Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:57:45 +1000
From:         lulu@COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU
Subject:      PH: CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS/11

THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL PHILIPPINE STUDIES CONFERENCE:
ABSTRACTS (continued)

PANEL: CULTURAL COMMUNITIES AND IDENTITY

(77)	The politics of retribalization: lumad ethnicity and resistance in
Northern Mindanao
J.R. Nereus C. Acosta, Institute of Culture and Communication, East-West
Center, Honolulu

Lumad refers to the indigenous peoples of the Philippines' second largest
island, Mindanao. The term is Visayan, the region's lingua franca, and
literally means 'grown to the place'. In northern Mindanao, the Lumads
number around 1.6 million and are divided in 12 major ethnolinguistic
groups. All lumad groups in Mindanao total around two million, roughly 15
per cent of the island's 15 million population.
The Lumads,  as distinguished from the Muslim group of Mindanao, face
increasing dispossession of their ancestral lands and the disintegration of
their cultures. This phenomenon is in direct connection with capitalist
expansion in this so-called 'land of promise' as well as development
programs and projects perpetuated by the state. As a result, a politics of
retribalization is engendered, a reassertion of ethnic identity among
Lumads  that is used as a strategy for empowerment and resistance. The
Lumad struggle is certainly not of the magnitude and protracted intensity
of separatist movements of the Moros (Muslims) of Mindanao, the Pattani
Malays of southern Thailand, or the Shah and Karen in Burma. Their problems
do not necessarily preoccupy  or their fight threaten   the government, the
constitution provisions that stress the protection of their rights
notwithstanding. Their needs and grievances, though recognized, are not
effectively met or addressed. Nevertheless, the Lumads  are far from
content to remain mute. And their emergent, and presumably growing, voice
of cultural self-determination demands to be heeded.
From preliminary field trips to Lumad  areas around Bukidnon, northern
Mindanao's largest province, this researcher is struck by the complex
dynamic of 'retribalizing' among Lumad  groups. The politics of Lumad
retribalization is real, not so much for those people or groups who are
most affected by the onslaught of modernization and development as for
those who have had established contact with the dominant culture. The
articulation of grievance and the employment of strategies of empowerment
and resistance reside in those who have a wider understanding of the
workings of social forces, of the interplay of domination and integration,
imperium and resistance. As such, NGOs and educated datus and other
individuals who profess ethnic affinities wit the Lumad  cultures are in
the forefront of this politicized project of retribalizing and
identity-reconstructing.
In the recesses of the hinterlands, however, the Lumads, while still
retaining some of their customs, rituals and traditions of old, inhabit a
social limbo. The places this researcher has visited are characterized by a
general feeling of listlessness and ennui. What one sees is a condition of
abject poverty and one perceives an attendant debilitating resignation to
such. Among these people there is nary a concept of an established ethnic
identity except for the understanding that they are different from the
dumagats or lowlanders who have relentlessly driven them farther and deeper
into the mountains.
For as long as government de-emphasizes cultural variations and ethnic
pluralities within the framework of a so-called nation-state, the plight of
these Lumads is bound to remain the same, if not worsen.

(78).	The T'Boli of Lake Sebu, Philippines: traditional culture,
music-making and change'
Manolete Mora, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University
The T'boli are shifting cultivators who mainly live in scattered
settlements over the hills and valleys of the Tiruray Highlands in the
province of South Cotabato, Mindanao. Lake Sebu is at the geographical
centre of the T'boli homeland; it is widely acknowledged by them as their
cultural and ancestral heartland.
The upland T'boli maintained a relative degree of independence until the
resettlement schemes for Christian Filipino immigrants established by the
national government expanded in the 1950s. Fieldwork carried out in 1983-84
and in 1985 showed that the T'boli around the Lake Sebu area still
maintained a relatively vigorous cultural life. This was exhibited, for
instance, in the telling of tales and myths, weaving, brass-casting,
jewellery-making, embroidery, music-making of many kinds, and the
celebration of the grand kinship ceremony (moninum).

[NOTE: this paper withdrawn from the conference programme. For further
information, contact author]

(79)	Muslim and Filipino?: the MNLF and the construction of Sama identities
Patricia Horvatich, Center for SE Asian Studies University of Hawaii

In this paper, I will examine the ways the Sama people of Tawi-Tawi
Province have constructed their ethnic, religious and national identities
within the context of Muslim struggles of resistance against the Philippine
state. Involvement with the Moro National Liberation Front has forced the
Sama to renegotiate their relationships with the Philippines government and
with other Muslim ethnic groups of Mindanao and Sulu.
For example, many Sama people joined the MNLF to defend Islam, to resist
'Filipinization' of their identities and cultures, and to struggle for
political power and economic advantages. When they joined the MNLF,
however, the Sama sacrificed their access to the social mobility that the
Philippine government had made possible for them; they were forced to
relinquish their jobs as teachers, office workers, and politicians that had
enabled them to effectively challenge the traditional political-economic
hegemony of the Tausug people. To struggle as Muslims, then, meant being
placed back into pre-colonial relationships of power the Tausug. This
relationship marginalized the Sama within the Tausug-dominated movement.
Surrendering to the government, on the other hand, meant betraying the
Islamic cause. Thus the Sama could not act - they could not join the
movement or surrender to the government - without defining their
relationships to other groups, and without constructing the nature of their
own identity in relation to these groups.
I will examine the issues involved in Sama relationships with the MNLF and
the Philippine government as I focus upon the ways the Sama construct and
reconstruct their identities in various historical contexts.

PANEL: ECONOMIC POLICY FOR THE POST-AQUINO ERA

(80)	Keynote Paper: Building upon hard-won gains: the imperatives for
sustainable industrialization in the post-Aquino era
Bruce Tolentino, [former]Undersecretary, Policy and Development, Dept of
Agriculture, Philippines

The Aquino administration of 1986 to 1992 enacted some initiatives toward
economic recovery and growth. The newly-elected government must heed the
lessons f the experience of governance and reform in the Aquino era. The
strategy of development must consider the realities of democratic space and
the equitable balance of influence among interest groups. The imperatives
for agro-based, sustainable industrialization are: (a) attention to
agricultural productivity; (b) a liberal economic development which
promotes competitiveness; (c) a fiscal program supportive of rural and
agricultural growth; (d) strict priority-focussed on agro-based
industrialization; and (e) sustained advocacy and communication for the
development agenda.

PANEL: POETRY, PASYON AND THE EPIC TRADITION

(81)	Illuminated history: aspects of the poetry of Cirilo Bautista
Elizabeth Perkins Dept of English, James Cook University

Cirilo Bautista, one of the foremost Filipino poets writing in English,
suggests that 'literature is always history ...much of Philippine
literature in the most recent times can be perceived as actually
illuminated history' (Philippine Studies 38 1988). In The Archipelago
(1970), the first book of his Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, Bautista's poetry
narrates the founding of the Philippine Islands to evoke the evolution of
'the Filipino Soul'. This first book of the epic ended with the execution
of Rizal. In The Telex Moon, Bautista's poetry offers a further perspective
through the Intelligence of Rizal, now released from time and space. In
these, and in shorter poems, and in draft versions of the third book of the
Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, Bautista's poetry translates historical fact and
legend through the imagined psyche of participants to evoke a poet's vision
of 'the uniqueness and the beauty of the Filipino experience.' This paper
offers a commentary on some of the poetry, indicating affiliations and
differences between historical and poetic construction of national history.
The title of the paper is derived from a statement in which Bautista
suggested that the writer's imagination has the power to situate events 'in
the center of national dreams and policies, and to predict the
consequential problems and prospects.'

(82)	Ka Amado: the poet unarmed
Charles Glyn-Daniel, Dept of English, Australian Defence Force
Academy-University of NSW
[unavailable for distribution ]


(83)	The Lenten practice of Pasyon as Southeast Asian theater? - a
structural analysis of performance, practice and protocol

Ricardo Trimillos,School for Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies,
University of Hawaii

The Philippines and its lowland cultural practices are often regarded as
highly acculturated and highly derivative of Spanish peninsular culture.
The Spanish catholicism and the number of Spanish loan words in the various
languages are evidences to support the opinion.
The pabasa or pasyon, the singing or recitation of a vernacular account of
the life and Passion of Christ, is widespread throughout the lowland
cultures of the Philippines. It is most often performed during the Lenten
period, intensifying during the Holy Week. The casual observer would see it
as yet another manifestation of acculturation from Spain. However a deeper
analysis of the performance/observance complex surrounding the pabasa
suggests that the Christian account has been grafted onto a Southeast Asian
theoretical tradition - the epic story. The musical characteristics,
including melismatic and free rhythmic melody, an unresonated vocal
production, the emphasis upon vocal improvization, the institutionalization
of competitive performance techniques, and the trilingual manipulation of
text for its sound rather than its semantic values are some examples.
The social features, including all-night performance, 'heroic' demands on
the individual performer, the association with performance as an act of
reciprocation for divine intervention, and the combination of such
performance with eating, consuming alcohol, and gambling, also suggest a
Southeast Asian structure. The analysis speaks for an indigenous cooptation
of Peninsular Spanish Catholic practice. It further raises questions
concerning the Ileto interpretation of the (Pasyon and Revolution).


----------------------------------
[more to come]
-----------------------------------
These papers are available from the Dept of Political and Social Change
(see address below) for a small fee.
*******************************************
Lulu Turner
Dept of Political & Social Change
Research School of Pacific Studies
Australian National University
GPO Box 4, Canberra  ACT 2601
AUSTRALIA

tel: (06) 249 0173
fax: (06) 257 1893
e-mail (Internet): lulu@coombs.anu.edu.au
*******************************************