Region, Nation and Homeland: Valorization and Adaptation in the Moro and Cordillera Resistance Discourses

Movement discourses construct an analysis of society, critique the power relations that exist, and offer an alternative vision for the population whom the movement promises to liberate. This book examines the resistance discourses within the Moro and Cordillera armed movements in the Philippines. The Moro and Cordillera identity entrepreneurs’ narratives are basically narratives of difference from the Filipino majority population that have been framed around the “Moro” and “Cordillera” identity markers. However, within and among the movement organisations, they differed in articulating the elements of these identities and the bases of their claims to recover homeland, ancestral domain, and autonomy.

The book traces the evolution of these organizations in the 1970s to 1990s and how they built on their respective resistance discourses over time, manifesting significant intertextuality in the case of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which broke away from the Moro National Liberation Front; and a drift to heightened ethnonationalism in the case of the Cordillera Peoples’ Liberation Army, compared to its mother organisation, the national democratic Cordillera People’s Democratic Front. The book reflects on where these mobilisations are now, and the strands of discourses that have remained salient or reemerged in the current decade.