Research group tapped to boost Pangasinan claim on village

TORN BETWEEN TWO PROVINCES Situated 1,675 meters above sea level, the mountain village of Malico is home to Kalanguya families. The community is at the center of a territorial dispute between the town of San Nicolas in Pangasinan province and Sante Fe town in Nueva Vizcaya province. —PHOTO COURTESY OF SAN NICOLAS MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

LINGAYEN, PANGASINAN—Gov. Ramon Guico III on Thursday directed the Center for Pangasinan Studies (CPS) to conduct research on the history of Malico, a mountain village of San Nicolas town, to determine its boundaries with Nueva Vizcaya province.

During a meeting with CPS, Guico asked the group to look for a 1917 document about Malico that was the basis for the villagers’ claim that Malico was part of Pangasinan.

“You are aware of the current issue that we might be losing 3,000 hectares [of Malico], so we are looking for the document, an article written during American time and the basis for the boundaries, and the village’s constitution then,” Guico told CPS representatives.

‘Long fight’

He acknowledged that the territorial row between Pangasinan and Nueva Vizcaya would be “a long fight.”

“But rather than sitting and doing nothing, we must do something [about the boundary issue]. This is an urgent matter,” he said.

On Monday, Guico and other provincial officials met with leaders of 112 indigenous Kalanguya families in Malico to discuss the boundary dispute with Nueva Vizcaya and assert Pangasinan’s territorial rights over the area.

Nueva Vizcaya Gov. Carlos Padilla on Thursday said they were only claiming ownership of one of the Malico villages that already spans the boundaries of their province in Santa Fe town.

“The part we are claiming is our own Malico, and they (Pangasinan) have their own Malico,” he told the Inquirer.

Padilla said the governments of Santa Fe and San Nicolas must recognize the results of a scheduled survey by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, which would set the boundaries between the two villages.

—REPORTS FROM YOLANDA SOTELO AND VILLAMOR VISAYA JR.

READ: Pangasinan execs vow to keep village amid border dispute with N. Vizcaya town