NCIP allows family to take over oldest Baguio hotel

BAGUIO CITY—An Ibaloi family has been granted a writ of possession that allows it to evict the operators of Casa Vallejo, the city’s oldest hotel.

Crizaldy Barcelo, Cordillera regional technical director for land management service of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), was alerted about the writ by the DENR’s Natural Resources Development Corp., which oversees the 2,160-square meter prime real estate on Session Road where the century-old Casa Vallejo stands.

The hotel served Baguio pioneers when the American colonial government developed the summer capital in the early 1900s. Following years of disrepair, it was restored by Roebling Corp. in 2009 when the firm won the lease to manage and operate the place.

But the property was included in the ancestral land claim of the Acop family, which traces its roots to an Ibaloi pioneer named Piraso, Barcelo said.

The family was granted two certificates of ancestral land titles (CALTs) over the Casa Vallejo lot by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) in 2010, records showed.

The writ, which was issued by the NCIP cluster regional hearing office, allows the Acops to take possession of lots covered by their ancestral land titles, said lawyer Amador Batay-an, NCIP Cordillera director.

“I was informed that the writ would be applied on Friday (Jan. 10), so we have to prepare a legal brief testifying to the legal and historic circumstance of [Casa] Vallejo,” Barcelo said.

But Batay-an said the issuance of the writ was part of a process in an ongoing land dispute that could be overturned by the NCIP hearing office or the court once the DENR challenges the writ’s applicability over Casa Vallejo.

He said the DENR and the NCIP had been conducting dialogues since 2013 to iron out problems emanating from the release of CALTs in Baguio City. The city government sought to nullify titles that encroach on watersheds, parks and a compound that is part of the presidential Mansion.

In August last year, Mayor Mauricio Domogan and the city council discussed strategies in voiding Baguio CALTs because of fears that these cover a fifth of Baguio territory.

Domogan also expressed concern over Casa Vallejo’s CALT problems.

Casa Vallejo was originally Dormitory 4, which housed the employees of the Bureau of Public Works in the 1900s, the same period when the American colonial government began developing Baguio.

The dormitory was leased and converted into a hotel by Spanish immigrant Salvador Vallejo in 1927.

Vallejo’s heirs ran the hotel for decades but they closed the establishment when the DENR refused to sell the property to them, DENR records said.

It briefly served as offices for the DENR in the 1990s and some agency employees said that was the period when people may have started to stake claim over the property.

A concrete building built beside Casa Vallejo has been the subject of a city demolition order because it was put up without permits. But local officials said the demolition had been postponed due to the dispute over the Acop CALT.

The CALT issued to the Acop family was one of several CALTs validated by a Court of Appeals (CA) ruling on Jan. 13, 2013, when it dismissed the objections raised against the CALTs by the Office of the Solicitor General over “procedural infirmities.”

NCIP Resolution No. 107-2010-AL describes the Acop family and other claimants as “heirs of Cohen ‘Sarah’ Piraso, the daughter of Piraso, otherwise known as Kapitan Piraso, an Ibaloi, who occupied ancestral land located at what is known as Session Road, Baguio City,” according to the ruling of the CA Sixth Division.

The CA said Republic Act No. 8371 (the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997, which allows the NCIP to issue CALTs) was a “revolutionary law which now enjoins the organs of the government to be vigilant for the protection of indigenous cultural communities as a marginalized sector, protect their ancestral domain and ancestral lands, and ensure their economic, social, and cultural well-being.”