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Squatter in their own land?

Simon "Ka Filiw" Naogsan
Spokesperson, Cordillera People's Democratic Front

January 1 9, 2006

Gloria Arroyo has once more shown callousness towards the national minorities of the Cordillera. During her recent New Year’s vacation in the Cordillera, she uttered disparaging comments about local residents near the Banaue rice terraces. She referred to them as squatters whose galvanized iron huts were ruining the beauty of the rice terraces. Her imperious edict was to evict the local residents from the terraces and relocate them elsewhere.

The incident shows how truly superficial is Mrs. Arroyo’s self-proclaimed concern for the Cordillera people, how shallow her understanding of local culture. Many tribes in the Cordillera build their settlements close to their ricefields to maximize time for work. Furthermore, Cordillera land use is based on communal, clan, and private ownership. Despite government’s efforts to ruin it, this practice is still in effect today. On whose land then will the people disdainfully referred as squatters be relocated? Mrs. Arroyo’s ignorance could trigger local land disputes. The people of the Cordillera are not pawns to be shoved about on a chessboard; neither are they squatters in their own land.

Galvanized iron sheets may not comply with Mrs. Arroyo’s lofty standards for building materials, but these are relatively cheaper and readily available. These are necessity to those made poor by corruption of social services burgeoning taxes, and rising prices inflicted by the Arroyo regime and the system it represents.

In Mrs. Arroyo’s twisted reasoning, the rice terraces must be preserved by evicting the people who own them, who nurtured and kept verdant the terraces with back-breaking labor. It is through their sweat, and that of their forebears, that there is a tourist attraction to even speak of today. Mrs. Arroyo’s flippant comments betray her true concern in the issue - to prioritize tourism and the foreign and local tourism agencies to rake in millions in profit. Mrs. Arroyo thinks that galvanized shacks and people who live in them uglify the rice terraces. What does she think about bulk mining projects that are stripping bare the forests and mountains, that are poisoning the lengthy rivers and ricefields of the Cordillera?

It is treacherous how the Arroyo regime treats the Cordillera people. On one hand are Mrs. Arroyo’s numerous photo sessions in native regalia with tribal women and local leaders in various locales in the region (She loves appearances, doesn’t she?). On the other hand are her programs for the entry of destructive mines and dams that violate the people’s rights to their ancestral lands. Mrs. Arroyo would gush over the beauty of the Cordillera, then build mines that would ruin it.

Ang isda sa bibig nahuhuli. The programs promulgated by the Arroyo regime bespeak a wide ranging and rapacious plot to lay bare the natural wealth and lifeblood of the region for the entry of big foreign corporations. The Cordillera people would do well to resist, protect their ancestral lands, their livelihoods, and their villages. The Cordillera Peoples’ Democratic Front calls on all the patriotic Cordillera men and women, heirs to a tradition of diligence and courage that has nurtured and defended this land, to unite in revolutionary struggle and overthrow this treacherous, much-despised and ugly regime. #

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