Battle of Bankusay, Painting by Dan Dizon. Courtesy of JDN Center for Kapampangan Studies. 

Bankusay refers to the Bankusay creek located off the north shore of Manila Bay. It was here where the bloody Battle of Bankusay took place in 1571, a battle which would immortalize the heroism and extraordinary courage of a young warrior whose name continues to elude the Filipino consciousness.

While several Filipino patriots sacrificed their lives and performed heroic deeds to free the Filipinos from foreign oppressors, some events and people remained unsung, not given proper credit or merely forgotten. Among the battles fought by Filipinos that seemed unremembered was the Battle of Bankusay on June 3, 1571. It was a naval engagement that marked the last or if not one of the last resistance of the natives against the Spanish Empire’s occupation and colonization of the Pasig River delta which had been the site of…