The Plight of the Gypsies in Mindanao: The Badjao (Part 2)

The plight of the Badjao – the sea gypsies, the boat people from the Sulu archipelago, is probably the worst that has ever happened to a Lumad in recent times.

The Badjao are the counterpart of the nomadic Mamanwa in the forests of Surigao and Agusan provinces. They lived in boathouses that clustered and moored near an island of choice in any particular moment. A community of Badjao would consist of 15 to as many as 50 boathouses. They spent most of their times in the sea, fishing, gathering seashells or pearls in the wild. They would only set foot on dry land to sell their products, to buy panggi or pyoto – a grated unsweetened cassava cake, to fetch drinking water, to gather firewood, and to bury their dead. The Badjao practiced sustainable fishing, getting only what they needed for the day with hook and line, spear and traps. They never harvested for surplus to process in any way for the proverbial rainy days.

The Badjao were humble and peace-loving people. They avoided conflict of any kind. If provoked by land-dwelling people, they would just bow their head and move away from their tormentor. They would never fight back even if they were right. When threatened, they would simply pull their anchors and sail to another place. Their land-based Sama and Tausog neighbors gave them derogatory names, such as Samal Palau (outcast Samal) or lumaan (God-forsaken people). The Badjao preferred to call themselves Sama laos (Sama of the sea).

The Badjao used to settle along the shores of some islands in the Sulu archipelago; but many eventually retreated to the sea to escape the oppression of the islanders.

Conflict among neighbors in the Badjao community was accordingly resolved in an impromptu-like singing contest within the hearing distance of everybody. The conflicting parties would sing aloud their grievances, resentment and sentiments one after the other until everything in their heart had been aired out. After the singing marathon things would return to normal.

The Badjao practiced monogamy. It was one boat one wife one family. For them sex was a natural biological phenomenon. When a husband felt like doing it with his mate he would do it, all inside the boat, the children might be playing around, or even within the viewing distance of their neighbors. There was no need then to wait for the night to fall, for the kids to go to sleep, for the neighborhood to become still, because everybody knew anyway anytime they would do it as their boathouses were interconnected in a temporary mooring. The Badjao had no concept of privacy, or an idea of malice, given that almost everything in life was done in an open boat.

Such was the simple and unadulterated life of the Badjao. Some Muslim and Christian missionaries tried to change their way of life but were generally unsuccessful. Certainly, they had captured some few unfortunate souls and taught them the concepts of malice and sin. But the rest of the Badjao had remained free from the tyranny of organized beliefs.

Things changed tragically, however, when Martial Law was declared in the country. To counter the MNLF uprising, the Armed Forces of the Philippines stationed military units in almost every island in the Sulu Archipelago. Some rogue military men befriended the Badjao and taught them how to improve their daily fish catch through dynamite fishing. This altered the perspective and the sustainable life of the sea gypsies. They experienced a sudden boom in their fishing activity, so radical the change that they didn’t even know what to do entirely with their excessive harvest or their extra money. They still lived in their boathouses and they had not much need for anything. Of course, some of the men now stayed longer in dry land with their new found friends and learned to booze. It was not too long, however, when most of the fishing grounds of the gypsies were destroyed and soon became unproductive. Life started to become a daily ordeal to the once self-sufficient people.

Then some NGOs and government agencies came to the rescue. They taught the Badjao how to operate and maintain a seaweed farm. This intervention made a positive change in their sinking economic life. The men in the boat houses would again tarry in dry land after harvest time, eating, drinking and spending their dough in pubs and local entertainment houses. But the economic rise of the boat people ended dramatically when pirates robbed and divested them of their income every harvest time. The Badjao were scared to the bone and scampered to safety. There was no option but to move away from the Sulu seas.

So began the diaspora and exodus of the Badjao away from home. They hovered for sometime in Zamboanga City, and without employable skills they reduced themselves to begging just to survive. Zamboanga City very soon became too crowded for them, thus many ventured farther away into the different cities of Mindanao, then in Cebu and finally in MetroManila. In many occasions, the boat people were herded by authorities in MetroManila and forced back to Zamboanga City. But after saving for some fare money, they would make a comeback to the great metropolis, now improving and honing the art of begging.

Such is the tragic plight of the once free and meek people of the Sulu seas. They are now dispersed everywhere. In a generation or two, they would completely forget their origin, their history, culture and traditions. Except those who practice begging in seaports, many Badjao very soon may even forget how to swim, when not long time ago they were already swimming even before they started walking. The government wants them to go home, but I doubt if they can still go home, home to the place and time where and when they were free from the burdens and demands of our own civilization.

The Plight of the Gypsies in Mindanao: The Mamanwa ( Part 1 )

The Lumads are the descendants of the free and proud people in Mindanao who refused to join the religious fold of the Muslims and, later, of the Christians and continued to maintain their beliefs and practices, their socio-economic and political life in their respective territories. History tells us that joining the Muslims provided the Lumads greater security and protection from their enemies. Joining the Christians, on the other hand, gave them access to educational, economic and political opportunities improving thereby their economic and social condition. To remain a free people proved costly at the end because it eventually dispossessed them of their possessions and pushed them into the margin of society.

Consider the Mamanwa. The Mamanwa are dark-skinned with kinky hair but are much taller and with well-proportioned body than their Aeta counterparts in Antique and Zambales. Nomadic, they used to occupy and roam the forest ranges of the Surigao and Agusan provinces. They were literally dependent on the bounty of the nature, satisfying their basic needs from what they could harvest from the forests and capture from the rivers. They never permanently settled but stayed temporarily in an area in huts without walls for as long as the bounty of nature still met their needs. After a while, they would roam again in a cluster of 3 – 10 families to another place enjoying life that is free from the trappings of a more sophisticated community. They were honest and peace-loving people who resolved conflicts among themselves through the mediation and counsel of the eldest member of their community.

After the Second World War, however, the landscape of Mindanao has experienced tremendous changes, especially in Surigao-Agusan mountain ranges. Miners have cut across and dug mountains to extract gold, nickel, cobalt, copper, iron ores and other minerals; and loggers, legal and illegal, have felled trees and secured their concessions with heavily armed guards. The Mamanwa could no longer thread freely in their former hunting grounds and have been restricted in the peripheral areas of the forests learning to survive through slash and burn farming from the lowlanders. They have resorted to trading with the people in the lowlands – selling or exchanging rattan poles and fruits, tubers, bamboo shoots, orchids, deer, wild pigs, monkeys and birds with corn grits, salted fish and some canned goods. Unschooled they are always at the losing end of the barter. The lowlanders look down at them and pejoratively called them kongking because of their scaly black skin and kinky hair.

When Martial Law was declared, the New People’s Army (NPA) for some time ruled the jungles of Surigao and Agusan. The Mamanwa, because of their familiarity with the terrains, were hired or forced to become guides by the military and the NPAs in pursuing each other and became primary victims in armed encounters and life-threatening suspicion from both sides of the warring parties. As a result the Mamanwa were ultimately forced out from their shrinking paradise. With no employable skills, they have been reduced to begging for food and clothing from the lowlanders who despise them. Anyway, some kind souls had taken pity of them and hired their men as farm hands or their women as house helpers. But their benefactors complained that they lacked initiative, motivation and concentration in what they were doing. In short, they were perceived as lazy and unreliable. They would accordingly escape work now and then pursuing and connecting with relatives in their wandering. The nomad in their blood refused a settled life. Disoriented, they keep on moving without definite purpose and direction except to survive out from the kindness and help of people they met along the way.

The passage, of R.A. 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, restored to some 1900 Mamanwa their forest land through the issuance of a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) by the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) on 22 September 2006. The Mamanwa’s ancestral domain covers an area of 49, 870 hectares located in the municipalities of Claver, Gigaquit, Bacuag, Alegria, and Tubod, all in the province of Surigao del Norte. Under the provisions of CADT, the Mamanwa beneficiaries, as land owners, are responsible in the development, control, utilization and collective management of their ancestral domain on the condition that said land resource cannot be sold, disposed or destroyed in any way.

Unfortunately, for the Mamanwa, their return to their homeland has been compromised by the surge of some 20 or more mining firms or mine claimants within the domain, in addition to those already entrenched earlier in the area, particularly upon the passage and implementation of the controversial Philippine Mining Act of 1995 (R.A.7942). Under the IPRA law, the natives were entitled to a royalty of one percent of the gross income of each mining firm operating within their territory. This has not been done. One firm shrewdly managed to ink an agreement with the tribal chieftain to grant P500,000/annum to the tribe people and their host communities. Notwithstanding that this in violation of the IPRA Act, only P200, 000 so far has been released to the beneficiaries and their host communities. Meanwhile, the Mamanwa homeland is now crisscrossed by mining roads, bulldozed, opened, and dug again and here and there for the precious minerals, destroying biodiversity and the natural environment, and displacing some of the natives from their farm lands. Recently, the military have occupied areas in their ancestral domain to protect mining investors reportedly from the harassment of the NPA rebels. The Mamanwa, who have begun to settle in their recovered land, are forced once again to mass evacuate into the lowland for their safety.

An NGO (Filipino Tribe Mission) is reportedly assisting Mamanwa families live a settled community life somewhere in Taganito, Surigao del Norte. Mamanwa children are taught the rudiments of education and the adults, hygiene, sanitation, nutrition and improved farming methods and employable skills to enable them to join the labor force or generate self-employment. If the approach succeed this would save the Mamanwa from the indignity of living at the mercy of other people. And yet this benevolent intervention may yet ultimately lead to their ultimate assimilation into the mainstream of society and erase once and for all what little cultural heritage that is left in their soul.