“Bungkalan” and the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe’s resistance to corporate land-grab in Bukidnon,Mindanao

Abstract

The island of Mindanao, dubbed as the “Land of Promise” is home to more than half of natural and mineral resources in the country. It hosts the largest rubber, banana and pineapple plantations as well as huge mining explorations. These big agri-plantations and mining corporations encroach peasant communities and Indigenous Peoples or Lumads in Bukidnon, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Compostela Valley and Davao provinces. Around 500,000 hectares of land in the five regions of Mindanao are planted with crops primarily for export. Ethnographic data were collected during fieldwork in the province of Bukidnon from May to October 2017. Raw data were obtained through formal and informal interviews, direct observation and collective discussions. Field research was carried out mostly with the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe in the municipality of Quezon. This article explores how corporate land-grabbing generates Lumad resistance, thus creating emancipatory politics. First, I briefly lay down the basis of “development programs” of the government within the framework of the neoliberal economic system and contextualize the issue of land-grabbing in Lumad communities in Bukidnon. I rely heavily on the theories provided by David Harvey in crystallizing the neoliberal economic paradigm. I then propose that this market-driven economic model inevitably results in accumulation by dispossession as experienced by the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe. Third, I describe how big landlords and agro-corporations encroach the Manobo-Pulangihon Tribe ancestral lands and explore a novel form of Lumad resistance against corporate land-grab.

Keywords

neoliberalism land-grabbing accumulation by dispossession

Introduction

Considered as the “food basket” of the Philippines, Mindanao is blessed with vast fertile lands. Over half of mineral and natural resources are found in the island of Mindanao. It is home to vast agricultural plantations with thousands of hectares in pineapple, banana, rubber, palm and cacao plantations as well as huge mining explorations. These corporate plantations are expanding at an alarming rate, with an estimated additional 600,000 hectares of arable land to be converted for plantations by 2023. At present, these huge agro-plantations and mining corporations intrude into the “the commons”, specifically the ancestral domains of the Lumads and the lands of the Moro people in Mindanao. This corporate land-grab threatens the livelihood of small farmers and imperils food security by displacing peasant and Lumad communities in Compostela Valley, Sarangani, Bukidnon, South Cotabato and Davao provinces. The Mindanao research group Reap Mindanao Network (2016) estimated that more than five hundred thousand hectares (roughly 12% of Mindanao agricultural land), covering more than five regions are planted with crops mainly geared for export. Giant multinational companies like Del Monte and DOLE monopolize these agricultural plantations by engaging in agribusiness venture arrangements (AVAs) with big cooperatives, while several Japanese, as well as local landlords, are engaged in contract agreements with local firms. All these schemes resulted in dispossessing farmers and Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of their lands. This article explores the damaging effects of a corporate land-grab to Lumad communities specifically in Barangay Butong, Quezon, in Bukidnon.

Despite existing laws aimed at protecting the rights of IPs like the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA Law), big corporations still manage to enter their sacred lands. In some cases, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the government agency tasked to safeguard and advance their rights, seems to favor agricultural and mining corporations over the IPs. This resulted in conflict between the intruding corporations and Lumad ethnic minorities. As a consequence, the Lumad people are engaged in a bloody battle for survival as they continue to struggle for their ancestral land and their right to self-determination.

Karl Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation

The encroachment of big foreign mining corporations and vast agri-plantations on ancestral lands of the Lumads is a glaring example of what Marx calls the “forcible expropriation” of the agricultural population. This violent process of casting away small farmers and IPs away from their traditional forms of livelihood inevitably forces them to work in those mining firms as employment is one of the promises given to them by mining firms. Some IPs become agricultural workers in big plantations while others are forced to migrate to urban centers to find jobs. Marx’s full exposition of his theory of “primitive accumulation” can be found in Capital Volume I, Chapter 26. By employing theological concepts such as “original sin” and applying it in the field of political economy, Marx was able to unmask “how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow” (Marx, 1977). Here, Marx attempted to uncover how a few segment of society were able to accumulate wealth while the vast majority “had at last nothing to sell except their own skins” (Marx, 1977). This eventually resulted in the “poverty of the great majority” where the poor “has up to now nothing to sell but itself” (Marx, 1977). As Marx explained, primitive accumulation laid down the fundamental conditions of capitalist production by “separating labourers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labour” (Marx, 1977). This process takes away from the laborer the possession of his means of production, thus reducing the immediate producers into “wage labourers”. Primitive accumulation forces IPs to be divorced from their lands and their means of subsistence. It is the “historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production” (Marx, 1977). In the first volume of Capital, Marx writes,

The fundamental conditions of capitalist production is the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. This process takes away from the laborer the possession of his means of production . . . the social means of subsistence and producers into capital . . . the immediate producers into wage-laborers are called primitive accumulation. The historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. To become a free seller of labor-power, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers. These new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their means of production.

In the case of IP lands in Bukidnon, land-grabbing and privatization of the means of production (land) are done through the “enclosure of the commons”. In Bukidnon, for example, land-grabbers build fences along these lands to keep IPs from entering. These enclosures are heavily guarded by private security guards and armed goons paid by local politicians, big corporations and landlords. As Marx pointed out in Capital, conquest, robbery, enslavement, including the dispossession of peasants of their lands (what Marx calls the “methods of primitive accumulation”) are far from “idyllic”. Here, the State, through its repressive (police, military, army) and ideological (laws, media, education, etc.) apparatus plays a crucial role in cementing private property for the elite and landed few. In the Philippines, human rights groups documented many human rights violations committed and perpetuated by State forces. In most cases, the State uses force, coercion and intimidation to drive IPs away from their ancestral lands to pave the way for plantations or mining corporations. The privatization of the land is completed by creating laws that will cement the ruling elite’s ownership of the land.

The socio-economic effects of primitive accumulation are evident in the landless and propertyless, IPs and peasants. They are thrown into conditions of mass destitution and poverty. During one of my interviews, I asked the tribal leaders about the plight of those displaced and dispossessed IPs. Many of the Lumads end up working in these huge plantations where, as Marx predicted, they become “free seller of labour power, who carries his commodity wherever he finds a market . . . ” (Marx, 1977). Hence, the transformation of the immediate producer into wage worker becomes complete. Others become lumpen proletariats involved in robbery and other petty crimes (Law, 152). Those who can find seasonal employment in the cities become victims of capitalist exploitation when they are forced to accept anti-worker policies such as contractualization and cheap labor. Many who could not find jobs resort to begging or other semi-proletarian forms of odd jobs in the cities or they become part of a growing number of reserve army of unemployed workers.

David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession

The World Bank reported in 2017 that large-scale farming systems can be used as a tool “to promote sustainable agricultural and rural development”. However, scholars critical of neoliberal economic paradigm argue imperialist globalization led by the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund–World Bank and World Trade Organization) have been “instrumental in opening up economies and access to raw materials for the transnationals, whose interests now dominate the agenda of World Trade Organization” (Paul & Steinbrecher, 2003). David Harvey (2005) describes how neoliberalism intensifies capital accumulation and heightens dispossession:

Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate for such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defense, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary.

This study is anchored on the theory of accumulation by dispossession expounded by David Harvey in the context of “new imperialism” or late capitalism. Some of the salient points of “accumulation by dispossession” as outlined by Harvey (2003) include (a) the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; (b) conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusively private property rights; (c) suppression of rights to the commons; (d) commodification of labor power and the suppression of alternative (Indigenous) forms of production and consumption; and (e) colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources). In most cases, the commodification and privatization of land necessarily involves what Harvey calls “violent processes of dispossession” (Harvey, 2003, p. 142). Here, the State with its “monopoly of violence and definitions of legality” plays an important role in legitimizing land-grabbing (Harvey, 2003, p. 145). Michael Levien (2011) situates accumulation by dispossession in the wider context of capitalist accumulation when he defines accumulation by dispossession as “the use of extra-economic coercion to expropriate means of subsistence, production or common social wealth for capital accumulation”.

How accumulation by dispossession occurs under neoliberalism

Paul and Steinbrecher (2003) demonstrated how big transnational corporations (TNCs) gained an “alarming level of control over food chain” through the “reorganization of communities according to the interests of the world’s largest corporations”. Studies on “accumulation by dispossession” as applied in specific countries abound (Caceres, 2015; Levien, 2011; Holden et al., 2011), highlighting its social and environmental effects and the collective struggle of the people that emanate from it. Scholars are unanimous in exposing and opposing the onslaught of neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation, denationalization and liberalization on the lives of ordinary citizens. Hall (2013) presented arguments consistent with critical scholars in using the concepts of primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession to analyze global land-grab. Arrighi et al. (2010) likewise used accumulation by dispossession as a lens in examining the African experience of “forcible dispossession of the African peasantry” but highlighted “accounts of the Southern African crisis before and after the downfall of apartheid”. In a similar vein, the study of Benjaminsen and Bryceson (2012) focuses on the “benefits from the land and natural resources that contribute to capital accumulation”. They argue that accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania deviates from other forms of primitive accumulation. For them, the Tanzanian experience “is not primarily for wage labour” but took the form of gradual transformation of villages and natural reserves into “conservation” sites and tourist destinations which “produced conditions under which subsequent dispossessions could take place” (Arrighi et al., 2010).

In 2011, the World Bank released a comprehensive report on the “rising” global interest in farmlands. The report highlighted the “enormous demand” for farmland especially in Africa and Asia (World Bank, 2011). Researchers from Oxfam International estimated that roughly 81 million acres of land worldwide have been sold to foreign investors and TNCs. Most of these land deals “happen without free, prior, and informed consent of communities” that often result in farmers “being forced from their homes and families left hungry” (Oxfam, 2017). The International Land Coalition (2011) in its “Tirana Declaration” reported that “control of land is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few”. Consequently, Land Matrix, a group of organizations that advocate for land rights for the poor showed that land-grabbing surged from 2005 to 2009. Prior to 2008, international land deals totaled about 9 million acres purchased a year. In 2009, the World Bank estimated a total of 138 million acres purchased a year (Deininger & Byerlee, 2011). Researchers from the online journal Scientific American noted that “Africa and Asia have accounted for 44 and 37 percent, respectively, of the total land grabbed since 2000” and that “nearly two-thirds of those acres are in Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia” (Beinkowski, 2013).

The Philippine context

Mindanao as the “Land of Promise”

The island of Mindanao, dubbed as the “Land of Promise”, is home to more than half of natural and mineral resources in the country. It hosts the largest rubber, banana and pineapple plantations as well as huge mining explorations. Mindanao produces 40% of the country’s food needs and one-third of its land area is devoted to agriculture (Francisco, 2017). These rich mineral and natural resources attract big foreign agri-plantations and mining corporations as well as “local colonizers” who encroach peasant communities and IPs or Lumads in Bukidnon, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Compostela Valley and Davao provinces. Magdalena (1997) provided an in-depth study on the history of local colonization of Mindanao from the early 20th century up to the post–Second World War era. Magdalena (1997) noted that it was President Manuel Quezon who coined the term “Mindanao as a Land of Promise” in the 1930s “to highlight the need to further develop the southern frontier”. Succeeding administrations made land resettlement its central policy which led to the “Great Migration” between 1939 and 1960 (Magdalena, 1997; see also Tigno, 2006). Between 1948 and 1960, Mindanao population jumped from “less than 3 million to over 5 million” (Magdalena, 1997). Wernstedt and Simkins (1965) identified the internal relocation of the population as one major reason for migration. Their study confirmed that a significant factor contributing to out-migration was the lack of employment opportunities in Luzon and Visayas.

IPs of the Philippines

The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) under the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (RA8371) defines “Indigenous Cultural Communities /IndigenousPeoples” as

a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, become historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. (RA 8371, Chapter II, Section 3)

At present, there are a total of 110 ethnolinguistic groups with an estimated population of 14 million or roughly 16% of the Philippine population. Holden and Ingelson (2007) noted that around two-thirds of IPs “lived on the island of Mindanao . . . while the remaining one-third live in the Cordillera on the island of Luzon”. The Lumad, or the Indigenous People of Mindanao, is a Cebuano term meaning “native” or “Indigenous”. Alamon (2017) highlights the political origin and implications of the term Lumad as they “collectively confront the same systemic mechanisms of structural discrimination oftentimes with the full backing and complicity of the Philippine State . . .” The Lumads of Bukidnon comprise around 24% of the population in the province. The Lumads are one of the most neglected, exploited and oppressed sectors in Philippine society (Alamon, 2017). Their customs and traditions, rituals and practices as well as their economic well-being are all inextricably linked with the land. The situation of the Lumads has been more precarious than other IPs in the Philippines because of the presence of rich mineral and natural resources in Mindanao (Figure 1) (Lopez, 2017).

Figure 1.

Map of Mindanao.

Disaster capitalism and dispossession

Around 500,000 hectares of land in the five regions of Mindanao are planted with crops primarily for export. Just recently, Agriculture Secretary William Dar declared Mindanao as the Philippine “food basket”. Dar cited the potential of Mindanao “due to its rich soil, climate and its regions which . . . is conducive to development and a center in agri-industrialization” especially because “there is a lesser occurrence of natural disasters in Mindanao” (Palicte, 2019). However, the last statement is questionable especially if we look at recent typhoon data in the Philippines and the recent impact of climate change and global warming. For example, in 2011, a strong typhoon named “Sendong” (international name Washi) devastated Northern Mindanao. Killing 1,257 people, it was dubbed as the “deadliest storm for 2011” (Malig, 2011). The following year, supertyphoon “Pablo” (international name Bopha) struck the southern island of Mindanao killing more than 1,200 people and damaging agriculture amounting to 34 billion pesos (664 million US dollars) (“‘Pablo’ Damage Soars to P34-B; Banana Losses at P22-B,” 2012). Dubbed as the “strongest storm to hit Mindanao in two decades”, State weather forecasters from the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA) noted the “unusual path of storms” in the past 5 years considering that “very few cyclones hit Mindanao” (“Typhoon Pablo Is Strongest Storm to Hit Mindanao in Two Decades,” 2012). With these recent developments, it is highly doubtful if Mindanao remains “typhoon free” (Montalvan, 2014).

Naomi Klein (2007), in her phenomenal book The Shock Doctrine critically analyzed how the most excruciating conditions can be used by capitalists to extract super-profits. Klein documented the various natural disasters experienced by people from different countries and how governments in partnership with big businessmen were able to prevent people from returning to their communities and convert these communities into business hubs and tourist destinations. This “posttsunami opportunism”, as Klein calls it, happened in the Philippines, a country prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and super typhoons. For example, in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda) that struck Eastern Visayas in November 2013. Immediately after Yolanda, the government erected an extensive seawall which supposedly protects communities from future storm surges. A month after the Yolanda tragedy, former President Benigno S. Aquino inaugurated the Comprehensive Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program. A 40-meter “no dwelling zone” (NBZ) was declared and “families were prevented from returning to their homes along the shoreline” (IBON, 2018). The 40-meter NBZ “excludes the fisherfolk and others who lived and made their living on the shore—but which does not include business interests” (Yamada et al., 2018). In 2015, the government allocated PhP 48 billion to build a seawall stretching 27 km from Tacloban to Tanauan which displaced more than 14,000 households (Yamada et al., 2018). Expounding on Klein’s arguments and applying it in the post-Yolanda context, Yee (2018) affirms that the aftermath of disasters “provides an enticing opportunity for states, corporations, and multilateral institutions—the disaster capitalism complex—in exploiting the reconstruction process to push for a free-market agenda to the detriment of the people”. Yee (2018) elaborated further,

. . . construction and operation of infrastructure within the 40-meter zones are allowed if these are for commercial purposes such as industry infrastructure, hotels, and resorts. Some hotel establishments in the city and in surrounding towns have already been able to recover and expand their operations within these no-build zones, while local plans envision these sites as future areas where tourism and hospitality infrastructures can be built.

In Mindanao, similar dispossession of lands occurred in quake-hit areas and landslide and flood prone areas. Communities of farmers, fisherfolk and IPs were barred from returning to their lands. Most declarations of “no build zones” are located within vast ancestral lands and are done without IP consent (Manar, 2019).

Land-grabbing in Mindanao

The political, economic and social impacts of international land-grab are enormous (Africa, 2006; Macleod, 2016). Situating land-grabs in the context of accumulation by dispossession “obviously implies that dispossession must occur when land is grabbed . . . [and] that dispossession . . . will be massive” (Hall, 2013, p. 1588). Those that are most vulnerable are small farming communities and IPs in developing countries. In particular, thousands of Lumads are losing the land, water and natural resources that have supported their livelihood for generations (RMP, 2016, 2017). This experience resonates with Wolford and his co-authors arguing that “direct producers were separated from the means of production, [and that] common property rights were privatized and non-capitalist modes of production were either harnessed or destroyed”. In most cases, since land-grabbing is “market-led”, it usually follows that violence occurs in areas where land-grabbing is prevalent. Agro-corporations and large foreign corporations hire private armies and paramilitary groups to protect and advance their interests. Derek Hall calls these “extra-economic” land acquisitions which involve “the use of legal or political power and/or the threat of force” (Hall, 2013, p. 1592). Moreover, the study by Holden et al. (2011) clearly shows how “accumulation by dispossession” is “exemplified” in a conflict between mining companies and the IPs in the Philippines. I argue that the development programs anchored on the neoliberal system have caused much displacement, death and destruction in Lumad communities in Mindanao.

The Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes, Inc. (PNFSP) defines land-grabbing as

the forcible seizing of land cultivated by smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, or rural communities, through illegal means, or facilitated by the government to legitimize such claims, in order to convert agricultural land for commercial, industrial, tourism, infrastructure, agribusiness, or large-scale mining purposes. (Lopez, 2017)

In the Philippines, one of the many forms of land-grabbing is through contract growing. Rehber (2007) outlines the various theoretical background of contract farming. AVAs has intensified TNC control in agriculture and is proven to have disastrous effects on ancestral lands (Daye & Healey, 2015; Lahiff et al., 2012; Ocampo, 2015; Olea, 2015; Sirait, 2009). Recent literature in contract growing focuses on understanding “how it advances TNC control and exploitation of agriculture”. Boundless contract farming has become so pervasive that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization published a “guide” for those who wish to be engaged in contract farming. While some analysts see positive effects of contract farming (UNFAO, 2016), many researchers also see contract farming as a “deprivation of livelihood and the exploitation of the farmers and farmworkers . . . and the demise of self-sufficient, ecologically-friendly agriculture” (IBON, 1998). Diga (2007) noted that agricultural contracting “contributed to high poverty incidence” particularly in Mindanao.

Contract growing “is an arrangement in which an agriculture-based business corporation transfers the farm production process to independent farmers, either to supplement or entirely pass on production”. The arrangement is bound by a contract “which is usually initiated by the corporation” (IBON, 1998, 2005). In contract farming, the farmer is contracted to grow a certain crop, buys inputs from the corporation, follows the production schedule and process of the corporation, and sells to the corporation to meet the commitment. Some of the various forms of arrangements are Joint Venture, Lease Arrangement, Farm Management Contract and Merchant-Usurer Arrangements (Department of Agrarian Reform, 2006; Pantoja et al., 2017). Analysts critical of contract growing insist that it has destroyed small farmers and peasants and traditional communities. It impinges production, and threatens food security and the right to food (Glover, 1994). “Accumulation by dispossession” enhanced by the neoliberal agenda of privatization, deregulation and liberalization accelerate the conversion of small community farms into vast agricultural plantation crops for export. Roughly 12% of Mindanao’s agricultural land is now owned, managed and controlled by big multinational agro-corporations.

The research locale is Purok 7-B, Tindoga, Butong, Quezon, located in the southern part of Bukidnon. Its landscape encompasses forests, mountain ranges, valleys and fertile plains. The Tindoga clans are settled outside a fenced land of what used to be occupied by Montalvan Ranch. This 630-hectare ancestral land is being claimed by eight clans of the Manobo-Pulangihon Tribe. However, Renato Anglao, an officer of Tribal Indigenous Oppressed Group Association (TINDOGA) estimates the ancestral domain of the Manobo-Pulangihon to be close to 12,000 hectares. The leader of TINDOGA clan is Datu Santiano “Andang” Agdahan Jr. Datu Andang is also the chairman of TINDOGA. He leads their clan in their struggle to reclaim their ancestral land. In Cebuano, tindoga also means “to rise up”. Datu is a title for rulers, chiefs or leaders of IPs in Visayas and Mindanao. As chairman of Tindoga, Datu Andang leads the community in opposing plantation expansions and is uncompromising in his values and decisions to stay in their ancestral domains despite the numerous attempts forcing them out of their community. One female Lumad that I interviewed explained that the strength of TINDOGA comes from the unified stand of its members: children, as well as the elderly, are all involved and actively participated in the struggle for land.

The displacement of the Lumads in Quezon goes back to the post-American period when the local government opened the province to domestic and foreign investors. In 1984, a wealthy politician and businessman in Bukidnon entered into a Farm Lease Agreement (AFLA) with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The 25-year contract ended in 2009 but at present, the land is being controlled by the businessman and politician which he converted into pineapple and sugarcane plantation and later on into a ranch named Rancho Montalvan. In an interview, Datu Andang explained, “we were informed that the contract of Rancho Montalvan, Inc. with AFLA #123 expired last December 31, 2009, so we applied for Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT)”. Datu Andang added,

The National Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) told us that we only had to pay them P30,000 and our paper will be processed. But the catch is that we have to agree to the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) which would lease back the land to the “owner” of Rancho Montalvan.

Refusing to sign the MOA, the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) was consequently withheld from Tindoga. Consequently, DENR and NCIP allowed the politician-businessman to stay in the disputed land despite the AFLA expiration and the CADT application by the Lumads, giving priority to Montalvan Ranch over the Lumad tribe. At present, there are seven Indigenous groups in Quezon, Bukidnon, applying for CADT. The government had allegedly leased the lands to a certain Pablo Lorenzo. Tindoga is claiming 630 hectares, “most of which is covered by the Rancho Montalvan Inc. (Ayroso, 2015). Sensing that the government would never listen to their cry for land, the TINDOGA members, with their families of approximately 500 individuals (including 200 children), built houses made of scrap materials just outside the border of the Montalvan Ranch.

On 14 September 2014, The NCIP issued a CADT to them. However, the politician-businessman whom the Lumads called land-grabber, refused to acknowledge the CADT and continued to occupy these lands. To this day, the ancestral lands are being converted into agricultural plantations and ranches. These landlords hire private armies and security guards which continue to harass, intimidate and in some cases kill Lumad leaders.

TINDOGA has struggled with sweat and blood literally. Many times, they were harassed and intimidated by private armies of these landlords and land-grabbers. The Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) documented the various forms of harassment and intimidation that took place in TINDOGA. There were several cases where private guards deliberately unleashed the cows and allowed it to enter Lumad communities in order to destroy their food crops and their property. On 28 March 2012, armed groups believed to be hired security guards of Lorenzo fired at TINDOGA families. This was followed by shootings, indiscriminate firing of guns and destruction of houses in April and October 2014. On the morning of 24 March 2015, while on their way to their farms, TINDOGA members were “ambushed by 30 armed security guards of Pablo Lorenzo, Jr. killing TINDOGA member Mabini Beato and wounding two others” (Ayroso, 2015). This was followed by almost monthly incidents of shooting in the year 2016. On 3 February 2017, Renato Anglao, the Secretary-General of TINDOGA was gunned down by three unidentified motorcycle-riding gunmen (Capistrano, 2017). Amid spiraling violence, the TINDOGA community persevered. They stood firm in defending their right to reclaim the land and assert their right to self-determination. The leaders and members are living testimonies to the importance of organized and collective struggle in asserting Lumad rights.

Corporate land-grabbing, mining activities, Lumad displacement, extra-judicial killings and human rights violations perpetrated by state forces (the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Philippine National Police and other paramilitary groups) are forcing Lumads and peasants to join the armed revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). No less than Philippine Presidential Adviser on Peace Process Jesus Dureza admitted that 75% of NPA guerrilla fighters are IPs or Lumads (Lugay, 2019). In a document published during its re-establishment on 29 March 1969, titled “Declaration of the New People’s Army”, the NPA prides itself on being the people’s army because it

serves the fundamental interests of the people by being the principal instruments in agrarian revolution . . . and also in the united front against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and because it has a style of being closely linked with the masses of the people by helping them in every possible way. (Sison, 2013)

NPA territories overlap with mining activities especially in the Eastern part of Mindanao (Holden, 2014). Holden added that poverty, ecological effects of mining and communities deprived of livelihood are some of the factors that pushed Lumads and peasants to join the NPA (Holden, 2014).

Bungkalan: Lumad resistance to corporate land-grab

Since 16 March 2015, TINDOGA members have engaged in bungkalan, a heroic act to assert their right over the land and a symbolic gesture of defiance against corporate land expansion. Bungkalan means “to cultivate”. Hundreds of Lumad families belonging to TINDOGA clan forcibly occupied lands illegally seized by big landlords and agro-corporations. For almost 3 years now, the Lumads, under the leadership of Datu Andang, have successfully tilled and developed the land which dramatically increased its food production. This ensures a steady and sufficient supply of food for the community. Since then, some 200 members of the organization

had been crossing the fenced off perimeter to expand their cultivated farms as a desperate measure for food in a time of drought and also as a defiant protest action to the continuing claim of Lorenzo over their ancestral land. (Alamon, 2017, p. 149)

Each family member of TINDOGA is given a 20-meter × 30-meter tract of land where they could build a small house (shanty) and plant vegetables and root crops for their daily consumption. Aside from the family farm, the village also holds larger community farms where all members of the community help to cultivate. These collective farms increased food production and enhanced cooperation among tribal members. The produce of these communal farms are distributed among TINDOGA members. Their strong sense of unity and their determination to pursue collective interests above individual gains allow them to repel any violent attacks by Lorenzo’s private armies. The TINDOGA experience of bungkalan is a clear indication that a sustainable, people-centered, agriculture-driven path to development is possible. Bungkalan is a stark contrast to the neoliberal development program being pushed by the government and big landowners whose only aim is the accumulation of profit by converting and expanding prime agricultural lands, including ancestral domains for use by big foreign corporations.

Conclusion

This article demonstrated that the present neoliberal economic development program that is being promoted by the government has proven to be disastrous not only to the environment but to the lives of the Lumads as well. This “development aggression” uproots Lumads from their ancestral lands, deprives them of their means of livelihood and source of food and water, and consequently destroys their rich culture and tradition resonates with David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession. It dismantles communal ownership of land and other natural resources by turning these into commodities to be bought and sold in the market. In Mindanao, this economic paradigm inevitably sharpens the contradiction between the big landlords and their multinational corporation counterparts and the vast majority of poor and impoverished, oppressed and exploited Lumads. Consequently, neoliberalism’s adherence to market fundamentalism is proven to be the antithesis of the Lumads’ way of life characterized by solidarity, cooperation, a sense of community, communal ownership, stewardship and care for creation. The destruction of life property brought about by land-grabbing breeds resistance from the ranks of the Lumad people through armed resistance and other legal means such as bungkalan, rallies and establishing picket lines. The Lumads have proven that only through collective and organized struggle can they combat the devastating effects of accumulation by dispossession. Through bungkalan, they are able to prove that a people-centered, sustainable and agriculture-driven path to development is possible.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jerry Degollacion Imbong

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