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Readers grappling with issues engendered by the aborted signing of
the controversial MOA between government and MILF negotiators may
find helpful the new book Rethinking the Bangsamoro Crucible
published by the Center for People Empowerment and Governance (CENPEG).
As retired U.P. professor Oscar Evangelista said
in the preface: “Philippine history has not been very kind in
telling the story of the Filipino Muslims. For too long, stereotyped
impressions have been preserved: Muslims have been treated as
pirates, barbarians, juramentados who kill Christians, etc. Glossed
over is the fact that Islam built the first higher type of
civilization in what would become the Philippines.
“The arrival of the Spaniards and the
introduction of the Catholic religion sharply divided what was once
a people united in pre-colonial beliefs and practices. Thus were
born the animosities between Christian and Muslim Filipinos,
exacerbated by the writings of the Spaniards who considered the
Muslims enemies. The stereotyped impressions of the Muslims were
perpetuated by early textbooks which followed the Hispanic colonial
perspective.” Evangelista cites the so-called “Moro Wars”
pointing to Moro attacks on Christian territories pillaging and
kidnapping “slaves” with no explanation of the war from the
Muslim side who saw it as a war against colonial aggression.
(My childhood was filled with stories from
mother about how some ancestors in Ticao were enslaved by Moro
pirates. In 1951 in Zamboanga where the College Editors Guild
conference was held, I met people talking about “a good Moro is a
dead Moro.” A colleague and I took a side trip to Jolo in the vain
hope of seeing classmate Santanina Tillah in Siasi. We got only as
far as Jolo and ventured to visit Maimbung on the other side of the
island. On the way, men with Enfields got on the bus and looked at
us suspiciously. A Moro boy whom we befriended assured us they were
his uncle’s men and we were safe. His uncle’s name was Datu
Kamlon (tagged by Manila as outlaw) whose men almost decimated the
“Nenita Unit” of Col. Napoleon Valeriano—notorious for
summarily executing civilians in Central Luzon. When we got back to
Jolo, we saw our boat “Turk’s Head” already out at sea,
leaving earlier than scheduled. We later took a small boat filled
with commiserating and helpful Moro teachers on their way to
Zamboanga for summer school).
In this day and age, it is indeed appalling to
see the clearly biased reactions against the Muslims in the wake of
the exposure of the MOA as unconstitutional and treasonous,
especially after the unwarranted killing of civilians in raids
conducted by rogue MILF elements. Even the Supreme Court ruling that
provisions of the MOA are unconstitutional may be gratuitous since
the “state to state treaty approach” used in the peace
negotiations will always require constitutional adjustments.
The legitimate issue of federalism has been put
on hold since the President has been seen as having a stake in
prolonging her term under a parliamentary government. Prof. Temario
Rivera, one of the book contributors, said the mistake of the MILF
was in negotiating with a government with little credibility.
Evangelista noted that the cry for a better
presentation of the plight of the Muslims got a response from
nationalist historians—included in the book. Editor Bobby Tuazon
said that the idea of coming out with a Moro reader came after
CENPEG fellows discussed widespread voters disenfranchisement,
cheating and involvement of corrupt election officials in fraud
during the May 2007 elections and recent ARMM elections.
What became clear was “the brutal truth of a
region in prolonged disquiet—a whole society unhealed from the
generational wounds of violence, grinding poverty, and election
manipulation.” Tuazon said ARMM and other Muslim provinces
constitute “the most depressed region in the Philippines—the
outcome of land grabbing by landlords and transnational
corporations, and of being left out from so-called development
paradigms that all the more fueled armed conflicts with deep
historical roots.”
The book contributors include scholars and
educators representing varied perspectives on the Bangsamoro
struggle for self-determination. Prize winning author Lualhati M.
Abreu traces the roots of nation-states among the Islamized
indigenous groups in Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan before Spanish colonial
annexation of the archipelago. Abreu depicts Moro resistance to
Spanish and American rule through the Third Republic in 1946 that
began the cooptation of Moro provinces, resulting in “ethnocidal
attacks by the Philippine armed forces and government backed private
armies” from the 1950s to the present.
Islamic scholar Julkipli Wadi’s “Multiple
Colonialism in Moroland” clarifies the four major strands of
control in Moroland: U.S. colonialism, Philippine colonialism,
multilateral colonialism which includes corporate globalization, and
the current U.S. ‘invasion” (under cover of the Visiting Forces
Agreement) in its “war on terror.”
(To be continued)
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