Manobo Population

I’ve got here for you the population data of the Dulangan Manobo. The photos below show the results of the census taken by the Indigenous Peoples Ministry of the Archdiocese of Cotabato in November 1999 to February 2000.

Unfortunately, this is the latest and most reliable study I could get my hands on. As far as I know, the ministry has not conducted a follow-up study since then. I’m not also sure if other NGOs or a government agency has a Manobo population data of its own. For the meantime, let’s be thankful for this document, which is an appendix to the dissertation submitted by Fr. Francis Efren Zabala, OMI, to the Catholic Theological Union at Chicago.

The ministry recorded a total of 37,139 Dulangan Manobo living in eight municipalities. Six of the municipalities are in Sultan Kudarat Province, while two (Ampatuan and South Upi) are in Maguindanao. A note in the bottom of the document states that Sharif Aguak Municipality was excluded, probably because of the peace and order situation at the time the census was taken. It’s not likely, though, that there is a significant number of Dulangan Manobo living in Sharif Aguak. I think most of the indigenous people who live there are Teduray.

Note also that the study was conducted only in the parishes under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Cotabato. Some Dulangan Manobo live in the provinces of South Cotabato and Sarangani, which are part of the Archdiocese of Marbel. Therefore, there might have been several hundred or a few thousand Dulangan Manobo who weren’t counted. The total population of the Dulangan Manobo in 2000 might be more than forty thousand.

In the document, the population of the Dulangan Manobo is at the lower part of the right column. Beside it is the population of the Lambangian, who seem to be a group of people who have a mix Teduray and Manobo blood. It’s my first time to learn of these people, and I’ll keep in mind to research more about them. They numbered 4,276 in year 2000.

Another surprising info for me from this list is the existence of a Manobo tribe in the province of Cotabato (old yet more popular name: North Cotabato). In 2000, seven towns in the province were home to 7,329 Aromanon Manobo. This means that using the term Cotabato Manobo for the Dulangan Manobo may be confusing to some people. I should avoid doing this from now on. Note that the papers written by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, listed in this blog’s bibliography, use Cotabato Manobo and refer only to the Manobo living in and near Kulaman Plateau, in Sultan Kudarat Province.

Kulaman in Relation to Philippine Political Divisions

Kulaman is the central barangay of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, Province of Sultan Kudarat. For the sake of those who are not so familiar with Philippine political divisions, I will discuss them in this post and give some examples from around these parts of Mindanao. My sources for this article are the 1991 Local Government Code of the Philippines and the official website of the National Statistical Coordination Board, among others.

The Philippines is currently divided into seventeen regions. Government agencies (e.g., Department of Education, Philippine National Police) in each area are headed by regional directors. The regions, however, are not political units, since there are no regional governments (except for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, which is ruled by an elected governor).

The regions are further divided into provinces, each ruled by an elected governor. In American setting, regions are loosely similar to states and provinces are similar to counties. Sultan Kudarat Province is part of Region 12, or SOCCSKSARGEN, which also includes South Cotabato Province, Cotabato City, Cotabato Province, Sarangani Province, and General Santos City.  As of June 30, 2012, the Philippines has eighty provinces.

The provinces are divided into municipalities, each headed by a mayor, and the municipalities are divided into barangays, each headed by a chairman. The country has 1,494 municipalities and 42,027 barangays. The Province of Sultan Kudarat has eleven municipalities and one city (Tacurong), while the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino has twenty barangays.

Municipalities are also called towns. Major newspapers in the country use town instead of municipality (e.g., “Senator Ninoy Aquino town,” not “Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino). In this blog, I interchangeably use municipality and town, and barangay and village.

The barangay is considered the basic unit of government in the Philippines. The village chairman and councilors are the lowest-ranking public officials that are chosen through periodic and organized elections. The barangay, however, is further divided into puroks, or zones. Many barangays also have special zones called sitios. A sitio is usually a cluster of houses that is far from the center of the village and often bigger than a purok. In English, I think sitio may be translated as hamlet.

Cities do not fit perfectly in the normal political divisions of the Philippines, and their classifications may be confusing to an ordinary person. Most, if not all, Philippine cities have been created from existing municipalities. In contrast, provinces, municipalities, and barangays are sometimes created out of areas that were not previously grouped together. For example, the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino was formed from several barangays of Kalamansig town and Barangay Langgal of Bagumbayan town.

The Philippines has 140 cities, and they are classified as highly urbanized, independent component, or component. Highly urbanized cities are those that have an annual income of at least fifty million pesos. They usually have the same level of importance as provinces; the mayor of a highly urbanized city is independent of the governor of the province where the city belonged when it was still a municipality. General Santos City is classified as such.

An independent component city is similar in political status to a highly urbanized city. Only, the independent component city does not meet the annual income requirement. Cotabato City is one such city.

A component city is not much different from a municipality; the mayor is still under the power of the governor, and the registered voters in the city vote for the provincial elective officials. Tacurong, Koronadal, and Kidapawan are component cities of Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, and Kidapawan, respectively. Some government agencies, however, have a separate division in each city, regardless of its size, so component cities enjoy some independence from the provinces they belong.

Another complex political division in the Philippines is the legislative district. Each district is entitled to elect what is commonly called a congressman (more accurately, a member of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, the Philippine lawmaking body). Each province, or city with at least 250,000 inhabitants, is entitled to have at least one representative in the Congress.

Though General Santos City and Cotabato City meet the requirements, neither of them doesn’t have its own representative yet. Instead, General Santos City is combined with three municipalities to form the second legislative district of South Cotabato, and Cotabato City, along with eleven municipalities, belongs to the first district of Maguindanao Province. Sultan Kudarat Province has two districts, and Kulaman is included in the second.

One textbook erroneously describes the Kulaman plateau as part of Bukidnon Province, while a few academic papers fail to mention that Kulaman is, at the present, part of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I hope this post will help set the records straight.