LA POESÍA Y LA COMPETENCIA DIGITAL DE LOS ALUMNOS DE SECUNDARIA

The aim of this chapter is to foreground the concept of ‘transmigration’ and locate its relevance to the previous discussion of the concept of ‘transculturation’. Transculturation only becomes meaningful when people of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds come into contact as a consequence of migration. After defining what is meant by the term ‘transmigration’ I explain the rationale for its existence, the history and trajectory of its development, the objectives of various state- sponsored resettlement programs, and the social reality that ensued from the implementation of those schemes. To better position the Narra / Palawan resettlement experience I draw on the transmigration phenomenon as it has impacted on a national Filipino level and a broader archipelagic level. While state planners imagined the socio-economic benefits of transmigration, they were less able to foresee its sociocultural ramifications. The chapter will conclude with the contrasting of the apparent positive outcome of Narra as a zone of intercultural accommodation when juxtaposed with the ethnocultural violence that has ensued as a consequence of resettlement initiatives in Mindanao and other archipelagic locales.

Transmigration (or intrastate rural resettlement) became a phenomenon of some salience to Southeast Asia in the twentieth century.119 This migration process contributed to a reality in which a heterogeneity of ethnocultural groups – sharing the same spatial setting, facing similar resettlement experiences – have had to acknowledge the different lifeworlds of their neighbours. The extent of Filipino polyethnicity coalescing with the inclusive nature of the former state- sponsored resettlement projects, led to the development of liminal intercultural meeting-places. However, migration theory reveals to us that different social interaction trajectories are possible. At one end of the spectrum would be the rejection of interaction with others, and reification of lived cultures; at the other end an embrace of others’ cultures, by either the impacts of acculturation or transculturation. For the millions across the Archipelago who have experienced transmigration, the hurdle of interethnic coexistence in new domains has not proved insurmountable. However, not all resettlement has proceeded as

119 _{Rural resettlement in Southeast Asia – in contrast to the general urbanisation taking place}

during the same period – has been a feature of states re-ordering their postcolonial socio-economic realities. While rural-to-rural population movements had been attempted during the late imperial period, the zenith of rural resettlement (transmigration) was achieved following independence. Including the Philippines, the process has involved many millions of migrants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

anticipated. The aspirations of state planners have not gone unchallenged in both the Philippines and the wider resettlement world.

Defining Transmigration

In this thesis transmigration is the inter-provincial, inter-island migration of people from more densely populated areas of the nation to areas of less density. The underlying rationale for this people transfer is the amelioration of socio- economic deprivation. Primarily the process envisioned the rural-to-rural resettlement of the landless (Huke 1963, Krinks 1974, Fernandez 1975, Hardjono 1978a, James 1979, Uhlig 1984a, Gondowarsito 1986, Tirtosudarmo 1997, Bahrin 1988b) though the vision has widened to include a general internal movement of peoples to less populated areas where socio-economic opportunities are premised on more than a general landlessness. This internal rural-to-rural migration should not be confused with a paralleling rural-to-urban migration and the increasing phenomenon of external migration.120

‘Migration theory,’ according to the DREC (2003: 178), is generally concerned with the political and economic push / pull factors that influence the movement of peoples. Meanwhile, the broader social ramifications of those movements: alienation, marginalisation, discrimination, social exclusion, and adaptation have the capacity to impact upon the identity of the individual. The DREC suggests that “the word ‘migration’ is derived from the Latin word migratio, which means to move, to wander… [and] pertains to individual mobility… is purposeful and instrumental” (p. 178). As well as taking place across state boundaries (external or international migration) migration also occurs within the boundaries of a state (internal migration), but whatever the model there are repercussions for individuals and societies:

Receiving regions will experience the establishment of ‘new’ ethnic minorities, ethnic tensions, and problems of social cohesion. On the individual level, moving from one’s home town or village means being cut off from social networks, associations and social structure… Changes of this kind occasioned by migration will inevitably affect migrant identities… (p. 178).

The AOD (2004: 1369) states that the prefix ‘trans’ may be employed to denote: (1) the notion of ‘across or beyond’, and (2) the circumstance ‘on or to the

120 _{The Philippines (and increasingly Indonesia) are cases in point. The resettlement across the}

Archipelago of millions of rural-to-rural transmigrants has not daunted two further migration patterns; that of the rural-to-urban migrant, and the outflow of international migrant-labour, which in combination have possibly encompassed numbers of the magnitude of 10-1 vis-à-vis the internal transmigrant movements.

other side of’. When juxtaposed with the term ‘migration’ the concept ‘trans- migration’– signifying a movement of peoples across or to the other side of a country, namely an internal migration – is forged. The term ‘transmigration’ (transmigrasi) gained cachet when used in the Indonesian resettlement context, and best represents what I deem to be analogous population movements in the Philippine context. The sense in which I use ‘trans-migration’ is to imply a general rural-to-rural movement of peoples across the country. Despite the abandonment of most state-sponsored resettlement initiatives, intrastate migration to settlement zones such as Palawan – albeit spontaneous in nature – continues.121 Increasingly, as the ‘frontier’ becomes more settled agriculturally, ongoing migration becomes less dependent on rural pursuits, and more dependent on tertiary pursuits: commerce, education and the bureaucracy.

Throughout the Archipelago and across time the nomenclature to denote like processes has varied between administrations (colonial and independent) and with the era. In the Philippines the process has been known as ‘land colonisation’, ‘new settlements’, and ‘resettlement’; in Malaysia as ‘land settlement’ and ‘land development’; in Indonesia as ‘land colonisation’ (during the Dutch era) and transmigrasi (transmigration) following Independence (Bahrin 1988a: 1). My intention to use the Indonesian term ‘transmigrasi / transmigration’ over alternatives is to avoid confusion.122 Though some interchangeable usage of the terms may occur, ‘transmigration’ is utilised to refer to the concept or overarching process of moving peoples across the nation-state, while the result of that process is the ‘resettlement’ of those people.123

In multiethnic societies such as the Philippines, the salience of internal migration is the role it plays in the necessary interaction between diverse ethnolinguistic, cultural, and religious groups, an interaction that necessitates a process of adjustment to new social realities. That is to say, transmigration is a

121 _{The population of Palawan in general and Narra in particular has increased many-fold in recent}

generations and yet Palawan Province – despite this influx – continues to be the 79th least densely populated province out of 80 in the Philippines. This is possibly a factor in the continuing attraction of Palawan as a migrant destination.

122 _{It should be noted that in Indonesia the term ‘transmigrasi / transmigration’, denotes more than}

the concept and process of resettlement. It is also the nomenclature used to represent the state’s resettlement agency. In its various guises it has been a single Ministry of Transmigration, or has formed parts of other ministries. Currently, with its role much reduced, it forms part of the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration.

123 _{Pre-WW2 resettlements in the U.S. administered Philippines were also termed ‘agricultural}

colonies’, while in the Dutch Indies the term ‘emigration’ was used interchangeably with [land] colonisation, not to be confused with the general condition of ‘colonisation’ or colonialism (after Pelzer 1945).

facilitating agent contributing to new realities in which the identity of individuals and groups, following departure from the security of their ethnic region-of-origin, is challenged. Once in the resettlement zone, individuals and groups employ various strategies to manage the adjustment required to share geographical spaces with others of differing ethnocultural worldviews. Cursorily stated these are: (1) the tolerance of other’s lifeworlds (rather in the sense of multiculturalism), (2) the embrace of other’s lifeworlds (rather in the sense of acculturation), and (3) the mutual adoption or adaptation of others’ cultural baggage (via the process of transculturation). The trajectory adopted has implications for identity determinedness; or rather the way in which identities in the resettlement milieu are renegotiated. The ramifications of these deliberations impacts on the way the polyethnic nation-state will be able to view itself in posterity.

The contention of state bureaucrats that the resettlement of the landless in peripheral, pioneer areas would benefit the state in various ways (Bahrin 1988, Campado 2005, Lea and Chaudhri 1983a, Oberai 1988a, Paderanga Jr. 1988) often failed to take cognisance of three factors. Firstly, the peripheral lands were not terra nullius (land belonging to no-one). Secondly, when the land was already in occupation by others, those others and the transmigrants might be culturally incompatible. Thirdly, the ethnolinguistic or ethnocultural diversity of the transmigrants themselves might prove to be an obstacle to resettlement success and stability. Manila or Jakarta (in the case of Indonesia) initiated programs that also failed to be mindful of the disconnect between cosmopolitan and rural realities; rurality after all implies conservatism, fixed worldviews and in some instances mutual suspicion.124

Transmigration – in both the colonial and postcolonial state (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) – began as a state-initiated enterprise. It was the state that encouraged and sponsored resettlement programs, dictating their location and scope. While in the intervening years the phenomenon of the spontaneous or self-funded migrant came to outnumber the state-funded migrant,

124 _{In his chapter ‘Toward a community broader than the kin’ Zialcita (2006) well illustrates that}

the rural reality – rather than being one in which the spirit of bayanihan (mutual cooperation) exudes to encompass a rural idyll – is often predicated on mutual suspicion. While interconnectedness with a wider world is eroding isolation “…suspiciousness toward outsiders, even of the same ethnicity and language…” is a widespread phenomenon. He states: When I would mention wanting to visit, say, another hamlet a few kilometres down the road, friends would warn me that it harboured sorcerers [mannamay]. However, in that hamlet-down-the-road, friends there would be concerned that I had been staying in that hamlet-up-the-road. They feared it for its sorcerers!” (p. 37).

the significance of the state schemes – which acted as catalysts for subsequent spontaneous migration – should not be overlooked. Spontaneous migration in some instances aggravated the integrative process on the resettlement frontier (Crystal 1982, Krinks 1975, Lopez 1986, Sage 1996, Wertheim 1959). In the absence of state supervision, amicable indigene-transmigrant relations at times deteriorated. Nonetheless, processes of integration and accommodation have taken place, though there have been differential degrees of success when viewed in an indigene-settler or settler-settler context.

Rather than focus on the state-funded / spontaneous dichotomy this thesis relies on an overarching concept of transmigration; that is, as a facilitator of intrastate movement of heterogeneous cohorts of people. In the resettlement ‘contact zone’ these ethnically diverse groups were faced with, and needed to address, the dilemma of how they viewed themselves in relation to a range of ethnocultural groups unlike themselves, and how they would manage their coexistence. If the resettlement ‘contact zone’ is perceived as the world-at-large in microcosm, then transmigration might be viewed as the catalyst that has hastened the process of intercultural exposure.

Transmigration: Archipelagic Overview

Since their mid-twentieth century decolonisation, the Malay Archipelago states – Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – ramped up earlier colonial-initiated programs of transferring populations from densely populated to thinly populated parts of their domains. The motivation for intensifying previous resettlement initiatives stemmed partly from the reality of rapidly growing populations in essentially agrarian economies. That is, in the absence of secondary or tertiary industries – manufacturing having by and large been the preserve of the metropole of the imperial states – the ex-colonies were faced with accommodating and sustaining increased populations for whom land: man ratios were deteriorating. It was reasoned that the exploitation of peripheral or frontier lands would have the capacity to absorb rapidly increasing populations from areas of already high density and ameliorate the dilemma of landlessness and the attendant economic, social, and political disruption that stemmed therefrom.125

125 _{At the beginning of the twentieth century when the U.S. began to encourage Philippine land}

colonisation and homesteading projects the population of their colony supported less than 10 million (after Pelzer 1945), one-tenth of what it was a century on. Concomitantly, when the earliest Dutch East Indies emigration / colonisation programs were attempting to alleviate overcrowding in Java / Madura were initiated in 1905, the population of Java stood at 30 million

Using Indonesia’s Transmigration Program as representative it has been suggested that land settlement schemes have been “a valuable multi-purpose instrument that have led to a belief that they are a panacea, a cure-all for many social and economic ills” (Tirtosudarmo 1997: 19). (Oberai 1988: xiii) posits an alternative perspective stating that land settlement schemes:

have often been presented as potentially tidy solutions to a number of problems, including the need to increase agricultural production, correct spatial imbalances in the distribution of population, exploit frontier lands for reasons of national security, and defuse potentially serious political problems resulting from the existing agrarian structure, poverty, rising landlessness and unemployment. Not only were the national aims and objectives of land resettlement programs varied and complex, their emphasis differed from one country to another and, from era to era, within the same country (Bahrin 1988a: 1-2). Elaborating further, Bahrin (cited Jones and Richter 1982: 3-4) suggests that generally speaking, state-directed land settlement program objectives may be classified as: (i) redistributive, that is moving people from heavily populated areas, (ii) economic, increasing rural opportunities, production and concomitant food security, (iii) social, alleviating poverty and addressing the mayhem caused by natural disasters such as volcanoes, dislocation due to infrastructure projects such as dam construction or homelessness as a result of regional insurgency, and (iv) political, to settle the ‘frontier’ for ‘pacification’ of minorities or to avoid land confiscation needs by states attempting rural land reform.

The postwar stimuli for new lands resulted from the push-pull factors of population pressure and the concomitant palliative, or ‘safety-valve’ theory of resettlement. However, a more nuanced understanding of the varying objectives of these transmigration initiatives helps pinpoint the success or otherwise of these movements in hindsight. Tirtosudarmo (2001: 214) states that Indonesia’s Presidential Transmigration Law of 1972 mandated seven policy goals: (1) improvements in living standards, (2) regional development, (3) balanced population distribution, (4) equitably distributed development throughout Indonesia, (5) utilization of human and natural resources, (6) national union and unity, and (7) strengthening of national defence and security. While these appear laudable goals, Uhlig (1984: xiii, 1984a: 11) posits that what drove resettlement initiatives was much more fundamental, that is, the need to find more ‘rice-bowls’

(after Wertheim 1962). A century on the Java / Madura population stands at approximately 140 million, despite the implementation of redistributive resettlement programs.

and concomitant lebensraum (room for development or expansion) for citizens of essentially agricultural economies with rapidly rising populations, beset with an increasing landless and ‘underlanded’ cohort.

The Demographic Imperative

Regardless of individual state or bureaucratic rationales for resettlement, the underlying factor that dictated the transmigration or resettlement phenomenon in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, was the continuance of relatively high birth rates occurring in tandem with decreasing mortalities. If archipelagic populations had remained stable – as happened in the affluent Euro-American world following World War 2 – much of the rationale for resettlement would have been moot. However, as alluded to in the ‘Introduction’, unprecedented population increases (consequent to sanitation and health initiatives) had doubled archipelagic populations several times over. The data (Table 4.1) bears repeating as it illustrates the population surge. And it is the surge that had implications for the decisions made to facilitate and implement transmigration from densely populated to less populated regions.

The Philippines at the time of the United States accession at the beginning of the twentieth century supported a population estimated to be 8 million, while the British Malay territories (now Malaysia) supported 3 million and Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) 43 million (after Pelzer 1945: 81, 185, 254). At century’s end those figures were 76 million, 23 million and 206 million respectively.126 The scale of the population increase – representing a historical aberration – should not be underestimated. In the absence of suitable alternatives, predominantly agricultural economies had little choice but to extend the territory under cultivation and this meant the alienation and exploitation of evermore peripheral areas of their respective states.

The island of Cebu is illustrative of the demographic imbalances that have occurred. In the period 1939-1960 Cebu had an out-migration of 475,356 persons (Wernstedt and Spencer 1978: 637). Notwithstanding Cebu’s status as the leading out-migration province, its population nevertheless increased from 1 million to 1.3 million in the period referred to. Today it supports nearly 4 million, the result of

126 _{Projections for the year 2020 are the Philippine population will have reached 111 million,}

Indonesia 262 million and Malaysia 32 million (EBYB 2012: 774-779). Statistics indicate that if fertility trends continue the Philippines will be supporting half as many people as Indonesia by mid-century, whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century Indonesia supported five times the population of the Philippines.

Philippine birth rates that outstrip its archipelagic neighbours. Put in perspective, Cebu, despite having contributed greatly to the transmigration flow, has witnessed a seven-fold increase in its population during the period 1930-2010.

Table 4.1 – Comparative Archipelagic Populations and Densities

1930 1950 1980 2010

Java / Madura 42 million - - 137 million

316 km² 1055 km²

Indonesia 61 million 80 million 150 million 238 million

32 km² 41 km² 81 km² 124 km²

Malaysia 4 million 6 million 14 million 28 million

12 km² 18 km² 42 km² 85 km²

Philippines 13 million 20 million 50 million 92 million

43 km² 67 km² 167 km² 306 km²

Cebu 0.6 million (1903) 1.2 million

(1960) - 4.2 million

121 km² 243 km² 810 km²

Source: EBYB 2012 / NSO website / Wernstedt and Spencer 1978 The Ethnocultural Imperative

If archipelagic nation-state populations had been monoethnic, and all other factors in the transmigration imperative (population increase, landlessness, poverty, and social unrest) had remained extant, resettlement integration would have been less fraught. Notwithstanding the matter of religious difference, issues such as minoritisation, marginalisation, regionalism, and secession would not have become the dilemmas they have in resettlement zones as distant as Mindanao and the Moluccas (Ananta 2006a, 2006b, Tirtosudarmo 2006). In the absence of population increase transmigration would have been less likely, each ethnocultural group might have remained in its region-of-origin and not been confronted with the need for intercultural dialogue. Transmigration in a monoethnic milieu might have meant a struggle for resources at worst, but that struggle would not have been exacerbated by the additional complication resulting from the ethnocultural diversity of a plural society.

A single ethnicity, language and a shared set of cultural markers would have precluded the need for the individual or group to confront the identity choices that needed to be made in the resettlement zone of a polyethnic state;

issues such as ethnic reification, acculturation to another’s culture or the compromises associated with transculturation would have been moot. In some resettlement situations – especially in situations where only two or three ethnocultural cohorts were resettled, the identity dilemma was less fraught.