American Homesteading as Culture Construct In Southern Philippines: The Saga of the Filipino Pioneers in Mindanao,Philippines

by Faina C. Abaya-Ulindang,Ph.D

ABSTRACT

Focusing on the period 1913-1957, the author traces how the present Filipino migrants into Mindanao developed a unique response to a combination of socio-political-economic problems that inhere in frontierland development.

Originating as far back as 1913 when the American colonizers opened north central Cotabato as agricultural settlements, Filipino settlers had been oriented to the Pioneer American Dream of a "self-sufficient owner-cultivator" and encouraged to "make do" despite all the odds. Such idea or culture construct became the pattern from which subsequent resettlement projects developed-first, under the Commonwealth, then, under the Philippine Republic under President Magsaysay (1954-1957). The author posits that while the Filipino tried to fit himself into the pattern, the material conditions had never been consistently satisfactory.

As resettlement persisted as a government measure to solve its agrarian problem, the migrants from Luzon and Visayas learned to adjust to their changed condition. These set of adjustments are thus termed by the author as "pioneering complex'. Homesteading as dictated and supported by the Americans demanded that the settler must have the pioneering virtues of industriousness and resourcefulness, among others. Except in Christian dominated areas, the settler had always been a stranger in the island of Mindanao.

This study thus, will look into the varied responses of the homesteaders in Cotabato and Lanao, during the core period (1913-1957) utilizing documentary as well as oral history for sources. Pioneering complex as defined by the author means the set of physical and non-physical manifestations, from political to religious symptomatic of their response to a host of problems in pioneering. Such would be the Filipino settler's answer to the culture of (American )homesteading.