Indigenous Ati tribe faces eviction threat in Boracay
Community fighting to retain agricultural land developers say is better used to promote tourism
For years, international travel magazines have dubbed Boracay in the Philippines as one of the world’s best island getaways, its powdery white beaches regularly attracting hordes of travellers.
Tourism has for decades provided jobs and livelihoods for thousands of Filipinos living on the island.
Largely left out of this prosperity, however, are Boracay’s indigenous Ati people, who have been engaged in a protracted legal battle over land that had already been granted to them by the government.
The Ati are the original inhabitants of Boracay, but have been pushed to the margins as the island gained fame. Many have been rendered homeless, with some forced to survive on welfare and begging on the beaches.
In November 2018, then president Rodrigo Duterte gave the Ati hope when, as part of a land reform programme, they were granted land titles to 3.2 hectares – about 1 per cent of the island’s roughly 1,000 hectares. The four titles, called Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs), were given to the collective ownership of the Boracay Ati Tribal Organisation.
Duterte put Boracay under the land reform programme when he closed it for six months in 2018 to clean up the island from pollution caused by overtourism.
At a ceremony to award the certificates to the Boracay Ati Tribal Organisation, Duterte urged the community to “go till the land for the benefit of your children [and] make it self-productive. And someday, sell it. At least your children and grandchildren will be millionaires”.
He also directed the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to train the beneficiaries to properly utilise the land.
But six of Boracay’s hotel owners, who are among the richest land developers in the Philippines, do not want that to happen. They have filed claims to the Ati’s CLOA land in court on the basis that it is private land and, ironically, the DAR seems to be on the developers’ side.
“We have exhaustively discussed the pertinent rules, issuances, memorandum and jurisprudence to support the right of the Ati as land reform beneficiaries as identified by the president of the republic. What the DAR has done on these cases is all wrong,” Daniel Dinopol, a local lawyer representing the Ati community, told the Post.
“Big businesspeople close to Malacanang [the presidential palace] want to claim the land so they can build resorts or a hotel in the area, because the cost of land per square metre at present is between 120 million (HK$16.5 million) and 200 million pesos.”
The battle between the rich land developers and the impoverished Ati people goes back to 2011, when the government issued a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title to 2.1 hectares of beachfront property on the island.
The Ati people have established a community for themselves here with permanent housing, a church, a school and a tribal museum. There are 265 people, comprising 55 families, living on this land.
While the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title is not being challenged, the CLOA land allocations have only served to increase tensions between the Ati and developers.
On February 22, 2013, on his way home from a meeting, young Ati leader and spokesman Dexter Condez was shot dead.
Condez was among the most vocal in the Ati’s fight for their ancestral land. The main suspect, who was not punished, was a security guard at one of the claimants’ hotels.
The community remains undeterred by Condez’s murder and has taken the fight with the powerful business families to the courts, with Dinopol representing them on a pro bono basis. They must also fight two government agencies that are supposed to help communities like theirs.
In four resolutions issued since March last year, the DAR has supported the protest petitions of property developers over the 3.2 hectares of land granted under the CLOA. The DAR directed the developers to file for cancellation of the CLOAs, which, if approved, would allow the developers to acquire the land for tourism purposes.
The DAR based its resolution on a certification from the Bureau of Soils and Water Management submitted by the petitioners concluding that the CLOA areas were “no longer viable for agricultural production”, supposedly based on soil tests done on Ati land.
The bureau said the lands were instead “highly recommended for Eco-Tourism Zones and or Medium Density Tourist Commercial Zones”.
Dinopol said they questioned the certificate because the bureau’s mandate was to work with the DAR to determine the soil composition so that they could advise the farmer-beneficiaries the types of crops suited for the land.
On March 27, the DAR dealt a blow to the Ati community by issuing a press release saying it had cancelled all four CLOA titles, based on soil tests that the land was not suitable for agriculture. The DAR said the displaced Ati villagers would be allocated alternative government land for farming.
Dinopol said the villagers had not been given any details on where the new land was supposed to be. “If the DAR has the power to allocate lands to the Ati, why cancel the CLOA and give another piece of land somewhere in lieu of the one already being used? This is ridiculous logic,” he said, adding that the Ati had no intention of leaving their land.
The Boracay Ati Tribal Organisation said it had contacted the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights, asserting that the impending eviction violated the Ati’s human rights.
House Deputy Minority leader France Castro has also called for a congressional investigation into the issue, saying the “developers [are] being favoured by the DAR instead of the indigenous people who naturally grew up in the area”.
For now, the Ati are continuing with daily life and going about their business.