By: Primitivo III Cabanes Ragandang, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (Philippines)
“Moros might turn your body into canned sardines,” my mother warned me tearfully as I boarded the jeepney that would take me from our Christian-majority village in Northern Mindanao to university. It was my first time to leave home and my first time to encounter Moro Muslims in real life. Not long after arriving, I met Usman (not his real name), a young Moro from the Bangsamoro region. When I nervously shared my mother’s warning, he laughed. “We have an identical story. Our elders told us to stay away from Christians because they grab our lands.”
We both laughed awkwardly, then warmly. That moment would mark the beginning of a friendship that challenged everything we had inherited about each other. Our story is not unique. It reflects the power of memory and the misremembering that communities across conflict lines carry. In places like Mindanao, memory is not just a backdrop to conflict or peace; it is the terrain on which both are built.
This piece explores how memory, trauma, and resilience are passed between generations—and why these generational dynamics matter for inclusive and sustainable peacebuilding in the Southern Philippines and beyond.
The weight (and power) of memory
Mindanao is the Philippines’ second largest island towards the south, sharing maritime boarders with Southeast Asia’s Muslim countries like Indonesia, Brunei, and Malaysia. Some scholars describe Mindanao as home to the second-oldest conflict in the planet. For decades, Mindanao has been known for its protracted conflicts which revolves around the struggle for self-determination of the Islamised indigenous tribes collectively known as the Moros. Often narrated as a geopolitical or religious clash, the deeper dynamics are rooted in memory: of colonial invasion, systemic injustice, exclusion, and resistance. On the every day, chronic cultural biases and prejudices against each other’s culture remain, between and among the Moros, Christian settlers, and indigenous peoples (lumads).
But memory is not static. It morphs and moves between generations with previous studies talking about how memory transmits transgenerational trauma between and across generations. Some biological studies even talked about genetic processes to which trauma is transmitted. But if trauma can be passed down across generations, how about resilience?
In my book, I introduce the concept of transgenerational resilience to describe how communities not only survive shocks across time, but adapt and endure through the retelling of stories, the passing on of rituals, and the everyday acts of remembrance. In short, resilience is transmitted through memory.
This is a different lens than the typical “bounce back” or “build back better” models of resilience. In regions where support systems are weak and shocks are chronic—be they from conflict, poverty, or climate—people do not simply adapt; they remember, and that remembering helps them survive.
For the Moro communities I worked with, memory served both as a shield and a bridge. Elders remembered foreign invasions and postcolonial betrayals. Youth inherited these memories secondhand, through stories, rituals, and cultural expressions. Yet despite the generational distance, the past remained a referent for how to act, resist, or reconcile in the present.
Youth as memory-bearers and peacebuilders
In the past 15 years, I advocate and write about peace in Mindanao. I founded and co-founded youth-led organizations advocating for violence prevention in the region. In my research, I looked into the engagement of young people in post-conflict reconstruction in the Bangsamoro. One of the most compelling findings from my research was how young Moros in the Bangsamoro region engage with the past, not as passive recipients but as active interpreters. They inherit not just trauma, but also responsibility: to continue the struggle for peace, autonomy, and dignity.
The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), established in 2019, offers a unique model of post-conflict governance. It emerges as a product of a decade-long peace negotiation between the Philippine government and the Moro liberation fronts. It replaces the now debunked Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Among its notable features is the inclusion of youth in formal institutions, such as the Bangsamoro Youth Commission and the 80-member interim parliament. Approximately 20% of the seats in the transition authority were given to youth leaders, a concrete step toward intergenerational inclusion. While there is no established criteria to selecting the youth leaders, they all share the same profile of having previous engagements as active advocates to the Moro struggle.
These young leaders, many of whom I interviewed, speak of peace in ways that are deeply rooted in cultural memory but also forward-looking. They desire an end to rido (clan feuds), economic inequality, and internal divisions among the 13 Moro tribes. Yet, they remain committed to preserving Islamic values and the lessons of their elders.
Such intergenerational collaboration is not always easy. Many young peacebuilders expressed frustration with being infantilized by older leaders or tokenized in decision-making. But they also recognized the power of memory—of listening to grandparents recounting war stories, of visiting symbolic spaces of resistance—as a form of political inheritance. These memories shape their aspirations and fuel their activism.
From depletion to invention: the ayóm-ayómic political order
Peacebuilding is often imagined as a process of institution-building, policy reform, and technical assistance. But in places like Mindanao, it is also an act of everyday ingenuity. Communities make do with what is available—physically, emotionally, and historically.
To capture this reality, I propose the idea of an ayóm-ayómic political order—from the Bisayan term ayóm-ayóm, meaning “to fix using what is locally available.” This concept describes how political orders survive not because they are institutionally robust, but because people remember how to endure. In resource-scarce, post-conflict settings, resilience emerges not from grand strategies but from local knowledge, improvisation, and intergenerational cooperation.
Consider the story of the lusóng—a metallic banana masher carved from the nozzle of a Japanese bomb, passed down in my family for generations. My grandfather found this is an abandoned Japanese military headquarters following the end of World War 2. Once a tool of war, grandpa converted it (ayóm-ayómize) it into a kitchen utensil, and later a chapel bell. This transformation captures the essence of ayóm-ayóm: the capacity to repurpose pain into something useful, even sacred. The lusóng is not just an object; it is a repository of memory, trauma, and resilience.
Similarly, the political order in BARMM is not a clean slate. It carries the weight of past wars, peace negotiations, and compromises. But it also carries hope—etched into the fabric of intergenerational storytelling, everyday rituals, and the silent determination to make peace “work.”
Inclusive peacebuilding needs a generational lens
What does this mean for peacebuilding practitioners, funders, and policymakers? First, we must recognize memory as a resource, not a relic. Too often, post-conflict programs emphasize “moving on” or “starting anew.” But in communities where violence has shaped identities across generations, forgetting is not a luxury. Healing requires remembrance of injustice, yes, but also of survival.
Second, we need to invest in intergenerational platforms. Inclusion cannot mean simply adding a youth quota or consulting elders separately. Real inclusion happens when generations engage each other in shared spaces co-creating policies, archiving memories, and designing peace together. In BARMM, this means supporting initiatives that connect former combatants with student leaders, or elders with young researchers documenting oral histories.
Third, we should expand our definition of resilience. Rather than seeing it as an individual trait or a technocratic goal, we might view it as a cultural and political process, one rooted in storytelling, memory-keeping, and symbolic acts of continuity.
Finally, interfaith dialogue must also consider intergenerational dynamics. In Mindanao, religious differences are often entangled with generational ones. Older generations may hold deep-seated prejudices, while younger ones seek common ground. Supporting interfaith peacebuilding thus requires generational sensitivity, understanding how religious identities are remembered, reinterpreted, and sometimes reconciled across time.
Closing reflections: the gift of memory
When I think back to that moment in the jeepney, with my mother’s fear heavy in the air, I realize now that she was also transmitting a kind of resilience. Her warning, however misinformed, came from a place of love—and from stories passed down across generations. The same is true for Usman’s elders.
Today, as our friendship continues, Usman and I laugh about those early days. But we also honour the memories we carry—not to perpetuate fear, but to transform it. In a world eager to forget, perhaps the most radical act is to remember together. Now, Usman works in the Bangsamoro’s cultural heritage agency while I continue to write about memories for peace in Mindanao.
And so, I leave you with a question: What do your communities remember? And how might those memories be used not just to heal the past, but to shape a more peaceful future?
