Resistance discourses construct an alternative analysis of society, critique the power relations that govern that society, and condemn the resulting oppression of the population that the resistance promises to liberate. They propose the ways and means social change can be done, and elaborate the shape of a new polity. While the dominant societal discourse reflects dominant power relations and helps reproduce the status quo, anti-state resistance movements and their discourses are counter hegemonic. They aim to realign state power and institutions by mobilizing people around their critique of the status quo and in support of their alternative vision.

In this book, I examine the resistance discourses within the Moro and Cordillera armed movements. ‘Discourses of resistance’ have been described as those that highlight difference and affirm ‘resistant space’ in opposition to the institutionalized frame. Critical discourse analysis is particularly relevant as a framework and method of analysis, given its concern with “the radical changes that are taking place in contemporary social life: with how discourse figures within processes of change, and with shifts in the relationship between discourse … and other social elements within networks of practices”. The narratives of the Moro and Cordillera armed resistance are basically narratives of difference from the Filipino majority population. Both the Moro and Cordillera identity entrepreneurs waged what we can call ethnopolitical mobilizations that were directed against the Philippine state.

Ethnopolitical mobilizations are movements whose discourses claim or reclaim ethnicity-based identities in order to advance a political project that will recognize and institutionalize their identity claims. In the Philippines, and probably in most other contexts, ethnopolitical mobilizations are distinct from, although related to, class-based and other ideological struggles. They are distinct because of the pre-eminence that the asserted ‘ethnic identity’ plays in their claims. Their construction of their ethnic identities and corresponding claims are embodied in their discourses, and their discourses in turn also set the direction of their struggle to constitute and create new socio-political relations. Thus, an analysis of the narratives and/or discourses of such movements is crucial to understanding the nature and trajectory of these movements.

Unlike in Mindanao, where the Moro population was overtaken by the influx of migrants from Luzon and the Visayas, the indigenous populations in the Cordillera remained the dominant populations in the region. Mining operations and government-led projects did lead to land-use conversion and changes in ownership in the more economically developed areas, but there was no massive resettlement of migrant populations. Relative deprivation and underdevelopment, a common context of many ethnopolitical mobilizations, are present within the region and vis-à-vis the national capital region. But several Cordillera provinces fare better in terms of income and other human development indicators than other provinces in the country. The region as a whole is better off than several other Philippine regions, especially Muslim Mindanao. The process of political and cultural differentiation also differed. Earlier initiatives of zealous Spanish friars from the Ilocos provinces failed. One Bontoc anthropologist wrote that “Christianity was established by the Spaniards on Igorot soil” only in 1893 when the first baptism was performed, but this event was allegedly never repeated under Spanish rule. But unlike in Muslim Mindanao, American Protestant and European Catholic missionaries made inroads in the region in the early twentieth century. They established churches and schools and generated conversions among the natives to Christianity.

Although control of the entire territory was uneven, the American colonial regime succeeded in ‘pacifying’ and incorporating the northern mountainous region under their rule, a feat unaccomplished by the Spaniards. Finin cited several reasons for the relative absence of resistance against the American administrators. One is what he described as the paternalistic and exoticized treatment that the Americans accorded the natives. They gave the Igorots — the collective name used by colonial officialdom for the natives in the region — a privileged status that was not extended to lowlanders in Baguio. Cultural performances and traditional feasts like the cañao were encouraged and supported. The American regime kept their hands off the rice fields and paid wages to the locals who were hired in the public works. Although the Philippine Constabulary remained the main tool of the state for subjugating resistance, local mediators were sought to settle conflicts and other forms of pressure were applied.