The Others

One day, a strange man came into our office. He was dressed like a soldier but clearly wasn't one. He wore no badge of rank or insignia of any of the armed forces. He was visibly uncomfortable, taciturn and whatever little he spoke was barely audible. Despite this, the man was in some position of authority for he was sent to record court proceedings between two particular parties that he was associated with. Video recordings aren't allowed in court which is why he was sent to the office. The Clerk had to make sure the man deleted the offending video.

I learned that the man and the two parties were "Lumad" or indigenous folk. Apparently, they have their own pseudo-government to which the tribesmen owe loyalty to. The strange man was a member of their own police force. He had no weapons, or at least none that we could see. These folk are a society operating within a society. I heard that their government even issues licenses for various things. Lumad folk are often shocked when they discover their "motorcycle licenses" count for nothing when they get caught by the national police.

Compared to the other mini-societies in the Philippines, the Lumad are small-time. At the other end of the scale are the full blown insurgencies such as the various Muslim groups down south (take your pick). Now those ones have no problem gunning down any soldier or lawman that dares step into their "territory." Some parts of the Philippines are completely out of the government's control as the infamous SAF massacre in Maguindanao would demonstrate.

It's disturbing that there are people running around the country that consider themselves first as something other than Filipino. Healthy societies shouldn't have this problem. However, the mentality is understandable and the cause for this is due to yet another piece of historical baggage weighing the country down.

There was no "Filipino people" before the Philippines. When the Spanish arrived, they took a bunch of islands and called it a country. That's it. There were no cultural considerations, only conquest. You could call the Philippines a mistake once you realize how arbitrary its composition is. The result was that you have a whole bunch of people divided by ethnicity, language and religion forced together because the winds happened to blow the Spanish galleons a particular direction. It sounds like the premise of a bizarre reality TV show but it's never funny when the shooting starts.

That's why we have a bunch of people constantly screaming for "autonomy". It's no surprise that you have groups like the Bangsamoro, MILF, BIFF, BLT or whatever new alphabet soup organization that just stumbled out of the jungle. Blood and religion is always going to be more important to people than a decree by some distant government that we belong to some nebulous group. The desire for federalism is motivated by a similar sentiment although at least it would be a legal solution. Yet, the threat of separatism is ever present.

The most important thing to know about these groups is that they don't care about the Philippines. The only thing they do care about however, is the generous aid we keep sending them. "Filipino" is irrelevant and meaningless to these people. If they could cast off the country like a rotten cloak, they would. When the government starts talking about the latest "peace deal" they've been hammering out with the separatists, the deal is probably a scam in which the country gives up everything for the promise of "peace". They're not interested in "fair" and will give up nothing. They've already won and just want to make it official.

It will all crumble in the end.