Rumble in an otherwise peaceful city (2)

General Santos City – Weak land administration systems have given rise to many violent conflicts in the Bangsamoro region and in an otherwise peaceful city like Gensan. Such systems date back to the colonial era, particularly the American period (from the early 20th century until the time the US government granted independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1945).

One of these systems was the introduction of the Torrens land title or “titulo Torren” as some of the older people of Magindanawn call it. This system was introduced in the early years of the American colonial period when the colonial government enacted the Land Registration Act of 1902 or Act No. 496 which provided for “comprehensive registration of land titles under the Torrens system”.

The Torrens system originated in Australia, where Sir Robert Richard Torrens (1812-1884) proposed a bill on private land ownership that came into force in the province of South Australia: the Real Property Act of 1858. Since then, it has become a widely used system in many parts of the world, establishing provenance for absolute ownership and being considered conclusive against third parties, even the government. Anyone who holds a Torrens title to a piece of land in “good faith” is given a legal guarantee that their ownership of the land is legal, “inalienable, indefeasible and imprescriptible”.

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Such an absolute concept of ownership of a piece of land was quite alien to the indigenous peoples of Mindanao, including the Magindanawn, Tausug and Meranaw converts to Islam, as well as other Islamized populations here. Islam was introduced in various communities in Mindanao as early as the 13th century, even before the arrival of the Spaniards in the early 16th century, starting with the arrival 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 Maguindanao provinces, and many other tribes inhabiting the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi believed in a different concept of land ownership. This is the principle of trusteeship, which is based on the principle that no individual has the right to own land in an absolute sense—it can be bought and disposed of like any other material property.

I often hear indigenous peoples here in Mindanao claim that “only God owns something that outlives us, such as land.” Such a concept is based on a common tradition of adat or customary law. This customary law dictates that no single person can dispose of land as it is done in capitalist economies where it can be used as collateral for mortgages and other credit systems. In this system, land is collectively owned by a clan or group of families claiming common ancestry, and it can be shared by anyone who needs to cultivate the land for their livelihood.

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At the time of colonial conquest, many indigenous peoples in Mindanao and many other parts of the Philippines (such as the mountain provinces of Benguet and Ifugao) did not know English, the language of the Torrens titles. Many indigenous rulers were easily deceived by scheming migrants that the colonial government brought to Mindanao and its island provinces.

This tragic history has brought forth all the grievances of the indigenous people and the Islamicized pioneer migrants of the Magindanawn to South Cotabato and Gensan. Some of the indigenous peoples' narratives of how their land was “legally” taken away from them through the various colonial Public Land Acts (1902, 1903 and 1905) can be found in the collection of stories from the Listening Process compiled in the reports of the Commission on Transitional Justice and Reconciliation established in 2014. (See these reports on tjrc.ph.)

Earlier this month, a series of tragic incidents occurred in Barangay Ligaya, a rural barangay that is slowly emerging as a potential mini-metropolis due to the establishment of a branch of the University of Santo Tomas there. In one of the incidents, a student of a madrasah (Arabic school) in Ligaya was injured when he was hit by a ricochet bullet from an M-79 grenade launcher. This armed confrontation stemmed from land disputes between ancestral land claimants and those who now hold Torrens titles. The other incident was a fatal gun incident that was also believed to be triggered by Rido, a clan conflict stemming from land disputes in the barangay.

More incidents like this will occur unless land tenure, ancestral claims and other land management issues are peacefully and definitively resolved. There is a need to thoroughly review outdated land tenure systems such as the Torrens systems and find peaceful middle ground on this issue, particularly in areas where Indigenous peoples make up a significant proportion of the population.

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