Social network users have ‘discovered’ that in an Asian country there is a municipality called Mexico, even some have ‘run’ directly to Google Maps to corroborate the information
Social networks have allowed users to go beyond their countries, even curiosity has aroused many and managed to find interesting things
Recently an image went viral where they affirmed the exit of the Mexico municipality in the Philippine province of Pampanga, users have been given the task of corroborating the information and realizing that in the Philippines there is ‘another’ Mexico.
The municipality of Mexico in the Philippines was founded in the year of 1581 and was originally named as New Mexico, to date there is no exact fact of the adoption of the name but historians agree that Mexico comes from the native language of the indigenous They inhabited the region. Historical science indicates that the name was taken from the Latin American country by the Spaniards.
MEXICO AND THE PHILIPPINES, COMMON INHERITANCES AND FRATERNAL LEGACIES
History, language, food and even clothing are shared with the Philippines.
Mexico is a city and municipality in the province of Pampanga, to the north of Manila in the Philippine capital. This town was founded in the year of 1581 when the colonizers arrived from the south in small boats to discover this fertile land, an area located between rivers and full of rice plantations in the middle of the Central Luzon region, the largest island from the Philippines.
In the beginning, they called that place New Mexico, but over time the town was officially constituted as Mexico. And it is that Mexico and the Philippines share many traditions and customs, which derive from ties established for more than 400 years when both countries were dominated by the Spanish crown.
In 1521 Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec empire, and in the same year, Ferdinand Magellan traveled to Asia and claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish monarchy. In 1543, after its discovery, the explorer Ruy López de Villalobos sailed from Barra de Navidad (Jalisco), Mexico, to recognize and name these islands. The Philippine Islands were named, in honor of Felipe II of Spain.
In 1565, Governor Miguel López de Legazpi claimed the Philippines as the Spanish Colony and designated Manila as its capital in 1571. Due to its distance from Spain, the Spanish government assigned the Manila government and the government to the Viceroyalty of New Spain for two and a half centuries. Evangelization and commerce constituted the core of intercontinental ties between Asia and America that materialized with the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade.
Later trade routes to Mazatlan and some founders can be traced to Filipinos
Due to the great exchange with the Philippines at that time, many cultural traits were adopted among them, the Mexicans remaining in the Philippines and establishing Filipinos in Mexico, particularly on the pacific west coast. Many words of Nahuatl were adopted and popularized in the Philippines, such as “Tianggui” (fair market) and “Zapote” (a fruit).
One of the first references to a Mexican “diplomat” in the Philippines is found during the Revolution, in the Porfiriato, with the designation, in 1878, of Evaristo Hernández Butler, as Consul. In 1935, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Emilio Portes Gil, appointed the first Filipino pilot and painter, Alfredo Carmelo de las Casas, as the Honorary Consul of Mexico in the Philippines. He remained in that position until 1954.
Another significant Mexican presence in the Philippines was Squad 201 during World War II. Mexico participated in the peaceful campaign against the Japanese, with a contingent of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force, which arrived in Manila on April 30, 1945, commanded by Colonel Antonio Cárdenas Rodríguez.
The year 1964 was decreed the “Year of Filipino-Mexican Friendship” to celebrate the Fourth Centenary of the Expedition of Miguel López de Legazpi. Due to the great cultural exchange, Mexicans and Filipinos share more than having been administered by the same government; for example:
The guayabera, considered a typical Mexican shirt, has much resemblance to the barong tagalog, a male garment of the archipelago. Manila mango, widely consumed in Mexico, is of Filipino origin. The Philippines also has its own variety of tamales. Filipinos speak about five thousand words of Hispanic origin. In addition, they also make use of words with Nahuatl origin such as “anguish” or “zapote”. For its part, the Philippines inherited from Mexico the style of some of its rebozos.
Manila has one of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, while in Paseo de la Reforma there is a statue of the Filipino national hero José Rizal, a virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico … and the Philippines. The cult of the Virgin Guadalupe arrived by sea to the Philippines. His cult is important throughout the country, but especially in the second largest metropolitan area, Cebu. Here there are even shrines dedicated to the brunette of Tepeyac and the occasional little town with her name. Pope Pius XII became patron saint Philippines in the early 1960s.
The Philippines, in colonial times, was ruled from Mexico City. Getting from Acapulco to Manila took 4 months. But arriving from Madrid to Manila took up to a year. So for practical reasons, the Philippines belonged to New Spain. The viceroy of New Spain was also the governor of the Philippines, delegating decisions to the captain-general attached to Manila.
Many “kastilias” (Filipino Spaniards) were really of Mexican origin. Much of the Spanish colonization to this Asian archipelago did not come from the Iberian Peninsula, but from Mexico. The Spaniards who arrived were rather descendants of peninsular people already born in Mexico (Creoles). Today the vast majority of Filipino surnames are very familiar to Spanish speakers.
Finally, the accent of Filipino Spanish is more similar to Mexican than Iberian. Until 1975, Spanish was the official language in the Philippines, although it had fallen into disuse since the 1920s. After 300 years of Spanish colony it was obvious that the language had permeated as a cultural and political instrument. However, as a result of the migration from New Spain, the accent with which it was spoken was more similar to Mexican (avoiding the pronunciation of the z, the conjugations of “you”, etc).
Source: tribuna.com.mx, mxcity.mx
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