Posted on Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Conflicts among Mindanao lumads 
undermine claim to ancestral lands

By Inday Espina-Varona

Sidebar to Part 2

Mindanao’s history casts a long bloody shadow, and the dispute over 923 hectares of a pasture and timber lease estate in General Santos City, South Cotabato, highlights how conflicts among indigenous peoples themselves undermine their claim to ancestral lands.

The Commission on the Settlement of Land Problems (CSLP) has recom­mended the cancellation of Nicasio Alcantara’s Forest Land and Grazing Lease Agreement 542 covering the 923 hectares, citing a B’laan, Rolando Pag­la­ngan, as the rightful claimant to the land.

But another group, led by a scion of a Maguindanao royal family, accuses Paglangan of usurping its claim, acting in bad faith following an offer to help the Pendatun, Mula and Gawan clans reclaim their lands.

Representatives of the three clans, all related to each other, insist Paglangan cannot prove his ties to the land he claims. Yet relations among the three families, while cordial, also simmer with class conflicts dating from the Mindanao sulta­nate era, before the arrival of Spa­nish colonizers whom Mus­lims fought to a standstill on the main Southern Philippines island.

Taken for a ride?

Datu Nasser Pendatun, son of the late Datu Abdul Pendatun, himself has come under fire for trying to cast aspersion on Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Elisea Gozun and officials of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. He tried to block Gozun’s confirmation at the Commission on Appointments and filed an antigraft case against NCIP Commissioner Evelyn Saquing-Dunuan, accusing her of bias for Paglangan, a charge Dunuan angrily denied.

In an exclusive interview with The Manila Times, Pendatun admitted acting against Gozun and Dunuan.

“Pero napilitan lang kami ng ibang grupo. [We were influenced by some groups].”

Pendatun singled out Val Lopez, former environment secretary Heherson Alvarez’s security chief. Lopez also figures in a department probe ordered by Gozun for having given questionable orders to Andrew Patricio Jr., the environment department’s officer in General Santos City, to demolish Alcantara’s structures on the disputed land and immediately install the claimants.

“We were used,” Pendatun admitted.

He said he was made to sign the complaint against Commissioner Dunuan late at night. “We were very tired. The next day I read the document carefully and decided to withdraw the case.”

Pendatun has since signed an affidavit of desistance on the case against Dunuan. He has also apologized to Gozun for trying to derail her confirmation at the Commission on Appointments.

Muslim royalty

It’s a little strange to hear Pendatun, an eloquent 40-year-old, admitting to having such serious lapses in judgment. But his long discourse on how Maguindanao Muslims lost their land, and Paglangan’s successful Maneuvers to wrest control of their claim, display a mixture of bravura and naivety or, worse, a laxity that casts doubt on his efforts to present himself as his tribe’s best hope for progress.

Pendatun still has to present his genealogical ancestry to the national commission. But few Muslim elders in General Santos and Maguindanao question his direct links to the great sultans of Central Mindanao or his family’s former possession of lands now held by Alcantara.

Neither Dunuan nor Gozun challenges Pendatun’s claim. All they want, the officials say, is due process, to ensure that whatever final land awards do benefit the rightful claimants.

Feeling at once proud and bitter, Pendatun recalls his people’s battles to hold on to their land, which once occupied “vast tracts” from Sarangani to Davao del Sur.

History books do not dispute Pendatun’s ancestors’ colorful role in Mindanao, a past he describes as “full of grandeur and prestige.”

What to most Filipinos is history, however, remains living faith to this scion of Muslim royalty, who belies Paglangan’s claim to the Alcantara pastureland on the basis of the B’laan tribe’s ancient position as slaves.

Ancient Filipino society had four classes. On top were the datus or royalty and the maharlika, freemen exempt from taxes in return for their vassalage to the datus. Next in line were the Timawa, comprising a big number of freed slaves. They paid taxes and worked as farm or house help of the datu, though at times they also enlisted as warriors, brave men ascending to the status of maharlika.

At the bottom were the slaves, whether of a household or a community. They could not own property, could be sold off, and had to seek a datu’s permission to marry.

In this light Pendatun asperses Paglangan’s claim to the land.

“How can slaves own land?” was a common theme throughout the interview.
Paglangan, Pendatun says, actually comes from Purol Batutitik, Barangay Basag, in T’boli, South Cotabato. His wife, Ana, is also from the B’laan tribe – which, Pendatum insists, included the T’boli until the “artificial bestowing of tribal status” on people from one town during the Marcos administration.

“It’s like saying a Caviteño or Batangeño is not Tagalog,” he points out. “They’re all Tagalogs; they just come from different towns and provinces.”

Sultanate

Pendatun traces his roots to Sultan Sharif Kabungsuwan and Sultan Abidin, the latter allegedly a direct descendant of Muhammad, Islam’s great prophet.
(In his book, Muslims in the Philippines, Dr. Cesar Majul, notes that the term sharif refers to a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hasan and that a sayyid is a descendant through his other grandson, Hussein. In the Philippines, says Majul, these terms were used interchangeably and sometimes simultaneously.)

Abidin married Princess Jusul Asikin, royal daughter of the Sultan of Johore, and they had three sons: Sharif Amad, Sharif Alawi and Sharif Kabungsuwan, who ruled in the Islamic regions of postcolonial Philippines and took a Maguindanao princess for a wife.

Kabungsuwan was succeeded by direct descendants, and a few generations later emerged Sultan Dipatuan Kudarat, who ruled Maguindanao for 50 years. Until then the royals did not take the title “Sultan.”

Kudarat ruled with Cotabato as his seat of power. Pendatun, however, says Sultan Kudarat’s vast farmland lay on the plains of Dajangas, now General Santos City.

Unlike Paglangan’s tale of innocence lost among the B’laan, Pendatun’s story concerns fierce resistance by Maguindanaoan datus to the Spanish invaders and their defense of their lands and their Islamic faith, the height of resistance marked in the realms of the Buayan datus. Majul, however, notes that by 1861 the Maguindanao datus had loosened their hold on power, allowing the Spaniards to occupy the lower valleys of Pulangi. He also explains that although the Buayan datus may have married into Maguindanao royal clans, they had a distinct identity, mainly agricultural, compared with the seafaring Iranun.

By the 1900s, at the time of the great Cotabato Chinese-mestizo chieftain, Datu Piang, the sultan of Maguindanao had transferred his capital from Pulangi to somewhere else in Iranun territory.

End of dominion

The sultanate throne always passed on to a direct descendant. Sometimes the datus, conferred the title by consensus.

Pedatun points out that at the time of Rajah Buayan, while a series of Spanish incursions threatened Maguindanao, the royal family maintained possession and ownership of large agricultural plantations and livestock farms, from Dajangas to parts of present-day Bukidnon, Sarangani and Davao del Sur.

The capital of the Sultan Muhammad Jalal ud-Dom Pablu lay opposite the town of Cotabato, across Pulangi. He was succeeded by Sultan Mangilin or Mangigin, who ruled Talik, and Sultan Sambuto, who ruled Koronadal and Sarangani.

Sambutu was the grandfather of Datu Abdul, Pendatun’s father. He, too, took the route of resistance, even with the coming of the Americans.

Mangilin’s son, Datu Pangalisan Pendatun, also married the daughter of Sultan Sambutu, Majarajah Pendatun. Their daughter, Bai Babaedro Sambutu, was the mother of Datu Abdul, who has six other offspring.

Not all Maguindanao datus resisted the invaders. Even during the Spanish period, when the sultanate waned, individual datus dealt with the colonizers in the manner it best suited them, Majul notes.

Pendatun says that by the time of Sambutu, the period of Maguindanao dominion was over, replaced by “displacement due to force, deceit or stealth.”
He adds that his great-grandfather spent most of his years as a ruler fighting conquerors and land-grabbers.

A black year

The Maguindanaon struggle intensified in the 1930s, with the coming of Christian clans from Luzon, wielding pasture leases to almost all areas under the sultanate.

Pendatun recalls his clan’s bitter fate with Sambutu’s initial warm welcome of Gen. Paulino Santos. The general “brought thousands of Christians who considered Mindanao their promised land.”

Within a year, Christians swarmed all over Muslim lands, claiming “discovery,” and disregarding the indigenous inhabitants.

“It was a black year,” Pendatun says of his family’s history.

That experience gave birth to the Mindanao secessionist movement, the Muslim Liberation Front, organized by Datu Ugtu Matalam, a governor, and Datu Salipada Pendatun, a senator.

While Maguindanao families continued to resist, Pendatun says “some servants and slaves from the T’boli and B’laan areas collaborated with Christian officials and started squatting on the lands of the sultanate.

“How can they be owners? They were not allowed to own land,” asked Pendatun, indignant.

He insists Paglangan cannot have proof of ancestry, because B’laan used to hang their dead on the trees, “to be eaten by the crows.”

Not content with calling the B’laan slaves, Pendatun also calls them “pagans,” though many have converted to Christianity or Islam.

By the end of Sambutu’s reign, what remained of a vast domain had been forcibly taken by Christians or fraudulently registered as pasture leases.

Like Paglangan, Pendatun acknowledges that resistance met defeat at the hands of better-armed and well-organized adversaries.

Except for those who collaborated, the doors to legal justice were barred against Muslims and lumad, as executive offices were occupied by settlers from Luzon and the Visayas.

Blocked at every turn

Pendatun’s grandfather, Pangalisan, tried to recover the lands of the Maguindanao royal family, filing with the Bureau of Lands applications for the titling of their remaining possessions.

After his death, his son, Datu Abdul, pursued the application, at least for the remaining 2,400 hectares of land in General Santos City, established as rice and corn fields.

As late as 1956, Pendatun says, the government surveyed the alienable and disposable portion that was part of almost 8,000 hectares covered by Alcantara’s pasture lease. Of these, 3,500 hectares were subject to Datu Abdul’s petition.

Abdul’s efforts were in vain as Christian ranchers had already fenced off the land.

In the ensuing conflict, Abdul’s family was destroyed.

“The ranchers destroyed ancestral homes, mosques and livestock owned by the sultanate,” Pendatun said.

The government ignored the family’s legal claim, issuing the Alcantaras a total of 2,400 hectares of pasture lease, covered by agreements 2231, 2891 and 2476.
Still, the Pendatuns persevered, seeking an investigation into the “fraudulent” issuance of leases.

On December 13, 1958, Benjamin Macario, a bureau official, conducted a probe.

At one point the Maguindanao clan managed to get a writ of preliminary injunction against the leases, leading to a joint manifestation of agreement between the Alcantaras and the Pendatuns.

In the end, however, the ranchers managed to get the lands reverted to forest land, leaving it out of reach of the claimants.

Widow’s plight

Then Abdul was murdered. Nasser Pendantun said the tragedy was in no way related to the land dispute.

Still, Abdul’s death dealt the Maguindanao cause a serious blow, leaving his widow, Consolacion, helpless in the face of the Alcantaras.

She left the family lands in General Santos City and relocated to Marbel, South Cotabato, which formed part of the Koronadal sultanate. But she continued to pursue the land claim. In 1990 a group of Maguindanaoans opposed the renewal of Pasture Lease Agreement 2891, which later became Alcantara’s FLGLA 542. In 2001 the Supreme Court, upheld the Court of Appeals verdict that declared the grant of FLGLA 542, under the Ramos administration, against the Constitution.

A Maguindanao “commoner,” Ismael Sabel, whose father was a friend of Datu Abdul, took on the Pendatun cause.

“Our mother entrusted him to pursue our claim, because we were all very young,” Nasser said, referring to his other siblings, Bai Lanton, Datu Umbra and Datu Abas.

Hardly. By that time he was a lieutenant. But the call of duty often found him in far-flung areas and he had to rely on Sabel’s help.

What he did not know was the entry of Paglangan, who originally laid claim to the Cabuay land covered by a separate FLGLA, which the Alcantaras have also lost.

Paglangan persuaded Sable and Acop to entrust him with the mission. The two men agreed, “because of the high travel expense to Manila,” where the settlement commission held its hearings.

Only in 2001 did the Maguindanaoans wake up to their plight. “We learned we, the royalty, had been left out, while Ana Paglangan, the B’laan wife of Paglangan, had already usurped the right to represent the Maguindanaoans,” Pendatun railed.

The Pendatun, Mula and Gawan clans hurriedly filed a petition to intervene with the Supreme Court, which granted the motion.

(To be continued)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Sidebar to Part 2 | Conclusion