The Jesuits right after being allowed to return to the Philippines 150 years ago, were assigned what they call the Great Island for their apostolate. Today the Great Island of Mindanao still hosts dioceses manned by Jesuits. Three Jesuit universities are on the island, Xavier, Ateneo de Davao and Ateneo de Zamboanga.
I just came from Xavier in Cagayan de Oro where I gave a talk and discussed with students, colleagues and Jesuit friends on possible research work we can do in Mindanao. I have to confess that Mindanao wasn’t in my research sites. My research has focused on Luzon and the Visayas and not much on Mindanao. I spoke with people from Davao, Gen San, Cotabato, Marawi, Iligan and Zamboanga
But Mindanao is a major hotspot for biodiversity, environment and resource use issues. On the plane I noticed rivers bringing in giant plumes of sediment to the sea. Mindanao is bleeding for the soil is the life of the island. Deforestation and land use changes are affecting the watersheds and there is cause for worry that this great island will end up like Luzon. I have flown so many times over Luzon and I do know that my big island is drying up. This is so evident in the Cordilleras and the North.
The good thing is that the Mindanaoans know that this is a problem. The students are well aware of the problems of their wonderful island. The other good thing is that they realize that the main job of researching their island fall on their shoulders and not on a Luzonian like me.
In my talk I told them that in truth I am a foreigner on their island. The only thing I can do is to mentor them in the sciences but the hard job of applying the science fall on their heads. Mindanao’s problems with the environment requires more cultural sensitivity and recognition of diversity. I had to tell them that this isn’t much of an issue on Luzon and things can get really polarized on Luzon, and even in the Visayas. Mindanao cannot afford polarization.
Here I remembered my uncle and dad who are honorary Mindanaoans. My dad grew up in Zamboanga and Jolo, while uncle grew up in Cagayan de Oro. If asked where they had spent their best days, the answer is unanimous, “Mindanao”. And their line was, Mindanao was very peaceful. Perhaps that is what Mindanao citizens have to recover. They have to recover that memory of peace. My generation couldn’t picture a Mindanao at peace. It is tragic.
One of my tasks was to encourage Mindanao science students to proceeed to grad school. They can do their grad school in Luzon or the Visayas or even abroad. But I had to remind them that they should return to their Great Island. If they stay out of the island, then they are lessening the promise of Mindanao. I have often heard from my elders that Mindanao is a “land of promise’. It really isn’t a land of promise to Luzon or the Visayas but to Mindanao alone. If Mindanao’s promise is realized, then the whole Philippines is realized.
The students really have the scientific talent. The edge is that they have that unique Mindanao character of being aware of the promises and pitfalls in advancing their island. On Luzon, especially in Imperial Manila we tend to be jaded and cynical. At UP I have 3 Mindanaoan research students and they are really good. One is on his way to a PhD and he says he’ll go back to Davao.
As for Xavier University, I learned that under the watch of Fr Jett Villarin, students and faculty are encouraged to study Mindanao in all its aspects. For the environment, he established a spanking new marine lab manned by a classmate of mine Dr Hilly Roa-Quiaoit together with one of our ex grad students in UP Diliman and a Surigaonon, Fr Mars Tan. This is proof positive that Mindanao’s got scientific talent.
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When I was young. We were taught that Mindanao is the Land of Promise. With deforestations, wars, denudations of all kinds. It is sad to see such beautiful land of ecologic diversity is slowly being destroyed.
The land is the best place in the country. It is not hit by Typhoons.
So, agricultural business is fitted in the place. Religious intollerance is also a problem in the place. We have religious fundamentalists waging a war in the area. NO PEACE. NO PROGRESS.
Yeah Mindanao has been dubbed “Land of Promise” by Manila Government – not for its native inhabitants but both for those greedy hacienderos, corrupt politicians and business crooks who wanted more lands and properties in this region after they grabbed the same from the native farmers there in Luzon and Visayas, and for them who had been promised of the same, but free lands here in Mindanao because they were disenfranchised and robbed of lands by these gluttonous crooks.
Should you want to know how this foolish phrase i.e. Mindanao as “land of promise” originated would date you back when about 10, 000 Jews were about to be settled here in Mindanao by virtue of the Mindanao Exploration Commission or Philippine President Quezon’s Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees without having Mindanaons being consulted.
So, the phrase is just a doctored version of the “Promise Land” Biblically mentioned there in Canaan somewhere in Palestine that the Jews believed to be their own home personally dealt out to them by God, as told in the Bible (Of course, Jews do not believe in the Bible nor on Jesus peace be upon him.) Fortunately or unfortunately, this had not been realized due to some intervening events so that it was the “local Jews” instead i.e. the Christian natives of Luzon and Visayas who had been robbed of lands, who were relocated by the Philippine Government in Mindanao. It was even more formalized when President Magsaysay accompanied the first batch of settlers with his EDCOR, riding on it as his political propaganda. And so, the influx of settlers in different batches flooded both the mountains and plains of Mindanao, again in sheer disregard of the consent of its native inhabitants.
With Manila colonial government’s complete encroachment of the Mindanaons’ particularly the Bangsamoro sovereignty predating that of the Philippine state, there had been NO PEACE, NO PROGRESS in Mindanao Hayden. Now then, if non-Muslims abhor to become a “minority” in Mindanao through the BJE, why then the Filipinos , or the Philippine government for that matter continuously demands the same from us here?
Bangsamoro sovereignty predating the Philippine state is questionable. The big question is whether Bangsamoro identity was established in the 16th century. If there was no “Bangsamoro” then there couldn’t be any Bangsamoro sovereignty as much as the Kingdom of Tundun and the Rajahnate of Manila had sovereignty.
The “Rajahnate” of Manila and other Muslim principalities i.e. in Tondo and everywhere in the Islands that time were no different nor isolated from Mainland Mindanao and Sulu Sultanates. They form parts of this sovereignty. The Moro identity, which was the identity of Muslims in Southeast Asia was referred to by Antonio de Morga in his La succesus which was quoted then by Jose Rizal in his “The Indolence of the Filipinos.”
“Islam was first introduced in Sulu and Mindanao . By the mid-sixteen century two sultanates had been established there, and the chieftain of Manila had also become a Muslim. It was in the midst of this wave of Islamic proselyting that the Spaniards arrived. Had they came a hundred years later, or had their motives been strictly commercial, Filipinos today might be a Muslim people.” (Government and Politics in Southeast Asia ” edited by George McTurnan Kahin, 1964)
“…You shall order them not to admit any more preachers of the doctrine of Mahoma, since it is evil and false, and that the Christains alone is good. And because we have been in these regions so short a time, the lord of Bindanao has been deceived by the preachers of Broney and the people have become Moros. You shall tell him that our object is that he be converted to Christianity, and that he must allow us freely to preach the law of Christians, and the natives must be allowed to go to hear the preaching and be converted, without receiving any harm from the chief. And you shall try to ascertain who are the preachers of the sect of Mahoma, and shall seize and bring them before me. And you shall burn or destroy the house where that accursed doctrine has been preached, and you shall order it be not rebuild.” (Instruction of Gov. Gen. Francisco de Sande to Captain Esteban Rodriguez de Figeroa on the siege of Sulu in June 1578 and Mindanao in April 1596, Peter Gowing, Muslim Filipinos, Heritage and Horizon, New Day Publisher, Quezon City, 1979)
Moro “was the appellation applied to all the Muslim populations of Southeast Asia by the Portuguese who seized Melaka in 1511..”…. and later on, “Moro denoted a Muslim inhabitant of the unsubjugated southern islands,” i.e. Minsupala these later times. (Thomas M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels, Anvil Publishing Inc., Manila, 2002, pp. 80-81)
“Fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in Luzon, in that very year 1521, when they first came to the islands, there were already natives of Luzon who understood Castilian. In the treaties of peace that the survivors of Magellan expedition made with the chief of Paragua, when the servant-interpreter died they communicated with one another through a Moro who had been captured in the island of the king of Luzon and who understood some Spanish.” (Jose Rizal, The Indolence of the Filipinos, 1890. Note that Rizal made quote of the writings of Spanish author Antoni de Morga e.g. La Succesus Felipinas he published in 1609)
Obviously, blackshama has not heard about the British paying rent to the Sultan of Sulu…
:)
This is fascinating history, but what does it matter?
Who is there now is who is there now and you can’t erase them or homogenize them.
Joe
If the whole island of Mindanao develops scientifically, it follows how rather disproportionately, the island of Luzon and Imperial Manila would have been heavily subsidized.
In other words, by its own development, Mindanao is being shortchanged since government subsidies are far less for this island and far more for Luzon itself. This spawned the seed of discontent in that region that it requires rethinking for government to set its focus on Mindanao in terms of state subsidy.
By all means, the government should give Mindanao a shot in the arm since local economy is the country’s economy. So it’s a choice – an independent Republic of Mindanao or an RP that is island selective?
Primer: It does not take much effort. You can be more creative (as B-Fernando has shown — more creative) by offering more than two choices.
Jesus created the universe – is that one of the scientific knowledge taught in Jesuit college?
Ahhhh… no. Jesus is AFTER the dinosaurs.
Or after the Neandertals
I own a home on Mindanao. The seas are over-fished, the lands are stripped, and there is no enforcement of regulations. Until there are regulations that make sense, and enforcement instead of abandonment of laws in favor of under-the table payments, the hills will continue to melt into the seas. No change in sight . . .
Joe
Joe
Only Mindanao citizens should do that and not people sent by the Imperial capital.
Regulations are made in Congress – with lots of lobbying from Makati’s Big Business that have interests in Mindanao.
It is not uncommon for Manila-based companies to not pay taxes in Mindanao based on the premise that since the funds they remit to corporate HQ will be taxed anyway. Therefore, their claim is that if they pay in Mindanao and pay in Manila – it will be double taxation.
If memory serves me right – this was the reasoning of PLDT when the Davao City government demanded that PLDT pay local taxes. Where previous administration would play footsie with PLDT, Rodrigo Duterte PLDT’s offices and suspended their business permit, and worked to have PLDT padlocked, and jail the PLDT-Davao General Manager. Finally, PLDT paid its taxes.
Serves them right. I suppose
In my talk I told them that in truth I am a foreigner on their island
Indeed, you let out the truth. The problems of Mindanao, including my hometown, Cagayan de Oro, are quite long-standing, endemic, and do not lend easily to discovery much less solutions. One really has to drive in stakes longer than a seminar, a vacation, or a short stay, to bring to daylight the things that are not going right in the context of what transpired in the past. Take the concept of peace in its unique context (co-existence of Christians and Muslims). Northern Mindanao has always been at peace, albeit in some periods uneasy peace reigned. Shooting wars have been confined to certain areas in the deep south.
The optimism expressed in its universities as the seedbeds for domestic development, will have to be tempered with the harsh realities. Any observant bystander could easily see that many, too many, of their university students (including the 3 other universities in CDO) are taking nursing courses, and other allied caregiving courses, with the schools’ primary intention of preparing graduates for employment abroad. Local doctors, including specialists, have been taking nursing courses, just in case.
We need Mindanao citizens tell their stories, hopes, fears and concerns. Perhaps someone on FV will specialize in Mindanao issues and I hope he/she is Mindanaoan. Also I met an Ilocano classmate of mine who set up shop in CDO to put up a nursing review school. The market is really huge for that.
please see “The Other Mindanao,” a short film crafted through the funding of the Mindanao Social Assessment as well as under the World Bank Post-Conflict Fund.
It is a short documentary film anchored by Ms. Samira Gutoc, A Maranao lady journalist hailing from Lanao Province, she and her crews embarked on a sensitive adventure and toured the marshy expanse of Buluan, in Maguindanao, one of those conflict-affected municipalities in the south during the 2000 and 2003 all-out-wars. It is an adjacent vicinity of Ligaoasan Marsh, a great water expanse believed to be one of the strong-hold of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Said documentary film documented, among others aside from socio-economic destructions, the environmental effects of the successive wars in the area. These include damages to physical structures like house, schools, places of worship, social halls, etc. It also accounted the obstacle caused by war to the implementation of socio-economic projects, whose respective funding would eventually go to corrupt hands due to the delay.
you mean, you were as encouraging to your friend to pamper on commodifying education by setting up nursing review schools? huge market or not, the boom is a bane, actually. there goes scientific training down the drain.
Science and the Jesuits? Hmmm..teka muna..
Not very long ago, the Roman curia and the Jesuits hierarchy stopped short of excommunicating one of its own, Teilhard de Chardin, for his “dangerous” views on evolution.
Until today, a monitum still exists for most of his works specifically The Phenomenon of Man for the same heretical and dangerous views.
The Catholic church is an inconsistent, opportunistic, hypocritical organization. Now that science is gaining the upperhand in divining the secrets of the universe, this hypocritical church becomes cool in the idea of reconciling religious hocus-pocus and the rational, dependable method of scientific inquiry.
Who says the Jesuits are Catholic? :-)
If that’s an admission of a schism, why even bother with catholicism?
Catholicism in its original sense as used by Origen should be able to tolerate Jesuits!
if memory serves me right – Teilhard de Chardin is still required reading in Philo 104 or 106.
Yes, as it has tolerated the Opus Dei, the Nazi, and even Ferdie..
The Catholic’s version of tolerance is manifest opportunism.
As it has supported Gustavo Gutierrez Liberation Theology – and withdrawn support later on.
Commodifying education? Don’t knock it, because some people do get to learn things. Just observe again damilo ignacio. Danilo fundraising bests the best USA-trained tisoys of Makati. Target-audience : Middle East oil. Desired result — money. Jews in Mindanao is the bait.