Sandugo Festival

Sandugo Festival is a yearly historical event that takes place every year on the month of March, in the island of Bohol. This festival honors the celebration of a local Philippine leader Datu Sikatuna's blood compact and association or treaty of friendship with the Spanish king conquistador, Captain General Miguel López de Legazpi in March 16, 1565.

History

It began with the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi in the shores of Tagbilaran, Bohol in 1565 and the swearing of commitment of Datu Sikatuna to the Spanish crown. The two people were believed to have made a cut on their left arms with a dagger and sprinkled their blood into a cup filled with wine, which both drunk in honor of their friendship and brotherhood. The treaty was signed on the SW coast of Bohol Island in March of 1565. This was 44 years after Ferdinand Magellan was killed attacking a Philippine village on Mactan Island about 50 miles north of here.

The Sandugo treaty is called a blood compact because the participants each drink a small amount of the other's blood. ("Dugo" means blood in the Visayan language.) This was a traditional way to formalize treaties of friendship in the Philippines. Magellan himself took part in several of these ceremonies before attacking Mactan Island.

The Blood Compact preserved the ties of friendship between two people once different in religion, nationality, culture and civilization. The Tagbilaran native chieftain who swore by his ancestral Anito and Bathala, and the Spanish courageous explorer and colonizer, who sought New World with the sword and the cross, drank to the common cause - friendship. It was the first international treaty of friendship and comity between the Filipinos and Spaniards