Datu Guibang Apoga, the chieftain of the Ata-Manobo tribe in the hinterlands of Talaingod, Davao del Norte, has been in hiding for a decade now. In the lowlands of Mindanao, his face is prominently displayed on posters in bus terminals and police stations as one of the most wanted persons in Southern Mindanao. In the uplands, he is being hunted down by government-backed tribal vigilantes. How this datu’s life has come to this is a long story that began with the encroachment of big companies, mainly C. Alcantara and Sons, into his tribe’s ancestral lands.
BY DAVAO TODAY
SPECIAL REPORT
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 38, October 28-November 3, 2007
TALAINGOD, Davao del Norte — Datu Guibang Apoga, the chieftain of the Ata-Manobo tribe in the hinterlands of Talaingod, has been in hiding for a decade now.
In the lowlands of Mindanao, his face is prominently displayed on posters in bus terminals and police stations as one of the most wanted persons in Southern Mindanao. In the uplands, he is being hunted down by government-backed tribal vigilantes.
In 1997, a warrant of arrest was issued against Datu Guibang and 25 other leaders of his tribe who had fought, using their spears and arrows, the armed goons of [1] Ecowood plywood whose expansion encroached into the tribal lands of the Ata Manobos. Ironically, it was also the year when the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), which purported to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, was signed into law by then President Fidel Ramos.
How the Ata-Manobo datu has come into hiding is a long story that began with the encroachment of big companies into the tribe’s ancestral lands. As the tribe urged other Mindanao tribes to withdraw their certificates of ancestral domain titles (CADT) and scrap the IPRA, the struggle of this fugitive datu and other Mindanao tribes is not about to end soon.
The first encroachment
In 1991, Alsons encroached into the Ata Manobo territories when it initiated tree planting activities in Talaingod after the government approved its Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA). Through IFMA, logging companies like Alsons, with expired Timber License Agreements (TLA), were able to convert their logging concessions into commercial timber plantations.
Owned by the powerful Alcantara family whose members include top officials in the Ramos and Arroyo regimes, Alsons was working out, in the early ’90s, an application to increase the coverage of its operations from 19,000 to 45,000 hectares — an area that practically covers the entire Talaingod. At around this time, Paul Dominguez, a member of the Alcantara business and political dynastry, was the presidential assistant for Mindanao.
(To learn more about Alsons’ business practices, read this special report in The Manila Times in 2003.)
Talaingod had just been turned into a town, with former Alsons security guard, Jose Libayao, lording over it as mayor. Libayao was an Ata Manobo. He was not from Talaingod but from Mapula, in Paquibato District, Davao City. He signed the agreement that put the entire Talaingod area under Alson’s IFMA. The plan also included relocating Ata-Manobo communities to a 5,000 hectare relocation site.
Datu Guibang and his fellow tribal leaders fiercely opposed the proposal. The datus agreed to unite in defense of their land.
Pangayao vs Alsons’ IFMA
On Nov. 30, 1993, Datu Guibang gathered the tribal leaders at dusk to perform the rites of a pangayao (tribal war), where the datus made the sacred vow to unite and defend their land. They then formed the Salugpungan Ta Tanu Igkanugon (Unity in Defense of Ancestral Land).
The Salugpungan initiated dialogues with Libayao, demanding that they be distinguished from the Lumads who supported Alsons’s IFMA. They also delineated a boundary that would separate the land of those who opposed the IFMA from those who were in favor of it.
But Libayao and other pro IFMA tribal leaders rejected the Salugpungan’s move. Libayao insisted that Talaingod should stand as one municipality and told Salugpungan leaders that the group had no legal authority to bar Alsons’ IFMA.
Alsons started accusing Salugpungan leaders of instigating “anti-government activities.” Soon, attacks against Lumad communities in Talaingod began.
In February 1994, three truckloads of soldiers from the Philippine Army’s 64th Infantry Batttalion swooped down on anti-IFMA villages, purportedly to rid the area of the communist New People’s Army (NPA).
Many Lumads fled their communities as troops burned down houses, looted harvests and slaughtered livestock. The military also set up a detachment in one of the Lumad villages.
(Read Bulatlat.com’s report, “Terror in Ancestral Lands,” on the militarization of Lumad lands.)
In August 1994, more than 500 Ata-Manobos fled to the town centers of Davao del Norte as a result of the military operations. They found temporary sanctuaries in church grounds and facilities, while Datu Guibang and the Salugpungan leaders remained in the hinterland to defend their ground.
Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte called a dialog between the Salugpungan leaders and the pro-IFMA leaders led by Libayao. As a result, the two conflicting parties signed a Memorandum of Agreement, where the two parties agreed to exclude the Salugpungan areas from IFMA operations. They also agreed to call for an appropriate government agency to survey and map the Salugpungan territory. They also agreed that Alsons and the military should pull out.
But a month after the signing of the agreement, Alsons, using its heavy equipment, continued encroaching into the area claimed by the Salugpungan. The soldiers were also back.
(To learn more about human rights abuses linked to “forest management,” read the 1996 report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch titled “The Philippines: Human Rights and Forest Management in the 1990s.” In the report, the case of Talaingod and Alsons is cited prominently.)
Outraged, Datu Guibang sent word that the Salugpungan datus would soon start their pangayao but the Alsons guards only laughed at them, making fun of their traditional weapons.
This angered the datus. After their third warning went unheeded, they engaged Alsons’ guards in a battle near the border of their territory, using only their spears and arrows.
The encounter killed and wounded some of the Alsons’ guards. The IFMA was abruptly aborted and a warrant of arrest was issued against Datu Guibang and 25 Salugpungan leaders.
As a result, Datu Guibang retreated deep into the forests of Talaingod. But this did not stop the Salugpungan communities from looking up to him as their leader.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jose Libayao increasingly enjoyed the backing of the military.
The second encroachment
The IPRA allowed Lumads to secure their land through certificates of ancestral domain titles (CADT). The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the implementing arm of the IPRA that plays an important role in the official delineation of the Lumad lands, recognized Libayao’s group called Talakayan, or the Talaingod Langilan Enkaylawan Ata-Manobo Tribal Leaders Association.
But in 2001, the NPA assassinated Libayao, prompting his group to launch its own pangayao. This pangayao was supported by the 73rd Infantry Battalion, under Col. Eduardo del Rosario, who started recruiting Lumads into a paramilitary group called Alamara.
Sagip, a church- and academe-based group, documented the series of human-rights violations and harassments of civilians, especially in Datu Guibang’s barangay of Nasilaban, allegedly perpetrated by the Alamara.
The conflict reached a point when Salugpungan leaders brought the matter to the attention of Governor Rodolfo del Rosario, who called the NCIP legal counsel Jake Dumagan and Salugpungan leaders to a dialog. The meeting brought Dumagan to the territory of Salugpungan, where he eventually met up with Datu Guibang.
In a Salugpungan assembly in 2004, Dumagan told Datu Guibang that Salugpungan must sign the application for CADT, otherwise the tribe would lose by default to the Talakayan, which was already applying for it. Convinced, Datu Guibang printed his thumb mark on a document prepared by Dumagan.
Later, it came out that Dumagan had secured a special power of attorney for Datu Guibang’s son-in-law, Vic Balagasi, who signed the documents on behalf of Datu Guibang and the Salugpungan leaders without proper consultation and without the datu’s consent.
Sagip then learned in 2004 that the CADT application over 65,683 hectares of land covering areas in the municipalities of Kapalong, Sto. Tomas and Talaingod, was suspended due to “peace and order situation.”
Then, in late 2004, some members of Salugpungan were gathered in an assembly meant to get the consent of the community on a planned hydroelectric power plant within Salugpungan territory, in compliance with the IPRA provision on “free and prior informed consent.”
The plant would encroach into a sizable portion of the Salugpungan territory. The project also included diverting Kipaliku river (also known as Talomo river) traversing the Salugpungan land to connect to another river, Gabuyan, to come up with the needed current to generate power.
Most of the consultations made on this project were done by the NCIP with members of Talakayan, not Salugpungan.
Outraged, the Salugpungan, in 2005, joined a major consultation where their members read a position paper opposing the energy project. Although the project did not push through, the military conducted operations in Salugpungan territory the following months and made Nasilaban a base of their Reengineered Special Operations Team (RSOT).
Last year, the Salugpungan, convinced of the NCIP’s duplicity, decided to withdraw its application for ancestral domain claims with the NCIP.
More recently, in a Mindanao conference to sum up the indigenous tribes’ experiences after 10 years of IPRA, Lumad leaders all over Mindanao called for the scrapping of the law. In that conference, Salugpungan leaders also urged other Lumad groups in Mindanao to withdraw their claims.
This interview with Datu Guibang, conducted in Lumad and Visayan, was held in 2006, months before the Salugpungan withdrew its ancestral claim.
DAVAO TODAY: Why did the government put you on its wanted list?
DATU GUIBANG-: Because we stood up for the land we live on.
Is it a crime to stand up for our land? We did not encroach on other people’s land. They are the ones who have no respect for our rights. They try to take away the land from us and call us communists, fugitives, terrorists. We did not trespass or steal other people’s land. It is the government who besieged us and dispossessed us of our lands.
DT: What kind of life have you lived since you were declared a fugitive?
DG: I lived in constant hiding. We experienced walking many nights under the rain. We slept without a roof above our heads and only have banana leaves for a bed. We had to endure mosquitoes. We had to endure not being able to eat in a day or two. We even eat bananas even if they are still young and bitter.
DT: Did you ever fall ill?
DG: I did, so did the others in our league. I experienced urinating and vomiting blood. But the most difficult thing was my inability to sleep at night.
DT: Where is your family?
DG: They are in the sitios (subvillages). But there are times we had to take them with us, especially when their lives are in danger.
DT: For instance?
DG: Like when the members of Talakayan went searching for us. They threatened to take as hostages the wives of the datus who are on the wanted list. They forced the youths to act as their guides. We had to go and get our wives out of the sitios.
DT: But why can’t they ever capture you?
DG: Because we are always on the move and the entire tribe is helping us. They are our eyes and ears.
DT: How much longer, Datu, do you think, can you live such life?
DG: My name has been on the list for more than 10 years. Enduring long walks for me is no longer that easy but life for us Lumads has always been an endless struggle because of the presence of intruders who threaten to take away our land from us.
DT: Has there been anyone who asked you to surrender?
DG: There have been many.
DT: What did they offer?
DG: They offered me a good life.
DT: Why didn’t you take the offer to get yourself out of the harsh life you are living now? Besides you are growing older.
DG: If I surrender, the suffering of my people in Salugpungan will multiply. Those projects, which we managed to push away, will come back. I learned a lesson from Tata Gawilan of Bukidnon who surrendered — and look what happened? He got all the benefits for himself but the rest of his tribesmen are still as wretched as ever. I’d rather die than surrender. If I surrender, what purpose is there left of me? What will I gain? Will it bring something good to the descendants of Salugpungan?
DT: We have heard stories from the military, Datu, that you appear dauntless because you are supported by the NPA.
DG: There were no NPAs when I stood for our ancestral land. The first time I ever had a glimpse of them was not until three years after, when they passed by our sitio. It was not the NPAs who prodded me to stand up for our land. We, Lumads, made this stand ourselves. Those who said that only meant to destroy our group, since they know they can never destroy the tribes of Salugpungan. It is our united stand to defend our land that gave me courage to stand up to the enemy like this. Had we not shown bravery, we would have lost our lands long ago, and become mere peons, just like what happened to other tribes in many other areas.
DT: Supposed they succeed in getting Datu Guibang Apoga — can the Salugpungan still stand on its feet?
DG: Our people will continue the fight. They will continue to protect our land and to stand up for their rights. I’ve seen and heard how our young ones have spoken. My son had sworn to continue the fight, just in case the enemy takes me away. But it could also be anyone from among our young, to continue what we’ve started.
DT: As you said, Datu, you have always been in hiding since. We wonder how you are still able to perform your functions as leader of your tribe?
DG: There’s always a way to communicate with the people, to talk to them, help solve practical problems, settle disputes, make sure that our laws are observed and not violated, our unities implemented, and improve ways on how we could manage our livelihood and resources better. We always make sure to inculcate in our people the importance of our basic principles of standing up in defense of our land, and our aspiration for respect for rights as a people and our right to self-determination.
DT: What problems for instance, Datu?
DG: Settling disputes, especially something that pertains to our culture and traditions like pangayao.
DT: Why do you think they continue to listen to you?
DG: People respect a leader who truly serves his people, someone who stands up to defend his land. There are those who pose as datus but they sell out their lands. They are not true leaders.
DT: So at present, Datu, what do you think is the most difficult problem faced by your tribe?
DG: Pangayao between communities is no longer a very difficult problem to solve. I see, as a difficult problem, the widespread poverty of our people and the entry of businesses who want to exploit our land for their own gains.
DT: Why do you think are these problems difficult to solve?
DG: It was IFMA that brought trouble to our tribe.
When IFMA came here, Alsons wanted our mountains to be turned into plantations of various types of trees. They looked down on us, as if we were deers and monkeys. We set boundaries so they would not intrude into our lands. It took us two years, trying to talk to them. They did not listen to us. They continued with their project, leaving us with no choice but to fight. We used what were available to us — arrows, spears and wooden traps — to defend our land. We declared pangayao against them. When they continued intruding into our boundaries, we fought Alsons men with what we had in our hands.
DT: We learned that it was the reason why they carried out the warrant.
DG: That’s right.
DT: Did these attempts to seize lands from you stop?
DG: It stopped for a while. But there were military operations afterwards, which displaced and harassed our tribe members.
DT: Is it still happening ?
DG: Yes, up to now.
DT: What do you think was the purpose?
DG: We think those operations were meant to pave the way for the entry of those projects because we notice that every time they leave, another band of military men would follow and another set of projects would come.
DT: What are these projects?
DG: What I have seen are the so-called CBFM (Community Based Forest Management), plantation projects of tree varieties such as falcatta, palm oil and also bananas. And now, another problem brought by the coming of the hydropower project.
DT: Were you consulted about this?
DG: No. They (the NCIP and other project proponents) met with other datus and dragged some of my tribesmen to their assembly for the approval of the hydropower plant. But the key officials of Salugpungan were never informed.
DT: Did the hydro project push through?
DG: It didn’t push through because of the petitions opposing it.
DT: After the hydropower project, what happened next?
DG: The troops came! There were military operations in Tibukag, Milyong up to Nasilaban.
All we want is peace in our land. Instead, they give us projects without our consent. We have decided to withdraw our CADT. CADT does not give us back our lands. It doesn’t recognize our right to self-determination. Instead, it makes it easier for them to grab our lands. I am making a call to all Lumads who have been deceived by this scheme. We don’t own our land just because the NCIP give us a piece of document. We, the people who work and live on this land for hundreds of years, are the real and living proofs that this land is our land.
DT: What will you do if they insist on those projects?
DG: We have no choice but to fight. If they would insist in taking the land away from us, then we must fight. As long as we still have our spears and arrows, we will continue to protect our land. Davao Today / Posted by Bulatlat
