My Own Private Mindanao
Mindanao always has a special place in my heart, being my birthplace. I may have grown up (and aged) in Iloilo and permanently living in Manila but Mindanao always beckons me with happy and blithe childhood reminiscence. My first recollection of early family life and playmates is in Davao where I spent my first 12 growing up years. Whenever I can (during quick, job-related trips) I would take time to visit the hospital where I was born, the church where my parents got married, or the place where our first house used to be and bask in the delights of brief homecoming.
I have always known Mindanao as home as well as a place of plenty… the land perennially green with soils so fertile that anything one sows would grow to bear the sweetest of fruits. Mindanao was the land of prospects and possibilities for a life of bliss—- the very same promise that enticed my parents to leave their Visayan comfort zones and find their destiny, fall in love and build a family in Mindanao, where life is good.
We only decided to leave in the 1980’s due to the threat of insurgency and the brazen killings even in the city’s most populated, policed areas. It was the time when the New People’s Army urban hit squad clashed with vigilante group “Alsa Masa”. Davao (which was nowhere near the peaceful city that it is today) was enlikened to Nicaragua (which in the 80’s was what Iraq and Afghanistan are, in terms of war and security problems). Killings, warlords and guns abound in the city and beyond. In fact, Agdao District (one of the Davao’s densely
populated areas) earned the monicker “Nicaragdao” because of the relentless assassination of policemen, soldiers, NPA urban guerillas, NPA supporters and even suspected NPA sympathizers or their kin.
Peace and security conditions in the outskirts of Davao were not any better as clashes always erupted somewhere. As a child, tales of the atrocities of rebel group Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in other parts of Mindanao would terrify me, as land grabbing, hamletting and summary executions regularly hogged radio headlines. The equally gruesome execution of Muslims by the dreaded “Ilaga” group would make Central Mindanao no man’s land.
The very delicate peace in the island is a centuries-old burden. This proverbial promise land south of the Philippines has been the object of strife among Muslim, tribal and Christian early settlers… as well as neighbouring countries that lay claim to the island’s enviable resources. Everyone fought with their ideology, religion, weapons and lives for a piece of Mindanao. It did not help that the discriminatory propaganda run by our Spanish colonizers against Muslims further congealed the distrusting and guarded relationship between Muslims and
Christians. Mutual hatred is culturally ingrained.
Since we left in 1982, I never had a chance to visit my homeland until recently. But from a distance I have taken interest in the developments there. Davao had exorcised its demons and became a peaceful and progressive city but elsewhere, the strife has just turned from bad to worse.
While the MNLF was neutralized through a peace deal with the government, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was born. The Abu Sayyaf, the Jemaah Islamiyah and its numerous splinter groups also came into life. They have succeeded in sowing terror and violence in Mindanao’s impoverished regions while the government keeps neglecting peace, development, education, empowerment and social justice. Violence persisted with kidnappings, bombings, clashes, attacks and beheadings that further shunned business and progress.
But even if lasting peace has been ever-elusive religious groups, civil society, the youth and the private sector have not stopped pressing for an end to the fighting. Christians, Muslims and other stakeholders talked, opened their minds and became more accepting of each others’ differences.
The people of Mindanao have also learned to live with the fact that peace is a work in progress, built slowly by continuous dialogue, forgiveness and unwavering trust. But with the recent violence in Maguindanao, the ensuing Martial Law and the exposition of corruption, tyranny and abuse of power— peace is uncertain anew.
Ateneo de Davao’s Fr. Bert Alejo S.J. who is with peace group KONSULT MINDANAW says the violence and political instability in Maguindanao has wiped out peace gains made in the last 50 years and peace advocates say it is almost like going back to square one.
I just hope Mindanaoans will very briefly mourn the regression of peace efforts.
We all need to pick up the pieces quickly and move on again. We have survived setbacks in the past in our quest for peace and we have gone this far. Mindanao has nowhere else to go— but forward.
