Filipino Culture

Maguindanao Massacre reveals the lie behind the Philippine “nation-state”

The Maguindanao Massacre forces Filipinos to question the very basic premise of the Philippines as a “nation-state.”  To apply that term to the Philippines, as it currently exists and operates, is to a disservice to the term as it is understood by and applied to other countries.  One has to understand: before the Spanish came, the Philippines was a mishmash of differing localities each under differing dynastic and semi-dynastic local rulers with shifting alliances.  Each alliance bolstered by intermarriage and blood pacts and other family-based loyalties.  It was a very fragmented place.  There was no universally understood political center unlike its neighbor Indonesia or,  to an even starker degree, the kingdoms of Indochina.  Indeed, only the Muslim regions of the archipelago that would later be called the Philippines could lay claim to even some semblance of centralized political organization.  No wonder part of Spanish decision to conquer the Muslim port city of Manila was its political organization (in addition to its natural harbor).

Regardless of their colonial sins (and there were many), the Spanish brought about the unification, for the first time, of the Philippines.  There was little to unite the local inhabitants in terms of shared language or culture.  Instead, the Spanish used Catholicism as a unifying tool.  Partly because of this approach, the Spanish never did manage to fully conquer the Muslims and all of Mindanao.  Catholicism was a potent unifying force since it simply gave Catholic names and dogmatic ascriptions to existing pagan practices to cement colonial loyalty and control.  Of course, such spiritual fealty came at the pain of Hell’s eternal fire.  This method of conquest was so powerful that the Philippines was one of the few Spanish holdings that were conqured principally through religion and missionary friars.  Local datus ceded land both while alive and on their deathbeds as a final bribe to “get into heaven.”

Regardless, under this thin veneer of religious unity simmered primordial local rivalries, ethnic/provincial competition, and ancient grudges.  The numerically miniscule but shrewd Spanish used this fact to their advantage through a divide and conquest strategy.  Datus were pitted against datus.  Provinces against provinces.  Dialect groups against dialect groups.  All this local cooptation and manipulation divided the locals between the Hispanicized and less-Hispanicized.  Many of the local anti-Spanish/anti-friar rebellions were as much rebellions against the local enablers (read “sellouts”/”collaborationists”–I use quotes since the truth of the label depends on from which side you’re looking at the issue)

The Spanish are long gone but the political vaccum and interethnic/interregional rivalries they astutely cultivated persist to this day.  The Maguindanao massacre is just the biggest manifestation of this political fragmentation.  Mindanao’s history is one stark example of the historical fluke that created the political archipelago called the Philippines.  The Spanish never fully conquered Muslim Mindanao.  Muslim Mindanao, and incidentally the southern slave trade, was only the vanquished and brought under Manila’s control during the American colonial administration.  So it was with a sense of betrayal that the Muslims of Mindanao found themselves reluctant Filipinos when the American colonial administration turned over the whole archipelago to the Christian Filipino Manila government in 1946.  The Maguindanao massacre is a direct reflection of that conflicted identity, the struggles that is engendered, and the problems of governance that the Manila administration continues to face up to this day.

Nor is Mindanao’s political fragmentation an aberration.  Local dynasties, warlords and private armies can be found in many parts of the Philippines.  From Abra, to Kalinga, to Ilocos Sur, and parts of the Visayas, local strongment and dynasties are so feared and obeyed by the locals that these clans can often be counted on to reliably “deliver” the votes of their region to their selected national patrons.  National party affiliations are taken off and changed with the regularity of underwear while local loyalties are steeped in primoridial identity and, if need be, blood.  Warlordism, regional bloc voting, and private armies are mere reflections of the Philippines’ lack of a strong, culturally and poltically united nation state. Moreover, they reflect the local loyalties and local cultural suspicions against centralized control — either in terms of economic control, cultural hegemony, or both.  Besides calling out for justice for the more than fifty lives snuffed out in theh Maguindanao  massacre it is also worth bearing in mind, and examining, the key structural and cultural reforms that are necessary to prevent another Maguindanao massacre.  We owe it to ourselves.