The Rise of Communities

The Rise of Communities
(1280-1663 A.D.)

Research Paper

History 101

Submitted By:
Group 5
Kimberly Charm Terrago
Cheline Antonette Flores
Diane Nica Formeloza
Lei Arana

I. Introduction

The process towards fragmentation was encouraged by a number of factors: First, The character of geographic environment naturally induced isolation and differentiation or budding off populations; second, the absence of unifying and controlling systems allowed the process to move undeterred. These are trends by the end of the Iron Age despite the particularization of populations along longer ethno-linguistic patterns, continued further to sub-particularize the inhabitants. It would not be until after the 13th or 14th century that new external forces appeared in certain parts of archipelago, subjecting the immediate areas to a centrifugal process towards new and larger consolidation. The Moros is one of such islam forces whose beginnings in archipelago was traced by Najeeb M. Saleeby to about 1380 A.D. The establishment or spread of Islamic roots in Maguindanao, The ancient base of the cotabato people, around the lake region of Lanao, and as far as the mouth of the pasig in Luzon set in motion three inter-related processes of Islamization. The Indios, As such emerged upon the advent of Spanish culture which was spread throughout the archipelago by means of the sword as well as the cross, but which succeeded only in creating a foothold in some of the ethnic groups. Generally, the settlements that were hispanized or Christianized were lowland populations within the direct route or perimeter of Spanish military influence. The Infieles, These communities were called collectively by Spanish sources as the Infieles (pagans). Why they succeeded could be related to several factors and circumstances. In relation to the Muslim factor, the upland societies did not experience the threat to their identities and cultures as they did in relation to the Spanish.

II. The Moros A. Definition Moro people are a population of indigenous Muslims in the Philippines, forming the largest non-Christian group in the country, and comprising about 5% of the total Philippine population. B. Islamization and Rise of Moro Communities

The plight of the Moro or Muslim Filipinos is a controversial phenomenon in Philippine history. No other Philippine ethno linguistic group has been studied as extensively as the Moros. In 1280 AD, Islam arrived in Mindanao through Arab merchants and Islamic missionaries. It was the same period that Muslim mystics and teachers arrived in Southeast Asia (Majul, 1999). The spread of Islamic roots in Maguindanao, the ancient base of the Cotabato people, around the lake region of Lanao, and as far as the mouth of Pasig in Luzon, set in motion three interrelated processes of Islamization (Tan, 1987).
First is the fundamental foundation of ingraining the concept of the ummah in the consciousness of the people. The ummah refers to the community of believers who are bound solely by spiritual ties regardless of sex, status, color or residence. This ummah consciousness placed the Muslim South in the territorial world of Islam. To a large extent, the sultanate as a system derived its historic influence from this consciousness vis-à-vis datuship or rajaship whose importance was confined to kinship and jurisdiction. However, it must be noted that the effect of the ummah on popular consciousness and culture resulted not in the social transformation of the Muslim communities in orthodox Islamic societies. Rather, it led to the development of a folk-Islamic tradition - a blend of Islam and indigenous local ethnic traditions. This harmonious mixture manifests not only in the socio-cultural aspect but also in the political life of the people (Tan, 1987, 2004).

Second, the political process was embodied in both the structure and functions of the “sultanate” which helped shape and consolidate Muslim ethnic groups. The Sulu Sultanate claimed jurisdiction over territorial areas represented today by Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Palawan, basilan and Zamboanga (Majul, 1999). Four ethnic groups were within this jurisdiction: Sama, Tausug,Yakan, and Subanun. The Sultanate of Maguindanao, which was the second to be established in Southern Philippines, was based in Sherif Kabungsuan’s with the local leaders who had rules prior to the sherif’s arrival. The Lanao Sultanates, while claimed by contemporary Maranao scholarship as of ancient origins contemporaneous with Maguindanao and Sulu, were actually historical entities which can be safely assumed as datuships (Tan, 1987). The differentiation of ethnic identities is illustrated by the divergence of the Old Sultanates. The Sulu sultanate was allied with that of the Bornean Sultan. The Cotabato-based sultanate was linked more with Sumatra in Indonesia where legend says the founding father of Islamic legacy in Maguindanao. But the process of reassertion led not to unified systems as in Maguindanao or Sulu but a constellation of royal houses which had unreconciled claims to legitimacy and historicity (Tan, 2004). From this can be traced the ridos or clan wars. Therefore with the successful Islamization of the South, the historic communities by the advent of Spanish rule had evolved into three but interrelated patterns, namely: 1) the indigenous communities or the Infieles or the pagans, 2) the Muslim community or the Moros as colonial sources referred to them, and 3) the Christian community or Indios as they are known to the Spaniards (Majul, 1999). Other cultural aspects to include politics were hardly seen as divergent among the ethnic groups whose old beginnings could be traced to common origins. Religious differentiation provided the colonists a good strategy in dealing with the diversity of cultures as well as an easy way of restructuring the colonial society.

Third, the social process was characterized by the particularization of populations along larger ethno linguistic patterns and at the same time further sub-particularization of inhabitants. The trend toward fragmentation was encouraged by the following factors: first, the geographic character of the islands induced isolation and differentiation or budding off of populations; second, the absence of unifying and controlling systems allowed the process to move undeterred. It would not be until after the 13th or 14th century that new external forces appeared in certain parts of the archipelago, subjecting the immediate areas to a centrifugal process toward new and larger consolidations (Tan, 2004).

(Sociological theories of ethnicity have customarily been divided between two approaches, the circumstantial, and primordial. Circumstantial theories emphasize the instrumental basis of ethnicity, particularly the role of self-interested rational action, while primordial theories emphasize identity based on affective ties. The interrelated processes that brought about the rise of the Moro communities are circumstantial and primordial. The political processes are circumstantial while the social processes are primordial. The theory also pointed out failure to the criteria that determine membership within active groups. This is demonstrated in the rise and differentiation of Moro communities.)

III. The Indios

Indio is the Spanish Colonial racial term for the native Austronesian peoples of the Philippines between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Our possessions in Oceania are unfortunately little known here in Spain. Many cannot even recognize them on the map. The generality of people here imagine that the Philippines is on the American continent or a fief of the Chinese Empire.
Far, very far is the Philippines from the Peninsula. Three thousand leagues separate them. The distance and the prevailing almost absolute ignorance of the Archipelago enable certain writers to write and relate rare and stupendous things about that Spanish province beyond the seas.
Such, in my opinion, if one who has not seen the Philippines would read them he would think that it is a country of savages. He has poured into his articles absurd concepts about the inhabitants of that Archipelago, which should be rectified in order not to mislead the public about the social condition of that people.
Our purpose in writing these lines is to defend the good name of the Philippines before the public against the insults and unjust attacks of Quioquiap in his writings; so that the public here and over there would not be led to believe that we are as he describes us.
He says about us, Indios: "the poor Indio of frail body and weak head ... brains devoid of ideas ... lifeless heap of human beings ...."
The injustice of the attack and the absurdity of his affirmations deserve silence as a reply.
But we do not owe Quioquiap a reply; we owe respect for truth and we, the public, an explanation. We proceed with our task: we set forth how the Filipino Indio has been developing during three centuries of Spanish rule, his aptitude and capacity for civilized life, for progress, which is denied by the anonymous writer.
"Those frail, naked bodies with weak head, those brains devoid of ideas, that anthropoid race of the quadrumanous family, that lifeless heap of human beings" were the ones who fought in manly manner beside the few Spaniards against the invading fleet of Li Ma-hong; "those pigmies without energy," that "collection of adolescents, of big children, those submissive Malays kneeling down before the Spaniard standing up" demonstrated their energy, valor and virility, luckily in spite of Quioquiap, by defeating, with Simón de Anda y Salazar, of glorious memory, powerful England, the queen of the seas, in this manner saving Spain from the ignominious affront done, to the never-defeated standard of Castile committed by the Archbishop of Manila [Manuel Antonio Rojo del Río] who readily capitulated to the English and delivered the Islands to them.
Jolo, Sipak, and Balangingi are an eloquent testimony to Filipino heroism.
Cochinchina owes its advent to modern civilization to the brave and ever victorious Indo-Filipino army which conquered her for France. Cochinchina is progressing and is more advanced than the Philippines. Why? Because there freedom reigns; individual rights, political rights, and freedom of commerce are a fact, whereas in Spain, they are still fiercely fighting for them.
If the Philippines had given to this noble nation nothing but happy days, parading throughout the Far East her yellow and red flag loaded with glories and laurels, why are the ever noble and loyal inhabitants of those Islands being reviled so much?
"Lazy, idlers, indolent, unfit for work, incapable of progress", he also wrote in one of his articles about us.
Iloilo, Cebu, Negros, and Pangasinan with their sugar plantations and mills equipped in accordance with modern standards, with steam engines, English plows, and vacuum pans; Camarines with its abaca plantations; Batangas with its coffee plantations—these are impressive contradictions of those inexact assertions. Indios are the owners of these numerous plantations and Indios are their tillers.
And they say that Philippine commerce began twenty years ago with the opening of three ports to foreign trade, and she is now a commercial center, if not on the level, almost of the stature of the most important in the world.
Liberty is the thermometer of the progress of a people. In the Philippines liberty is a myth. How do you expect her to take gigantic steps toward progress?
As absolutism reigns there, distrust, bureaucratic abuses, Bagumbayan Field, and Marianas Islands are the prize of culture. How can you expect the Indio to express openly the ideas that are stirring in his brain? On education, statistics throws an impressive data, the number of those who know how to read and write being greater than in Spain. We do not deny that the Philippines is backward, very backward, and this backwardness, far from being due to her resistance to culture, to her ineptitude for progress, is due— let us say it very loud—to the friar, the missionary of the Catholic faith and representative of Spain 's civilizing mission in those regions, who, by submerging the Indio in ignorance and fanaticism, found him to be an inexhaustible vein of exploitation.

IV. The Infieles
What then was left of the pre-Islamic pattern, after Islamization and Christianization, were represented by the upland societies and communities in the archipelago which had succeeded in preserving their own traditions from the two processes. These communities were called collectively by the Spanish sources as the infieles (pagans). Why they succeed could be related to several factors and circumstances. First, the Spanish colonial strategy of pacification required the lowland communities and the coastal villages, especially those that were vital to trade. Missions accompanied by both religious and military personnel were conducted, through trails and rivers triggering occasional encounters with upland on the Mountain Province were more of an exception to Spanish initial polices on conquest. Another explanation for the successful preservation of upland communities, as they were before western contact, was the effort of the upland inhabitants to resist the new influence by an effective method of withdrawal into the deeper recesses of the hinterlands and usually into the inaccessible cliffs and forests literally difficult and often devastating to any westerner. The experience of the Igorot in Mountain Province, the Ivatan in the Batanes, the Mangyan in Mindoro, the Negrito and similar groups in Zambales, Panay, Negros and Bicol, as well as the Manuvu in Mindanao would illustrate the system of withdrawal. In the case of the Ivatan, the climatic and sea turbulence created by typhoons and winds added to the miseries of adventurers and Spanish missions and reinforced Ivatan isolation, mush more well-defined in cultural norms, values, and features then any in Luzon. Withdrawal and isolation would not only help in preserving the indigenous and ancient mode of life and traditions but would also thwart the Christianization process in the upland societies, thus separating them from the newly evolved Christian community. In relation to the Muslim factor, the upland societies did not experience the threat to their identities and cultures as they did in a relation to the Spanish. For one thing, the Muslim community was, in a sense, different from the Christian as far as religious work was concerned. Although dominant and well-established before the Christian advent, the Muslim did not establish a monolithic religious hierarchy and structure as the Christian Church. There was, therefore, no conscious and systematic attempt to spread to spread Islam throughout the archipelago and to convert the natives. There was only the spread of Islamic political and territorial influence through the Sultanate but more for political and economic reasons than for religious purpose. The Muslims in Manila where Raja’ Sulayman, Rajah Lakandula and Rajah Laya were the recognized political powers could have Islamized the outlying communities of what is now Bulacan, Laguna, Cavite, and Batangas. But they did not. Instead the internal trade of Central Luzon received paramount attention from the Muslim Kingdom.

V. Synthesis
This study has therefore revealed that a third level of identity is the national character personified in the name Filipino, proposed to be the designation integrating all of the people of the archipelago into a nationality. This name, given by outsiders, was to become a self-designation for all those labeled as Moros, Indios and Infieles. This national identity is now our current. This identity was started by the Spanish, but primarily for the Christian people and in terms of being a colony of Spain. It was continued by the Americans with notable indistinctness since it had both extensiveness and exclusivity due to other division. The American regime used the term Filipino to refer to all populations of the islands, but they also introduce a concept of division by use of Moro as a special category and also the idea of non-Christian tribes. Muslims were included in that concept. This concept is later known as cultural minorities. Now the national government emphasizes and upkeep the name Filipino for all Philippine citizens. An in-depth look at these terms will show the historical developments in their use and the present day meanings and ambiguities that still remain in their use. These terms will overlap the colonial identity the religious identity and the national identity.

VI. References
(Majul, 1999, p.64
(Tan, 1987, p. 59
(Tan, 2004, p.21)
(The Indios of the Philippines, Period 19th Century Category History Language English Textual Physical Form, by Sabrina L. Oliveros; Kristina Joy Panogot).

References: (Majul, 1999, p.64 (Tan, 1987, p. 59 (Tan, 2004, p.21) (The Indios of the Philippines, Period 19th Century Category History Language English Textual Physical Form, by Sabrina L. Oliveros; Kristina Joy Panogot).