Rumblings in an otherwise peaceful city (2)

General Santos City—Weak land governance systems have spawned many violent conflicts in the Bangsamoro region and in an otherwise peaceful city like Gensan. Such systems hark back to colonial days, especially during the American period (from early 1900s to when the United States government granted the Philippines independence on July 4, 1945).

One of these systems was the introduction of the Torrens land titling, or “titulo Torren” as some of the older folk of Magindanawn refer to it. This system was introduced during the first few years of the American colonial period when the colonial government enacted the Land Registration Act of 1902, or Act No. 496, which provided for a “comprehensive registration of land titles under the Torrens system.”

The Torrens system originated in Australia, where Sir Robert Richard Torrens (1812-1884) proposed a private land ownership bill that became law, the Real Property Act of 1858 in the province of South Australia. Since then, it has become a widely used system in many parts of the world, of provenience for absolute ownership, considered to be conclusive against third parties, even the government. Those who hold a Torrens title to a piece of real property, in “good faith,” are granted legal guarantees that their ownership of the land is legal, “indefeasible, unassailable, and imprescriptible.”

Such an absolute ownership concept of a piece of land was something quite strange to indigenous peoples in Mindanao, including those who have converted to Islam, like the Magindanawn, the Tausug and Meranaw, and other Islamized populations here. Islam was introduced to different Mindanao communities as early as the 13th century, predating the arrival of the Spaniards in the early 16th century, starting with the coming of Ferdinand Magellan (or Fernando de Magallanes in Spanish).

Indigenous peoples like the Blaan (native to South Cotabato and Dadiangas, now Gensan), the Teduray and Teduray-Lambangian of the Maguindanao provinces, and many other tribes inhabiting the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi had believed in another concept of land ownership. This is the principle of stewardship, based on the principle that no one individual has the right to own land in an absolute sense—to be purchased, and disposed of like any other material property.

I often hear indigenous peoples here in Mindanao invoke that “only God absolutely owns something that outlives us, like land.” Such a concept is based on a common tradition of adat, or customary law. This customary law prescribes that no one person can dispose of land in the way it is being treated in capitalist economies, where it can be used as a guarantee for mortgages and other credit systems. In this system, land is collectively owned by a clan or a group of families claiming common ancestry, and it can be shared by anyone who needs to till the land for their sustenance.

At the time of colonial conquest, many indigenous peoples in Mindanao and many other parts of the Philippines (like the Mountain provinces of Benguet and Ifugao) were unlettered in English, the language of the Torrens titles. It was easy for many of the rulers among indigenous tribes to be hoodwinked by scheming migrant populations brought by the colonial government to Mindanao and its island provinces.

This tragic history has spawned all grievances of indigenous and the pioneering Islamized Magindanawn migrants to South Cotabato and Gensan. Some of the narratives of indigenous peoples on how their lands were “legally” taken away from them through the various colonial Public Land Acts (1902, 1903, and 1905) are in the collection of Listening Process stories compiled in the reports of the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission created in 2014. (See these reports on tjrc.ph.)

Early this month, a succession of tragic incidents happened in the barangay of Ligaya, a rural barangay now slowly unfolding as a possible mini-metro area, with the establishment of a branch of the University of Santo Tomas there. One incident involved the wounding of a student in a madrasah (Arabic school) in Ligaya who got hit by a stray bullet from an M-79 grenade launcher. This armed confrontation stemmed from land contestation issues of ancestral land claims versus those who are now holding Torrens titles. The other one was a fatal shooting incident that was believed again to be triggered by rido, or clan conflict based on land disputes in the barangay.

More incidents like these will happen if the land ownership, ancestral land claims, and other land governance issues are not going to be resolved peacefully, and with finality. There is a need to review comprehensively outdated land ownership systems like the Torrens and find some middle-of-the-road peaceful solutions to this problem, especially in areas where indigenous peoples comprise a substantive sector of the population.

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