The Philippines - The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget - page 585

phrase that loosely translates to “what will
be, will be”.
CHRONOLOGY
500 BC Trade develops with the archipelago's neighbours
- the powerful Hindu empires in Java and Sumatra, and
with China.
1380 Arab scholar Makdam arrives in the Sulu Islands.
1475 Muslim leader Sharif Mohammed Kabungsuwan,
from Johore, marries a local princess and declares himself
the first sultan of Mindanao. Islam becomes established in
Mindanao, and influential as far as Luzon.
April 24, 1521 Ferdinand Magellan arrives in Cebu and
claims the islands for Spain. He is killed in a skirmish with
warriors led by chief Lapu-Lapu.
1565 Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, under orders from King
Philip II, establishes a colony in Bohol and erects the first
Spanish fort in the Philippines on Cebu.
1571 Legaspi conquers Manila, and a year later the whole
country, except the Islamic Sulu Islands and Mindanao.
Spanish friars zealously spread Catholicism.
1762 The British occupy Manila for a few months, but
hand it back to Spain under the conditions of the Treaty
of Paris, signed in 1763.
1892 José Rizal, a lawyer, novelist and poet whose anti-
colonial writings portray Spanish friars as unscrupulous
and depraved, returns to Manila and founds the reform
movement Liga Filipina. He is arrested and exiled to
Mindanao. Andres Bonifacio takes over and establishes the
revolutionary group Katipunan.
1896 Armed struggle for independence breaks out, and
Rizal is arrested and then executed on December 30, in
what is now Rizal Park in Manila.
1897 Allied with a young firebrand general, Emilio
Aguinaldo, Bonifacio supports violent opposition. Facing
all-out insurrection, the Spanish negotiate a truce with
Aguinaldo, and Bonifacio is executed.
1898 The US and Spain are at war over Cuba, and the US
attack and defeat the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. The
Filipinos fight with the US, and General Aguinaldo declares
the Philippines independent. However, the US pays Spain
US$20 million for the Philippines, and takes over as a
colonizing power.
1898-1902 The Filipino-American War lasts for three
years (with skirmishes for another seven), and more than
600,000 Filipinos are killed.
1935 Washington recognizes a new Philippine constitution,
making the Philippines a commonwealth of the US. Manuel
Quezon wins the country's first presidential elections.
1942 Japanese troops land on Luzon and conquer Manila
on January 2. US General MacArthur and Quezon leave the
American base on Corregidor, which the Japanese overrun
in days; during the Bataan Death March that follows,
10,000 Americans and Filipinos die.

October 1944 MacArthur returns, wading ashore at
Leyte and recapturing the archipelago from retreating
Japanese forces.
July 4, 1946 The Philippines is granted full independence
and Manuel Roxas is sworn in as the first president of
the republic.
1965 Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, a brilliant young lawyer
and member of the Senate, is elected president, portraying
himself as a force for reform. In his first term he embarks
on a huge infrastructure programme.
1969 Marcos is re-elected. Poverty and social inequality
are still rife, and there is student, labour and peasant
unrest, much of it stoked by communists, which Marcos
(backed by the US) uses to perpetuate his hold on power.
September 21, 1972 Marcos declares martial law, arrest-
ing Senator Ninoy Aquino and other opposition leaders.
August 21, 1983 Aquino, who had been in exile in the US
for three years, returns to the Philippines. He is assassinated
as he leaves his plane at Manila Airport.
February 7, 1986 At a snap election, the opposition
unites behind Aquino's widow, Cory. On February 25, both
Marcos and Cory claim victory and are sworn in at separate
ceremonies. Archbishop Jaime Sin urges the people to
take to the streets and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos flee
into exile in Hawaii; Ferdinand dies in 1989. Conservative
estimates of their plunder are around $10 billion.
1986-92 Cory Aquino's presidency is plagued by problems.
She backtracks on promises for land reforms, survives seven
coup attempts and makes little headway in tackling the
widespread poverty.
July 1, 1992 Fidel Ramos is elected president.
1998 Former vice-president Joseph Estrada (known as
Erap, a play on the Filipino word for friend, pare ), a former
tough-guy film actor, becomes president.
2000 Estrada is accused of receiving P500 million in illegal
gambling payoffs. He is impeached, but the trial falls apart.
Following protests of half a million people, the military with-
draws its support and Estrada is evicted from Malacañang.
January 20, 2001 Vice-president Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo is sworn in as president.
2004 Macapagal-Arroyo wins the presidential elections
against Fernando Poe Jr, a movie star and friend of Estrada.
Poe's supporters claim election fraud.
November 2007 An attempted coup in Manila is put
down. It is similar to one in 2003, and around a dozen
others in the past twenty years.
August 2008 Separatist violence in Mindanao surges after
peace talks break down, leaving at least 30 people dead.
November 2009 The slaughter of 57 civilians (at least 34
of them journalists) sends shock waves around the world
in what becomes known as the Maguindinao massacre.
Already ranked second only to Iraq as the deadliest country
for journalists by the CPJ, the massacre underlines the
Arroyo administration's tolerance of extra-judicial killings

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