Mindanao

(2002 est. pop. 13.8 million). Mindanao is the second-largest island (after Luzon) in the Philippines and home to most of the Philippine Muslim population. It is located in the southern Philippines, south of the islands of Negros, Cebu, and Leyte and north of the Sulu archipelago. It covers 36,536 square miles and has a long and irregular coastline. The island is divided administratively into the northern (2002 estimated population 2.9 million), southern (5.4million), central (2.7 million), western (3.2 million) and Muslim (2.6 million) regions. The major cities are Davao (estimated population 874,000) and Tagum (estimated population 107,000) in the south, Cagayan (estimated population 426,000) in the north, Cotabato (estimated population 171,000) in the center, and Zamboanga (estimated population 153,000) in the west. Mt. Apo, the Philippines' highest peak at 2,954 meters and an active volcano, is located on the island.

The region was first settled by peoples migrating north from what is now Indonesia and Malaysia. Islam was introduced in the fourteenth century and until the middle of the twentieth century, Muslims formed the majority of Mindanao's population. The three major Muslim ethnic groups on the island are the Maranao, Maguindanao, and Sangill. Massive migration from the north beginning early in the twentieth century and accelerating rapidly after World War II, when settlers were given free land, has made the Muslims a minority (less than 20 percent of Mindanao's total population in 2002) and the Christians (mainly Roman Catholics) the majority. The island is also home to indigenous peoples, who live in remote areas of the interior. One of these groups, the Tasaday, caused an international stir in 1971 when they were "discovered" and publicized as a lost Stone Age people, a description that proved to be less than accurate.

The Muslim peoples of Mindanao have resisted centralized control since the Spanish first colonized the islands in the sixteenth century, and their resistance continues in 2002 with some Muslim groups advocating political autonomy and others separation from the Philippines.

Mindanao came under centralized control only in the early twentieth century when American influence and financial support allowed for the creation of agricultural colonies in the interior. Settlers from the overcrowded central and northern Philippines cleared much of Mindanao's forests and transformed it to an agricultural and later an industrial region. It now houses major commercial agricultural operations, large cattle ranches, pig farms, and rice fields.

Headland, Thomas N., ed. (1991) The Tasaday Hoax Controversy: An Assessment of the Evidence. Washington D.C.: American Anthropological Association.

Majul, Cesar Adib. (1973) Muslims in the Philippines. Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press.

McCoy, Alfred W., and Ed. C. de Jesus, eds. (1982) Philippine Social History: Global Trade and Local Transformations. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.

Stewart, James C. (1977) People of the Flood Plain: The Changing Ecology of Rice Farming in Cotabato, Philippines. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms.

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