"Bungkalan" and the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe's resistance to corporate land-grab in Bukidnon, Mindanao. (March 2021) - Imbong, Jerry Degollacion
The island of Mindanao, dubbed as the "Land of Promise" is home to more than half of natural and mineral resources in the country. It hosts the largest rubber, banana and pineapple plantations as well as huge mining explorations. These big agri-plantations and mining corporations encroach peasant communities and Indigenous Peoples or Lumads in Bukidnon, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Compostela Valley and Davao provinces. Around 500, 000 hectares of land in the five regions of Mindanao are planted with crops primarily for export. Ethnographic data were collected during fieldwork in the province of Bukidnon from May to October 2017. Raw data were obtained through formal and informal interviews, direct observation and collective discussions. Field research was carried out mostly with the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe in the municipality of Quezon. This article explores how corporate land-grabbing generates Lumad resistance, thus creating emancipatory politics. First, I briefly lay down the basis of "development programs" of the government within the framework of the neoliberal economic system and contextualize the issue of land-grabbing in Lumad communities in Bukidnon. I rely heavily on the theories provided by David Harvey in crystallizing the neoliberal economic paradigm. I then propose that this market-driven economic model inevitably results in accumulation by dispossession as experienced by the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe. Third, I describe how big landlords and agro-corporations encroach the Manobo-Pulangihon Tribe ancestral lands and explore a novel form of Lumad resistance against corporate land-grab.