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The Bangsamoro War and the Meaning of Campo Muslim

The Bangsamoro Rebellion was waged as an intense armed struggle from late 1972 until early 1977. A negotiated cease-fire held for most of 1977, but by 1978 fighting had resumed, albeit at a somewhat reduced intensity. It was not until 1980 that armed clashes became infrequent and the separatist movement assumed a mostly unarmed form. This chapter returns us to the Cotabato City community known as Campo Muslim. As an urban poor community sheltering a large number of war refugees, Campo Muslim is an appropriate site from which to begin an investigation of the Bangsamoro Rebellion from the point of view of the rank-and-file insurgents and supporters who suffered the greatest losses of the war.

The term "Campo Muslim" denotes a bounded Muslim community in a city in which Christians predominate, thus signifying the accelerated marginalization of Cotabato's indigenous Muslims in their own traditional capital. The community's name also suggests a second significance. Campo Muslim is the site of a concentrated and self-consciously Muslim population. As such, it has always been viewed by separatist leaders as a vital resource for waging the Muslim nationalist struggle. There is yet another meaning to be found in Campo Muslim.


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It is an urban poor community composed primarily of residents who are self-evidently impoverished not only in relation to the Christians who control the city but also by comparison to various other urban Muslims, including virtually all of those who seek their political support.

In this chapter and the two that follow, I examine the nature of rank-and-file participation in the Muslim separatist movement by exploring the interplay between these three meanings of Campo Muslim—as marginalized indigenous community, Muslim community, and urban poor community. In its every aspect, Campo Muslim provides the ideal setting to investigate contemporary Muslim politics (and especially Muslim nationalist politics) from the perspective of ordinary Muslims. Here I focus on the Bangsamoro Rebellion as experienced in and viewed from Campo Muslim. In particular, I argue (based on evidence collected in Campo Muslim) that ordinary fighters and followers of the separatist rebellion held views and produced symbols of the armed struggle that differed markedly from those promoted by movement leaders.


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