Davao de Oro

Davao de Oro, officially the Province of Davao de Oro (Cebuano: Lalawigan sa Davao de Oro; Filipino: Lalawigan ng Davao de Oro), is a province in the Philippines located in the Davao Region in Mindanao. Its capital is Nabunturan while Monkayo is the most populous. It used to be part of the province of Davao del Norte until it was made a separate province in 1998.

The province borders Davao del Norte to the west, Agusan del Sur to the north, and Davao Oriental to the east. To the southwest lies the Davao Gulf. The first elected governor was Jose Caballero, formerly a lawyer for a mining group in the province. It was formerly known as Compostela Valley (shortened to ComVal; Cebuano: Kawalogang Kompostela) from its inception until December 2019, when a plebiscite ratified the law that proposed to rename the province to Davao de Oro.

Spain 1521–1898
 United States of America 1898–1942
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 United States of America 1945–1946
 Philippines 1946–present

Davao de Oro, the 78th province in the country, was created out of Davao del Norte Province by virtue of Republic Act No. 8470, signed by President Fidel V. Ramos on January 30, 1998. The new province was officially named Compostela Valley. On March 7 of the same year, the law was ratified through a plebiscite conducted in the eleven (11) municipalities of the mother province.

The movement to create a new province by dividing Davao del Norte started in the 1980s during the time of Congressman Lorenzo S. Sarmiento Sr., himself the author of RA No. 6430. However, this was not realized until his death in the late 1980s. His son, Rogelio M. Sarmiento, who became his successor in Congress, pushed for the passage of the bill creating the province.

Upon consultation with the governor of Davao del Norte, Prospero S. Amatong, the province's other two legislators, 3rd District Congressman Rodolfo P. Del Rosario and 2nd District Congressman Baltazar A. Sator, and other provincial and municipal officials, it was decided that the addition of four municipalities, namely Maco, Mabini, Pantukan, and Laak to the proposed province would be the most ideal and equitable configuration as this would make both provinces on an almost equal footing in terms of area, population, and development opportunities. It was also decided that Nabunturan would be the capital town because of its more central location.

The name originally proposed for the province was Davao del Norte, the former name, or so it was thought, of the mother province. However, the House of Representatives’ Reference and Research Bureau, which conducted the research and legal work on the creation of the province, found out that the mother province continues to be officially referred to as Davao del Norte in most official documents including the 1987 Philippine Constitution despite the passage of RA No. 6430 on June 17, 1972, renaming it as Davao Province. Tedious technical and legal issues needed to be resolved before the name could be adopted. The proposal was thus shelved and the name finally agreed upon was Compostela Valley, referring to the great fertile plain in the heartland of the province.

The origin of the province's inhabitants came from the ethnic tribes of the Mansaka, Mandaya, Manobo, Mangguangan, Dibabawon, Aeta, Kamayo, Davaweño and Kalagan. Similar to the history of other Mindanao provinces, most of the present populations of the province are descendants of migrants who came from Luzon and Visayas islands during the pre-war and post war eras, among the Luzon migrants were Tagalogs from Bataan (thus, the town New Bataan) & Ilocanos from North Central Luzon. The bigger wave of immigrants came during the time of President Ramon Magsaysay wherein the policy of attraction adopted by the national government was to offer parcels of land to tenant-farmers. Although a virtual melting pot, the Visayans (mostly Cebuano-speaking) are the dominant group in Davao de Oro.