Rethinking Mindanao

I have been doing some reading on the history of Mindanao. I was very curious to understand why development for instance, was lagging in this region, but for certain cities. At the onset, I had an embarrassingly rudimentary understanding of Mindanao, both geographically and historically. I knew Malaysia was mediating the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Philippines governments' peace talks. I also know Malaysia in particular is sympathetic to the Moro struggle and that Nur Misuari has a huge following in Malaysia. 

So armed with names of some contacts and limited understanding of the location of my research, I landed haplessly in Sultan Kudarat, Mindanao. However, the universe is kind and I found my footing and began to understand how wonderfully complex Mindanao actually is. I was struck by verdant green fields, fertile soil which nurtures any kind of vegetation and hardworking people who build the economy. It would be my version of heaven except for the clashes and violence which happen sporadically. 

I found an interesting book, 'Joys of Dislocation: Mindanao, nation and region' by Patricio N. Abinales who has written with great accuracy and in-depth understanding of Mindanao. The entry after this point is taken directly from the book. Mindanao was supplying raw material to trading entreports around South East Asia and was receiving a wide variety of goods in exchange. It was a highly profitable enterprise with returns often much better than from 'internal trade' with other Philippines islands. 

The Muslim datus and leaders of the lumad (indigenous peoples) thus had a mindset that was regional and more cosmopolitan. It was a world view that was, I dare say, more internationalist than the Tagalogs' of the North - one that took for granted the trade in goods and people (slavery) between Sulu, Singapore, Jambi, Riau, Penang and even as far as the courts of Cambodia and Siam. 

Their struggles against the Spaniards signaled not only their refusal to be dominated but their efforts as well to maintain their status as economic players in the region. When the Muslims fought the Spaniards, and later on the Americans, they did so to defend their continuing access to this network. Neither did they later collaborate with these colonial powers in order to be part of a narrower, more limited place called Las Islas Filipinas. 

When Haji Butu (Muslim leader) agreed to work with the Americans, one demand he made was to be accorded the same benefits the British gave the Sultan of Johore. And when the Sultan of Sulu was negotiating with General Bates, one of his demands was the right to fly the American flag side by side  his own in Singapore. This was to show his trading rivals that he now had a new and powerful business partner, which would radically alter his standing in the trading community. On their own, these were acts that could be interpreted as opportunistic (making Butu and the Sultan of Sulu, no different from Pedro A. Paterno, Felipe Buencamino and soon after, Emilio Aguinaldo). But viewed from a Southeast Asian perspective, they were actions that any regional strongman would recognize when confronted with powerful forces that could be tapped to his economic advantage. 

What 1896 The Philippine Revolution and then Americans did to Mindanao was detach it from the larger Southeast Asian world and bind it to a territory born in the office of the imperial cartographer in Madrid and uncritically adopted by Washington. 

Both the Malolos Republic and the Schurman Commission would declare Mindanao's long history of trade, commerce and diplomacy with Southeast Asia as illegal and immoral, derisively referring to its businessmen and women  as smugglers, slavers and pirates. 

Mindanao's perpheralization then proceeded in earnest and its cosmopolitanism faded into colonial archives. 

(PDI, May 9, 1998)