Mindanao History, Politics, and Culture

Patricio N. Abinales retired as a Professor from the Department of Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i-Manoa in 2025 and completed a six-month research fellowship at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, last August, where he was working on a manuscript on everyday authoritarianism in the University of the Philippines during the Marcos era.

 Abinales grew up in the northern Mindanao city of Ozamiz and studied at the University of the Philippines and Cornell University.

 His first book was a co-authored one. Transnational Corporations in the Philippine Banana Export Industry was a study of corporate agriculture in southern Mindanao conducted by the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center (TWS).

 In 1998, Abinales published his first single-authored book, Images of State Power: Essays on Philippine Politics, from the Margins with the University of the Philippines Press. This was followed by Making Mindanao: Cotabato and Davao in the Formation of the Philippine State, 1900-1972, published by Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2000 (and republished in 2020). In 2001, the University of the Philippines Press published his Fellow Traveler: Essays on Filipino Communism, which won the National Book Award for the Social Sciences.

In 2005, he and his late wife, Donna J. Amoroso, co-authored State and Society in the Philippines, published by Rowman and Littlefield (an expanded edition was released in 2017). In 2010, he wrote Orthodoxy and History in the Muslim Mindanao Narrative, which was published by Ateneo de Manila University Press.

His last four books are The Contemporary World, a 2021 college textbook he co-wrote with Professor Lisandro Claudio of the University of California-Berkeley and put out by C&E Publishing Inc., of Manila; Modern Philippines, which was published in 2022 by ABC-Clio Greenwood Press; The Marcos Era Reader, which he co-edited with Leah Castañeda-Anastacio, published in 2022 by Ateneo de Manila University Press; and  Presidents and Pests, Cosmopolitans and Communists, which came out of Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2023.

Abinales wrote two non-academic books with Anvil Publishing: Love, Sex and the Filipino Communist, or Hinggil sa Pagpigil ng Panggigigil, in 2004, and Joys of Dislocation: Essays on Mindanao, Region, Nation, in 2008. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing. He is currently working on a third book, Global Cuisines: The Philippines, for ABC-Clio Greenwood Press.

He lives in Quezon City with his wife, the book historian Patricia May Jurilla, and their two dogs, Caxton and Pinpin, and commutes to Honolulu to visit his daughter Angela.

Paring Bert’s immersion in popular spirituality and social issues during the 1970s Martial Law in the Philippines led him to get attracted to the Jesuit mission of ‘Faith and Justice’. His formation was enriched by his interest in poetry, politics, and indigenous philosophy while working with the organized poor, especially when he headed the Archdiocese of Manila Labor Center before his ordination in 1991. After earning PhD in Social Anthropology in London, he engaged in teaching and research, while remaining active in indigenous peoples’ rights advocacy, peace negotiation with armed Communist and Moro groups, fighting corruption and extrajudicial killings related to the ‘war on drugs’. He cofounded the Institute of Indigenous Peoples Education, Mindanawon Initiatives for Cultural Dialogue, Sacred Springs: Dialogue Institute on Spirituality and Sustainability, and Amuma Cancer Support Group Foundation. Among his books are Ehemplo: Spirituality of Shared Integrity in Philippine Church and Society, Generating Energies in Mount Apo: Cultural Politics in a Contested Environment, Táo Pô! Tulóy! Isáng Landás ng Pag-unawà sa Loób ng Táo (National Book Award 1990), and three poetry anthologies for which he received the National Award for Poetry and Translation or Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas, given by the Writers Union in the Philippines in 2021. Among his edited works are the 4-volume Annotated Bibliographjy of Mindanao Studies, From Zamboanga to Subic, In Search for Partnership:  Conflict and Cooperation between Ancestral Domain and Economic Zone, and Listening to Our Teachers: A Study of the Views, Attitudes and Practices of Teachers and Parents of Catholic High Schools Regarding Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Sexuality Education. His music videos, like Bayang May Dangal and Meme na Mindanaw, are in YouTube. Paring Bert serves as board member of No Peace Without Justice, while teaching at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.