Mindoro is the seventh largest and eighth-most populous island in the Philippines. With a total land area of 10,571 km2 ( 4,082 sq.mi ), it has a population of 1,408,454, as of the 2020 census. It is located off the southwestern coast of Luzon and northeast of Palawan. Mindoro is divided into two provinces: Occidental Mindoro and Oriental Mindoro. Calapan is the only city in the island while San Jose is the largest settlement on the island with a total population of 143,430 inhabitants as of 2015. The southern coast of Mindoro forms the northeastern extremum of the Sulu Sea.[3]Mount Halcon is the highest point on the island, standing at 8,484 feet (2,586 m) above sea level located in Oriental Mindoro. Mount Baco is the island's second highest mountain with an elevation of 8,163 feet (2,488 m), located in the province of Occidental Mindoro.
Geography
Mindoro is the seventh (7th) largest island in the Philippines. It is divided by two provinces Occidental Mindoro and Oriental Mindoro. Mindoro Mountain Range is the largest and longest mountain range in the island with a total length of 200 km (120 mi) north-south and 58 km (36 mi) width east–west. Mount Halcon, at 8,484 feet (2,586 meters), is the island’s highest point and is located in Oriental Mindoro.
Mindoro is a center of biodiversity in the Philippines, a megadiverse country, and has a large number of species found nowhere else on the archipelago. Mindoro additionally hosts its own ecoregion, the Mindoro rain forests, separate from neighboring Luzon. Mindoro's biodiversity and isolation is a result of the island not being connected to the rest of the Philippines during the Pleistocene; during this time, most of the Philippine islands were connected to each other during lower sea levels; however, the deeper channels surrounding Mindoro led to it being isolated from the rest of the Philippines during this time.[4]
The name Mindoro was likely a corruption of the native name "Minolo". Domingo Navarette ('Tratados...', 1676) wrote "The island which the natives call Minolo is named Mindoro by the Spaniards..." (trans. by Blair and Robertson).[5]
History
1900 map of Mindoro Island
In past times, it has been called Ma-i or Mait by Han Chinese traders. Indigenous groups are called Mangyans. The Spaniards called the place as Mina de Oro (meaning "gold mine") from where the island got its current name. According to the late historian William Henry Scott, an entry in the official history of the Song Dynasty for the year 972 mentions Ma-i as a state which traded with China. Other Chinese records referring to Ma-i or Mindoro appear in the years that follow.[6]
The products that Mindoro traders exchanged with the Chinese included "beeswax, cotton, true pearls, tortoiseshell, medicinal betelnuts and yu-ta [jute?] cloth" for Chinese porcelain, trade gold, iron pots, lead, copper, colored glass beads and iron needles.[6]
The island was invaded and conquered by the Sultanate of Brunei and housed Moro settlements[7] before the Spanish invaded and Christianized the population. Afterward, the area was depopulated due to wars between the Spaniards and the Moros from Mindanao who sought to enslave the Hispanized people and to re-Islamize the island.[8][9] Consequently, most of the population fled to nearby Batangas and the once rich towns of Mindoro fell to ruin.[8] In the seventeenth century, Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri visited the island.[10]
Tourism is a lucrative business as well, with locations such as Apo Reef National Park, Lubang Island, Puerto Galera, Sabang Beach and Mount Halcon. Puerto Galera's beaches are the island's most known tourist attraction and are widely visited.
An important aspect of the economy in Mindoro is mining, mostly performed by outside companies owned by foreign countries. While the foreign countries make most of the money from these mines, the Philippine government still receives some economic and financial benefit from allowing them to mine on their lands. These companies include Pitkin Petroleum, a US-based company which is looking for nickel, oil, and gas in Mindoro,[15] Crew Development Corporation, a Canada-based corporation mining nickel and other precious metals,[16] and Intex, a Norwegian-based company operating the Mindoro Nickel Project. This project is supposed to last 15 years and should produce over 100 million tons of ore by the end of the project.[17] Unfortunately, while the mines might be profitable for the national government, they have caused problems to the environment and the indigenous tribes living in Mindoro.
Environment
Resource Rich Devil's Mountain
Mining in Mindoro poses a significant risk to the island's environment. Local and international mining interests have disregarded the island's ecology to gain access to the rich tungsten veins that exist below the surface.[18]Intex, a Norwegian Mining Company attempted to begin prospecting for tungsten deposits, but was halted by a regional environmental protection ordinance.[19] Small scale, legal and illegal, environmentally degrading mining operations still persist throughout the island due to a lack of enforcement by the local police.[20]
Fauna
Mindoro is also home to the tamaraw or Mindoro dwarf buffalo (Bubalus mindorensis), which is endemic to the island. The tamaraw is a bovine related to the water buffalo (carabao) and is an endangered species.
Culture
Languages
The principal language in Mindoro is Tagalog, usually spoken with Batangas dialect due to its geographical contact with Batangas and Batangueño residents in the island (the reason for making Mindoro part of Southern Tagalog),[21] although in some parts it has been greatly influenced by the native Mangyan and Visayan languages, creating another unique dialect. Visayan and Mangyan languages, too, are spoken on the island, the latter being native to Mindoro and has dialects, as are Ilocano, Bicolano, Hiligaynon, Karay-a, Cebuano, Cuyonon and some foreign languages – e.g., English, Hokkien (a SiniticChinese language by Chinese Filipinos), to a lesser extent, Spanish.
The following indigenous languages (all of them being part of the Philippine branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages family, like also like Ilocano, Bicolano, and the nationally designated official Filipino dialect of Tagalog) are spoken in Mindoro:
^ abScott, William Henry. (1984). "Societies in Prehispanic Philippines". Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. p. 70. ISBN971-10-0226-4.
^Prof. Cesar A. Majul attests to the existence of Bornean settlements in Manila and construes that some of the rulers found by the Spaniards were themselves Borneans. He in fact cites that as late as 1574, the Borneans and their allies, the Sulus, continued to extract tribute from the natives of Mindoro, thus this practice must have been going on for quite some time. Cf. Muslims in the Philippines, (Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press, 1973), pp. 72.,78; ·
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