Mindanao. History and Geography

Mindanao. History and Geography is a chronicle about the second largest island in the Philippines. This book by José Nieto Aguilar includes useful reflections on the political tensions between Spanish colonial forces and ethnic and religious groups in the region during the nineteenth century.

The ignorance that Spain has of what concerns the Philippine Archipelago is great, as it can also be assured that the enormous damages that this concept suffers the national prosperity, are in direct reason of this lamentable ignorance.
But what is more and more accentuated is the erroneous opinion that with calculated interest is spread in our country by those who benefit from it, is what refers to the indigenous population; A concept that is based on a famous letter from Father St. Augustine from a very early date, maintains in our people the erroneous belief that the Indian is lazy, inept and refractory to any idea of culture.
In Spain it is naïve to believe that nobility obliges, and we, who in long residence in that Archipelago have been able to appreciate the ambitions of progress that beat in that people so vexed and depressed, consider that as far as the public interest is convenient, we are obliged to undertake in the first place a reasoned defense of the Filipino people: defense that we believe is very justified, since in the conscience of all is the certainty that until the moment in which the events of the Carolinas made the memories of our Oceanic colonies green, if only fleetingly, the talk of the Philippines was always something new and pilgrim, so much was the oblivion in which they were held!
Who then would have predicted that important political problems could be based on them today, capable of solving the very serious conflicts of socialism, which the misery developed in the richest of our provinces, raises terrifying threatening to destroy the social balance?
Who that there had very serious international questions, which like the German conflict so directly interested the honor of the fatherland?

Excerpt from the text