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by Ayesha Merdeka Alonto-Datu Ramos

LABELS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IMPOSE ON MY PERSON FROM as far as I could remember. While growing up, I was either pampered and praised for being the "daughter of the Vice," or taunted and pinched hard with malicious diatribes for being the daughter of a rebel. Though neither had anything to do with my person in reality and each experience was in fact, just indicative of which side of the fence those people were on at that time, it made me feel that I didn't belong either way.

I guess the dynamics of my childhood is different from most people: my father was the organizer and founding Vice-Chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front and was its highest officer in the Philippines since most of the senior members of the organization were abroad. He was leading the defensive guerilla warfare of the war in Mindanao in the 1970s.

Back then I didn't quite comprehend because I was just a child needing a sense of belonging which I only felt in the rare moments when I was with my parents or grandparents. Whenever the need to look back is asked of me, the most vivid recollections I have next to the menacing visits of military men in my paternal grandparent's compound were the cruel and often times hurtful diatribes of people that made me feel so alone and different. Thus, from day one, I was already a "marginal kid."

When my father laid down his arms in the spirit of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, we moved from Lanao to Metro Manila. The moment I stepped out of the plane, another child laughed at me for not understanding a word she was saying. I hear distinctly the words " Muslim kasi" from her grown-up companions. I didn't even know I was anything that can be labeled at that time. From that day onwards, my quest to find out what that word meant started, and for the next twenty years of my stay in Metro Manila and my visits in other parts of the world, it was that one word, Muslim, a singular label that I identified with and allowed major life's decisions to be guided by it, directed my course.

On my fifteenth birthday, I was married off to my paternal third cousin. I then heard the word "teenage wife" and when I became a mother at nearly seventeen years of age, I was referred to as a " teenage mother." Yet, while pursuing education at the best Catholic schools in Metro Manila, I too was called "colegiala", "coño", and "sosyal." Back home in Lanao I was referred to as "Kiapilipinoan a wata I Abul" (the Filipinized daughter of Abul) for I could not speak fluently our own dialect. When I came home to Mindanao after acquiring a degree in History at De La Salle University, I was aghast to realize that to the non-Muslims of the area I was but an "educated Maranao," and to the Maranaos, I was an "elitist." Either way I look at it, I didn't belong.

While I was away from Mindanao for twenty years, such labels were a source of jokes and self-deprecatory statements. But returning to Mindanao and having stayed here for the past nine years, I had to finally struggle, ironically, for the first time with those labels to find my own true self and my own convictions. Being referred to as "Moro" and "Muslim" outside the homeland propelled me to study and learn of the history of the Bangsamoro and Islam. They were the pillars that kept me together in the face of the rare moments of discrimination and oppression that I experienced in those years, and indeed remains to be my one strength in those years, and indeed remains to be my one strength in life. But a totally different and alien dynamics exist when one lives in one's very own structure of society. While it was easy to invoke Islam outside Lanao, It was like standing in a quagmire of dichotomized realities back home. I experienced discrimination and prejudice from the very people I called my own outside Mindanao, the very people whose principles and aspirations I defended aggressively. This led me to take the authenticity check on my being, the long arduous inner journey of finding my own true self.

When I first arrived in Mindanao nine years ago, I was completely appalled by the sight of "my people" attempting to remove the very identity we, outside of the homeland, held on fiercely. It hurt me how they were ashamed of their own identity even going to the extent of speaking English or Tagalog with their thick accent just to fit in among the non-Muslim milieu of Mindanao. When I first immersed in the election of 1998, I realized that the idealism of the Bangsamoro revolution was nothing but a political tool to most political players, and those that were true to it were being called "fools" behind their backs. What seemed imperative was one's political clout and money. I was culture-shocked. The very ground I stood on shook as realities of the Bangsamoro slowly unfolded before my eyes. Are these the people my father so selflessly fought for, partially losing his sense of hearing in one of the attacks of the Philippine government against the Bangsamoro in the 1970s? The same people he always declared with all conviction worth dying for at any given time and worth sacrificing a promising political career for? Is this the Bangsamoro he talked about and whose ideals my life and that of my sibling centered on and were taught to defend? It was beyond terror to feel that my being was defined by mere card box ideals. All my sacrifices, doors I was forced to turn my back to, all came back to me in one overwhelming sense of loss. In those dark years, I suffered severe depression that took me three years to overcome. I was in complete perplexed anger. But in the end, it was Islam and my knowledge of the history of the Bangsamoro that kept me from completely giving in to the darkness. Knowledge is indeed power. It paved the way for me to understand that the centuries of armed struggle and the political setup imposed on the Bangsamoro has made them live in a seemingly dichotomized and opposing realities. But above all, I came to know my own humanity. In the authenticity check, I found my own prejudices and met my own weaknesses and became just me, sans the messianic tendency that I didn't know I held. I realized that my marginal life had given me the gift of genuine friendship amongst people not my own, but are truer to me. I found that I was an individual, apart from my family and the Bangsamoro. I discovered that I was part of a cycle of hatred, but one that I could choose to end with me. I replaced it with a genuine pursuit of becoming a better Muslim. As Prophet Muhammad said. "One from whose tongue and hands people are safe." It is a continuous struggle within and outside of the self; at times it is frustrating, but it keeps me in touch with myself. I began to forgive, and learned that by becoming a better person, I help create a more suitable world for my children- a world that I will be proud of as a Moro.

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by Evangeline Aspacio

Mga kapatid,

Mahirap ang pinagdadaanan natin

Tayo na mga Menuvu.

Hindi natin masasabi na wala tayong pinuno

Dahil kahit saang lugar

Ay mayroong pinuno.

Nakapagtataka kung iisipin

Na hindi tayo nakakaahon

Bagkus lalo tayong nalulunod.

Sa mga pinuno ng lugar

Bakit mahirap pa rin ang buhay

Naming mga Menuvu?

Kaunlaran ay lagi lang naririnig

Pero hindi man lang matikman ang tamis

Dahil pinuno ay natutulog

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The Bangsamoro people have a long history of fighting for self-rule and addressing grievances against the Philippine government.

"Living Life Out of the Box" touches on the internal complexities within the Bangsamoro community, which can be seen as a parallel to the broader struggle for a unified Bangsamoro identity.

Both "Living Life Out of the Box" and "Natutulog na Pinuno" offer a glimpse into the challenges faced by marginalized communities in the Philippines, highlighting issues that resonate with the Bangsamoro perspective.

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Marginalization and Struggle

Leadership and Broken Promises

Desire for Progress and Identity

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          Ayesha Merdeka Alonto-Datu Ramos (Left)

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                                Evangeline Aspacio

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AUTHORS

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QUESTIONS

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How can the leaders in "Natutulog na Pinuno" bridged the gap of progress and stagnation without upholding the respect and traditional values?

How may the idea of "Living Life Out of the Box" be applied to give voice and experience to marginalized groups in the community, so that their distinct viewpoints are included in the socio-political a discussion?

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Bangsamoro struggle for independence

Tripoli Agreement of 1976

Philippine government attacks in 1970s

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The Menuvu People of Davao Oriental and Bukidnon.

Struggles they face for better living conditions.

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Themes that resonate with the Bangsamoro perspective

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Themes that resonate with the Bangsamoro perspective