The Murillo hoax
IT is one of the biggest hoaxes among false historical narratives: the claim that the 1734 map drawn by Jesuit missionary Pedro Murillo Velarde depicted Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc) as part of Las Islas de las Filipinas that was a Spanish colony, and therefore what was ceded to the US in 1898 as Philippine territory included it.
The hoax is one of the five fallacies* widely disseminated by the Americans and their puppets here to create Sinophobia in the country, each of which I will debunk in this series. I dare Antonio Carpio, the main purveyor of these lies, and the robotic Jay Tarriela to disprove my assertions.
This Scarborough-is-ours narrative has been spread since 2017 principally by former justice Antonio Carpio and repeated uncritically by journalists and diplomats. It is a cleverly manufactured lie.
The map’s valuation over the years is intriguing, to say the least. It was first auctioned for P186,000 in 1991, and another copy was offered in 2012 at P1.3 million. Local tycoon Mel Velarde — encouraged by Carpio and probably because he shared the same name with the cartographer — bought it for P12 million in 2014, after it was hyped by the former justice as proving our sovereignty over Scarborough. Was the map Velarde bought in 2014 the map purchased for P1.3 million in 2012? Whoever that is must have laughed all the way to the bank at what Carpio called the “Mother of Philippine Maps.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. again demonstrated his gullibility in believing anti-China narratives that in the December 2024 ceremony in which the map was donated to Malacañan Palace, he said: ”The Murillo Velarde map provided critical evidence (in the arbitration suit against China) to demonstrate that the Philippines has continuously exercised authority and jurisdiction over what it is identified as Panacot Shoal — now Scarborough Shoal.”
Marcos is so wrong: The arbitral panel’s 2016 decision didn’t even mention the Murillo map or any of the maps that the Philippines submitted, as it is a well-known fact that maps are never considered proof of sovereignty unless annexed to a treaty.
It is a testament to the power of media that the Murillo hoax still persists despite hard evidence against it.
Fabrication
Carpio’s hoax is based on the fabrication that the Panacot Shoal in the Murillo Velarde map is the same marine formation as Scarborough Shoal, by another name (image 1).
It is not. Panacot is a shoal that, at 39 nautical miles, is so near to the Zambales mainland that fishermen during the Spanish period routinely passed through it and had given it a name. Scarborough Shoal is 116 nautical miles, approaching the high seas (image 2).
It was discovered only in 1748 when the warship HMS Scarborough, which was traveling from England to China found itself grounded on it. The shoal was named after the frigate and depicted prominently in European maps — precisely located at 117°50′ East — to warn ships of this hazard, which was so dangerous it could ground a warship. The Spanish instead called it Bajo de Masinloc in 1808, which means the “shallows of Masinloc,” referring to the town in Zambales nearest to it.
I found on the websites of rare-map dealers maps which show that the two are different shoals. One is the 1774 “D’Anville” map chart of the China Sea, which shows a “Scarboro,” with two other features about 80 nautical miles away that, if compared to the Murillo map and another map described below, are the Panacot and Galit shoals. (https://ift.tt/Ddws9oG ) To save space here, this is shown only at this column’s internet version at rigobertotiglao.com.
Different
A second map made in 1778 that indubitably proves that Scarborough is different from Panacot is “A chart of the China Sea and Philippine Islands with the archipelagos of Felicia and Sooloo” (https://ift.tt/8EPJfdS). This is shown in image 2.
The map was drawn by British captain Robert Carr and was published in London in 1778, for navigational use in Southeast Asia. The map clearly shows that “Cabezas dos Negros or Scarborough” shoal is different from “Panacot or Marsingola Bank.
Probably since the Scarborough Shoal was more treacherous than the Panacot, Lumbay and Galit banks, which European vessels easily avoided, or were easy to safely sail through, these three shoals were no longer put in European maps starting in the 1750s, with Scarborough Shoal instead prominently shown.
Furthermore, according to international law scholar Dr. Melissa Hubahib Loja, the cartographer himself, Murillo Velarde, published in 1752 a geographical history titled Geographica Historica de las Islas Philipinas del Africa y de sus Islas Advancentes Tomo VIII.
In this book, available at Google Books, Murillo Velarde reports: “These shoals, Lumbay, Panacot and Galit, run about 15 leagues, from below Frayle to Bolinao Point.” The 15 leagues are equivalent to 39 nautical miles from the Zambales shoreline. Scarborough Shoal is 116 nautical miles, or three times further away than Panacot, as is supported by a simple ocular inspection of the Murillo map.
Carpio’s gargantuan lie that Scarborough Shoal was part of Spanish territory is a remarkable sleight-of-hand trick. He points to the 1748 Murillo Velarde map, where west of Zambales is a feature named “Panacot Shoal” and then declares “that is Scarborough Shoal” in subsequent maps.
18th century
Carpio either didn’t know there existed 18th-century maps — those mentioned above — in which both Scarborough and Panacot were depicted, 80 nautical miles from each other.
Or he thought that this would be excellent material for fabricating a false narrative that Scarborough has been part of the Philippines even during colonial times, and that nobody would spend millions of pesos (Carpio is known to be a collector of rare maps) to scour Europe for maps that could disprove the lie. He obviously forgot that rare-map stores now routinely post their wares on the internet.
In 2024, Carpio held an exhibit at the University of the Philippines in which he presented over two dozen 18th- and 19th-century maps, which he claims all show Scarborough as among the Islas Filipinas that was part of the Spanish Crown. The exhibit merely demonstrated the depths of his intellectual dishonesty.
His exhibited maps made before 1748, when the HMS Scarborough sank in the shoal subsequently named after it; all showed Panacot Shoal, and of course, no Scarborough Shoal. Those after this date, of course, had a Scarborough Shoal depicted, but no longer a Panacot Shoal existing.
Why all this effort to prove Scarborough was part of the Spanish colony? Because Carpio thought this would bolster his claim that the 1900 Treaty of Washington corrected the lines representing the limits of the territory ceded by Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris to include Scarborough Shoal, which had been within Spanish territory. (Read my column Oct. 27, 2025)
Washington
But the Americans were sure Scarborough wasn’t part of the Philippine colony, with the treaty limits even abruptly ending just 25 kilometers from that shoal. The Washington Treaty referred to the southern island of Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu in Tawi-Tawi, which the British had a claim to, and it redrew the treaty limits (through the US-UK Convention of 1930) to include these, maintaining, however, the western treaty limits to exclude Scarborough as part of Philippine territory.
While the issue of Scarborough not being Panacot is really moot and academic — the maps say so — it continues to be the basis for the propaganda that feeds Sinophobia, which is a big obstacle to the normalization of our foreign policy toward China.
Indeed, the shoal fell in 2012 into China’s effective occupation — a justification for sovereignty under international law — after the US tricked the Aquino III regime into abandoning it during the Scarborough standoff. The Americans at that time were worried that the Scarborough standoff could spiral into an armed conflict, into which it would be drawn.
Coast Guard official Tarriela keeps beating his chest, claiming that it is the Filipinos’ duty to defend our territory — referring to Scarborough Shoal. As a result, our coast guard has been repeatedly trying to provoke the Chinese into attacking Philippine vessels trying to re-occupy it to purportedly reassert Philippine sovereignty. But 12 years is a long time to have lost Scarborough Shoal, and our claim averter all is a fabrication.
Are we really willing to have our sailors killed for a lie?
***
*These five fabrications which have been or will discussed in this series are: 1) The 1900 Washington Treaty included Scarborough as part of Philippine territory; 2) the Murillo map proves so; 3) that the 2016 arbitration panel’s decision declared illegal all of Chinese claims in the South China Sea; 4) our exclusive economic zone under Unclos bolsters our claims over Scarborough and the Kalayaan Island Group; and 5) China’s 9-dash line, illegal under Unclos, is the basis for its claims in the South China Sea.
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The Murillo hoax
Source: Breaking News PH
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