Much has changed in Datu Paglas, Philippines, a secluded town on the island of Mindanao that exemplified the chaos that engulfs the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines. Until recently, rice and cornfields sat fallow as many of the area’s farm- ers headed into the hills to join a separatist army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Many were being gunned down in blood feuds with rival political clans, and kidnapping syndicates sprang up as some locals decided to trade in humans rather than crops. The island’s economic prospects were extremely dim.
Today, everyone from the Philippine government to the World Bank is holding up Datu Paglas as one of the Muslim south’s rare economic success stories. Hundreds of MILF fighters have laid down their arms and returned to the banana plantations and rice paddies to work and live in greater security. A mini-mall and development bank have opened, and foreign and Philippine entrepreneurs are trekking into Mindanao’s jungles to build factories, such as a new Korean-financed plastics plant. Over 450 years of Spanish and American military rule and conflict could not yield such positive results. How did this transformation at Datu Paglas occur? It took leadership, multiple- stakeholder cooperation and goodwill, and the opportunities of globalization.
The highly respected town mayor, Mr. Ibrahim Paglas (for whose family the town is named), was eager to halt the local senseless violence and deaths, including the assassination of several of his close relatives. He brokered peace with the warring clans and used his cultural and political influence to curb crime and violence. Know- ing that an enduring peace could come only with economic prosperity, he also brokered a very attractive deal with wary investors from Saudi Arabia, Italy, and the MNC Chiquita Brands International, to develop a banana plantation in the fertile country-
side. The resulting local company, La Frutera, Inc., is the largest foreign-investment project in the Philippines’ Muslim autonomous region.
Perhaps the most unlikely figure at La Frutera is Yaal Pecker, an Israeli who grew up on a kibbutz, or communal farm, near the Sea of Galilee. During his service in the Israeli military in the 1980s, Mr. Pecker fought Muslim militants in Lebanon. He went on to become an agricultural specialist with the Israeli firm, Plastro Interna- tional, which was brought on board by La Frutera’s foreign investors for its strong reputation in irrigation technology. Any potential tension between the Israelis and the Saudi investors was outweighed by the desire for the Israeli company’s exper- tise. Israeli company participation also needed approval from the highest levels of the MILF command. One day Mr. Paglas hiked through the jungle with an Israeli representative to meet with the MILF chairman, who was also Paglas’s uncle. The MILF chairman asked if the Israelis were helping his people, and Paglas assured him they were. That was it—the MILF commander declared that the Israelis were wel- come. As operations developed, Mr. Pecker and six of his Israeli colleagues worked hand in hand with former MILF guerillas who tend the fields, oversee fumigation, and provide security. Both sides see themselves as members of similar agricultural cultures and overlook religious and political cultural differences. “They’re farmers, just like me,” the gruff Mr. Pecker says. “What’s the big deal?”
La Frutera’s fruit is in heavy demand in Japan, China, and the Middle East. Its business now is filtering through the rest of Mindanao’s small economy. Mr. Paglas has set up trucking, security, and gas station companies to serve the plantations. They provide jobs to local residents, while the town’s new bank offers loans to other aspiring entrepreneurs. “My life is much better since I left the MILF,” says Rocky Daud, twenty- four, a former MILF field commander in the jungles of Mindanao and now a member of La Frutera’s 2,000-person workforce. Today he makes what is considered locally a decent paycheck and can afford appliances and other goods from the newly opened mini-mall. “I don’t want to go back to the hills,” he says. Abbie Paus, who now over- sees forty-five men in La Frutera’s fields, was a fighter for most of his forty years, roaming the area’s green hills and occasionally ambushing Philippine army patrols and bandits. “I can now send my children to school,” he says.
Mr. Paglas’s ability to unite Muslims, Jews, and Christians in a Southeast Asian region gripped by sectarian and ethnic conflict has opened the eyes of leaders from cities as far away as Tehran and Jerusalem. The vastly improved situation at Datu Paglas is aided by Mr. Paglas’s unquestioned authority as a Muslim chieftain. In fact, the national government received his assistance in securing the successful release of three employees of a Chinese oil company who were kidnapped by a local gang. Even after stepping down as mayor, Mr. Paglas still has the last word in enforcing security arrangements and settling disputes. As he explains, “I tell people that if they have guns near my plantation, I’ll kill them.”
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UESTIONS FORC
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NALYSIS ANDD
ISCUSSION1. What message does this case send to those who categorically deny any value from globalization?
2. What conditions and factors are necessary to bring about the positive out- comes of globalization? In particular, what human factors are critical? 3. What social and human aspects surrounding Datu Paglas have changed with
globalization (for example, movement toward global cultural convergence), and what aspects remain very much the same (for example, persistence of a cultural divergence effect)?