My Ateneo-educated lawyer friend and neighbor, many of whose sharp insights inspired a lot of articles in this space, has given me a new perspective about Maguindanao and the Moros in light of recent incidents in that crying place.
My friend and I usually converse across the top of our cars on those occasions that we find the time to wash our cars ourselves before going to the office. It is not often that we meet over this chore, but in the times that we do, it is always a pleasure.
As usual, he starts our conversation with some remark about the latest news, and his latest quip was naturally about the massacre. Attorney, which is how Filipinos call all lawyers, asked me if I noticed something in the photos and video footages taken of the massacre site.
I said I did but did not quite get what he meant. He said from across the roof of his car: “Grass! Everything is all grass! There are no crops. No nothing. Just grass!” Yes, I think I remember. The area surrounding the dug up pit and the hills beyond were all run over by grass.
So? I still did not get it about the grass. So he proceeded to explain. He said he used to work for a large corporation and had been all over Mindanao, including areas of conflict such as Maguindanao and its neighboring provinces. And where Moros are, there is usually just grass.
In areas where there are large Christian populations, he said, the land is often tilled and agricultural produce is abundant, feeding people and fueling the economy. But in areas where Moros predominate, lands are often idle and untilled, given in to nothing but grass.
These areas are often areas of conflict because, he said, instead of working the land and becoming productive, these people prefer quick fixes. The problem is that the quick fixes they choose are often against the law, hence criminal activity grows rampant.
These people, Attorney said, are using the criminality and the threat of violence to hold the government hostage. God knows, he said, how much money the government has already poured into these areas. But they all go to the pockets of the warlords who have nothing to show for it.
The government, he says, understands that the only way to keep these people at bay is to keep on buying what little peace they are willing to concede, afraid that they may make good their threat of blowing up the whole place into one mighty conflagration.
But, Attorney insists, he also knows a lot of Moros who have not chosen to live by quick fixes but have made meaningful lives for themselves. And these other kind of Moros said the threat of violence, of violent secession, is just a bluff.
He said that if only the government will call this bluff and schedule a plebiscite to ask the Moros whether they want to have a separate Moro republic or not, the result will be a resounding No.
Most right-thinking Moros do not want a separate Moro republic because if that happens, it will just be divided among the different warring clans who will then proceed to kill one another and the new republic will only implode in one great intra-Moro conflagration.
The news photos and video footages of Maguindanao also showed the provincial capitol in the capital. It is a very imposing building, fenced in like a fortress by a high concrete fence. Taken against the grass, there is neither symmetry nor coherence.
The provincial capitol, unlike similar buildings elsewhere, does not provide an open and inviting picture. It looks impregnable, as if built by people who not only intend to stay there forever but also are oblivious to conditions outside its walls. Even grass is unwanted there.