Politic-Economic-Society-Tech

Filipino, Vietnamese kinship dates back centuries ago

By IVAR GICA

ALTHOUGH the present diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Vietnam has turned 25 years old last June 12, up to late 1967, I noted a street in downtown Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh) named Filipinen in honor of Filipinos who fought for Vietnam in earlier wars. Apparently, it was the French colonizers of Vietnam that inspired that street sign. History records Tomas Claudio as the first Filipino to die in a foreign war. It shows that Spain used Filipinos in her imperialistic adventures in Indochina as early as 1595.
Noted historians Gregorio F. Zaide and Sonia M. Zaide in their comprehensive book, Philippine History & Government, recorded that from 1858-63 some 1,500 Filipino soldiers fought under the Spanish flag in Indochina. It was to help her ally, France, conquer the Vietnamese Empire and to avenge the murder of Spanish missionaries by the Vietnamese. Fighting shoulder-toshoulder with French forces, they distinguished themselves in the battles of Saigon, Ka Koa, My Tho and Bien Hoa. 

For their gallant services, they were praised by their Spanish commander, Col. Carlos Palanca Gutierrez and by the French commanders, General Chaumont, Admiral Bonard and Vice Admiral Charnier. 

Ninety Filipinos also joined the first Spanish expedition to Cambodia of 130 men in 1596 under the command of Captain Juan Gallinato. Two years later, Luis Dasmariсas (former governorgeneral and son of Gomez Perez Dasmariсas) led another expedition to Cambodia with Filipinos and Japanese soldiers. Both these expeditions however failed to subjugate the Cambodians. After the Indochina war in 1975, a Cambodian army chief, General Sostene Fernandez, was said to be of Filipino parentage. 

It is interesting to note that many Filipino soldiers who fought in Vietnam in those early wars under the Spanish flag remained permanently in that country, married the beauteous Vietnamese women and reared their families. 

In the early 1970s while serving as community development advisor in Vietnam for six years, I chanced upon two Filipinos living among the Vietnamese in a coastal village in central Vietnam. They had been there for decades and were ever fearful Immigration would catch up with them. But the villagers, who loved them because of their fishing skills and more advanced ways of shoreline living, they were even reluctant to introduce them and their families to me. 

During the Vietnam war in 1965-1975, more Filipinos went to Vietnam. They were with the Philippine Civic Action Group-Vietnam (Philcag-V), the Philippine Contingent (the Philcon of doctors and nurses), Operations Brotherhood of the Philippine Jaycees (notably medical teams), the Community Development and Pacification Advisors, engineers and technicians and those with Volunteer Agencies (Volags) and many other organizations from the Free World. Many of them married and sired Filipino-Vietnamese children. That's how close the historical kinship between Filipinos and Vietnamese. 

source: Manila Bulletin, 16 July 2001