QUEZON, Bukidnon - "Sa uban, ang tubo simbolo sa tamis. Sa amo mga Manobo, kini simbolo sa kapait sa amo kabuhi, mga tanom nga gibunyagan sa among dugo." (To others, sugar cane symbolizes anything that is sweet. For us Manobos, it represents all the hardships that the tribe is now suffering, plants grown with our own blood).

This, Datu Carlito Anglao ecplains, is why there is "blood in your sugar." Many Manobos have been killed to give way to ranches and sugar plantations allegedly leased to cronies of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos after the declaration of martial law in 1972.

To date, the crony-owned companies continue to prevent the Manobos from reclaiming their land or occupying the ancestral lands awarded them by the Ramos administration.

Heavily armed guards and other hired goon men blocked the tribe twice last month, incidents which could ended in a bloodbath were it not for the presence of journalists.

The most recent encounter took place on August 25, when more than a hundred men, many of them masked and armed with cane bolos, surrounded and blocked more than 300 Manobos who were set to occupy an idle airstrip.

Company guards armed with shotguns and Garand rifles lingered nearby but backed off upon seeing an ABS-CBN TV crew from Cagayan de Oro City and other journalists.

It was the second time that the media's presence averted what could have been a violent confrontation.

On August 10, about the same number of Manobos, many of them children, narrowly escaped being mowed down. The Manobos told the Inquirer that not far aay from where they stopped was a machine gun aimed at them. As in the latest incident, many of the armed men wore masks or covered their faces with shirts or towels.

"We are only protecting our source of living," said Francisco Arciado, a security personnel of the plantation. About 300 meters ahead of the road was another blockade of some 30 armed men who taunted the convoy for a confrontation.

A company personnel was caught by a video camera cursing the presence of a Task Force Detainees of the Philippines staff member among the Manobos.

"Hijo de puta, here is the human (worker)," he said as he looked menacingly at the TFDP personnel.

His statatement, the Manobos, reflects the disregard for their lives and an omen of what cold have happened had they insisted in moving on.

Just and moral

"The tribe's attempt to occupy their ancestral lands through metalegal means is just and moral," Bishop Honesto Pacana of the diocese of Malaybalay told the Inquirer during a meeting with leaders of the Quezon Manobo Tribes Association (Quemtras).

Metalegal, he explained, is an act "above but not against the law."

"It's your right (to go back to your traditional land), more so that a certificate of ancestral domain claim had been awarded to you,' the soft-spoken church leader said.

The (metalegal) action, he added, is justifiable, especially because the tribe "had already exhausted other avenues."

"If the law has become inutile and too bureaucratic, and if your children's welfare is at stake, you can take other courses of actions to remedy the situation," he said.

But he warned the Manobos against any form of violence.

Metal spikes planted by still unidentified persons pierced the tires of an ABS-CBN vehicle which ran ahead of the 10-vehicle convoy of the lumads on their second try at land occupation.

Several masked men, armed with cane bolos, blocked the entrance to the airstrip. They admitted being under the employ of the crony-owned companies.

Anti-lumad posters and streamers were strewn along the road. These were made on orders of the management and Bayabas," the masked men said.

Bayabas is Francisco Arciado who introduced himself to the TV crew as "head of security matters."

Bishop Pacana, who passed by the area later, got peeved by a poster with a caricature of what looked like a gun-toting priest holding a bible. The drawing was reportedly intended for Fr. Diosdado Tabios, the town's parish priest, who sided with the lumads.

Tabios does not deny supporting any group seeking justice.

At one time, he told the Inquirer, a drunk Arciado, accompanied by two armed men, paid him a "late night visit," Tabios, sensing danger, denied them entry.

Cronies reign

On June 3, 1998, then environment secretary Victor Ramos signed the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim of Quemtras, covering 2,093 hectares.

The document was given after 35 leaders and members of the lumad association encamped for one month at the main office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Quezon City.

Included in the CADC are Agro Forestry Farm Lease Agreements issued by the Marcos regime to companies that are either owned or controlled by known Marcos cronies Roberto Benedicto, Manuel Nieto Jr. and Alfredo Africa.

These firms are the Silangan Investors and Management Inc., Rang-ay Farms, Inc. and Escano Hermanos.

According to the documents, the companies were among those ordered sequestered in 1988 by Mary Concepcion Bautista, member of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, but continued operating under the management of Pablo Lobregat, son-in-law of Nieto and son of Zamboanga City mayor Mayor Ma. Clara Lobregat.

In 1988, then environment secretary Fulgencio Factoran cancelled their Afflas based on the complaint of Quezon parish priest Efren Nathaniel.

Cancelled

The companies filed their motions for reconsideration which Factoran denie in 1990 "in view of field reports of gross violations" of the Affla.

Factoran's order, however, was not enforced. The firms continued operating while seeking other avenues for relief.

Rang-ay Farms filed a petition with the Office of the President. When this was denied, it filed a motion for reconsideration which was also denied in 1991 by then Deputy Executive Secretary Mariano Sarmiento II who ruled that there was "no new matter to justify reconsideration."

But the regional trial court in Malaybalay, then presided over by Judge Alejandro Pallugna, Jr., acting on the companies' petition for certiorari with prohibition and temporary restraining order, gave relief to the Affla holders via a status quo order to the DENR. This prevented the enforcement of the cancellation of Affla.

Pallugna issued the ruling in spite of Presidential Decree 605 which provides that no court in the country "shall have jurisdiction to issue any restraining order, preliminary injunction or preliminary mandatory injunction" over cases filed by Affla holders.

Quemtras argued with the DENR in 1996 that even with a petition filed by the companies, the department could have "enforce(d) the cancellation order and work…for the disposition of the land."

Judge Jesus Barroso Jr., current presiding judge of the regional trial court in Malaybalay where the AFFLA holders filed their 1991 petitions, said he was not aware of the provisions of PD 605.

"The DENR never raised (the existence of PD 605) in court," Barroso said.

Even if there was such a decree, he added, the "tribe should not wait for the benevolence of (Pablo) Lobregat but pressure the DENR to implement the (cancellation) order. Technically, it's the responsibility of the DENR."

'We were victims of the crony-bashing frenzy'

"We are neither a crony nor (a) landlord; we will not concede even an inch to the tribe and our armed guards are merely defending our business interests and their source of employment," thus declared Pablo Lobregat when sought for comment here by the Inquirer.

"We stole nothing." Lobregat denied that the companies which he manages were owned by Marcos cronies, among whom was ex-ambassador Manuel Nieto Jr.

"He (Nieto) invested his own money (in those companies) and never ran out of the country (as others did when Marcos fled in 1986). The latest proof is the P800 million sugar milling complex in Nearby Maramag, the Crystal Sugar Milling Company, Inc. which became operational only last year," he added.

"We were victims of the crony-bashing frency which characterized Cory Aquino's assumption to power," Lobregat said, adding that environment secretary Fulgencio Factoran "denied (the Affla holders) due process in ordering the (1988) cancellations."

'The law provides that we have 90 days to rectify whatever errors or violations (were) committed against the lease agreements, but Factoran never gave us this opportunity," he said as he insisted that the companies never committed any violations.

Instead, the DENR issued a separate leasehold agreement covering more than 400 hectares to the Samahang Kabuhayan ng manobo Pulangihon whose members "forcibly occupied" the subject lands.

"Not even an inch," Lobregat said when asked if he was willing to allow Quemtras to occupy land with the Afflas. "Don't ask me to give (any part of the leased areas) when we had already been robbed of more than 400 hectares." The certificate of ancestral domain claim issued to Quemtras "is a midnight issuance" which Lobregat claimed was typical before the turnover of the DENR to the Estrada administration.

Lobregat also accused the tribe of "twisting anything so as to get lands which they would sell later to outsiders," pointing to one Macaria "Cayang" Bagas, former Sakampu official, as one example. The Manobos do not deny this charge, but reasoned that Bagas had been expelled from the organization and that "any transactions entered with her by anybody are considered null and void."

"We are not landlords but employers who give more than the average wages and benefits," Lobregat said as he took exception to the "pro-landlord" description attributed to his mother, former representative, now Zamboanga City Mayor Maria Clara Lobregat. The adjective stuck to his mother when, during her term in congress, she sttod defiantly with landlords against the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

The companies that Lobregat manages here are directly benefiting more than 1,000 families. Children of workers were extended free transportation to and from school and the companies shoulder educational expenses from kindergarten to high school, other ranking company officials claimed.

The young Lobregat admits that Francisco Arciaga whom the tribe calls "Bayabas" and who is accused of "continually terrorizing" tribe members is under his employ. "His (Arciaga's) responsibility is to defend the company and protect our business interests and the employees."

Now pending at the regional trial court in Malaybalay are cases filed by the companies headed by Lobregat. One is for the court to cite Vicente Buyante "for indirect contempt." Buyante is the regional director of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.

The other is for the "extension of the effectivity and coverage of the July 21, 1993 status quo order." This seeks to cover the entire NCIP "and/or any of its officers, agents and representatives and any and all persons acting for and in (sic) their behalf from proceedings (sic) with the implementation" of Quemtras' certificate of ancestral domain claim.

The Manobos, by all indications, are in for a long wait. Nieto's P800 million investment on the new sugar milling complex could be recovered only after 10 years of uninterrupted operations, Lobregat said.

"We are prepared to contest (the tribe's claim) up to the Supreme Court, Lobregat said.

Assault on Manobos continues as their pleas fall on deaf ears

Manobo Datu Carlito Anglao says the brutal assaults on his tribe continued with the entry of migrants and the promotion of the cattle and sugar industry in the area starting in the late 1950s.

His grandfather, Datu Lorenzo Anglao, and another chieftain were killed and hanged on a balete tree when they refused to vacate their area.

'The Manobo had good relations with Don Manolo Fortich, Sr. who came to our area in 1907,' Datu Anglao recalls.

Twenty years later, Fortich Sr., already the governor, initially "borrowed" 300 hectares from the tribe for a government ranch project.

The lease contract, although verbally made, was witnessed by mayors and provincial officials. Until Don Manolo died in 1947, the tribe asserts that the agreement was religiously observed.

It was when Don Manolo's son, Cesar, became a congressman and then secretary of natural resources under President Carlos Garcia and his subsequent association with cronies of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos that the tribe noticed drastic changes.

A massive drive to convert their ancestral lands of about 12,000 hectares into ranches and sugar plantations followed.

At that time, according to Ibon Philippines Databank and Research Center, the sugar industry was picking up with the re-institution of close trade relations with the United States after World War II.

The Philippine Yearbook of the National Statistics Office also indicated that the sugar industry earned for the country a total of $5,123 million from the 1960 to the 1970s.

The cronies made hay starting in 1974, when Marcos announced his government's policy to increase sugar production in excess of the usual US quota "in view of the favorable price situation in the world market."

The Bukidnon Sugar Co., which was capitalized at $30 million by Carlos Fortich, Manuel Nieto Jr., Rodolfo Cuenca, Jose Ma. Ozamiz, Jose Africa, Miguel Gonzales and Julio Ozamiz, became operational in two years.

Busco milled the canes harvested from the Agro-Forestry Farm Lease Agreements.

50 centavos a hectare

The Afflas were officially issued in 1983 to the Marcos cronies by then Natural Resources Minister Rofolfo del Rosario. Their effectivity was retroactive to 1974.

The cronies leased the area for 50 centavos (note: this is slightly more than once cent of a dollar at 18 October 2000 exchange rate of 48 pesos to $1) per hectare for 25 years, renewable for the same number of years.

The Manobos were evicted from their lands.

In September 1975. Datu Mansario Agdahan's group of 350 families in Nabangonan were into trucks by some 100 military personnel for resttlement. The datu, together with 14 other elders, was duped into signing a blank paper which led to their ejection.

A third truck carrying the manobos mysteriously figured in an accident, killing 3 Manobos on the spot, Datu Anglao said. The rest suffered wounds and fractures.

The driver, according to survivors, jumped out of the truck seconds before it overturned.

Two company bulldozers started destroying the tribe's crops as they were being herded at gunpoint into the trucks, the survivors added.

Tribe members had to contend with living in the periphery of the plantations. Their presence was generally tolerated as the companies used them as seasonal laborers.

Emboldened by the 1988 sequestration of the crony-owned companies and cancellation of Afflas, the tribe started to occupy vacant areas in the plantation despite various forms of harassments. But not for long.

In April 1991, armed men attacked Datu Anglao's group which settled not far from the Busco milling plant.

Assaults

In an affidavit, the datu said two persons were killed and four others, including his brother, were injured. He identified the heavily armed assailants as employees of Pablo Lobregat.

The datu estimates that about a dozen members of the Manobo Tribe had died from assaults by armed men connected with the plantations.

In early 1988, a young member of Quemtras was killed allegedly by a cowboy of the Rancho Montalvan Inc., one of the Affla holders in the area.

The victim was looking for medicinal herbs but failed to come home before dark. His body was found in a shallow grave. A suspect is now in the provincial jail.

Last ditch

The near bloody confrontations on August 10 and 25 were desperate moves by the Affla holders to hang on to their business at the expense of workers, a company insider who requested not to be named said.

"Gipasampok sila," he said, referring to the use of workers as pawns to block, even with violence, the tribe from occupying their land.

"The workers are given the false promise that they have prior rights over the lands as plantation workers. How could the Affla holders promise them the lands when they are themselves merely leaseholders…" the source said.

Farmers' groups which were interested in the land earlier filed an intervenor's motion with the sala of Judge Jesus Barroso jr., presiding judge of the regional trial court in Malaybalay.

Barroso "decided with finality" to reject the motion in January last year.

Nearly 600 Quemtras members, half of them children, fled to this town's municipal gymnasium after the failed August 10 occupation of their area.

"It's either back to what is legally and traditionally our land or none at all," the tribal leaders agreed during a recent meeting.

Roberto Sahagun, administrative officer of the Silangan Investors and Managers Inc., announced over a local radio station that the company would continue to block the lumad's entry.

"We developed the area (being claimed by the tribe). The Manobos want to take it back because the lands are now developed, personnel assistant Igmedio Sermonia said.

Late last month, municipal officials and representatives of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples wrote to the firm's general manager, Pablo Lobregat.

They asked for "favorable approval" of the tribe's occupation of an initial 50 to 100 hectares of the Afflas, which a DENR ordernine years ago cancelled but has remained unenforced.

Company officials said Lobregat turned down the request, pushing the tribe to leave the municipal gymnasium and again try to reclaim their land.

They were blocked by armed men and other hired farmers. Guards fenced the road, leaving the tribe with the provincial highway as the only place where they could erect tents.

A field supervisor of the plantation revealed that on standby for their use are machine guns and other high-powered rifles.

Quezon Mayor Melchor Melendrez told Manobo datu Arnulfo Sali-ot that he himself had requested Lobregat to concede parts of the land to the tribe.

"Not even an inch," the mayor quoted Lobregat as having said. Melendrez said Lobregat reminded him of his "right to demolish" whatever shanty the tribe would erect.

Some members of the Manobo tribe, mostly children, started getting ill in the gym, said a staff of Community Aid Abroad, a leading Australian development agency.

With literally the skies for a roof and the ground as floor, the health situation of an already impoverished tribe is in extreme danger, a CAA staff member, Ting Gorgonio, said.

The situation remains volatile. Bloodshed could be far worse than those perpetrated against the tribe in the past, Datu Anglao said, unless concerned agencies act immediately.