RATTING UP: THE ILAGA FEAR SURFACES

THE prospect of the Ilaga vigilante group coming out of the doldrums could worsen the already precarious peace and order situation in Mindanao (see related post “Will the Ilaga rise again?”).

 

Yesterday, I again heard convicted priest killer Norberto Manero over a radio station saying that if the government wants to crush the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, it should do so with the help of civilians who know the terrain and people of the Mindanao.

 

Manero’s statement is short of saying that the national government should not rely on military might in dealing with the MILF but it must also harness or even arm civilians.

 

Manero may not actually say it but it seems that he wants another group similar to the Ilaga to rise and chase Muslim rebels.

 

As a backgrounder, the Ilaga group actually started in the 1960s as an armed group protecting Christian politicians who grabbed lands in Mindanao. They are more like private armed groups protecting a mayor or governor from Muslim insurgents who are bent on retaking the lands they lost to Christian settlers who came mostly from Visayas region.

 

The group was organized by the so-called Magnificent Seven, a group of seven Ilonggo mayors in Mindanao. However, the Ilagas became as notorious as their Moro adversaries. Among the noted personalities associated with the Ilaga were Leonarda “Kumander Inday” Lacson, Manero’s wife, and Feliciano Luces alias “Kumander Toothpick” who was from Antique.

 

The Mindanaoans branded the “Ilaga” (Hiligaynon for “rat”) as an acronym for “Ilonggo Land Grabbers Association.”

 

In the 1972 elections, Col. Carlos B. Cajelo of Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo — who nurtured the Ilaga Movement, defeated Datu Udtog Matalam as governor of Cotabato in Central Mindanao, and served as the longest elected governor of the province for 12 years.

 

What made the Ilaga notorious is their ferocity against Muslim and communist rebels in Mindanao. It assumed the mantle of a messianic cult although it was still regarded a private army of land grabbers in the turbulent southern Philippine island.

 

Some of the MILF rebels such as Abdullah Saber Macapaar alias Kumander Bravo, who recently led offensives in parts of Lanao and Cotabato, have an axe to grind with the Ilaga group. It was reported that Kumander Bravo’s parents died in the hands of the dreaded vigilantes.

 

While the present crop of Ilaga members may take refuge behind the idea of protecting innocent civilians from the onslaught of the Muslim rebels, there is no denying that their presence will only exacerbate the Mindanao conflict which flared up again with the breakdown of the negotiations on the ancestral domain issue.

 

But what is this ancestral domain issue which triggered the shooting wars anew in Mindanao? And what are the contents of this memorandum on agreement that became the symbol of false hopes dangled to Muslims and Christians who wanted everlasting peace in Mindanao?

That is another topic worth discussing in the next post.