A public interest law firm headed by former Ateneo School of Government dean Antonio La Viña has taken on the case of Mariahangin Island residents in Balabac, southern Palawan, who are fighting for control of a small island they claim as their ancestral domain but which has been titled instead to a group of private individuals who have never even set foot on the place.
The battle for Mariahangin has shifted to the courts, as the Regional Trial Court in Brooke’s Point last week issued a temporary restraining order at the behest of the landowners, in effect preventing the indigenous community living on the island from denying them access. This has come in the wake of protracted clashes between the residents and a private security firm trying to gain control of the island.
La Viña said in a press conference Monday they will appeal the TRO, as he also bared plans to question the validity of the land titles issued to nine private individuals whom residents have accused of being surrogates or dummies of the country’s largest conglomerate, San Miguel Corporation (SMC).
“It is like they are being asked to leave their own home where they have lived since time immemorial. Under our laws, we are supposed to recognize ancestral domain rights, but here they are being asked to leave their own homes,” La Viña said in a press conference attended by support groups including Akbayan partylist Rep. Dadah Ismula Kiram and the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines through its Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples.
The 38-hectare island at the southernmost tip of Palawan is a textbook case of how the country’s land titling system works against indigenous communities. Mariahangin magnifies the systemic failures of the country’s social justice environment—where private individuals who have never set foot on a remote land can acquire a transfer certificate of title (TCT) over it, a government agency (the Department of Agrarian Reform) reversing its own protective policies against an indigenous community, and a court order criminalizing an indigenous community’s actions to defend their own homes.
“Sobra na ang pahirap na ginagawa sa mga katutubo. Nananawagan kami sa mga indibidwal at grupong pang-negosyo na itigil na ang pagsasampa ng mga kasong walang basehan. Sa mga ahensya ng pamahalaan na gawin ang kanilang mandato na magbigay ng hustisya sa ating mga katutubo, sa DENR para ilabas ang tunay na land classification ng Mariahangin,” Tony Abuso of ECIP-CBCP said.
The phantom landowners
At the center of the controversy are nine individuals—Bonifacio M. Suarez, Mario N. Alsosa, Michael D. Carbaquel, Brian B. Nacionales, Nepthali T. Guinanao, Den Den M. Ramirez, Efren M. Llena, Benjie S. Deoric, and Gerard J. Carpo—who claim legal ownership of the island through titles issued in recent years.
Their names appear on legal documents, but residents say these individuals have never been seen on Mariahangin. Instead, their interests are represented by Caesar M. Ortega, a lawyer who is in fact a former director of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples’ (NCIP) Ancestral Domain Office, the very agency tasked with protecting indigenous land rights.
Lawyer Nica Millado, who has been collaborating with La Viña’s firm, said they have obtained copies of the titles from the Land Registration Authority and plan to scrutinize their provenance. She indicated a strategy that will focus on demonstrating that the titles were fraudulently obtained or issued in violation of indigenous peoples’ rights laws.
Millado explained that the root of the issue involves a supposed land title based on an affidavit of waiver signed by certain tribal members in favor of the land claimants.
“May waiver daw na pinirmahan ang mga katutubo. Walang pirmahang nangyari sa isla ng Mariahangin. Those who supposedly signed the waiver, hindi sila pumirma doon at hindi thumbmark ang nandoon sa dokumento,” Millado said.
The SMC connection
While San Miguel Corporation has repeatedly denied any involvement in Mariahangin, the evidence trail suggests otherwise.
Social media posts on the issue have established the role of a certain Atty. Michaella Rosales, identified as SMC’s Special Projects Manager, in attempts to encourage the island residents to relocate with the promise of the company’s support.
SMC later retracted this promise, admitting in an official statement that it only had initial interest in the island but had since backed out.
Meanwhile, SMC’s subsidiary, Bricktree Properties, continues to maintain a resettlement project for those who have accepted relocation offers in Sitio Litason, Barangay Buliluyan, Bataraza. Bricktree Properties is also spearheading SMC’s plan to develop a massive luxury resort on Bugsuk Island just across from Mariahangin.
The pattern of denial is familiar in the case of Mariahangin. While SMC says it is not involved, it’s their representatives offering residents money to leave. The title holders say they are private individuals, but some of them have declared close association with SMC top executive Ramon Ang in private social media posts.
A 20-year wait for justice
The Molbog, Palaw’an, and Cagayanen communities of Mariahangin filed their application for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) in 2005. Nearly two decades later, the application remains stuck in the first phase of a tedious process mandated by law. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) has cited “lack of funds” for failing to conduct the necessary validation surveys on the tribes’ claim.
The bureaucratic paralysis shows a stark contrast to the speed with which the private titles were issued by the DENR to private individuals. While the indigenous application languished for 20 years, nine separate titles were processed, approved, and registered despite contentious issues such as whether the landowners were actual occupants who deserved to be issued an original certificate of title normally granted to those who have actually held and toiled over the land.
The Christmas TRO
The December 15 temporary restraining order has become a focal point of controversy, not just for what it orders but for how and when it was issued. The RTC in Brooke’s Point granted the 20-day TRO just four days after a December 11 hearing—a timeline legal observers describe as extraordinarily compressed for a case involving complex questions of indigenous rights and ancestral domain.
The order was served at 7 a.m. on December 15 by a sheriff accompanied by armed police, preventing residents from blocking the activities of the claimants. In practical terms, this means the indigenous community can no longer form human barricades or prevent entry by security forces—tactics they had used to maintain control of their island.
“The timing of this eviction threat—during the Christmas season—is particularly heartless. At a time when families should be celebrating peace, the children of Mariahangin are instead forced to fear armed intrusion,” another religious group, the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc., said in a statement.
Martial law shadows
The Mariahangin conflict cannot be understood without examining Balabac’s history of martial law-era dispossession. In 1974, President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. granted 10,821 hectares of ancestral land on Bugsuk and Pandanan Islands to Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr., then CEO of San Miguel Corporation, through a presidential land swap agreement. Indigenous communities were never consulted.
La Viña and his legal team are investigating whether any of the nine current titles have genealogical connections to the 1974 Marcos-Cojuangco deal, which would raise questions about whether they inherit the legal infirmities of that original transaction.
The DAR reversal
Perhaps no government action has been more damaging to the community’s position than the Department of Agrarian Reform’s September 2023 decision to revoke its 2014 Notice of Coverage that had previously placed Mariahangin under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
For nine years, that CARP coverage provided a measure of protection for the IP community, legally classifying the island as agricultural land subject to redistribution. The 2023 reversal, which declared the land “unsuitable for agriculture,” came as a shock to residents who have been farming seaweed, vegetables, and rice on the island for generations.
“How can land we’ve been farming successfully for decades suddenly be declared unsuitable for agriculture?” asked Marilyn Pelayo, a Molbog leader.
Legal experts see the DAR reversal as potentially actionable if it can be proven that it had no scientific basis and was decided in a manner that coincidentally benefited private claimants.
The human cost
While lawyers debate legal principles, the nearly 100 families remaining on Mariahangin live with constant fear.
Since June 2024, they have maintained 24-hour beach patrols, taking turns sleeping so someone is always watching for approaching boats. Children who once played freely on the shore now understand that strangers in blue uniforms represent an existential threat to their way of life.
The community has fractured under pressure. Nearly half of the original 200 families accepted relocation payments and left for the Litason settlement arranged for them by SMC and its subsidiary Bricktree Corporation. Those who remain speak of their departed neighbors with a mixture of sadness and anger.
The violence has been both physical and legal. The June 29, 2024 shooting incident, when JMV security guards fired at residents, left no one physically injured but traumatized the entire community. Then came the arrests—ten community members were detained in May 2025 on “grave coercion” charges for forming human barricades to protect their homes.
The cemetery as evidence
Perhaps the most poignant evidence of the community’s ancestral connection to Mariahangin is the cemetery—a small plot where generations of Molbog, Palaw’an, and Cagayanen people are buried.
For the residents, the cemetery represents something the titles held by the nine named landowners can never match: physical, spiritual, and generational ties to the land.
“My grandmother is buried there. My father is buried there. When I die, I want to be buried there too,” said Tarhata Nasiron Pelayo, an elderly resident who joined the tearful video appeals.
What happens next
The immediate legal focus is overturning the TRO, which La Viña expects to argue before the Court of Appeals in the coming weeks. Simultaneously, his team is preparing the main case challenging the validity of the nine titles.
The community, meanwhile, waits anxiously. The TRO expires after 20 days, but it could be extended. Without legal protection for their resistance tactics, they face an impossible choice: comply with the order and watch security forces occupy their island, or continue their barricades and face criminal prosecution.
