When Mexico Calmed the Sea for Filipino Adventurers. Part 1 of 2

September 28 is the culmination of Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821 but the Philippines remained under Spanish colonial rule for another seventy-seven years.

For Filipinos, however, Mexican independence opened an unexpected door.

Both countries were already connected by more than two centuries of Pacific exchange. Mexico was the American end of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, while the Philippine archipelago supplied sailors, merchants, goods and knowledge to a maritime world that stretched across the Pacific.

But perhaps we should go back even further.

The ancestors of peoples throughout the Philippine archipelago belonged to the vast Austronesian maritime world. Their communities spread across an enormous stretch of the Indo-Pacific. They did not suddenly become adventurers when Europeans arrived. They inherited a world in which the sea was not a barrier. It was a pathway.

They had no map of the world as we know it today. They had the sea—and the courage to see what lay beyond the horizon.

By the sixteenth century, Philippine sailors were participating in the Spanish Pacific. In 1587, Pedro de Unamuno’s expedition reached the California coast. Its records identify sailors as Indios Luzones, men from Luzon. One died during an encounter at what is now Morro Bay.

They were already on the California coast more than three decades before the Mayflower reached New England in 1620—and before Jamestown was established in 1607.

Then came San Diego.

In 1769, the San Carlos, sailing from New Spain (now Mexico), reached San Diego Bay after an agonizing voyage of almost four months. Scurvy and disease had devastated the crew.

Among those who died were Agustin Fernandez de Medina, identified in Vicente Vila’s diary as a Philippine seaman, and Matheo Francisco, another Philippine seaman who died only days later.

Their names matter.

They were not statistics in the expansion of Spain into Alta California. They were men who crossed the Pacific and reached the shore that would become San Diego. Some never left.

The sea was the connective tissue. Before there were borders, there were routes. Before there were nation-states, there were ports.

Mexico’s independence changed the political landscape. In 1821, Mexico became an independent nation while the Philippines remained a Spanish colony. Mexico did not create Filipino mobility; it inherited a Pacific network already centuries old and gave it a new political setting.

The names begin to multiply.

Ramón Fabié y de Jesús and Isidoro Montes de Oca connect the Philippine archipelago to Mexico’s struggle for independence.

Alonso Morgado, a Filipino mariner, captain and merchant, operated through ports including San Blas, Mazatlán, La Paz and Guaymas.

Juan Nepomuceno Machado, of Filipino origin, established himself as a merchant in Mazatlán.

Gaspar Molina, born in the Philippines, became a sailor and shipbuilder in Baja California.

Antonio Miranda Rodríguez, Manila-born, was selected for the 1781 expedition associated with the founding of Los Angeles and later served at Santa Barbara.

And Francisco Flores, born in Cebu, arrived in Texas in 1822—when Texas was still Mexican territory.

He did not cross an American border. The border eventually crossed him.

The map continued to change. New Mexico moved from New Spain to Mexico and then to the United States. Southern Arizona remained Mexican (part of Sonora) until the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. California and Texas underwent their own transitions.

For the people moving through these places, political geography was changing around them.

The border moved. The people did not. Yet the names of these pioneers are often missing from the larger story.

We routinely give historical attention to European explorers who “discovered” new worlds. But others discovered new worlds and remained hidden.

These Filipinos had names. They had trades. They had choices. Most certainly, they had lives.

The challenge is not to declare every person from Manila “Filipino” in the modern national sense. Colonial identities were complicated. A Spanish, Chinese or European-sounding name does not settle a person’s origin.

A name is a clue, not a conclusion. Don’t assume. Don’t dismiss. Investigate.

That matters because these sailors were continuing a much older maritime tradition. The galleon was new. The relationship with the sea was not.

Their ancestors had crossed the sea without the modern map. Their descendants crossed it under many flags. Ships, ports and political powers changed.

The sea remained. And perhaps that is why Mexico matters.

Its independence did not create the Filipino adventurer. It changed the landscape through which Filipino sailors, merchants and workers could move.

Some went north into California. Some remained in Mexico. Others moved eastward through Texas and the Gulf.

They were not spectators to history. They were in it.

And nowhere is that more tangible than San Diego. In 1769, Philippine sailors arrived aboard the San Carlos. Some died here.

Centuries later, generations of Filipino sailors would come to San Diego through the United States Navy. Many would retire here. Their families would build communities here.

The circle is remarkable.

Some came by ship and never went home. Others came by plane, served in ships, came ashore (retired) and stayed.

The sea had brought them here before San Diego was an American city. And the sea kept bringing them home.

Mexico was one chapter in a much larger Pacific story.

For Filipinos, the next chapter belongs to the sailors who carried that reputation beyond Mexico and into the American maritime world.