Cagayan de Oro is a hub city in Mindanao, a giant southern Philippine island that you may have been taught to avoid. At least four Muslim rebel groups operate on the island and once in a while they set off a bomb or kidnap foreign tourists. The vigilante group Abu Sayyaf, for example, beheaded a Canadian hostage in April. No wonder the Canadian government’s September travel advisory for the Philippines “advises against all travel to the Mindanao region due to the serious threat of terrorist attacks and kidnapping.”
That type of common advice keeps direct investment out of Mindanao despite a wealth of natural resources, leaving the island poorer than other parts of the Philippine archipelago.
Yet when you ask common people in Cagayan de Oro whether they feel safe, you get a unanimous yes. People in the industrial port city of 675,000 recall just one deadly attack, a 2013 bombing that was possibly the work of rebels. Mosques and churches normally co-exist and a lot of the Muslims in Cagayan de Oro came specifically to find a safe place to live. People pack the malls, restaurants and downtown parks. They’re more concerned about making a living than making it out alive. You see foreign backpackers walking around with their heads high.
Cagayan de Oro is not the only city with a claim to safety despite being on Mindanao. Most of the 104,000-square-kilometer (40,360-square mile) island is safe from rebel bombings and kidnappings. Rebels usually operate in the west and on outlying islands such as Basilan and Jolo, where the Moro group of Muslims has run its own affairs for some 800 years and just wants other forces to let them.
The U.S. Embassy lists seven cities, provinces and geographic patches as danger spots for American citizen travel. The April advisory that warns of terrorism, violence and kidnapping of foreigners, however, omits the vast regions of central and eastern Mindanao. The island’s chief city and country’s second largest, Davao, ranked the world’s fifth safest city last year on crowd-sourcing survey site Numbeo.com. Then-mayor, now President Rodrigo Duterte had eradicated crime the way he’s going after drug rings now. A leftist group once hot for violence in Davao hardly ever comes out of the hills anymore, Davao denizens say. The Canadian advisory says urban Davao is safe to visit.
“There is that kind perception Mindanao is associated with violence, but one who stays here longer will realize it’s not true, there are many areas that are quite safe and safer than Manila,” says Antonio Ledesma, archbishop of Cagayan de Oro.
But it's perceptions of widespread danger that set back prospects of a boom in investment. The island produces four fifths of all farm products for export. Del Monte, Nestle and other multinationals are there, likewise Japanese-invested automotive factories. But a lot of foreign capital stays away because of the fear, says Rhona Canoy, president of the International School Cagayan de Oro and part of a political family. Wages remain low and career jobs are scarce. As a result, Canoy says, families groom their children to leave Mindanao in search of work after high school.
Kirk Nagac, a 27-year-old Cagayan de Oro native, actually returned to the city to find work. “Mindanao is a very big place and very big island,” he notes. “Here in Cagayan de Oro, the Abu Sayyaf is not a threat.”
