Meranaw Aspirations from the Commonwealth to the Contemporary Period

This study investigated the aspirations of the Meranaws, one of the major Muslim groups in Mindanao in the Southern part of the Philippines, in terms of their political, economic, socio-cultural and educational goals as a people.  It followed an ex-post facto design in its attempt to identify and reconstruct the major events from the Commonwealth to the Contemporary period in a historiographical presentation to determine recurring themes. It drew upon Toynbee’s view of history as cyclical or a ‘return’ which developed into a full-blown theory known as the Historic Recurrence theory.  The possibility or likelihood of events in Mindanao history repeating themselves is based on the observation of the re-playing of a cycle of similar causalities.  Based on the narratives collected from personal interviews concerning events which span two decades of collection from the 1990s until 2017, a self-constructed survey, and other materials from archived sources, it can be concluded that the Meranaws were more or less united in their resistance to the presence of the Americans in their homeland and in refusing to recognize the inclusion of Bangsamoro land in the ceding of the Philippines to the new colonial masters.  They became politically divided only during the Commonwealth period on the issue of their annexation or integration into the newly created Philippine Republic.