Has Mindanao’s promise been fulfilled?

I did not know exactly when the idea of Mindanao as promise land started. When I was young, I saw for myself two of our neighbors who left with their whole family for Mindanao. I did not know to where exactly but later I heard that the one with the house to the left and back of our house went to Zamboanga while the other in front to the right of our house went to Cotabato. I never saw them coming back home again.

As years went by many of our neighbors left our village also. My father, in partnership of the husband of our close cousin had a fishing group of about 30 men. They went not to Mindanao at first but to Maasin, Leyte every year beginning in the late forties or early fifties but only for few months for the flying fish catching season. They would leave after our barrio fiesta in July or later but would always come back in early February in time for our town fiesta. Another two fishing groups would also do the same routine.

In the late sixties when I was in college, my father’s group began to move to Mindanao to fish, first in Medina, Misamis Oriental, then to Balingasag in the same province after a couple of years. Another group from our place went to Tagnipa, now El Salvador, again of the same province.

When my father got sick and died in 1974, his group disbanded and many of them remained in Balingasag to fish on their own until now. The husband of our eldest sister decided to put up another group and settled in Libertad Misamis, which is just three towns away from El Salvador. His group is still there now. The husband of our second eldest sister went back to Maasin and put up his own fishing group there. 

I knew later that besides the people of our place who were mostly fishermen, many others from our town in Dalaguete and nearby areas in southern Cebu also left for Mindanao.

Well, I guess, that was the promise of Mindanao fulfilled to them in the experience of my own folks in Dalaguete and others in the south.

After four years of teaching at the University of San Carlos, where I also graduated, I myself went to Mindanao. I went there not to fish, but as professional economist of the newly organized regional office of the National Economic Development Authority in Cagayan de Oro City. I stayed there for more than ten years until my promotion as Assistant Regional Director of NEDA with a new assignment in Cebu.

It was my work in Cagayan de Oro City that I saw first-hand and understand how Mindanao developed. More so when I became part of the team of the NEDA Integrated Population and Development Project that provided training on how population and development is to be integrated in preparing regional and local development plans. The project allowed me to travel in many parts of Mindanao and in all the other regions in the country.

As for Mindanao, my research paper at USC that I did later after leaving NEDA, informed me that during the Spanish period migration to Mindanao was sporadic but when the Americans came, which developed its infrastructure like roads and seaports, many people, both aided and unaided by government, migrated there who came from all over the Visayas and Luzon. This stopped only during the last war but after independence, the migration resumed. The martial law period and the rebellion of our Muslim brothers in Mindanao who wanted to free the island from Manila’s control during the seventies again stopped the migration again but resumed after the dictator was deposed.

I spent the last ten years travelling back to Cagayan de Oro to visit my two sisters and other close relatives. In the last two years, this included going to Davao region. Last week I went to visit General Santos City in Cotabato.

I will write more of Mindanao development through the years next week.