Philippines’ indigenous Higaonon fight for return of ancestral land

BAGOCBOC, Philippines – Morning hasn’t broken, but the town’s resident fighting cocks are already awake, their crows rising and falling to different decibel levels, the locations moving like lightning bugs floating in the dark.

When the sun is higher, a few members of the people’s organization called Pangalasag, meaning “Indigenous Shield,” gather behind the house of Joseph Paborada, the group’s chairman, in the town of Bagocboc on the Philippine island of Mindanao. He had been expecting more members to attend the meeting, but the unannounced arrival of a handful of soldiers who have decided to show up for a dialogue may have scared them off.

One man sits off to the side with one of the fighting cocks that has befriended him, petting the top of the bird’s head and beak. From where he sits you can see to the neighboring town of Tingalan and the palm oil plantation that now covers what used to be his and other local farmers’ plots of land. After the corporation acquired his land he was left with only a half-hectare to till, but he says it is enough to survive since his children are grown and his wife recently died. He is hoping that pending government legislation and legal action might help him get his land back.

He looks off and waits. Paborada states his and Pangalasag’s desire unequivocally: “We want our land back.”

Gifts of displacement and destruction

The native inhabitants of the Philippines (called Lumads), historically have had their homelands targeted for large corporate development projects, including mining operations, hydroelectric dams and mono-crop plantations, as documented by organizations like the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Northern Mindanao Sub-Region (RMP-NMR). Representatives say the Lumads have been promised myriad benefits by development companies, but have more often been delivered the gifts of displacement, destruction of their environment, livelihood and culture, and the killing of their tribal leaders.

“This is not the type of development people are asking for—the destructive development that will ruin their lives,” Ailene Villarosa, Advocacy Officer for the RMP-NMR’s “Healing the Hurt” Project explained to Mongabay.

The RMP-NMR’s programs have monitored the government’s promotion of the palm oil industry and what they describe as the “development aggression” that arrived in northern Mindanao in 2002 in the form of agribusiness company A Brown Corporation, Inc. A Brown partakes in trading, real estate, mining and energy, and palm oil cultivation and milling, which is handled by its subsidiary A Brown Energy and Resources Development, Inc. (ABERDI).

            Joseph Paborada was farming mango, bananas and corn on the land around Bagocboc before ABERDI arrived, as did his family before him. The Office for the United Nation’s Commissioner for Human Rights documents that the towns of Bagocboc and Tingalan in the municipality of Opol, Misamis Oriental province, both lie within the ancestral territory of the Higaonon people. Jomorito Goaynon, Chair of the Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organization, says that during a series of land-grabs and occupations by cattle ranchers in the 1950s, the Higaonon were alternately forced off their land and then able to move back as various landlords came and went, even though the land was now deforested and their communal structure of life fractured.

The Higaonon people filed an “ancestral domain claim” in 2002 for land they have traditionally inhabited, which is their right under the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997. Joseph Paborada and the organization Pangalasag (then called the Sarahogon Bagocboc Farmer’s Association) also petitioned the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for the land rights to 520 hectares of an old, abandoned grazing concession they had reclaimed and were farming. But according to both Joseph Paborada and Jomorito Goaynon, the local DENR officials were in negotiations with a pro-corporation organization called the KMBT, which ended in a Memorandum of Agreement allowing ABERDI to establish its palm oil plantation on the already-cultivated land under what is called the Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) program.

While the DENR and Departments of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform are mandated to facilitate business ventures in agribusiness, they are also responsible for protecting the welfare of the inhabitants and ensuring that corporations provide social services within areas of investment. Paborada and Goaynon allege that some of Opol’s residents were tricked into waiving the rights to their land using signatures transferred onto documents they never read, and others were not even made aware of the investment negotiations, and human rights NGOs and government agencies have questioned whether the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) ever ensured that ABERDI obtained the Higaonon’s free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) that is necessary under the Philippine Constitution.

Jomorito Goaynon said that a 2014 Congressional hearing found that an actual CBFM agreement for the area never existed. The DENR’s Assistant Chief of Enforcement Division in Region 10, Sarah Chacon, said in a March 2017 interview with Mongabay that there is an ongoing investigation into whether ABERDI is operating with the proper permits.

Permits or not, ABERDI began clearing the land for its nursery and planting operations in 2010/2011 under its subsidiary, Nakeen Corporation. Pangalasag members say that even those who did not opt to give up their land were barred entry to their farms by the company’s armed guards, who were given what Joseph Paborada called a “shoot to kill” order if anyone trespassed. Paborada said anyone not backing Nakeen’s operation was harassed – their crops destroyed or planted over with oil palm, their houses burnt.

One morning in 2010, Edwin Baronggot was working his land. He recalled how a dump truck and several other vehicles arrived, loaded with armed company guards, government security forces and members of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). Shots were fired, he said, and people ran. Baronggot said he was apprehended, beaten by an NBI agent and thrown in jail for two weeks. His case was dismissed three years ago, but he has lost his land and his livelihood, and hasn’t returned to his farm since the incident. He says he lives under the pall of a death threat, as does Joseph Paborada, whose brother Gilbert, the prior leader of Pangalasag, was shot and killed on Oct. 3, 2012 in Cagayan de Oro City by two men on a motorcycle. Joseph claims his brother was murdered after refusing one million pesos to cease his opposition to the palm oil operation. Then on December 2, 2013, one of the group’s founding members, Rolen Langala, was allegedly killed by a Bagocboc town councilor, stabbed and shot twice in the head at a community fiesta, according to the Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organization.

But because of “money and power,” says Joseph Paborada, “the force has continued.” He added that the murders have remained unpunished. Pangalasag members say that the elected town leader of Tingalan, allegedly a supervisor at the plantation, is now driving around in an expensive SUV and protected by armed security. Tension remains in the community, which is divided over the issue of palm oil.

An atmosphere of impunity and lack of responsiveness by government agencies has left Paborada and others feeling abandoned and forgotten. He says he has little faith in the squad of soldiers from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that are now camped out in the town hall for what Staff Sergeant Felipe Minister told Mongabay was a Civilian-Military Operation under President Rodrigo Duterte’s Development, Support and Security Plan – the new program being employed to fight the 48-year-old insurgency of the communist New People’s Army (NPA).

From past experience, the indigenous Higaonon regard the military as “protectors of the plantations,” as Paborada puts it, and claim it brands anyone that opposes the palm oil industry as NPA.

The Nakeen Corporation suspended its operation in Opol in September 2016, and Joseph Paborada says the community was left with no benefits, broken promises and one alternative: “If the government won’t help us, we will seek help from the NPA.”

“We just want our land back”

Another community where the Higaonon and other tribal groups say their lives have been critically altered by palm oil is the town of Kalabugao, Bukidnon. ABERDI began planting here in 2006/2007, again under its subsidiary Nakeen Corporation. And as in the case of Opol, the company ceased operation – this time in the summer of 2016.

Just as they did in Misamis Oriental, the DENR facilitated an agreement with a people’s organization, called KASAMAKA. This allowed ABERDI to cultivate 1,000 hectares of traditional tribal land on a CBFM plot allotted to local residents, according to Goaynon.

The CBFM program was ostensibly created to promote reforestation and aid local economies. But combined with the DENR’s 2004 directive qualifying the oil palm tree as a reforestation species, the program has also made it easier for oil palm plantations to invade an area.

In this case, the people of Kalabugao were generally more open to ABERDI’s arrival, welcoming the potential benefits and economic prosperity. But with nine years still remaining on its lease, critics say the company has left the people in places like the village of Kaanibungan with nothing.

“Now they don’t have their land and they don’t have their wages,” said Mary Louise Dumas, executive director of the Mindanao Interfaith Institute on Lumad Studies.

Workers who have formed an offshoot of KASAMAKA called the Kaanibungan Farmer’s Association (KAFA) say they aren’t exactly sure why the Nakeen Corporation closed its doors, but speculate that it was for economic reasons. They only know that one morning they arrived for work and the company security guard informed them there wasn’t any.

Village leader Victor Sanugan said in an interview that some people were able to rent land from their neighbors and plant corn and root crops as they had before the company arrived. But for others, the unexpected shutdown left them in crisis, with no jobs or land. He says that they have received no severance pay.

“If any investors come back we will not accept them anymore,” said Amor Pinaapol, a member of another community organization called Lagimo, during Mongabay’s visit to Kaanibungan in March 2017.

During the same visit, one woman scoffed that palm oil is useless, good only for cosmetics, while farming food maintains life.

“We just want our land back,” she said, adding that if they had the resources, they would burn out all the oil palm and plant food crops again.

Community members took a similar action on January 17 of this year. Frustrated by ABERDI/Nakeen’s lack of responsiveness to their situation, they cut down a patch of oil palm. KAFA members say the company’s answer was to alert the AFP. The 8^th Battalion allegedly prepared to launch an attack, assuming they were NPA, but a dialogue was initiated and bloodshed avoided.

According to KAFA, the only other reaction from the corporation was a letter addressed to the organization and the community offering an arrangement where they would go back to piecework-based compensation, but would be charged for everything from fertilizers to the use of tools. The offer was not accepted.

Neither A Brown/ABERDI nor the Nakeen Corporation responded to Mongabay’s requests for information, which were made both in person and via email. Nakeen’s listed telephone number was disconnected, and inquiries at A Brown’s office in Cagayan De Oro City were met with a locked gate and no answers. In Kaanibungan, the workers’ quarters are weed-ridden, the abandoned basketball court watched over by feral dogs.

Accounts from individuals were obtained through interviews conducted by the author in March 2017.

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