The Real Story of the Origins of the modern-day Malita
There are just so many #FakeNews or #MisInformation or #DisInformation widely disseminated through the World Wide Web that one does not know what to believe anymore. One cannot trust even official government sites or even legal documents like congressional bills. Some may be harmless or may seem harmless, but it is just not true.
When it comes to events or people in the past, it becomes even more problematic, esp. if there is blatant lack of documentation. As Napoleon cynically puts it, “history is just a fable agreed upon”. And since history is a venue for power discourse, historical revisionism seems to be in vogue nowadays.
So many websites explain how my mother’s hometown Malita in Davao Occidental, formerly Davao del Sur, got its name. According to these sites, purportedly, a veteran of the Spanish-American war decided to live in that place but upon arriving there, he somehow lost his suitcase and so began shouting “maleta! maleta!” (Spanish for suitcase.). [1]
Don Mariano Peralta was my mother’s grandfather. And that was not how Malita got its name.
MALITA, an old name
Malita was already named Malita even before the Americans, and even before the Spaniards came to Mindanao. It was peopled by the Mindanao natives — mostly Manobo and Tagakaulo and some Bilaan — under the overlordship of the Muslim Datu of Sarangany (the Island, not the newly-created province) or the Rajah of Candahar and later, the Rajah of Buayan. See my essay where I mentioned that in 1628, the Muslim Datu Magada of Sarangany listed Malita as one of its negeris or districts. That came from primary sources according to its Dutch author. [2]
Non-Muslim warriors from Malita joined forces with Muslim Moros and even Moluccans to fight – first the Portuguese, then the Spaniards – in the 16th and 17th centuries and even later.
In an Explanatory Note to House Bill 2077 by our congressman cousin, Don Mariano was described as “according to history, a pioneer migrant from Spain, and was among the first foreign settlers in Malita.” Hehehe. What history is that?!
EDWARD C. BOLTON
Don Mariano did not stumble upon Malita from Spain, lost his luggage, and kept on shouting “Maleta!”. He went to Davao with Americans — a lot of Americans — the troops of Lt. Edward C. Bolton who was ordered to pacify Cotabato and Davao areas.
Lt. Bolton was in the Ilocos region after the “official” end of the Philippine – American war in July 1902. He was interested in Philippine plantations. And Ilocanos proved to be good plantation workers. Many of Mariano’s cousins and uncles were recruited to work for plantations in Hawaii. Mariano was recruited to be a farm administrator in an American plantation in Davao. As the troops of Lt. Bolton was assigned to go to Davao, he promptly joined Bolton’s army as a volunteer medical orderly.
MORO PRINCESS
On the way to Davao, they passed by the Rajahnate of Buayan. And in the principality of Koronadal, they were the guests of the local royalty. The young soldiers were intrigued by a big house that did not admit male guests. They all concluded that it must be the harem, as in the harem of the Arabian Nights stories. The American soldiers teased and convinced Mariano to go and see what was inside that mysterious house.
I suppose the Ilocano wanted to show off to his American friends. At nightfall, he made his way up the roof. And as fate would have it, part of the roof caved in and down came Mariano. The big house that was off limits to men belonged to a Buayanen princess who happened to be a young rich widow.
Since there was no male head of the house, no males were allowed to enter the house. The princess was still young and quite rich. She, like her elder sister who had married a Tausug datu, was known for her beauty. She had two small children, a boy and a girl.
The datus of the realm were vying for her hand in marriage, which made them seethe with anger at the disrespect shown by Mr. Peralta. They demanded that Mariano be killed immediately.
The American soldiers admitted to Lt. Bolton that they practically goaded Mariano into doing such a reckless act. Fortunately for Mariano, the whole US troops under Lt. Bolton protected him. The American lieutenant vouched for Mariano’s integrity; insisting that he meant no harm as he was just trying to get some fruits from the tree when he fell off the tree and into the house.
It was a good thing that the local chief known as Sulotan a Lokes or Old Sultan was there to control the situation. The Old Sultan explained to the American that according to local custom, there were only two options — either death or marriage. Mariano’s action already caused shame on the princess and the community. Mariano had to be punished. But if the lady would agree to marry him, then Mariano’s life would be spared.
The princess was a recent widow of a Chinese national who came to Koronadal with one shipload of merchandise. He had previously disposed of one shipload of goods in Manila. I suppose his Chinese ship or junk, as they are called, went into the Sarangany Gulf and docked right into Sugud sa Buayan, the ancestral domain of Bai Mukuy’s family. Bai Mukuy was from the aristocratic houses of B’ntung, B’ntal, Sugud sa Buayan and Koronadal of the Rajahnate of Buayan.
Buayan was in troubled times. In 1899, Datu Utto, the Rajah of Buayan had given over the reigns of the Rajahnate to his younger cousin Datu Ali as the fight against the Spaniards had turned into a fight against Americans. The Americans were able to get the cooperation of some Maguindanaon and Buayanen datus, but Datu Ali, as the new Rajah of Buayan, swore to fight off the Americans.
Bai Mukuy almost married Datu Ali of Tinunkup who later became the Rajah of Buayan. He already had sent word of his intentions and visited her. But he was very busy fighting the Spaniards and later, the Americans. Her sister Bai Intan married Datu Uyung, the great-grandson of Shakirullah, Sultan of Sulu, Datu Uyung’s and Bai Intan’s sons Datu Tambuyung and Datu Buyungan would later become Zein ul-Abidin (Jainal Aberrin), Sultan of Sulu and the Rajah Muda of Sulu respectively. Datu Buyungan would be the husband of the celebrated Tausug Princess Tarhata Kiram. who would become the Pangyan or Sultana of Sulu.
It must have been the longest night in the life of Mariano Peralta, as his life hung in the balance. The tension between the irate Buayanen datus and the American soldiers must be very high. They were in the territory of Datu Ali, who was Enemy No.1 of the Americans in Mindanao.
Lt. Bolton pledged to take care of the dowry. He told the old Sultan that he was tasked to survey the whole of Cotabato and Davao. And that he would give Mariano enough land for the dowry.
Finally, the young widow was called to give her decision. She said, in the vernacular, “Make him Muslim!”
Making Muslim out of Mariano meant that she agreed to marry him. And making him Muslim meant that he must be circumcised — again. I have no idea how a man could be circumcised twice; but. apparently, that was the case with Mariano.
Thus, the American expeditionary force and the Moro people at Koronadal celebrated an impromptu wedding between an Ilocano would-be farm manager and a young rich widow from the royal House of Buayan.
MARIANO IN MALITA
Mariano found himself a lucrative job as a farm administrator in one American plantation. Several American abaca and coconut plantations have sprouted in the Davao area from Toril to Digos to Malalag and to Malita. With the creation of the Moro Province in 1903, Lt. Bolton was appointed as Military Governor of Davao. He had also established his own plantation in Malalag, a town next to Malita.
After a year or so, Mariano went back to the Rajahnate of Buayan to bring his wife Bai Mukuy to Malita. It was during the return of my great grandfather, together with his new Muslim wife from Buayan, that a storm hit their ship and they lost most of their baggage, not just one maleta. Maybe it contained his most important documents so he kept shouting Maleta! Maleta!. Don Mariano was known for his loud, almost shouting, voice. The “maleta” legend could have had a partial factual basis.
DON MARIANO PERALTA y SALMON
Don Mariano Peralta was not from Spain. He was from Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte. A native Ilocano whose father and/or grandfather was a gobernadorcillo. He and his brothers and cousins were members of the Katipunan. The Katipunan general Artemio Ricarte was his cousin. He was also related to the Luna brothers.
“History never looks like history when you are living through it,” said John W. Gardner, a business and academic leader and adviser to US presidents. Mariano Peralta did not seem to have a great appreciation of the times he lived in and his role in it.
It was indeed historic times and he was right in the middle of it. He was with the Katipunan in its fight for independence — against the Spaniards and later, against the Americans. Then he found himself among American troops going all the way from Ilocos in the North to Mindanao in the Philippine South. Then, because of his recklessness and temerity, he almost ignited a battle between the American Army and Buayanen datus right in the territory of Datu Ali, the Rajah of Buayan.
In Malita, he witnessed first hand the fight of the native inhabitants of Davao and the Americans, the gruesome murder of the American Governor of the Davao District and his farm administrator, and his own fight against marauding Davao natives. He witnessed the creation of the Moro Province, which included his town of Malita, where he put up, together with his wife, a coconut plantation. He assumed the office of presidente of Malita for a long time, even during the years of World War I. He built the modern-day Malita, provided it with law and order, built schools with American teachers, and created the infrastructure including roads for the new motorcars, buildings and even a movie house.
But most of the documents of his life were gone with the coming of the Japanese and World War II where his plantations (left to his children) were ransacked and even the mansion he had built, the Peralta Hall, was destroyed.
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DANGEROUS TIMES IN DAVAO
At the turn of the century, enterprising Americans started grabbing the lands in Mindanao, and putting up their own plantations. In Davao, American plantations were put up in Toril, Digos, Malalag Malita, and other places in the Davao region. Mariano became a manager of one of those plantations. A year or so later, he was able – thanks to Gov. Bolton and other American friends – to get land grants for himself and his wife separately. Bai Mukuy used the Filipino name Nicolasa Bangbang to get around the limitation on landholdings of non-Christian natives of the Moro Province. They were also able to make friends with Manobo and Tagakaulo datus in Malita. The Davao natives even gave them lands and provided workers.
Those were dangerous times for plantation owners from America and their Filipino friends. It came to a head when an American plantation administrator of Gov. Bolton killed a Manobo datu, son of Datu Sulutan in 1905. There was more fighting, which resulted in the death of Datu Sulutan and his companions. There was tension in Davao as the Manobos and Tagakaulos were threatening to avenge the killings. [3]
In 1906, to pacify the Manobos / Tagakaulos, Gov. Bolton asked to have talks with the native leaders in Malita. In Malalag, he met with Mangulayon, the deputy headman of the recently created Tagacaolo (Malalag) Tribal Ward. At Lecaron Beach, on the way to meet Manobo / Tagakaulo leaders, Mangulayon and his brother killed Governor Bolton and his plantation administrator Benjamin Christian on June 6, 1906.[4]
Don Mariano was closely associated with Gov. Bolton and the Americans. News of Manobo / Tagakaulo uprising and threats on American planters from Digos to Malita were spread all over Davao. Mangulayon reportedly declared his intention to kill American planter and Assistant District Secretary Max L. McCullough [5], whose store in Kibulan (Kiblawan) was looted.
The killing of the American Governor Bolton was reminiscent of the assassination, during the Spanish era, of the Davao District Governor Jose Pinzon y Purga. He was killed by Muslim natives (Kagan / Kalagan) in Tagum, northern Davao in 1861. It so happened that Blair & Robertson published parts of their monumental book The Philippine Islands 1493–1898, those which contained the assassination story, in the same year as Bolton’s murder (1906). [6] That could have alarmed the Americans more if they had read that particular volume or learned the story from elsewhere.
District Secretary Orville V. Wood, an American planter in Malita succeeded Bolton. But he was immediately replaced by Capt. George T. Langhorne, who was acting governor of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu at that time. Just a month later, he was replaced by Lt. Allen Walker, of the Philippine Scouts, who took over as district governor on July 14, 1906 and held the position until August 4, 1909. There was a lot of confusion among Americans at that time.
Although not an American, Mariano was a known friend of the Americans. Despite his friendship with the local Manobo and Tagakaulo datus and the presence of many Manobos / Tagakauos in their plantation, his fledgling plantation was still constantly attacked by natives from outside of Malita. He and his wife and their workers re-planted coconut trees to act as a fence or a wall surrounding the plantation. The trees needed to be planted closely side by side to give protection from the natives’ dreaded sumpit — long blowguns, usually armed with poisoned darts.
The unlikely young couple — an Ilocano planter from the North and a Moro aristocrat from the South — suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the wilderness of Davao del Sur. But they persevered until they eventually created their 3000-hectare plantation and built the modern-day town of Malita — which spanned all the way from the twin islands of Balut and Sarangany to the borders of Malalag. They created a Malita which encompassed the whole of the newly created Davao Occidental province. Because of them, Malita was peopled mostly by the Christian Ilocanos and the Muslim Moros (from the sultanates of Buayan, Maguindanao, Lanao and Sulu. The Cebuanos and the Ilonggos came much later. In their later years, they were known endearingly as Apo Mama and Apo Ba-i.
NOTE TO MY HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE COUSINS
The next time my cousins in Congress would seek to create a municipality called Don Mariano Peralta, they better drop the “maleta” legend and Spanish foolishness. Instead, they should explain that Don Mariano Peralta and his wife created the modern-day Malita, which used to comprise the whole Davao Occidental province. He created the government bureaucracy there, built schools with American teachers (the Thomasites), created the police force, maintained law and order, built houses for their plantation workers, roads for the motorcars and even a movie house, etc. Surely, the man who established the whole province deserves to have a municipality named after him.
Malita used to be very big, half of Davao del Sur. It has been constantly gerrymandered. The latest was the gerrymandering of Davao del Sur itself. It was cut into 2 provinces – Davao del Sur and Davao Occidental. The whole of Davao Occidental used to be Malita.
The Explanatory Note in the House Bill 2077 says that Malita’s formal creation was in 1936. But as Wikipedia explains “Records show that Malita must have existed long before the passage of the Philippine Commission Act, the Laws of the Moro Province that mentioned Malita in Section 1 of Act No. 164 dated December 10, 1904.”
Besides, Don Mariano Peralta was the Presidente of Malita from 1906 to 1922. He was succeeded by others including his son Datu Sarbao and his son-in-law Sheikh Ismail Yahya, my grandfather. Malita was part of the Moro province.
MARIANO’S AND BAI MUKUY’S DESCENDANTS
Don Mariano was a Muslim convert, married to a Muslim princess from Buayan. She was a widow of a rich businessman from China who converted to Islam. They had a son named Sarbao and a daughter, who was brutally murdered by one of their workers from Sulu. Mariano and Bai Mukuy had a daughter Bai Rosa and a son named Manuel. Mariano adopted Bai Mukuy’s children from her late husband. Bai Rosa married Sheikh Ismail. (Ismail and Rosa were my grandparents.) Don Manuel’s grandchildren now rule over Malita and Davao Occidental (formerly Davao del Sur).
I hope my cousins have not erased the history of Malita. I remember my mother was quite angry that the municipal hall exhibited a picture or a news story of the supposedly First Miss Malita. My mother, Sitti Rahma Peralta Yahya was the very first Miss Malita ca. 1930 when she was in Grade 6. It was a very tight and heated contest between her and her first cousin, the daughter of Datu Sarbao.
In fact, I don’t see the list of Malita presidentes and mayors on the Web anymore. I hope the leaders of Malita before the current ones would not be erased. That would include my grandfather Sheikh Ismail, a Mranao Arab imam who allowed Christian churches to be built in Malita. Don Mariano, a Muslim convert and in deference to his Muslim wife, forbade Christian churches to be built in his town. He was the Law then there.
According to my mother, President Manuel Quezon visited Malita at the start of the Commonwealth era. He was looking for Don Mariano Peralta. But he was already gone. Instead, he met Sheikh Ismail Yahya, Mariano’s son-in-law. Sheikh Ismail must have been the Presidente of Malita at that time. Quezon’s anti-Muslim stance is quite well-known. He hated Moro datus and sultans who acted like they were the lords of the realm and most of them would not bow down to him. I can imagine that Quezon did not like the actuations of the flamboyant Sheikh. For one thing, Sheikh Ismail thought that he was the Lord of Malita and he certainly would not bow down to Quezon. I guess that was the reason why Quezon immediately appointed a Christian plantation owner, Marcelino Maruya, as the first Mayor of Malita.
A municipality – Don Marcelino – was created in honor of Mayor Maruya in 1979.
It is quite ironic that the man who built the foundations of modern-day Malita, which then encompassed the whole of Davao Occidental, does not even have a municipality named after him. And his wife and partner, who left a rich and comfortable life in Buayan for a hard and risky life in Malita, is completely forgotten now. They suffered so much trials and tribulations in order to create a civilization out of the Malita/Davao del Sur wilderness.
POST SCRIPT:
THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF BEN BAUTISTA, SR.
A young Benjamin Bautista came to Malita from Pangasinan full of hope and ambition. As he used to recount, he realized early on that to move forward faster in Malita, he had to marry into one of Malita’s elites. And not long after, he saw the pretty Pilar Peralta, daughter of Don Mariano’s son Manuel. And soon enough, Ben got his wish. And as he probably foresaw, he became the Mayor of Malita. Surprisingly, he was able to persuade my uncle former Mayor Abdul Kader Peralta Yahya, Sheikh Ismail and Bai Rosa’s único hijo, to step aside for him, ostensibly to preserve family unity.
When Martial Law came, Ben was the incumbent mayor, with my uncle ably supporting him, even substituting for him as Acting Mayor every time he left for Manila or elsewhere When my uncle Abdul Kader suddenly died in 1977, he was the Acting Mayor. Ben joined the KBL Party in 1978 when he ran for a seat in the interim National Assembly (Batasang Pambansa). He was Assemblyman until 1984.
With the coming of the Aquino administration, a new set of local officers were appointed. A young lawyer, Randolph Parcasio, the great-grandson of Datu Sarbao was appointed as OIC-Mayor. In the 1987 elections, Parcasio and Bautista met head-on for the Congressional seat.
The Peralta clan was divided in half — those who wanted a young and new leadership under the great-grandson of Datu Sarbao or the experienced, tried-and-tested leadership of the son-in-law of Don Manuel. It was a tough fight but Uncle Ben finally won. From then on, he never looked back.
The political genius of Benjamin Bautista, Sr. was evident when he kept the congressional seat until 1998. Meanwhile, he groomed his children to be good politicians like himself. He let his son Claude run and win as Board Member in 1995 and eventually become Mayor of Malita in 1998. He turned over his congressional seat to another son Franklin in 1998. In 2001, Ben, Jr. became vice governor of Davao del Sur and later, Governor.
Uncle Ben and Auntie Pilaring groomed their children to be great politicians and leaders of the Malita and Davao del Sur communities. Although they are both gone now, their children have an iron grip on Davao Occidental politics.
In a way, political fortunes have gone full circle in the Peralta clan. During the time of Don Mariano Peralta and his wife, they controlled the whole Malita before its gerrymandering. Today, the children of their granddaughter Pilar Peralta-Bautista control the whole Davao Occidental province, which is the size of Don Mariano’s and Bai Mukuy’s Malita.
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ENDNOTES
1. See criticism of the “maleta’ story: https://mindanews.com/mindaviews/2022/07/passion-for-mission-malita-chismis-and-history/#gsc.tab=0 retrieved on April 10, 2024
2. See Once Upon A Time: Sarangany Island
3. Linden , Gerry van der (2020) Who Was Bolton? Footprints, https://www.victoriahoffarth.com/446991555/446268440 retrieved on April 10, 2024
4. Ibid.
5. Figueroa, Antonio V. (2020) Lt. Bolton’s death in U.S. media Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/100064361756579/posts/169200241562874/ retrieved on April 9, 2024
6. City Government of Tagum, Tagum during the Spanish Period from from Kagikan: Tracing the Flow of Tagum’s Rich History https://issuu.com/aseanjam/docs/kagikan-tracing-the-flow-of-tagums-/s/78519 retrieved on April 9, 2024
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Postprandial Musings, 2.0 