Getting to know
the 'juramentado'

A LITTLE over a month ago as some members of our family were taking an evening stroll around the downtown shopping district of Kyoto, we noticed an unusual deployment of policemen. Armed men in uniform stood at every corner, which was very strange in an ancient city that prides itself on having very few crimes. Naturally, the Pinoy in us made us stay put and watch. We wanted to see what the fuss was all about, until my sister remarked that there was obviously something afoot and we were clueless about it. She insisted on returning home, fearing a gang war or shooting where the uziseros (onlookers) from the Philippines would be caught in the crossfire. Maybe, she exclaimed with some alarm, there was a bomb scare and, since we didn't understand the announcements in Japanese, we could be within range and not know till the bomb exploded.

Such paranoia is what keeps people like her alive. In contrast, I love wading into a milling crowd to see what is going on, and so I will probably end up as a casualty somewhere, sometime.

The experience reminded me of recent trips to Mindanao where some genuinely concerned people would scare me into canceling the trip by relaying some inaccurate information regarding the Abu Sayyaf, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or the juramentado. It is the latter that seems so terrifying to ignorant lowland Christian people like myself.

In the popular imagination, a juramentado is a Muslim who has taken an oath to slaughter as many Christians as possible before being killed himself in the process. The root word is the Spanish juramentar, meaning to take an oath.

Cesar Adib Majul makes some fine distinctions on the use of the term, which changed my view of the juramentado. For one thing, the juramentado did not attack at random. His attack was planned, pre-meditated, and aimed at Christian soldiers (during the so-called Moro Wars, this meant Spanish soldiers and Filipinos who fought on the Spanish side). In times of peace, the juramentado attacked law-enforcement officers, meaning uniformed Spanish, American, or Filipinos seen as part of an occupying force in Muslim Mindanao.

If it's any consolation, the juramentado never attacked innocent bystanders, women, children, and old people included. Somewhere along the line, the juramentado got mixed up with the amok who goes on a frenzied killing rampage not out of religious or political beliefs but because he is a psychiatric case. Unfortunately, the mix-up was even translated into a film by Gary Cooper who saves the damsel in distress from a Muslim who ran amok. While the amok and the juramentado are two different concepts, in the popular imagination they are one and the same. Even in Manila someone who runs amok is sometimes referred to as "nag-juramentado."

While reading the 1936 book by Vic Hurley Swish, "Kris: The Story of the Moros," I was drawn to a short chapter on the juramentado and the catalogue of American casualties. On April 16, 1911, one Lieutenant Rodney was killed as he walked unarmed on a street in Jolo. What I found surprising was that his four-year-old daughter was left unharmed. I thought juramentados tried to kill as many Christians as they could. So why was the child spared when it could have increased the quota?

Reading this made me realize that I had harbored such a warped idea of the juramentado, though one could realize how difficult the situation was for the Spanish and the American forces occupying Mindanao. General Pershing thus ordered all American officers to carry arms at all times and had soldiers move constantly in groups of three or more. In 1911, Executive Order 24 was issued and it said in part:

"The provisions of the act are hereby made applicable to all districts within the Moro Province. It is therefore declared to be unlawful for any person within the Moro Province to acquire, possess or have the custody of a rifle, musket, carbine, shot-gun, revolver, pistol or any other deadly weapon from which a bullet may be discharged, etc. or to carry, concealed or otherwise on his person, any bowie knife, dirk, dagger, kris, compilane, barong, spear or any deadly cutting or thrusting weapon except tools used exclusively for working purposes and having a blade less than fifteen inches in length, without permission from the Governor of the Province."

Going over Spanish and American accounts of the juramentado heightened my fear and ignorance until I learned a few facts to counter the myths. It was a myth that the juramentado attacked Christians indiscriminately. Attacks were made primarily on soldiers. The juramentado did not attack according to ethnic group or skin color either. It was the occupying forces, seen as an enemy, that was the target. More importantly, the purpose was not to kill as many Christians as possible. On the contrary, the aim was not to kill but to be killed since the juramentado had prepared and purified himself for this suicidal attack as a way to go straight to heaven.

I started reading on the juramentado because I wanted to know more and, in doing so, I realized how much in our history has to be rewritten if only to integrate Mindanao into our Manila-centric "national" history. Knowing that a juramentado shaves his hair and eyebrows, for example, gives me something to look out for even if the juramentado, unlike the amok, is a thing of the past--something considered history today.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu