Divine Mercy and Divergent Evaluations: The Rebellion According to its Ordinary Adherents

What of the understandings of ordinary Muslim civilians, nearly all of whom supported the rebels during the insurgency in Cotabato? The official ideology of the Muslim separatist movement was not widely disseminated to non-elite Muslim civilians during the armed phase of the rebellion. Rebel ideologues were in self-imposed exile abroad, and Campo Muslim residents told me they possessed little or no knowledge of rebel leaders beyond the level of local commanders until after the first cease-fire in 1977. Even after the cease-fire, when key separatist symbols were more effectively presented to the Muslim populace, they did not readily take hold. The residents of Campo Muslim were generally familiar with the nationalist rhetoric of the rebellion, but even after years of appeals to Bangsamoro nationhood continued to denominate themselves either as "Muslims," which was also the term used by local Christians to refer to them, or by the name of their particular ethnolinguistic group, rather than identify themselves as "Moros."

Muslim civilians did identify strongly with rebel fighters during the insurgency, viewing them as their primary protectors from the murderous hostility of the military. A rebel commander remarked to me that early in the rebellion Muslim civilians provided little support to the insurgents but that the depredations of the Philippine military quickly gained adherents for the rebel cause.^[15] He added that other factors intensified support for the insurgency: "The government caused the masses to support the rebels, especially after the Ilaga were formed into CHDF units. When the government realized the damaging effect of that decision, they organized Muslim CHDF units, but ten men would only receive two guns. Most datus, however, were afraid to support the rebels."

As the government's campaign against Muslim insurgents intensified, military attacks on Muslim civilians multiplied, further alienating ordinary Muslims from the Philippine state and solidifying their identification with the rebellion.^[16] Popular support for the rebels was expressed symbolically in popular narratives of the divine mercy shown to rebels. In accord with cultural practices widespread in Southeast Asian warfare, individual rebel fighters sought magical powers—especially invulnerability to blades and bullets—through the use of spells, amulets, and other manifestations of esoteric knowledge (see Bowen 1993; Kiefer 1972; Reid 1988).^[17] Distinguishable from these individual acquisitions of magical protection was the popular belief in divine mercy (limu a Kadenan ) bestowed collectively on all rebel fighters (expressed in the first verse of song 1 above).

Divine mercy was most often manifested as supernatural assistance received from local spirits. Popular narratives relate how government boats were overturned and attacking soldiers devoured by spirit crocodiles. These pagali (literally, relatives)—ancestor spirits who appear in the form of crocodiles—were described for me by a Campo Muslim resident in the following account: "The pagali are large crocodiles with bands of yellow around their necks. In times past, people would place food on the riverbanks as offerings to petition them for favors. These stories are hundreds of years old, but we have proof that these spirit crocodiles still exist because they assisted the fighters during the rebellion. Once, in fact, when a carnival came to Cotabato City during the war, the government soldiers arrived and shot all the crocodiles on display there."

The most frequently reported instance of supernatural assistance was that received from a class of spirits known as tunggu a inged , or Guardians of the Inged. The tunggu a inged may appear as animals, birds, or even insects but very often take the form of giants (masela a mama —literally, large men) as described in the following narrative:

The masela a mama are not always visible. They appear only to certain people at special times. They live in remote places and stand more than fifteen feet tall. Before the coming of Sarip Kabungsuwan [the man who brought Islam to Cotabato] they were always visible, but they became frightened of him. They said: "His voice is louder than ours." They assisted our forefathers long before the rebellion. The individual who saw one of them would know that something was about to happen—usually something bad—and prepare for it. The masela a mama aided the rebels during the conflict by guiding them through valleys at night. At other times they would create fog so the enemy could not see the rebels. One

day during the war, my uncle, a commander, was sleeping in camp after the midday meal when he woke to see one. He told his men, "We must leave this place." As soon as they had left, artillery shells began to fall on their camp.^[18]

These and other unauthorized narratives illustrate how those deemed to be fighting for the inged were afforded divine mercy in the form of supernatural assistance from local spirits, most prominently from the supernatural guardians of the inged.^[19]

Unofficial interpretations of the events of the rebellion were also vehicles for ordinary followers to express their approval or disapproval of its developments. For illustration, we may examine the operation of subordinate perspectives in regard to rebel commanders who defected from the separatist cause. Defections were a serious problem for the Cotabato rebel leadership. The martial law regime offered substantial economic and political incentives for rebel commanders to "return to the folds of the law." Stories told by Muslim subordinates recount how some of those defections provoked supernatural sanctions. The following narrative concerns the tribulations of one of the best-known rebel commanders, Disumimba Rashid, after he surrendered to the government for the promise of a large sum of money: "Disumimba was a notorious outlaw who joined the MNLF and became a famous fighter. He possessed the power to transform himself into grass or a tree or an animal. However, many misfortunes befell him after he surrendered: motors on military boats that carried him would fail and tires blew out on trucks in which he rode. He was finally killed a few years ago for unknown reasons." Disumimba's eventual violent death attested to the failure of his protective magic and the withdrawal of divine mercy.

Other prominent defections were evaluated quite differently by ordinary Muslims. The three well-known defecting commanders depicted above—Peping Candao, Commander Jack, and Tocao Mastura—surrendered to the government contemporaneously with Disumimba Rashid, yet none of the them was reported to have suffered any divine retribution and all three remained popular with Muslim subordinates long after their defections. Their contrasting fortunes relate to their postdefection activities. Each was instrumental in insulating poor Muslim communities from many of the daily predations of the Philippine military. Disumimba provided no comparable postdefection services and the popular assessment of his abandonment of the rebellion appears to reflect that fact. Although all four defections were identically injurious to the rebel cause, and the defectors equally condemned by

rebel leaders, the estimations of Muslim subordinates centered on a separate set of considerations, most immediately a concern with securing protection from state aggression.

Perhaps the most poignant instance of unauthorized understandings by subordinate adherents concerns a special sort of divine mercy shown to sabil , or rebel martyrs, as described in the following account: "Previously, when the fighters were killed, their bodies did not smell bad or decompose, even for one entire week. The bodies exuded a pleasant fragrance. They had the scent of flowers. They were real mujahideen (those engaged in a struggle for the faith) who fought and died for Allah." As this passage suggests, these perceptions have a distinct periodicity. At one point in the rebellion this mercy ceased and rebel corpses decomposed just as those of government soldiers. The previous quote continues: "Later, if the rebels fought the soldiers or paramilitaries they would all smell bad; because now it was all just for politics." That perceptual shift on the part of followers demarcated the post-cease-fire period of late-1977 to 1980, a phase of the armed rebellion marked by the urbanization of the war, political infighting between rebel factions, and general confusion and disillusionment. Rebel actions had come to resemble "normal" political activity rather than jihad, and as a result divine mercy had been withdrawn.

The belief in the magical preservation of the corpses of slain rebels was widely shared among rebels and their supporters and was sanctioned by Islamic clerics. Ordinary followers, nonetheless, separately established clear limits to such divine evidence of participation in a righteous struggle. Despite rebel leaders' assertions of the integrity of both the armed struggle and the bodies of recently slain fighters, Muslim subordinates observed only deterioration. That withdrawal of blessing was an expression of their assessment, based on shared experience, of the "normal" political activity of Muslim leaders.