Ang Mindanao noong aking kabataan

Tampok sa mga balita sa lahat halos ng peryodiko at komentaryo ngayon ang Mindanao. Nag- deklara kasi ang Pangulong Duterte ng batas militar dahil sa kaguluhan doon at paglitaw ng maraming armadong grupo. Tuloy naalala ko ang ang aking sinulat noong mga ilang taon ng nakakalipas ng noong ako ay nasa Mindanao.

Heto yun. It was mid-sixties when I first visited Mindanao. It was some kind of an adventure.I was young and so curious. My friend Marino Guiao of Angeles City, who worked as a karate instructor in Clark Air Force Base, invited me to join him and wife Elizabeth. Our destination, Pagadian, then the capital town of Zamboanga Del Sur.

Me and Marino instantly fell in love with the place. Laid back, friendly residents, cheap prices and beautiful women. We decided to stay. We established Beaux Brotherhood Kyukushin Hai Karate Club in a rented second floor of a building in the downtown area.

I met a Kapampangan who worked as warehouseman(bodegero) of Rice and Corn Administration(RCA) forerunner of National Food Authority stationed in Ipil the halfway town between Pagadian and Zamboanga City. He invited me there and met more Kapampangans, mostly from Tarlac since the RCA adminstrator then was Jose Feliciano of Concepcion. Diosdado Macapagal was then president.

I was invited to have a good time in Zamboanga City one weekend. On that Sunday early afternoon when our bus reached the city, I can’t help but exclaimed, Wow, what a beautiful place! Pasonanca Park, Cawa Cawa beach, Plaza Pershing, Nuestra Seniora Del Pilar Grotto and many areas you visit even in the dead of night was so safe, like how it was safe to travel to any point in Zamboanga Peninsula, Basilan and Jolo, Sulu. Almost every place, Cotonato, Dipolog, Marawi, Bukdinon...etc.

There is a song and it goes this way,’Don’t you go, don’t you to go to far Zamboanga’.It sends the message that once you are there, you will never want to leave. It happened to me. I stayed more than two years and decided to stay there forever, but a love affair involving me and a rich and beautiful Chinese girl ended my stay. Her parents threatened her.( My love story with her will beat a telenovela but it will require another story telling some other time).

I had several Muslim friends. There was no ethnic quarrel. There was peace all over Mindanao. Though some filtered news that trouble was brewing in Cotobato. Still nursing a broken heart, I accepted the invitation of a friend to work as newswriter for the Cotobato section of Mindanao News Tribune edited by Bert Tesorero and printed in Davao City. Not long after I was invited by Fred Babao, station manager of DXMS, to become an assistant news director of the station’s news bureau.

Datu Udtog Matalam was governor of the Cotobato province and Salipada K. Pendatun was the congressman of the province which was then a lone congrssional district, and not yet gerrymandered. There was utmost peace, till a movement was being formed and gained ground, the Mindanao Independence Movement (MIM). And later, the Moro National Liberation front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari, and the once peaceful Mindanao was bathed with blood.

In my youth, it was said that Mindanao is the ‘land of promise’. Maybe so, because leaders in our country made strings of promises which gave hope to people of Mindanao. But that hope faded as time passed by, and the despair turned into violence. Filipinos killing brother Filipinos. Until the tough talking Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City became president. Now the imposition of martial law in the region.

THERE’S so much talk about martial law lately that others overlooked the main reason why it has been declared in the very first place.

Others just simply dismissed the idea and expressed opposition about the declaration. “Why does it have to be dealt through military rule?” some would ask, saying that there are other means.

But if there are other ways then what could it be? Really, there are lots of reactions but lesser research and lots of oppositions but lesser actions.

We are actually living in a blur. While others are lost in rage over the martial law declaration in Mindanao, others are lost in fear somewhere in Marawi City which had been beleaguered by the Maute group, a local terrorist group, since May 23.

Imagine also the thousands of students and teachers from all over Mindanao, who had chosen to study and teach in Mindanao State University (MSU) to avail of an