This painting depicts the great Philippine hero Lapu-Lapu killing Magellan in Cebu in 1521.  Magellan was the first Westerner to visit the Philippines.  In former times, historians depicted Lapu-Lapu as a treacherous assassin, but today he is a revolutionary hero.

Lapu-Lapu has literally grown in stature in the Philippines.  In all the statuary around the Philippines he has become a regular Arnold Swartznegger.  As you can see from this memorial located at the site where he killed Magellan, nobody had a bigger sword than Lapu-Lapu.

Another painting in Cebu at the Basilica de Santo Niño celebrates the arrival of Christianity to the Philippines.  Although it arrived on the same Spanish galleons that brought the colonial oppressors, the Filipinos do not seem to have a problem with this apparent contradiction.  They are trying to jettison the unpleasant aspects of their colonial history while preserving the 16th Century Spanish Catholicism that arrived with the colonizers.

In central Cebu City, Magellan's cross celebrates the arrival of Christianity.  The mural on the ceiling above depicts a very different Magellan than the savage colonizer killed by the great hero Lapu-Lapu.  This cross is said to encase the remains of the original cross that Magellan planted in Cebu.