This paper presents the millenarian movements of Negros Island specifically in the southern part where topographic conditions significantly influenced the emergence and subsequent reappearance of what is sometimes labeled as "revitalization movements.” Further, this paper aims to present the various peasant movements with their religious undertones which appeared in Negros as influenced by Babaylanism from nearby Panay Island. Negros Island saw the proliferation of religio-political protest movements that attracted many rural adherents. Classified as messianic, nativistic, or millenarian, these movements combine folk, Catholic, political, and nationalistic ingredients in their ritual beliefs and practices.
Using a New Historicist approach and ethnography, this paper tries argues that poverty, social inequities, social disorder, and anxieties have provided the backdrop for the emergence of these movements. Thus, such movements must be understood in the context of the social, economic, and political conditions that gave rise to them. Following this view, this paper attempts to elucidate the connection between the movement spearheaded by Dios Buhawi in 1888; Papa Isio in the 1890s; the Salvatori in the 1980s and the contemporary Dios Amahan movements which has found fertile breeding ground in the same areas.
