EDSA had a huge impact on the Philippine left, and Joma wasn't the only or the largest part of it. Probably the greatest blow was losing Marcos: the symbiotic relationship between Marcos and the NPA is still underrated. hen of course there was the decision not to participate in the snap election and the subsequent civil resistance... the organized left sat it out, but many of the urban intellectual cadre that the NPA used to draw on for leadership were deeply involved in what was for many of them a life-changing experience (it really was a big deal at the time), driving a wedge between them and the organization that was once the default option for political expression. That had a serious long-term impact... not that the NPA leadership were ever intellectual gems, but the intelligence level dropped quite sharply post-EDSA.

All that contributed to the internal insecurity that launched the purges and led to them spiraling out of control. The sense that history was on their side evaporated very quickly, accelerated by the global collapse of communism. In keeping with their tradition they turned on each other. Some of the most bizarre and incomprehensible political rhetoric ever to disgrace the race came out of the RA/RJ debates. Of course in the long run the RAs held together, having noplace much to go, while the RJs deteriorated into an ineffectual alphabet soup of breakaway acronyms. My favorite acronym to date is the "RPM-P/RPA-ABB", though there's likely a better one out there.

What I'm watching curiously at the moment is what seems to me a likely split between the CPP/NPA PPW hierarchy and many of the groups on the above-ground side. It's always been assumed that the above-ground groups would be subordinate to the leadership of the armed side, but at least in the Cordillera, the above ground groups now have more funding, influence, and effectiveness than the armed side, and I'm sensing some tension. There's a bit of a gender component in it as well... much of the leadership of the above-ground groups is female and feminist; the armed side is dominated by patriarchal males, whose gender relations in practice don't quite live up to the rhetoric.

Two factors distinguish places where the NPA has held up from those where they've deteriorated, for me at least. First would be the presence of oppressive local elites that dominate the local economy and are perceived as completely separate from the populace, second would be the presence of ready funding. Eastern Mindanao scores high on both counts: the local elites are as feudal as any, and the small-scale mining and timber operations provide a steady revenue stream.

On autonomy in Caraga, or other parts of "Christian" Mindanao... I'm not sure what the basis would be. Certainly there's no real ethnic identity. Any such autonomous region would have an implicit division: the biggest problem the lumad have is the settlers, and the settlers would still be in charge of an autonomous region. I never felt that there was any real regional identity there... the term "Caraga" wasn't even in use until the mid 90s. I lived there from 79-82 and I don't think I ever heard the term "Caraga" used; except to refer to the municipality in Davao Oriental.

I'm not sure if Caraga's timber output exceeds that of the NE Sierra Madre (I don't think anyone knows, since most production is illegal and uncounted), but it's substantial. Political autonomy is not necessarily an obstacle to resource access, though, especially since "autonomy" as used in the Philippines is pretty nominal, generally meaning little more than an added layer of regional bureaucracy.

Of course there have been many groups over the years that espoused "autonomy" in north and NE Mindanao, but that was less a serious political demand than a thin justification for what were essentially personality-driven factions. There's always been that tendency toward personalized fringe movements in Mindanao, I suspect largely because so much of the populace is composed of rootless settlers. Generally they coalesce around a charismatic leader, the nominal objectives being very nominal indeed; often they combine religious and political elements. I met a bunch of these guys back in the day... Alex Noble and Lavi Manpatlan, Carlos Lademora and the Manero Brothers (in their Agusan days), Feliciano Luces (some time after his announced death; he seemed fairly lively for being dead, spent a lot of time around the cockfights in Manggagoy, a good place to disappear in those days). Ruben Ecleo Sr put the weird-o-meter right off the scale. Junior was still hanging out in those days, playing guitar and showing no interest at all in being Divine Master... that was way before the amphetamines and wife-killing. And yeah, I know the CAFGU. I got a thorough ass-whupping from a group of them near Kapatagan, Davao Sur in 1981, though they called them CHDF then, guess that counts as familiar!

Them was the days. "Seduced by the local environment" is a good description. Been there, done that. Survived, I still have no good reason why. Dumb luck, I suppose. Running very fast helped, particularly on one strange night in Agdao. I still have no idea who those guys were, or why they wanted to shoot at me...

I'm not sure it's accurate to say this:

Cordillera is a great example of the wind being takren out of an insurgency when the political objectives are partially met. If a group has no real ethnic narrative, like the "Moros." A group that exists only in the mind of fantasists, a stab at autonomy works wonders."
The ethnic narrative here is I would say stronger and more coherent than that of the Moros, and much less corrupted by profiteering and influence-seeking on the part of local bosses. It wasn't "autonomy" that took the wind out of the insurgency, and the objectives weren't partially met. The local tribes achieved their objective completely: the army pulled out and the projects that sparked the rebellion were abandoned. The formal autonomy (still up in the air in administrative terms) was pretty irrelevant to the locals; just government's way of acknowledging the status quo. The NPA didn't get what they wanted, but for most of the locals the NPA were just another bunch of intrusive lowlanders trying to exploit the locals for their own ends.

There's still some NPA traction, particularly in the Abra River Valley, where there's been a lot of lowlander intrusion... Abra almost seems a transplanted fragment of Mindanao in some ways.

I'm not in Baguio... 120km north, in the real mountains. Baguio and southern Benguet are fringes of the Cordillera, where (like in Abra) the tribal groups have lost control and been diluted by lowland infiltration. The heartland would be the areas speaking Kalinga, Ifugao, and Kankanaey (not always along provincial boundaries). The Ibaloi, Gaddang, Tingguian, Isneg have largely gone the way of the indigenous people elsewhere in the Philippines, assimilated into the lowest tier of society and kicked around by everyone.

I'd hesitate to use the word "empowered" to refer to the core Cordillera indigenous communities, because it implies that somebody empowered them, which is not the case. They're pretty much a self-empowering system, which is of course the only way empowerment really works, whatever the NGOs might say.

LGU opposition is stiff but in the end Manila will get its way (what a travesty). The latter is the Makati-registered branch of a Canadian Mining corporation (TVI, well actually TVIRDP is a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based subsidiary of TVI but you get the point). This company has the largest amount of land under permit of any other single mining corporation. The "Divide and Rule" game is alive and well and I have not seen a single multi-national that hasn't ripped a tribe or 2 apart.
Y'all need some Igorot missionaries to come down and show how it's done. One of the richest gold reefs in the country is a short bike ride from where I'm sitting. The locals mine it small scale, but no company has ever been able to come near it. They can't divide and conquer because the locals don't divide; trying to rip the tribes apart has gotten a few people ripped apart. All about that ethnic narrative, and about the combination of armed force, mass resistance, and a well-educated, well-connected cadre of locals that can attack the establishment on its own terms.

One the largest engines here is Development Aggression. The conundrum of Peace and Order, Investment, Exploitation and Prosperity is a vertiable Gordian Knot. They want to pacify the island so that it can be developed and exploited ("exploited" in the neutral sense and not the negative, as in exploitation of resources ,not people). However, their drive to develop is 1 of the most effective engines driving th various insurgencies so...
Many years ago I met two young engineers working on an attempt to build a road from southern Agusan Sur across to Bukidnon. It never went anywhere, obviously. They couldn't understand why the locals were so violently opposed (literally) to a project that was designed to help them. I had to point out the obvious: that once the road was built their land would be valuable, and once it was valuable somebody would come and take it away from them. Development is indeed a two-edged sword.

Plus c'est la change...