

            Obviously commemorating the re-establishment of the fort in 1719 and the change in the name from La Fuerza Real de San Jose to the Fort of Our Lady of Pillar of Zaragosa.  

            In the center of the northwest curtain is where we have the present entrance, 2.50 meters wide. The writer in his youth had passed through it many a time to gape at long large cannon on the orillon and watch the awesome Zamboanga golden tropical sunset, and listen to the silent voices of the secret ghosts of the past.

            Like great structures of the world, the fort is not short of legends.

            One, a tale most, if not all, Zamboangueños know by heart is that of the Lady and the Spanish sentinel. It was near midnight. On the ramparts of the fort, the Spanish sentinel was making his rounds. The Moros had threatened to attack the fort. He had been more watchful than usual.

            Suddenly, as if in thin air, a lady appeared on the seaward orillon before him. He shouted at this mysterious apparition, his frightened voice ringing in the dark:

            “Alto, quien eres? - Halt, who are you?”

            No reply came from the Lady.

            The sentinel, very much alarmed now, raised his musket and was about to shoot when the reply came. Said the Lady:

            “Sentinela, porque el paso niegas al alba del dia? Si conoces a Maria porque le mandas acer alto? - Sentry, why do you deny the pass to the dawn of day? If you recognize Mary, why do you halt her?”

            Visibly shaking in terror now, the Spanish sentinel answered:

            “Perdonad, Señora mia, madre de mi corzaon, soy un pobre sentinela y cumplo mi obligacion. - Forgive me my lady, mother of my heart, I am but a humble sentry who does his duty.”

            The following day, the sentry reported the incident to his commandant. Who didn’t believe a word he said. Instead, to draw out the truth from him, the fort commandant put him to a test: the sort of thing not lost to this day in order to force out the truth from a victim.

            Over a fire with soaring flames, one of the sentinel’s fingers was thrust. The commandant and the torturers vowed they heard the finger sizzle in its own oil. Their noses stung with the sharp odor of burnt meat.

            When they thought that, the sentinel’s finger was about to break into pieces as charcoal does, the torturers pulled out his finger from the flame. Lo and behold! the finger wasn’t burnt; it showed no telltale sign at all of having been in the fire, nor smelled of burnt meat.

            But the following weeks the Spanish sentinel fell ill. Soon after he died. They said he died a saintly death!              

            It happened many, many years ago before the intrepid and leal Zamboangueño Voluntarios revolted against Spain, and the beginning of our tale¼

¡§Philippine Copyright "¶ 2006 by A. R.  Enriquez¡