Mindanao historian gets Fr. Demetrio Award from Xavier U.

ILIGAN CITY (MindaNews / 5 July)—Retired history professor and peace and development advocate Rudy B. Rodil has been chosen as recipient of the Fr. Francisco R. Demetrio, S.J. Award by Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City and will be conferred the honor during XU’s commencement ceremony on Thursday, July 6.

_{Prof. Rudy Rodil talks about Moro history to soldiers of the Army’s First Infantry “Tabak” Division. MindaNews file photo by BOBBY TIMONERA}

According to Fr. Mars P. Tan, S.J., university president, the award is “in recognition of [Rodil’s] significant contributions in the field of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and Moro community studies through research, writings, advocacy works, and participation in peace processes addressing conflicts in Mindanao.”

In his letter to Rodil, Tan said XU established the award “in memory of Fr. Demetrio’s life and passion for all things Filipino … to honor those who have made significant contributions to Philippine culture and the arts.” Demetrio is known as a scholar of Philippine studies, who authored works on folklore, anthropology, and culture. Some of his works are displayed at the XU Museum.

“[Rodil’s] work continues to enlighten and inform the understanding of the history and the struggle of the Moro and IPs in Mindanao,” Tan said in a memorandum addressed to his constituents.

Rodil taught history at the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology for 23 years, and authored “Two Hills from the Same Land” and many other books on Mindanao, particularly on the Moro people and the Lumads. He was a member of the government panel that negotiated peace with the Moro National Liberation Front from 1993 to 1996 and with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front from 2004 to 2008.

Rodil said the Jesuits played a major role in his “own transformation as a combination of being a peacemaker and writer of Mindanao-Sulu history.”

He cited three Jesuit priests whose works influenced him the most—Fr. Horacio de la Costa, Fr. John Schumacher and Fr. Jose Arcilla. Rodil said that aside from his classroom exchanges with them when he attended the San José Seminary at Ateneo de Manila University, he also devoured all their major works.

“If you have read any of my writings, the touch of Jesuitic discipline is there, meticulous to the last detail,” Rodil noted.

Rodil was born in 1942 in a plateau in the municipality of Upi in Maguindanao surrounded by deep green forest, to an immigrant family from Cavite. As mentioned in his column for MindaNews in 2022, Upi used to be called Little Baguio, where settlers from Luzon and the Visayas lived along with the Maguindanawons. In the forests were the indigenous Tedurays.

“As far as I can recall and from what I have heard from my elders, there was never any major problem in the interaction among the people, none of whom were large enough to dominate one another. Each group carried his own culture and language yet somehow they were able to communicate,” he said of his childhood days.

In his elementary years, Rodil said his classmates were all sorts: Teduray, Ilonggo, Ilocano, Chavacano, Maguindanao, Tagalog. “We spoke each other’s dialects with ease,” he recalled.

He went to Cotabato City for high school at the Notre Dame. After graduation, he then attended the seminary in Manila, but eventually went back to Notre Dame to finish college.

While he was away, Rodil said logging companies arrived in Upi and changed its landscape forever.

“When I paid a week-long visit in 1986, I traveled 69 kilometers inland towards Lebak in Sultan Kudarat. The whole place is bald, Meteber River’s watershed is nowhere to be found, the river itself is hardly gurgling with the little life that is left. Darugao River tells the same story. The water is dirty brown, almost too dirty to touch, least of all bathe in. The rivers that nurtured my childhood adventures no longer possessed the same magnetism,” he wrote.

“What I learned when I headed the Mindanao Regional Development Project Research on the Cultural Minorities of Mindanao in 1974 was that only 164 logging companies, whose timber concessions were for 25 years and renewable for another 25 years, were responsible for denuding Mindanao’s commercial forests,” he added.

Rodil later taught in Jolo, and in many places in Mindanao, eventually settling at MSU-IIT in Iligan City with his wife, Saturnina “Bebot” Rodil, née Sescon. (Bobby Timonera / MindaNews)

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