About zamboanga del sur

Zamboanga del Sur, officially the Province of Zamboanga del Sur, is a province in the Philippines located in the Zamboanga Peninsula region in Mindanao. Its capital is the city of Pagadian. Statistically grouped with Zamboanga del Sur is the highly urbanized City of Zamboanga, which is geographically separated and a chartered city and governed independently from the province.

The province borders Zamboanga del Norte to the north, Zamboanga Sibugay to the west, Misamis Occidental to the northeast, and Lanao del Norte to the east. To the south is the Moro Gulf.

The name of Zamboanga is the Hispanicized spelling of the Sinama term for "mooring place" - samboangan (also spelled sambuangan; and in Subanen, sembwangan), from the root word samboang ("mooring pole"). "Samboangan" was the original name of Zamboanga City, from where the name of the peninsula is derived from. "Samboangan" is well-attested in Spanish, British, French, German, and American historical records from as far back as the 17th century.

This is commonly contested by folk etymologies which instead attribute the name of Zamboanga to the Indonesian word jambangan (claimed to mean "place of flowers", but actually means "pot" or "bowl"), usually with claims that all ethnic groups in Zamboanga were "Malays". However, this name has never been attested in any historical records prior to the 1960s.

History

The original inhabitants of the Zamboanga Peninsula were the Maguindanaon and Subanen, who settled along the riverbanks in inland areas; and the various Sama-Bajau and Yakan ethnic groups who settled in coastal areas. Tausūg settlers from northeastern Mindanao also migrated to the region in the 13th century.

The region was additionally settled by migrants (mostly from the Visayas islands) after World War II. Together with the original settlers, these pioneers helped develop Zamboanga del Sur into the abundant and culturally diverse province that it is.

Historically, Zamboanga was the capital of the Moro Province in western Mindanao, which comprised five districts: Cotabato, Davao, Sulu, Lanao, and Zamboanga. In 1940, these districts became individual provinces. Zamboanga City became the capital of Zamboanga province.

Soon after World War II, the provincial capital was transferred to Dipolog. Molave was created as the provincial capital in 1948.

On June 6, 1952, through Republic Act No. 711, Zamboanga del Sur was carved out from the former Zamboanga province that encompassed the entire peninsula in southwestern Mindanao. As the 52nd province of the Philippines, it originally consisted of 11 towns with the City of Zamboanga and the Island of Basilan, which were later expanded into 42 municipalities with the City of Pagadian as the capital.

This happened in the midst of the postwar period, a time when Mindanao was peaceful and increasingly progressive. Ethnic tensions were minimal, and there was essentially no presence of secessionists groups in Mindanao. Tensions in Mindanao mostly began to rise only as the 1970s approached, as a result of social and economic tensions which affected the whole country.

The late 1960s in Mindanao saw a rise in land dispute conflicts arising from the influx of settlers from Luzon and Visayas, and from the Marcos administration’s encouragement of militia groups such as the Ilaga. News of the 1968 Jabidah massacre ignited a furor in the Moro community, and ethnic tensions encouraged with the formation of secessionist movements, starting from the largely political Muslim Independence Movement and Bangsamoro Liberation Organization, and eventually the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Additionally, an economic crisis in late 1969, violent crackdowns on student protests in 1970, and 1971, and eventually the declaration of Martial Law all led to the radicalization of many students. Many of them left schools in Manila and joined New People's Army units in their home provinces, bringing a Communist rebellion in the Philippines to Mindanao for the first time.

The year 1982 was a particularly bloody year for Zamboanga del Sur under the Marcos dictatorship, as two massacres happened in the province that year. On February 12, 1982, members of the Ilaga killed 12 persons in Dumingag, Zamboanga del Sur, allegedly to avenge the death of their leader, who they believed had been killed by the NPA. And on May 25, 1982, three people were killed and eight people were injured when the administration's airplanes dropped bombs on Barangay Dimalinao of Bayog, Zamboanga del Sur, allegedly as reprisal for the killing of 23 soldiers by supposed rebels two days earlier. Days later, two more men from the community were picked up and killed, and a few months later, the residence of Bayog's Jesuit parish priest was strafed after he had written letters decrying the torture and harassment of the indigenous Subanon people from his parish, whom government had tagged as communist supporters.