Maranaw datus want recognition of Moro struggle against foreign invaders

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao — Senior Moro leaders celebrated Philippine Independence Day yesterday with calls for the government to highlight in the yearly event the deaths of the datus and their men who perished in their defense of Mindanao against the Spaniards and the Japanese during World War II.

This town was in fact named in honor of Sultan Kudarat, a fierce, 17th century warrior who fought the Spaniards in many areas in what are now Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur.

Sultan Kudarat, a blue-blooded leader, has reached as far as Lamitan, now a town in Basilan, in his hunt for Spaniards, thus expanding his principality over revolting Yakans there which he, subsequently, organized into a big expeditionary force.

The mayor here, Datu Tucao Mastura, a descendant of Sultan Kudarat, said that if history is reviewed, the Moros in Mindanao were never subdued by either the Spaniards or the Japanese.

"We have so many stories of Muslim villagers slaughtered by the Spaniards for coddling our warriors who fought them then," Mastura said.

He said there were hundreds of Moros who perished in their struggle against the Spanish occupation from the 16th to the 19th century.

Cotabato City (Kuta Wato), the stone fort overlooking the Rio Grande de Mindanao, from where Sultan Kudarat commanded his forces attacking from different directions, was originally a port where the Spaniards moored their galleons.

The history of the Maguindanaon people, in fact, tells of how members of the Ampatuan clan in now the Shariff Aguak municipality, the capital of Maguindanao, overran a Spanish fortress in Tamontaka, a riverside community in Cotabato City, to rescue more than a dozen relatives enslaved by the Spaniards and forced to embrace Islam.

The Maranaws of Lanao del Sur also have similar stories of gallantry by their ancestors. — John Unson