The Moro Legacy cans and Arabs. The Moors easily took former territories of the Roman and Persian empires because in most cases the populace accepted them. When Spanish conquistadores came to Manila, they encountered many people who had embraced the Islamic faith and called them Moros. The “Moros” in Manila that Spaniards encountered were the dominant group, with three main kingdoms (Manila, Tondo and Namayan). During the Moro Wars against Spanish domination, the word “Moro” became a derogatory term used against Muslims from Mindanao and Sulu. It was associated with piracy, pillage, slave raids and treachery because of the Moros’ ability to effectively thwart Spanish military expeditions and answer them with their own retaliatory attacks against main Spanish settlements that included Manila, Central Luzon, Ilocos region, Bicol and the Visayan islands. The inhabitants of Luzon and the Visayas who had become virtual Spanish slaves under the encomiendero system began to fear and hate “Moros” when they suffered from these Moro attacks. The Stockholm syndrome/captive bonding (love of captors) generally penetrated the psychological make-up of subjugated Filipinos. 3. What were the original “Moro Lands” in the Philippine Islands? Lands once occupied and influenced by Moros by virtue of occupation, intermarriage, conversion to the Muslim faith and the jurisdictional scope of tribute can rightly be called the original Moro Lands. Most of these lands were peopled from countries of Maritime Southeast Asia. They have a common racial ancestry ethnically termed as Austronesian for the same language family, but differentiated by Europeans according to ownership by conquest (i.e., Malays for Britain, Indo-Chinese by the French, Indios by the Spaniards and Indonesians by the Dutch). They 13