Anjelica Pearl V.

Nazareno
Mindanao Studies 1
Section C

Life In a Boat: Letting the Waves of Economy Bring You to The Promised Land
The Migration Story of a Spanish Man and His Descendants

Land resettlement policies for the people of Luzon and Visayas were offered by the
government for them to start a new life. Luzon and Visayas and its people were suffering too much
from the recent wars and the poverty brought about by Spanish colonization and American
imperialism. For many, life in the north was not a life of luxury, but one of scarcity; and so, the
government tried to rehabilitate the state by exploiting the resources of Mindanao as capital to fund
the reinforcement of the north and reviving the state’s economy. This left the people of Luzon and
Visayas to be displaced, yet again, to a foreign place, and the people of Mindanao had to
accommodate a massive influx of resettlement and migrants in their land. Not only that, but to also
give up numerous hectares of native land and resources for exploitation during the Spanish and
American colonization.
Settling in a foreign land is not always a matter of leisure or privilege. There are times when
the decision of leaving your home and travel to another land is an effect of poverty, lack of
opportunities in homelands, and the presence of available income sources in foreign lands. In this
paper, I want to present the life of my antecedents, their origins, and their migration story, what they
experienced and how their life turned out to be the origin of their descendants. The origins of the
Malate family date back to my great-grandfather, a Spanish worker who migrated to the Philippines in
Manila and married a Filipina. Due to the lack of available income resources in Manila during that
time, they migrated to Mangagoy, Bislig City in Surigao del Sur when PICOP Resources Incorporated
offered jobs in its paper-making industry. They lived there for years and built their family, and that is
where my grandmother and her brothers were born.
My grandmother, Enriqueta, was not a daughter of a poor man. They became a middle-class
family as their parents learned how to fish and the art producing making dried fish as a long-standing
industry of Mangagoy. Their business grew and they owned several boats that were manned by her
older brothers. She dreamt of not staying in the industry and hoped to become a teacher one day. This
was granted by her parents and she was therefore sent to her relatives back in Manila, to pursue
tertiary education. But my grandmother was not able to handle herself well with the liberty of living
without her parents. She blindly fell in love, and with the lack of communication with her parents to
guide her, she went astray and never finished her studies.
Enriqueta settled with my grandfather in Orani, Bataan where they built their family. My
grandfather was a fisherman, a life my grandmother hoped to escape to. I guess there are many ways
where fate brings you back to your origins, for not succeeding in changing your future. My
grandfather is making a living fishing while my grandmother sells them in the streets. This is where
their family grew until my mother, Aileen, was born. They lived for a few years in Bataan where my
mother attended her nursery school before they migrated back to where my grandmother came from.
Life in Mangagoy for my mother was but a short one, due to the complications brought about
by the dangers of fishing, her father died and soon enough there were no longer any resources for
them to continue living in there. My grandmother remarried a man from Talicud, Davao del Norte,
and they all went along with him, selling my late grandfather’s fishing boat to afford the travel to a
new place, where they hoped to create a new life. But that was not made into reality as the second
man my grandmother loved was not a good man. He made very little money from copra and was an
alcoholic. Their income resources were insufficient due to the extreme spending on alcohol and
cigarettes, and my grandmother had to juggle multiple jobs just to feed a family of four. This sad
reality made my mother and my uncle resourceful and resilient; while attending primary school, they
also sold the guava from their backyard and boiled bananas to their schoolmate and teachers to earn
their own pocket money to afford the needs of their education. But their stepfather became more
violent as they grow older, so they convinced my grandmother to leave their stepfather and migrate to
another city, where they can leave peacefully as a family. My uncle took this opportunity to migrate
back to their relatives in Bataan where he continued growing up, while my grandmother and my
mother relocated in Davao City where she continued her secondary education.
Life in Davao City was not easy but was not as bad as they thought it would be. My mother
admired Davao for its advanced civilization, having paved roads and huge buildings was a sight to
behold. It was not hard for them to converse with natives as they can speak Bisaya, albeit not the
Metro Davao Bisaya dialect that was spoken by the natives. They managed, my grandmother, learned
then provided manicure and pedicure services while my mother worked as a cashier in an eatery on
Magallanes Street. For them, Davaoeños were people full of life. They were friendly, accommodating,
and hospitable. They are also fond of inviting you over for a meal or sharing their food with you when
you are too busy to attend the celebrations in your neighborhood. At least that is how my mother
experienced her life in Davao City. The city and its services were also a great experience for her, she
loved the Victoria Plaza mall where she first saw a dancing fountain, a cinema, and a huge shopping
mall. She loved the streets at night because the traffic lights were colorful and it was night time was
just as lovely as daytime. This is when she decided to settle for good, and maybe form her own family
in the future.
The apple does not fall far from the tree as my mother in her third year of high school, fell in
love with a mechanic from the neighboring car repair shop on Magallanes Street, where she got
courted by Rey, my father. My father was a native Mandaya from Surigao and their tribe was
relocated to Baganga, Davao Oriental where they continued to live, albeit forcefully civilized and
their culture was taken away from them. He finished his primary and secondary education there and
migrated to Davao City by himself to continue a vocational education in automotive services. He then
continued to work there and soon after he met my mother. They settled in Buhangin, Davao City
where they formed a family of five, and still continue to live there.
The migration stories that I learned from my mother and father definitely changed my
perception of what migration is. For the record, migrations that I initially know where that of native
farmers or people from the mountains who migrated to the north to find a better life and opportunities.
But now this newfound knowledge from both the concepts of reduccion and resettlement plans, along
with my great grandfather’s migration story coincides. The fact that people from Luzon during the
colonization and after the wars seek refuge and restoration of a peaceful life in the south was
manifested in the situation of my great grandfather and his family. What this teach me is that the state
was exploited too much, relocations after relocations and bringing chaos after chaos. It was not for the
gain of the natives, the people, but for the people who seek to dominate, who seek to milk the
resources of a foreign land. We ought to remember this history of Mindanao, the history of the people
who were dragged along to feed the greed of the people in power.