Agta burial custom casualty in Aurora land conflict
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—An Agta chieftain who was killed over a land dispute in Dinalungan town in Aurora last week was denied his right to be buried in the ancestral burial ground within a contested property on Sunday, the victim’s relatives told the Inquirer.
Instead, Arman Maximino, 42, was buried beside his house, which was near where he was gunned down on the night of May 17, said Jonathan Sobrevega, his cousin.
Maximino headed 25 Agta families from five clans in Sitio (subvillage) Delebsong in Barangay (village) Nipoo.
Sobrevega said the clans asserted their right to bury Maximino in what is now a 33-hectare fenced property said to be owned by the Guerrero family. But he said Mayor Tito Tubigan prevented the plan.
“That burial ground facing [the Pacific Ocean] is owned by the Agta. It’s been used by the elders since 1913,” he said.
The land is within a 49-ha non-Christian reservation for which a title was given to the tribe by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 2006 through Benjamin Miña, provincial environment and natural resources officer.
Reached by telephone from Metro Manila, Tubigan said the Guerrero family showed a Supreme Court order validating its ownership of the property.
Tubigan denied an allegation that he stopped the burial of Maximino in the ancestral plot. “I advised them to secure clearance because there is a municipal ordinance banning whimsical burial for sanitary reasons,” he said.
But Mark Basilio, head of the service center of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) in northern Aurora, said that denying Maximino’s interment in the old burial ground was a “malaking-malaking (enormous) violation of his right.”
Basilio said the 25 Agta families displaced from the property had moved to the coast facing the Pacific Ocean when the fencing began in March.
Fe Oliva, NCIP Aurora director, said it was up to the clan to determine if a violation had been committed. She noted a conflict between tribal and local government laws.
Sobrevega said Maximino was embalmed, a fairly new practice in the tribe, as relatives negotiated for a proper burial and waited for other family members from Quirino province.
Tubigan said the suspects in Maximino’s slaying—security guard Richard de los Santos and his coworkers at Fasm Security Agency—had been charged before the prosecutor’s office.
Sobrevega said De los Santos posted bail after the charge was downgraded from murder to homicide.
De los Santos said Maximino had trespassed into the property.
Sobrevega said Maximino was checking on the traps he laid out for “bayawak” (monitor lizard), a food among the Agta, when he was shot and killed by De los Santos. Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon
