Philippine - COFFEE buddy Paringbert a.k.a. Fr. Albert E. Alejo SJ lent me a book by Japanese historian Shinzo Hayase ("Mindanao Ethnohistory Beyond Nations, Maguindanao, Sangir, and Bagobo Societies in East Maritime Southeast Asia", Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2007) highly recommending it as a good read. It has been over a month since he lent it, and I`m just halfway, not because it`s not an interesting read as he said, but because there are just so many facts and new lessons to imbibe, the book makes for very, very slow, repetitive reading.
The fact that reading history for me is so difficult. As a school-kid, when we were forced to chew on history by Gregorio Zaide, I strongly believed history was the most boring subject ever thought of.
I`m not alone I`m sure, because among my peers I`m among those who have a bit more knowledge of Mindanao history. But this knowledge and appreciation wasn`t in me during my school days with those oh-so boring history textbooks. It came just over a decade or so ago when I can already afford to buy Mindanao books outside the required schoolbooks, Mindanao books which usually cost more than the regular books you can easily afford and which cannot be found in second-hand bookstores.
It`s sad to note that even today`s history books that are required in school cannot gather as much interest and details on Mindanao history... and several more generations of pupils and students are growing up ignorant of Mindanao while regarding history as the most boring subject ever conceived.
Like, what the heck is East Maritime Southeast Asia?
Mindanaoans may be acquainted with the constant claims of the Moro and the lumads of how they were able to refuse colonization by the Spaniards, but Sharif Kabunsuan and Sultan Kudrat will always remain to be names of places out there yonder we don`t exactly know where. But then, no one introduced these historical figures to us in the first place. Definitely not in the history books I had in school.
A regular middle-aged person who has been basking in the beaches of Mindanao cannot even see Mindanao as one of those South Pacific islands pictured in Hollywood movies of long ago where the white explorers had to battle with in order to control the spice trade. It must be Indonesia or the Dutch Indies, it must be Hawaii, but not the Philippines because Philippines wasn`t civilized before the Spaniards found us, as we were led to believe.
While we don`t know who Sharif Kabunsuan was, we know very well about the long centuries of Spanish colonization and American colonization -- greatly detailed in our history books. Thus, not surprising comes the conclusion in a child`s mind that the colonizers were the ones who came to bring civilization otherwise we would have been still swinging on trees, wearing bahag, while toting our laptops today. After all, the pre-colonial days were all lumped in less than a chapter with some more vague reference to a golden salakot of sorts.
But in this 200-plus page reference-filled book, I became acquainted with a powerful people who had kingdoms and seafaring warriors by the thousands; large armies armed and able to throttle Dutch and Spanish invaders. They even had slaves -- including foreigners -- and they traded these slaves like everyone else. More interestingly, the kingdoms were already at their peak of power just a few decades after Italian merchant Amerigo Vespucci and Spanish colonialist Christopher Columbus landed in America. The kingdoms were already actively trading with their Asian neighbors while the colonizers were still stumbling around the world, trying to find spices, and then claiming that they have discovered for the world the Americas and the Philippines, and whatever place else instead of admitting that they really lost their way.
It was like, d-uh?
All the time we only knew of Lapu-lapu as a Cebuano who killed Magellan in a battle where Magellan was wearing bloomers over tights topped with a ruffled polo with puffed sleeves and Lapu-lapu was wearing bahag (maybe like the bahag we would still have been wearing while swinging on trees with our laptops had not Spain and America discovered us). We didn`t even know that real and powerful kingdoms were already in place in this heathens` land we have come to know as Mindanao. Yes, there have been vague references to the Sultans of Sulu, but nothing much. Just that there have been sultans. We did not even know how huge their kingdoms were. And because they have often been referred to as Sultans of Sulu, then we just relegated them to the few dots of island we see in the map at the bottom of Mindanao -- inconsequential territories, we may say. After all, how many of us have really gone to Sulu? Moreso, how many of us are even aware that the spice islands were not just the vague place referred to as the Moluccas.
Our history books in school never mentioned that Maguindanao even became the strongest force in the Eastern Maritime Southeast Asia in those days of yore; a fact that should have established our people`s superiority over even the colonizers, because the Eastern Maritime Southeast Asia was the "center of commerce", within it were the territories the Dutch, the Chinese, the Spaniards, and all other major commercial exploiters were lusting for -- the spice islands.
Maguindanao was so powerful. It was entering into trade agreements with the colonizers of Indonesia and the Philippines. But no one told us about this. I can bet that no one even told that to our parents, we the children of immigrants who have found a home in this rich island called Mindanao.
But then, there are a lot of other things we are unaware of, and very few efforts to popularize a history of power. We shouldn`t be surprised though. Acknowledging such history can change a lot of perspectives, including perspectives that have kept Mindanao as the constant battleground of the power-hungry.
Thus, as guns and cannons are ringing once more in a forested barangay in Tawi-tawi comes the longing to dig into an island that is not just oozing with resources, but is rich with history as well. If only these types of books can come more often, and more affordable and accessible to even the grade school pupils; children who may regard history as among the most boring subject ever, but will remember it anyway because they need to in order to pass their grade level.
But then, that`s hopeful thinking. From a central government that cannot even come out with error-free textbooks for children, it can even be pollyannic.
Source: www.sunstar.com (3 September 2007)
