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By Inday Espina-Varona
2nd of 4 parts
They have won a landmark legal battle, but
squabbling indigenous claimants to 923 hectares of Alcantara pastureland
in General Santos City, South Cotabato, are jeopardizing their victory–and
giving their opponents opportunities for divide-and-rule tactics.
The July 2001 Supreme Court order upholding a
Court of Appeals decision on the General Santos City disputed land
was based on Nicasio Alcantara’s petition against the decision of
the Commission on the Settlement of Land Problems cancel his 25-year
lease extension and return the land to its original owners.
The commission’s case is a riveting narrative
of greed and displacement, a microcosm of the land struggle that has
fueled Mindanao’s insurgency for the last century. Its aftermath
also sheds light on the rivalries and maze of conflicting interests
that have held lumad and Muslims alike in bondage to Christian
landowners.
The sad tale of General Santos City’s B’laan
and Muslim folk dates from the Spanish colonial era, and sprawls
across the American occupation, World War II and the raging land
wars of the 1960s.
Sadly, even with the passage of the Indigenous
People’s Rights Act, and even with the 2001 Supreme Court
decision, the travails of these dispossessed peoples have not ended.
Ending the famine
The commission’s recommendation, upheld by
former environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez, was in response to a
petition filed by Rolando Paglangan, his wife, Ana, and their
B’laan tribe partners. Yet Paglangan is himself at odds with three
clans that accuse him of usurping their rightful claims on the land.
The heirs of Datu Abdul S. Pendatun, represented
by Datu Nasser B. Pendatun; the heirs of Sabal Mula, represented by
Hadji Latip K. Mula; and the Gawan Clan, represented by their tribal
chieftain, Loreto Gawan, filed as intervenors in the case on April
6, 2001–two months before the Supreme Court issued its decision.
Their petition described Paglangan only as an agent of the Mula
clan, and not of the other intervenors.
The Supreme Court allowed the intervention. But
although its decision–written by Associate Justice Santiago
Kapunan and concurred in by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. and
Associate Justices Reynato Puno, Bernardo Pardo and Consuelo Ynareas-Santiago–upheld
the Court of Appeals order to award the 934 hectares to indigenous
peoples, it was silent on the fate of the intervenors.
The Court’s silence, nevertheless, did not
stop the Pendatun clan from muscling in on the controversy.
The Pendatuns are considered Muslim royalty and
known for their fierce fighters. In the aftermath of the Gozun hold
order, Datu Nasser Pendatun, a police chief inspector assigned to
the Central Mindanao office and living in Koronadal, led a series of
protest actions, seeking the immediate settlement of the rightful
claimants.
Following that, Pendatun filed a complaint with
the Commission on Appointments, objecting to Gozun’s confirmation,
and accusing her of being anti-poor and biased for the rich patrons.
Gozun later showed a letter of apology, signed by Nasser Pendatun,
claiming misrepresentation.
Despite the apology, the Pendatuns have filed an
antigraft case against Commissioner Evelyn Saquing-Dunuan of the
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples for alleged bias in favor
of Paglangan in the settlement of claimants to Alcantara’s pastureland.
Land’s potential
The settlement commission’s order, signed on
August 3, 1998, by Chairman Rufino V. Mijares, called for the
following actions:
1. Cancellation of Alcantara’s Forest Land
Grazing Lease Agreement (FLGLA) 542, covering 923 hectares;
2. Immediate segregation of 300 hectares
requested by Paglangan from the 923 hectares;
3. Declaration of the entire 923 hectares as
“the ancestral lands of the B’laan”; and
4. Possession by the petitioners of the land
“in order to start cultivation and plant crops for their food, and
solve the ongoing famine and hunger being experienced by the lumad.”
General Santos City and outlying areas are known
for their lush, fertile soil. The commission’s ruling implies as
much, in that it aims to provide lumad with land conducive to
planting food crops.
Yet the local journalist Inocentes Gulle Jr., half in jest, notes
that the disputed area is sometimes called “The Golden Plains,”
“probably because the grass was almost always yellow for lack of
rain.”
Alcantara himself notes that the land is hardly
farming material owing to its unfavorable topography and is more
suitable for raising livestock.
Documents with the General Santos City
government also show that as early as the 1970s the government had
classified the area as grasslands.
New township
Councilor Zoilo Abing, who heads the committee
investigating the Alcantara land dispute, confirms that FLGLA 542 is
covered by city plans for a new township development, covered by
both an ordinance and a Comprehensive Development Plan.
In an interview with The Manila Times, Abing
said the planned development would have included housing for 13,330
registered urban-poor residents of the city, as well as schools,
recreation and cultural centers and a commercial district.
The city government, Abing said, had also
applied for the cancellation of FLGLA to make way for the township.
That plan, first drafted under the Ramos
administration, during the term of Mayor Lita Nuñez, and then
dusted off by succeeding administrations, is now in limbo.
Incumbent Mayor Pedro Acharon Jr. insists the
FLGLA has been part of the public domain dating back to several
decades. He wants 41.6 hectares of the Alcantara estate for a mass
housing site.
Alcantara’s overseer, Jesus Montemayor,
however, said the public domain issue was resolved in 1982, when the
then Ministry of Natural Resources issued an administrative order
categorizing the area as pastureland.
A new twist in the controversy is the discovery
that portions of the FLGLA 524 area had been titled as private
property in 1978, and has four owners: an Akmad Mohammad, Pedro
Villar, the Lihibon family and another Mohammad.
Abing said these claimants are all alive and
have furnished him with the titles, showing their lands to be within
the Alcantara estate. The Lahibon and Villar families have “rest
houses” inside FLGLA 542; the other two claimants have fenced in
their lots.
Abing is bemused by this development. It shows,
he said, how government agencies can work at cross purposes with
each other. The DENR and its predecessor, the Ministry of Natural
Resources, he added, also has a proclivity for issuing contradictory
orders that worsen an already tense and confusing atmosphere.
In the case of the newly discovered private
titles, each covers four hectares bordering the adjacent hacienda
Espina. The facilitating agency was the then Ministry of Agrarian
Reform, which issued Certificates of Land Ownership.
Abing questioned how the certificates were
issued in 1978 for “corn lands” when the estate had already been
classified as grassland.
The four claimants never took possession of
their lands, Abing said, until last year, in the aftermath of the
Supreme Court’s order and Alvarez’s cancellation of
Alcantara’s lease.
They managed to get in with the hundreds of
other families who, Abing said, had been promised “membership”
by Paglangan and Pendatun.
Paglangan has around 300 “members” and
Pendatun more than a hundred, he said.
Although reports have claimed the members paid
the claimants for rights to occupy the land, Abing stressed that
they have shown no documentary proof.
Gozun, in an interview with The Times, said
driving out people who had come in before her hold order would
worsen the tension. She has imposed an “as is, where is”
condition, but this has not eased problems, said Jesus Montemayor,
Alcantara’s overseer.
While Paglangan was granted 300 hectares, the
new occupants have scattered across the estate, even invading the
livestock corral, Montemayor told The Times. Ranch operations have
since been frozen and hundreds of cattle herded into the adjoining
estate (FLGLA 552), owned by Nicasio’s brother, Felicisimo.
In a report dated February 13, 2002, the
environment department’s investigation team, under Alvarez,
cites a reason for the ferocity of the land struggle.
The last paragraph of the report, undertaken by
a team led by the law-enforcement chief, Ali M. Hadinasser, notes:
“The FLGLA is located within the City of
General Santos; its topography is flat to undulating of 0-18 percent
in slope; adjacent to General Santos City Airport. Nowadays, General
Santos City is the subject of development opportunities, being
considered ‘The Booming City of the South,’ hence, expansion
areas for residential, commercial, industrial and other areas for
development are very necessary.” (Italics added.)
It is not clear how that observation is relevant
to the report, which details several alleged violations of the
lease–including the possession of 923 hectares, which runs counter
to Article XII of the 1987 Constitution.
The constitutional provision says that citizens
may not lease more than 500 hectares of land. An administrative
order by the environment department in 1999 allows bigger leases,
between 500 and 2,000 hectares, for associations, cooperatives or
corporations. The lease was issued for Nicasio Alcantara, not for a
corporation.
The department’s composite investigation team points out that
enforcing the Supreme Court’s decision is impossible without the
cancellation of Alcantara’s lease.
Who’s who?
The same potential for development–given that
lumad claimants would not be bound by the conditions of the
Alcantara lease–is behind the feud between Paglangan and
intervenors in the case.
Pendatun, a son of the late Datu Abdul Pendatun,
claims 500 hectares of the indigenous land. The Mula and Gawan clans
claim another 400 hectares.
These claims cover 900 hectares, which leave
Paglangan no room for his 300 hectares.
The intervenors’ claims are convoluted.
First, they claim Paglangan merely presented
himself as the representative of the Mula clan, by virtue of a
letter signed on April 10, 1990, by Ismael Sabel and Lasid Acop.
Neither Sabel nor Acop, the intervenors note,
are members of the Mula or the two other clans.
Yet they also grant Paglangan some legitimacy in
the same petition, acknowledging “that if he has any interest at
all in the land claim of the Mula clan, it would be his claim for
compensation for service rendered . . . for representing them in the
[settlement commission] and Court of Appeals case.”
In an interview with The Times, Pendatun
acknowledged that Acop is married to a Mula daughter, and thus part
of the clan. Mula himself is half Maguindanaoan on his mother’s
side though his father was pure B’laan.
It was Sabel whom Pendatun’s mother,
Consolacion, trusted to pursue the Maguindanaoan’s claim to the
land.
Subsequently, Pendatun would question
Paglangan’s efforts to dispose of the 300 hectares, saying these
should have been shared by Sabel and Acop. (See sidebar.)
Regardless of Paglangan’s motives, the case he filed with the
settlement commission allowed indigenous people to retake land
wrested from their ancestors.
Pendatun questions the B’laan’s claim. This
is Paglangan’s story, which forms the basis of the commission’s
decision. The story dates from the Spanish time, when B’laans
worked peacefully in their ancestral land in Lanton, Apopong.
One day, Paglangan says, three Spaniards came
and took over the land, hiring the B’laan as paid labor. (Paglangan’s
story carries no initial narratives of resistance, and does not
explain why the B’laan rolled over for the Spanish visitors.)
Much later, Visayan settlers arrived. Again,
they befriended the tribal leaders, “who accepted [the strangers]
with all their hearts.”
Paglangan says even the Japanese Occupation
failed to dislodge the B’laan. The few who left immediately
returned after the war.
“During the liberation, the woes, fears and
sacrifices of their ancestors started, as many Christian settlers
came to the disputed area and surreptitiously surveyed it,” the
complaint states.
Guile and force
In an area known for violent land disputes,
Paglangan’s story strangely doesn’t mention blood and gore,
until the 1960s. He acknowledges that Christian settlers managed to
fool unsuspecting tribal leaders to enter into a lease agreement
over some portion of their ancestral domain, “in exchange for a
cow as monthly rental.”
The promised cows were not given, however,
provoking a dispute.
“Their ancestors were overpowered by the
settlers and ultimately driven away by force and without any
recourse whatsoever to regain their ancestral land due to fear and
sheer ignorance.”
The lumad tried to retake the land in 1962,
“accompanied by Muslim brethren.” That is Paglangan’s first
mention of the Maguindanaons.
After two years, however, Christian settlers
attacked with high-powered firearms, forcing indigenous folk into
flight once more. In the battle, two of the B’laan elders died:
Ismael Sabel and Ismael Dicaya.
The victor in that fight: Conrado Alcantara, a
ranch owner “and the most powerful among the Christian
settlers.”
The complaint says Alcantara’s men razed all
indigenous homes. He also filed cases of forcible entry against the
lumad though these were dismissed.
In 1985 the widows of the eldest sons of the two
slain leaders restarted a new quest for their old lands.
“Slowly and painstakingly they worked to
segregate their 300 hectares from their total ancestral land of 923
hectares originally claimed by their brother B’laan,” in 1990.
The complaint is clear in stating it also aims
to prevent Nicasio, Conrado’s successor, from renewing his
expiring lease–though this initial course failed since the
department of environment issued an extension in 1993.
High time
The settlement commission, the Court of Appeals
and the Supreme Court stress that Alcantara has not disputed the
B’laan’s story. His arguments center mainly on the
commission’s lack of jurisdiction and the sanctity of contracts
entered into by the government, in this case his leasehold.
The commission’s decision, however,
underscored that the protection of contracts involves only those
that are perfectly valid.
In the disputed land in General Santos City, the
commission noted that the grant of the pasture permit, later
replaced with the FLGLA, also violated Presidential Decree 410,
which sets aside public lands that have been occupied and cultivated
by minorities for at least 10 years as part of ancestral lands,
exclusively for indigenous people.
The decree emphasizes: “The interruption of
the period of their occupation and cultivation on account of civil
disturbance or force majeure shall not mitigate their right….”
Ironically, the first pasture permit was granted
during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, who issued that decree.
The Alcantaras have not disputed that their
forefathers were part of the group of settlers who wrested land from
the lumad. Nor have they disputed historical accounts of the razing
of indigenous homes.
The commission, taking note of the perilous
situation of lumad, noted that the complainants were never given
“due process” in their opposition to the grant of Alcantara’s
FLGLA.
In granting Alcantara the FLGLA during the Ramos
administration, the environment department, according to the
commission, “did not lend an ear to the plight of the complainants
who have much to bear as a result of the denial … of their rights
to use and benefit from their ancestral land.”
Dismissing Alcantara’s arguments, the
commission wrote these fighting words: “When the respondent has
already earned several millions of pesos as a result of his
operation on their ancestral lands… it is high time that he
extended to his poor brother B’laan their right to exist and
survive as Filipinos with dignity, and not squatters in their own
land.”
Clear victory
His arguments denied by the commission,
Alcantara went to the Court of Appeals and, later, the Supreme
Court.
While commission officials have been dragged
into anomalies involving the alleged fraudulent award of claims and
even of outright extortion from claimants, the rulings of the
appellate court and the Supreme Court left no doubt that, in the
case of the B’laan, at least, they had all the rights to the land.
The Supreme Court sustained the appellate
court’s observation that Alcantara had cooperated with the
commission, in effect accepting its jurisdiction.
“He participated actively in the proceedings
before [the commission], filing an answer, a motion for
reconsideration of the [commission’s] decision and a supplement
to respondents’ motion for reconsideration,” the Supreme Court
pointed out.
“This Court has repeatedly held that the
active participation of a respondent in the case pending against him
before a court of a quasi-judicial body is tantamount to
recognizing that court’s or body’s jurisdiction and a
willingness to abide by the resolution of the case, and will bar
said party from later on impugning the court’s or body’s
jurisdiction,” it stressed.
The petitioner, the Court noted, had gone to the
appellate court on the issue of jurisdiction “only when he
realized that his period to appeal [the commission’s] decision had
lapsed.” It dismissed Alcantara’s complaint that he was not
given due process in the commission’s proceedings.
The Court also upheld the appellate court’s
stance that the commission, indeed, has the power to entertain cases
involving indigenous cultural communities when the environment
department or the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples fails or
refuses to act on complaints or grievances.
For Paglangan, however, the real victory lies in
the Supreme Court upholding the appellate court’s verdict
recognizing the B’laan as the original occupiers of the land–a
fact that, the Supreme Court stressed, had not been disputed by
Alcantara.
The appellate court and the Supreme Court also
upheld the settlement commission’s finding that the grant of
Alcantara’s FLGLA was flawed in the first place, because it
violated PD 410.
Tarnished win
Alvarez’s successor, Elisea Gozun, takes
effort to convey her acceptance of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
She denies reports of overturning the
environment department’s cancellation of Alcantara’s FLGLA, and
says Alvarez’s decision stays.
But she cites the urgency of ensuring the proper
disposition of the land.
She points out that the spirit of the law does
not allow Paglangan to dispose of the 300 hectares any way he sees
fit. The same proviso covers other claimants, she adds. The land
must be used for the benefit of indigenous people, she insists.
For justice to be served, Gozun notes, no
disposal should occur unless this issue is resolved.
The claimants themselves, while protesting
Gozun’s move, prove her fears are genuine.
Pendatun says Paglangan has sold the rights to
the 300 hectares to a big business eager to develop prime land near
the city’s international airport.
Speaking for the other intervenors, Pendatun
notes that Paglangan does not hold exclusive claim to the 300
hectares–as the heirs of B’laan Datu Sabil and Datu Lasid Acop
also have a share to that portion of the land.
Yet Paglangan has not only bid out the land to
big developers. He has also allegedly sold “membership” to 3,000
urban-poor households, for at least P1,600 a share.
The new squatters, Pendatun asserts, have
encroached beyond the 300-hectare portion into the lands allegedly
owned by the three intervenors.
Unfortunately for Pendatun, his own claims are
suspect.
Dunuan’s reply to the case, filed before the
Office of the Ombudsman for Mindanao by Pendatun, Mula and Gawan,
accuses the complainants of trying “to further confuse the issues
of the case and to delay the proper implementation” of the
decisions of the settlement commission, the Court of Appeals and the
Supreme Court.
In the first place, the commission had denied
the intervenors’ petition for lack of merit on August 15, 2002,
more than a year after the Supreme Court ruling–and on the same
day Alvarez canceled Alcantara’s FLGLA.
Pendatun says he was “tricked” into filing
the case against Commissioner Dunuan, which he has since withdrawn.
Dunuan points out that the Supreme Court made no
specific mention of the intervenors, giving her no recourse but to
consider Paglangan and his group the rightful claimants.
Says she: “If, indeed, the complainants
Pendatun et al. have any valid claims to any portion of the
ancestral lands . . . their recourse [is] to submit their claim and
proof of ancestral landownership to the [National Commission on
Indigenous Peoples], the agency that shall determine how the
ancestral lands covered by the canceled FLGLA 542 shall be titled
and distributed in accordance with the Indigenous People’s Rights
Act.”
Efforts by the environment department to resolve
the controversy led to the signing on April 24 of a four-point
agreement that recognizes the mandate of the national commission.
The Pendatun group, at least, had the good sense to sign the
agreement.
(To be continued)
Part 1
| Sidebar to Part 2 | Part
3 | Conclusion
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