Where, O, Where Is the Homeland of the Moros?

The Ilocos Coast, part of it in Ilocos Sur

     They were known as sea-faring people. In Spanish times, they were pirates that rode the western Philippine sea and raid Christian towns along the coast. Their depredations reached as far as the Ilocos where there are still relics of watch towers warning Ilocanos and Igorrotes of the arrival of vinta- riding and kris-wielding people from Southern Philippines.  The crumbling radrillo watchtower is still there in Bacnotan, La Union.

    Maybe because of sheer number, Bangsa Moro territory should comprise  Sulu, Basilan  and Tawi-Tawi. But not in the entire island of Mindanao (their area is specified in the MILF-RP Memo of Agreement), where lumads, Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Ilonggos, Samarenos and other Luzon ethno-linguistic groups outnumber them three to one. Inside their "homeland" in Mindanao are also great numbers of Christians and lumads.
     
    Why create a nation-state of Bangsa Moro? Why amend the Constitution to accommodate them? They are already gloating over the government's action of stopping gas, oil, mineral explorations in their imagined area.

     And why are they allowed to keep their guns, these Moros who have been beheading Christians and Christian soldiers since time immemorial?

     Give peace a chance? At the expense of the Filipino people? And the country's territorial integrity?

    President Aquino like her mother Cory before him has betrayed the Filipino people. That memo of agreement, as articulated by a Moro himself--he is actually a Badjao-- the former UP professor Nur Misuari, is a recipe for disaster and further violence in the South.