Published January 13, 2006
History of the Philippines involves much conflict
Editor’s Note: When she visited Anchorage in November, Maria Ida Giguiento, who works for Catholic Relief Services in the Philippines, delivered a fascinating speech about her peace and reconciliation work in her country and in nearby East Timor. We have received permission from Giguiento to reprint excerpts from her talk ("Building Peace in Multicultural, Interreligious settings"); here is the first of four parts.
I bring you greetings of "mabuhay" from the Philippines and "assalam alaikum" from my land, Cotabato.
I was born and raised in Cotabato City, the seat of the Archdiocese of Cotabato, with which the Archdiocese of Anchorage has an ongoing partnership agreement. I grew up with the sound of the Muslim call to prayer and the sound of the church bells ringing, calling all the faithful to prayers in the early hours of the morning. I grew up feeling safe in that environment — until factors outside my control took over my life and introduced me to a violent world of wars.
Before I get into that, let me set the few parameters of this presentation.
I am not an expert in the Catholic or the Islamic faiths, or in the histories of the Philippines or the United States.
I will be speaking about my experience living and working with Catholics and Muslims in both Mindanao (Southern Philippines) and East Timor (where I worked for five years). I no doubt draw from my perspective as a Christian engaged in interreligious dialogue, and from the course I have been privileged to co-facilitate for the past six years, Religion as a Source of Conflict and as a Resource for Peace, at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute.
The Philippines is divided into the northern part (Luzon), the cluster of islands in the central part (Visayas) and the large island (Mindanao) in the southern part with smaller ones at the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula.
It was colonized by Spain for 333 years (starting with the arrival of Gen. Legaspiin 1565), then sold to the United States in the early 1900s and under American rule for 33 years. The Japanese occupied it for three years (1942-1945) during World War II, and then the Americans came back and, in the eyes of some political activists, never left.
When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, they saw that in some areas (especially in the central and southern parts), there were established territories with functioning economic (trading) systems and defenses and forms of governance — the "sultanates." For three centuries, the Spaniards tried to conquer the sultanates and convert the people to Catholicism, but they had very, very little success.
The Spaniards coined a derogatory term for these fighting people — "Moros" ("Moors") — the term they gave their enemies from Mauritania and Morocco.
Catholicism spread widely in the north and central Philippines and in one part of the south, Zamboanga City, where the Spaniards managed to establish a huge fortress for defense. Islam retained its firm foothold in the southern island of Mindanao.
Mindanao was treated as separate from the other islands of the Philippines. When our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal was arrested by the Spaniards for his fiery writings that inspired the revolutionaries who were fighting for freedom from Spanish rule, he was exiled to Mindanao.
But when Spain sold the Philippines to the United States, to the surprise of the peoples in Mindanao, their island was included in the sale.
There was tension between the Americans and the islanders, particularly the Muslim population. The Americans managed to subjugate the Muslims in the southern part of their new colony swiftly (by 1914). They had more troops and better weapons, but it was more than that. The Americans also used a new model of colonial administration, sharing power with district and municipal chiefs, which earned them loyalty. Also, they employed a demographic model of colonization — now call transmigration — in which huge populations of people, often landless and ambitious, were encouraged to migrate from the north and central part of their new colony to the south.
The transmigration movement created Christian enclaves in overwhelmingly Muslim areas, that is, on lands the Muslims claimed as their own (source: "The Mindanao Peace Talks: Another Opportunity to Resolve the Moro Conflict in the Philippines" by Benedicto Bacani).
As the population of Christians grew in Mindanao, the Muslims became a minority in their land. The proportion of Muslim inhabitants to the total population of Mindanao fell from 98 percent to 46 percent by 1976.
Mindanao’s population of 14.6 million (1990 census) is now made up of approximately five percent Lumad (indigenous people), 20 percent Muslims and 75 percent migrants who happen to be Christians, according to Mindanao historian Rudy Rodil.
The Muslims now own less than 17 percent of the property on the islands of Mindanao and Sulu, mostly in poor areas far from the city centers.
According to the Bacani report cited above, 80 percent of the Muslims are landless.
Groups of Muslims formed pockets of rebellion against the colonizers and the settlers, but none achieved enough legitimacy to force the government to seriously look at their plight and aspirations until 1969.
Then-President Ferdinand Marcos was seriously looking at possible expansion of the Philippines to include the Malaysian island of Sabah. It was a time of energy crisis in the Philippines and having Sabah as one of the islands of the Philippines would have increased the offshore oil production capacity of the country.
Marcos based his claim on the claims of the heirs of the sultan of Sulu (the Kirams) that the sultan of Borneo had given Sabah to the sultan of Sulu as a reward for helping quell a rebellion in Borneo. Malaysia of course protested the claims.
While the two countries tried to settle the dispute diplomatically, people associated with Marcos decided to train a force of commandos to destabilize Sabah, then send Filipino troops there in the guise of protecting the lives of the many Filipinos living in Sabah, according to the Bacani report.
The military under the Marcos government began to recruit young Muslims in the south and trained them. On the eve of their graduation from the military training, they were told that their assignment was to invade Sabah and destabilize it.
The Muslim trainees resisted (under Islamic law, they should not kill one another, as they belong to one "ummah," or community of believers).
The military officers moved the trainees in batches of 12, brought them to the airstrip and mowed them down with guns. One survived — Jibin Arula. When he saw his colleagues fall on the ground, he ran to the hills and rolled down into the sea where he clung to a plank and stayed afloat until he was rescued by fishermen the next morning.
It took some time for the people to find out what happened on that fateful evening of March 18, 1968, on the island of Corregidor.
This massacre united Muslims across the country and the Moro National Liberation Front emerged at the forefront of their struggle for secession against the Philippine government. Fights broke out between these two major protagonists, and other players (politicians, warlords, big logging companies) started to enter the scene with the creation of paramilitary groups and militias and private armies.
Most of those who were in the rebel movement in the south were Muslims; most of the government soldiers were Christians. Many of the paramilitary groups were Christians, some were Muslims.
The rebellion in Mindanao was escalating and there was another rebellion movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines that the government was trying to fight off. Marcos declared martial law in 1972. In 1976, he sent an emissary to Nur Misuari to come to the negotiating table and they signed an agreement in Tripoli to stop fighting and continue talking on the key points raised by Moro National Liberation Front (sovereignty, geographical control). Misuari then signed a peace agreement with the Philippine government Sept. 2, 1996.
However, some did not like what Misuari was doing, and they separated from his group and formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, then led by Hashim Salamat.
The government has invited the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to the negotiating table to talk through their agenda, but to date no lasting peace deal has been achieved.
This history has bred much animosity and suspicion towards each other by the different tribes, peoples and faith communities.
Next: A short background on the conflict in East Timor.