Abstract "The Uneven Development of Mindanao

 

The uneven development of Mindanao, island south of the Philippines, was brought about by the resettling of farmers from the Luzon and Visayas, north and central islands, who were in need of lands. However, land and property rights inherited from Spanish and American colonizers saw to it that these virgin lands be exploited to benefit their regimes and that labor should be expedited and encouraged to make this possible. Thus, settler-migrants came to Mindanao and settled where the colonizers stationed them: public lands where either the natives- both the Muslims and the non-Muslim indigenous people live. Vulnerability on the open sea which was an easy access for the colonizers, thus, became the first line of colonial development towards urbanization.

            The twenty-first century Mindanao thus saw a more urbanized northern Mindanao while rurality has diminished its spatial importance. This paper, thus, attempts to answer the following:

1.      What migrant labor and land legislations of the colonial and post-colonial regimes cause the rural/urban spatial divide in Northern Mindanao?

2.      How did foreign capital favor the so-called pacified, settled spaces and where are these located?

3.      Was the so-called intention of resettling farmers to allow them become landowner-cultivators realized? To what extent?

This paper is based on documentary sources as well as current narratives coming from the Northern Mindanao  migrants themselves whose roots are traced from the Visayas and Luzon; including the Chinese migrants who came from the Visayas looking for greener pastures. This study adds the latter as the urbanizing sectors during the twentieth century.

 

Keywords: Northern Mindanao, , colonial land laws and property rights, migrant farmers