THIS year was the first time I veered away from staring the television and wait for the Philippine President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III to give his annual State of the Nation Address (Sona). Instead, I went to a rural village of Butong in Quezon town, Bukidnon province on the eve of his anticipated speech.
There I met the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe, composed of various clans and groups, who settled in small, make-shift houses (that can be transportable, which epitomizes the native Filipino home). I was filming the Tribal Indigenous Opressed Group Association (Tindoga) for another documentary film project, and they have many stories to tell.
The issue on Pulangihon struggle in Quezon, Bukidnon particularly in Barangay Butong is not new to me, as I was one of the witness when one of its groups, the Villanon Clan, attempted to reclaim their ancestral domain in 2012 by entering the fenced area of what is now part of the Montalban Ranch.
The Villanon Clan back then were residing just beside the farm road, facing the sugar cane plantation and barbed wire fences guarded by heavily armed men, of whom some were wearing camouflage suits.
The conflict ensued while they were trying to advance their houses and things beyond the fence when they were confronted by the armed guards and a fair-skinned man on face was covered with his cap, shouted for them to leave the premises.
I thought it will culminate with gun burst and bloodshed, seeing the tension was escalating, but fortunately it didn’t. But last April 23 this year, it happened again and this time it was Tindoga that made the advances.
Unlike in 2012, this time it led to armed guards (or the group is calling it “private army”) firing at people and allegedly targeting Tindoga’s leader, Datu Santiano Agdahan, all of these where visiting organizations were present. The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines in Northern Mindanao Region even documented the whole event with still and video images captured.
At the end of the day, a member of the tribe was hit in his legs, a mother got traumatized and child died weeks later due to the traumatic experience.
All the group wanted, was to till in their lands and benefit the harvest from their own labor and won’t allow the entities of the private businessman Pablo Lorenzo “Poling” Montalban to “rent” their ancestral domains in exchange for their harvest.
As of now, the Pulangihon groups were divided, some benefited in receiving their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles, which were allegedly backed by Montalban because of his interest to rent them, and some - like Tindoga - were delayed because their refusal to do Montalban’s bidding. The fact is that the Tindoga already had its Certificates but they were given the land area which were rocky and non-arable, which were not good in planting crops.
Thus the continuing struggle for Tindoga’s struggle for their rightful ancestral domain - claiming that the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the Local Government Unit betrayed them and blinded by Montalban’s influence over the lands.
And this is what PNoy’s Sona gravely missed, like any presidents before him. I did not say that the “facts and figures” and the “improvement” he was talking about were all falsehoods, it may have indeed benefited some sectors - however, the sectors of the few and already well-benefited, and not actually the majority let alone the indigenous minorities and Mindanao in general where the culture on warlords and feudal lords are still observed in some parts making government officials as mere puppets.
[Email: nefluczon@gmail.com]