Responding here to some things that are here and some that were posted elsewhere… again to keep the NPA/Eastern Mindanao stuff on one thread and the MILF/Central Mindanao stuff on another.

When we speak of Bisaya (Visayans) nowadays we tend to be talking about Cebuanos but from Oroquita City all the wat aropund the island, moving east, until the border of Davao Oriental and Davao del Sur was populated by Bisaya.
Who’s “we”? Cebuanos tend to use “Bisaya” and “Cebuano” interchangeably, but “Bisaya” or “Visayan” reasonably refers to native speakers of the primary Visayan languages (Waray, Cebuano, Ilonggo, Kinaray-a) and sub-dialects. Boholanon, Surigaonon, Butuanon are not discrete languages, but mutually intelligible variants of Cebuano. “Boholanon” is Cebuano with an accent; if it’s a language, so is Australian.

Not that any of that is really germane to the issue.

As I’ve said a number of times, the Mindanao Muslim historical narrative is undoubtedly distorted and twisted to support Muslim political aims. The Visayan narrative is no better. If you’re hearing the story from Mindanao Visayans, you’re hearing a version of the story that’s every bit as distorted and inaccurate as what you’d hear from the Muslims.

It’s true that there have always been Visayans in Mindanao, mainly along the northern coast with some minimal penetration up river valleys. What’s disputable is the assumption that because there have always been Visayans in Mindanao, Visayans from other islands therefore have the right to settle anywhere on Mindanao that they please.

It’s certainly not true that all Visayans on Mindanao are settlers. It is, however, very true that virtually all Visayans in the parts of Mindanao now afflicted by insurgency – whether the MILF insurgency or the NPA/Lumad insurgency – are settlers. You cannot reasonably ignore the impact of settlement from the causation of these conflicts, especially given the scale of settlement and the demographic shift, in which indigenous groups have moved from majority to minority in so many areas, and the extreme pro-settler bias shown by government agencies, the “justice” system, and the security apparatus.

Yes, there has always been conflict: I should have referred to THIS conflict; thought that was assumed.

The Lambangians, Tedura, B'laan, and T'boli Tribes all lived as sub-humans and in exchange for giving the majority of their crops were allowed to remain on ancestral lands. The problem isn't Christians.
At least they were allowed to remain. The settlers, especially the logging, mining, plantation and ranching interests, don’t want tribute, they want the land… and they take it. What’s the threat to these groups now? Are the settlers treating them any better than the Muslims did?

Certainly the Maguindanao and Maranao political culture is feudal and abusive, but the political elite in the Visayas, and among the Mindanao settler community, aren’t exactly shining examples of egalitarianism and social justice themselves. How well have the indigenous communities in Panay or Negros – what’s left of them at least – been treated? What’s happened to indigenous groups in settler-dominated areas? That shoe fits more than one foot. There’s little doubt that Mindanao’s Muslims have suffered as much from the execrable quality of their own leadership as from anything else, but the settler political leadership hasn’t been a great deal better.

You are correct that both sides targetted non-combatants but only on side did so without provocation, the Black Shirts. Each Ilaga atrocity was a reaction to a specific atrocity commited by the Black Shirts, and later the Barakuda, and then the MNLF.
That I fear is a complete load of bollocks. Settlers were as often as not aggressors, and initiated as many atrocities as they responded to. Of course you won’t hear it that way from them… you’ve obviously heard their side, have you spent equal time with Muslims - especially the ordinary farmers who took the brunt of it - and heard their stories? If you’ve read the academic literature on the conflict, you surely realize that nobody who has systematically studied the events of that period shares that conclusion… do you really believe that they’ve all been duped by Muslim propaganda, and only the Mindanao Visayans are telling the truth? Surely you know what happened in Manili in June ’71… was that a “reaction to a specific atrocity”? I’m sorry, but it’s a complete crock of one-sided self-serving nonsense.

In the early 80s I spoke to many militia members who were perfectly open about having attacked Muslim villages, not in response to any particular incident, just because Muslims needed to be killed. They thought it perfectly reasonable and defensible to kill Muslim civilians, including women and children… after all, the boys would grow up to kill Christians and the girls would have sons who would grow up to kill Christians. Easier to kill them when they’re small. These things were spoken as self-evident truth, often accompanied by display of assorted trophies. I was also told, among other things, that if I was ever speaking to a Muslim I should be certain never to turn my back, because if I did the Muslim would be possessed by an irresistible urge to stab me.

Of course I’ve heard the story of Luces and the Ampatuans. I’ve also heard a few other versions of the same story. The Ampatuans were notoriously the worst of the datu families when it came to treatment of settlers and the Muslim peasantry alike, and there were confirmed incidents of the Ampatuans allowing land to be settled and then taking it back. Whether those incidents involved Luces remains debatable: the confirmed incidents happened in Ampatuan town, not Upi, and Upi was Sinsuat territory, not Ampatuan. Again, if you’re hearing the stories from Mindanao Visayans, you have to consider the possibility that what you’re hearing is distorted, and if you’ve not bothered to seek out the other side of the story at source, you’re not seeing the whole picture.

I notice that your account completely omits the role of the settler political elite… are we supposed to pretend that they didn’t exist, that all the settlers were poor earnest hard working victims?

Poor Muslims were pushed off cultivated land, in substantial numbers. Most of them ended up migrating to Cotabato City shantytowns, where populations soared in the 60s and beyond.

Settler communities were exorbitantly favored by national government agencies: investment in roads, irrigation, schools, health care, etc was almost exclusively devoted to settler communities. Of course the settlers claimed that the stupid Muslims didn’t care and wouldn’t accept help, but that claim doesn’t stand up to even the most casual research or the most transitory look at period sources. It’s BS, to put a simple word on it.

When the violence began, the government took the side of the settlers, exclusively. Muslims who fought settlers were outlaws, pursued by the PC and the army; settlers who killed Muslims were considered assets and given arms and support. No attempt has ever been made to bring settlers who committed atrocities against Muslim civilians to justice… unless of course they subsequently committed atrocities against Christians. A number of Muslims pointed out to me that the Manero brothers killed Muslim civilians openly and with impunity for years and were considered valuable assets of the state. Killing one Catholic priest made them public enemies.

The extraordinary level of anti-Muslim prejudice, discrimination and outlandish caricature that prevails among the Christian populace, dating back to Spanish times (the Spanish of course had their own issues with Islam) is well documented and real. It exists to this day.

What caused it was the inability of Muslims to co-exist with non-Muslims, as Politically Incorrect as that may be.
Again, look at the scale of migration, the demographic shift, the enormous bias of government toward the settler communities. Hard to expect anyone to simply “co-exist” on those terms.

There’s a similarity, at times uncanny, to Palestine. Whoever you think is “right” or “wrong”, at the end of the day the fact remains that if you introduce a new population into an inhabited area against the will of the current inhabitants, and the new population becomes dominant and begins taking over political control, violence will ensue… and each side will develop an exclusive historical narrative that serves their interests. This may be right or wrong, good or bad; not my place to say. It’s inevitable.

The only thing that stopped the migration was the outbreak of violence. If the war hadn’t started, do you think the settlers would ever have stopped coming? Or would the settlement have continued, until the Muslims were relegated to the same role the Lumad now play in the east? What has happened to every Philippine indigenous community that decided to “co-exist” with settler intrusion?

When the Muslims refer to all Christians as "settlers," there can never be peace. I have never met a single Christian on Mindanao who denied that Muslims have a right to live in Central Mindanao.
In the areas affected by the Central Mindanao insurgency now prevails, virtually all Christians are in fact settlers. I’ve met quite a few Christians who told me that only a Muslim-free Mindanao will ever have peace. It’s been a bit of a mantra among the militias, and among the settler political elites when they think no outsiders are listening.

Not possible to boil this one down to right and wrong, good guys and bad… unless you want to take sides of course. We’re all free to do that, but representing either of the constructed narratives in this conflict (as with most similar conflicts) as truth is a bit of a farce.