Sunday, August 24, 2008 Sunstar Essay: Life-worn issue By Erma M. Cuizon Sun.star essay
WE pray it would be all about healing.
Not bullets, not pain nor terror.
It’s about that long-held intent to create peace in Mindanao, to put a sense of building a home for both Christians and Muslims in that part of the country.
But at the point of a gun, they’re looking for peace.
Still, we can’t rest just on the noise of issues that come with the whole mess.
What, a memorandum of agreement to surrender land, asks one who hates to hear the word “ancestral lands.”
But this is part of the peace process, explains the pusher of the MOA idea.
Aha, there’s the connection to the shift to federalism (and regionalism) which might put GMA still in power, swears the Opposition.
But there’s really a Mindanao problem, says the House Speaker. The congressmen have just passed a bill creating the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, for their education and economic programs in step with the rest of the country.
Aren’t all Muslims Abu Sayyafs, asks a teenager who likes war movies.
Let’s bomb the towns, say the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels.
Now, really, who is there fair enough, sensitive enough, passionate enough strong enough to try and solve the Mindanao problem?
It’s painful to imagine that the solution should have started from each of our forefathers in both sides of the national consciousness a long time ago when Mindanao was mostly settled by Muslims who resisted the Christian Spanish colonizers. The Muslim issue will always be there because it starts with all of us where the bias begins.
Not so long ago, I heard a radio commentator take up the topic of Badjaos in the city. He screamed on the microphone, Kana sila, mamauli unta na sila ngadto sa ila. The radio man said we allow them (the Badjaos) to stay in the city, but where they come from, they kidnap us, he said.
Could the cabbie shift that radio dial to some music, please? I asked.
Gladly he did, saying that another passenger of his also told him to stop the commentator from yelling by gagging him off the air.
But you can’t solve the problem by clicking the unit off.
When Mindanao was left behind in development by the government, in the early years as now, nobody probably thought the dismal condition Muslims were in would fester forever and blow into small wars that ache like incisions that refuse to heal.
My first time in Mindanao was my sight of the neglect of it. For a business matter, I went to Iligan city right after college in the 60s. Not knowing anyone there, I took a bus from the airport for the trip to the business venue.
The bus ride itself was an interesting revelation of Mindanao then (and perhaps now?). The bus was rickety, yet it held almost all the airport arrivals who came down the tarmac, the only public land transport in sight. From the airport, it chugged on its way along an old asphalt highway. The road was wide enough only for one vehicle to pass, even while it was decaying on the sides. The center part of the asphalt remained intact but now it was only a strip. From the sides, then up the strip to the next side and back, the bus leaned dangerously to one side, then the other. I sat in a space as wide as a belt of wood,
in one of the benches aboard shared with others.
Poor transport system, to talk of only one aspect of neglect.
What would the ordinary Muslim, who probably doesn’t know what the MILF is up to, say about all these?
A friend from Mindanao once talked about a homecoming in Basilan, her first trip back home since she graduated and worked in the city. She hadn’t been home for a long time, she was missing everyone---the family and friends.
At the airport on her arrival, she spotted a Muslim kid who reminded her of those she grew up with. Fair, as Yakans mostly are, he had the familiar native large, lovely eyes. He had Arab-like features, darkish---a tall young boy he was. My friend smiled, walked towards him and said, “Hello!”
But the mother of the boy, who was standing nearby, quickly put herself between, as though to keep him away from harm.
