Ancestral land titles hamper John Hay segregation

BAGUIO CITY—The ancestral domain title issued to a whole village inside Camp John Hay and other land titles owned by residents near the reservation have become a legal quandary for the government firm tasked to segregate 13 barangays (villages) from the former American rest and recreation area.

A director of the John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) asked the Office of the President to determine whether it would honor these titles as partial fulfillment of segregation, which was one of the 19 preconditions the national government had agreed to undertake when Baguio endorsed John Hay’s privatization in 1994.

The JHMC, the estate manager of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), is obligated to enforce City Resolution No. 362, series of 1994, which enumerates the 19 conditions. Condition 14 requires the BCDA to exclude all affected barangays from the John Hay reservation.

Except for Barangay Scout Barrio, where former John Hay employees settled decades ago, the state firm had not been able to start the segregation process for Barangays Happy Hallow, Hillside, Greenwater, Upper Dagsian, Loakan Proper, Loakan Liwanag, Loakan Apugan, Country Club Village, Camp 7, Lucnab, Military Cut-off, Sta. Scholastica and Lower Dagsian.

JHMC director Leandro Yangot said the BCDA and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), which issues ancestral land titles, are administered by the Office of the President, “so the issue could be settled on the President’s level.”

“If the President recognizes the certificate of ancestral domain titles (CADT) issued to Barangay Happy Hallow [one of the John Hay villages identified for segregation] and the certificates of ancestral land titles (CALT) issued to individuals living in Camp John Hay, then their neighborhood and their home lots are as good as segregated,” Yangot said.

The segregation involves the survey and boundary delineation of the villages before President Aquino could issue a proclamation separating these communities from the coverage of the John Hay reservation, according to documents provided by the JHMC.

The segregated home lots would then be sold at a minimum cost to the present John Hay dwellers, said Yangot, who chairs the JHMC committee on the 19 conditionalities.

Jamie Eloise Manzano-Agbayani, JHMC president, announced at a December 19 caucus with Baguio civic leaders, that P1 million had been allocated for the survey of the John Hay villages.

Yangot said delineation could be done quickly in many of these villages, particularly for uncontested lots. The process, however, does not take into account the existence of titled properties before segregation, he said.

If the government’s segregation process is unable to honor ancestral land titles, the state may be compelled to go to court and nullify these titles before it can relinquish Happy Hallow and individual John Hay home lots, Yangot said.

The Happy Hallow CADT was the first ancestral domain title to be issued inside an urban community in 2006. But the CADT was challenged by Ibaloi clans of Happy Hallow because it entitled both Ibaloi and Kankaney dwellers as ancestral dwellers of the area.

The Ibaloi families argued that the Kankaney families were 20th-century migrants who were assimilated into the indigenous Ibaloi clans.

The dispute was settled in 2009 when the Ibaloi families withdrew their names from the domain title, according to NCIP officials.

CALT had also been issued to Ibaloi families living in Loakan and Greenwater villages, but these were challenged by government agencies like the Philippine Economic Zone Authority.

According to records, only Scout Barrio was segregated by a proclamation issued in 2009 by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.—Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon