TAGUIG CITY (MindaNews / 1 March) — The morning after the 40th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, I looked out from a balcony in our Davao residences and saw the soft, amber light catching on the windows of a nearby building. For a moment the whole structure glowed—quiet, steady, almost contemplative. It felt like the appropriate mood for a country still figuring out what this anniversary means.
EDSA@40 invites familiar questions: What was gained? What was lost? What remains unresolved? But if we are honest, these questions look and sound different when asked from Mindanao—where the memories of the Marcos years, the uprisings, and the democratic transition followed a more complicated rhythm than the one retold in Luzon.
To understand Mindanao’s lens, one must begin earlier.
A History That Started Before EDSA
By the time Martial Law was declared in 1972, Mindanao had already endured years of communal violence—Ilaga, Blackshirts, and Barracudas fighting in a cycle of retaliation that scarred towns across Cotabato, Lanao, and Basilan. Land dispossession, demographic shifts, and political neglect had already stirred unrest among Moro and Lumad communities. When the MNLF was formed in 1972 and later the MILF in 1977, the region entered a conflict that would last decades.
In short: Mindanao did not arrive at EDSA with the same emotional script as the rest of the country.
The Quiet Resistance
The story of People Power is often framed around Metro Manila’s crowds. But Mindanao had its own forms of resistance—smaller, quieter, and often more dangerous.
There were barefoot rosary processions in Kidapawan led by Bishops Tony Nepomuceno and Orlando Quevedo. Human chains outside churches in Cagayan de Oro. Journalists in Davao publishing under threat. Parish workers in Cotabato City sheltering activists. Families who protected neighbours despite pressure from armed groups.
These were not televised.
But they were unmistakably acts of conscience.
So when February 1986 arrived—when Enrile and Ramos defected; when crowds massed at Camp Crame—Mindanao watched with both hope and caution. People gathered in churches, listened to transistor radios, whispered updates through half-opened windows. The region felt the tremor of change, but it also knew instability could invite new dangers.
After EDSA: The Work No One Glorifies
For many Filipinos, EDSA meant the return of democracy.
For Mindanao, it meant entering yet another transitional period.
The 1987 Jeddah Accord, the 1989 creation of the ARMM, and the 1996 Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF were major steps forward, but they did not resolve the deeper conflicts. Fighting with the MILF continued. Rido resurfaced. Lumad displacement persisted. Poverty and underinvestment remained unaddressed.
Yet these same years saw the rise of a different Mindanao—Davao rebuilding itself, Cagayan de Oro expanding, General Santos booming through trade and fisheries. It was a Mindanao both wounded and resilient, moving forward despite a national narrative that often omitted its complexities.
EDSA@40: What Happens Now?
Forty years later, Mindanao stands inside another transition: the shift from ARMM to BARMM, the fragility of peace, the need for governance that can outlast political cycles.
This is where EDSA@40 matters—not as nostalgia, but as a reminder that democracy is sustained not by anniversaries but by institutions, moral courage, and civic discipline.
The next chapter will depend on confronting old fractures:
land conflicts that span generations,
displacement that has become inherited,
development that excludes the most vulnerable,
and a national memory that still leaves Mindanao at the margins.
The Morning After
The glow I saw this morning was brief, but it offered clarity.
Anniversaries help us remember—but remembering is not enough.
Especially in Mindanao.
People Power must move from commemoration to commitment:
to fair governance,
inclusive development,
stronger peace institutions,
and a historical narrative that finally recognises Mindanao’s role.
South of the 8th Parallel, we have always known that change rarely comes in four dramatic days. It arrives in quiet, steady work—performed without cameras, without applause, but with conviction.
Forty years after EDSA, that work continues.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. South of the 8th Parallel is a reflective civic column written from the vantage point of a Mindanao-born senior who has lived the arc from Ozamiz to Cotabato, Davao, Manila, Cagayan de Oro, and now Taguig. The 8th Parallel North is the line of latitude eight degrees above the Equator that runs across Mindanao, placing the island firmly in the tropical belt and slightly removed from the country’s political center. Rooted in memory yet attentive to policy, the column examines Mindanao’s concerns—governance, development, peace, inequality, migration, faith, and aging—with the steadiness of lived experience. This is not a view from the capital looking south, but a life shaped by the South looking outward, seeking perspective over noise and endurance over spectacle.)
