The murmurs of a Moro

WHEN WE were growing up in our small lakeside town of Wato, Lanao del Sur, our elders told us stories of government men chasing Moro children to forcibly take them to school. These stories disturbed our young minds because of talk that going to school would make us kafir (infidels) or converts to Christianity.

There were words to frighten a recalcitrant child: “Miyakoaka skuwela” (roughly, “May school get you”), as if school were the bogeyman. And back then, the old folk referred to the government as “gobierno o manga saruang a tao”—a government of foreigners. We were conditioned to feel distrust and antipathy toward the government and the kafir, and it took us years of education and social integration to overcome it.

This is partly why the Moro problem defies solution to this day. It partly explains why, despite well-meaning measures on the part of the government, integrating Moros into the national body politic is not an easy task. The distrust that Moros harbor against the government is deep-seated.

This is also why the secessionist fever persists among Moros, the reason peace remains a mirage in their homeland. There is a rooted feeling that the government has failed to treat them fairly and to provide them with basic services, never mind that elected corrupt and dynastic Moro leaders should share the brunt of the blame.

Legitimate questions are raised to this day: Why were Moros illegally uprooted from their ancestral lands through legislation? Why did the government invite communist rebels in Luzon to resettle on lands tilled and owned by Moros, who were eventually displaced? Why has no one been punished for the Jabidah Massacre on March 18, 1968, of 12 Moro trainees despite the eyewitness testimony of the lone survivor? This and the series of massacres of Moros in 1971, some perpetrated by the state-sponsored Ilaga militia, remain unsolved to this day (Opinion, 3/26/14). Are Moro victims not Filipinos, too?

And what about the peace agreement signed by the government and the Moro National Liberation Front? That pact, as well as the organic law creating the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, provides explicitly for an equitable representation of Moros in the government. But it was mere lip service. These events, and more, have inflicted deep wounds on Moros and left corresponding scars.

History provides an insight into the problem.

As far back as the Filipinization drive in 1910 until the Commonwealth era, Moros had been agitating for independence and in fact relayed to the Americans in no uncertain terms their desire not to be part of the Philippines but to remain a US protectorate. The famous Beacon Bill (Rep. Robert Beacon, New York, Republican) sought in 1926 to separate Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan from the Philippines because, it stated, “The Moros are an essentially different race from Filipinos, that for a hundred years there has existed bitter racial and religious hatred between the two, and that complete union of the Filipinos under one government is distasteful to the Moros who would prefer a continuance of American sovereignty.” But the Democrat-dominated Congress rejected it.

The Moros’ rebellious sentiment came to the fore with the Dansalan (now Marawi) Declaration of 1935, which embodied their distrust and animosity toward the government and the rest of the Filipinos. The datus who signed the 1935 declaration told the US government that the Northern Filipinos were the Moros’ historical and cultural enemies and that they were, as Muslims, a different nation that wanted to be granted a separate independence.

The 1935 Constitution was not signed by one delegate, Sen. Tomas Cabili, now deceased; he was a member of the Constitutional Assembly representing Iligan City and the undivided Lanao. The principal reason for his lone dissent (there were over 200 delegates to the assembly) was that the document did not provide provisions sufficient to protect and promote the interest of the non-Christians, especially the Moros. For this exemplary act of statesmanship, Cabili earned the sobriquet “Bantugen,” after the legendary superhero of the Maranaw.

With the present public outcry against the Bangsamoro Basic Law, we appeal for sobriety. We ask critics to be objective and more discerning about the draft law and to not forget its raison d’etre as a political solution to a social powder keg. We appeal to them, especially radio broadcasters cum commentators whose principal source of information is text messages, to tone down their language and refrain from using loaded words like “walang tiwala” (absence of trust) or “panloloko lang” (only treachery), etc., which serve to exacerbate the situation.

Moros are brought up in a setting different from what the rest of the country know. They have long been trapped in a morass of poverty, ignorance and disease. War has practically been a way of life for them. They have seen too much carnage, violence, marauding government troops, arson and pillage not experienced by others. They have fought foreign invaders and colonizers imposing a different religion and culture over their own.

As if these were not enough, they have to fight the government because of the misplaced perception that it is the enemy.

If the BBL is not passed, then perhaps all the past mistakes, all the injustice, inequity, discrimination and prejudice they have experienced will remain subjects of the murmurs of a Moro.

Lawyer Macabangkit B. Lanto (amb_mac_lanto@ yahoo.com) acquired his masteral and doctoral degrees from New York University under a Fulbright fellowship. He is a former assemblyman and speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Government of Central Mindanao, and also a former congressman, ambassador to Egypt and Sudan, and undersecretary of tourism and of justice.