DND asked to stop PMA plan to reclaim land
BAGUIO CITY—Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. has been asked to suspend government efforts at reclaiming military reservation lands occupied by civilians in this city, including the forested lands surrounding the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), pending discussions about legally separating properties that are inhabited.
The Baguio City Council on April 7 passed a resolution asking Teodoro for a status quo over recovery plans at Fort del Pilar, where the premier military school is located.
It also asked the military to freeze clearing operations at Camp Henry T. Allen beside the City Hall and at the Navy Base where the families of retired military personnel have lived since the 1960s and 1970s.
The PMA is the custodian of over 400 hectares of land surrounding the military school: the 373-hectares Fort Gregorio del Pilar, which was established as a reservation through Proclamation No. 2405 in 1985; the 29-ha Navy Base, which officially became a reservation in 1983 through Proclamation No. 2313 in spite of the 3,951 people living there as part of Barangay St. Joseph; and the 14.3-ha Camp Allen, which was the PMA’s home in 1908 and briefly after Word War 2.
Camp Allen was reserved for military use through Proclamation No. 254 in 1929, but it is now home to 2,330 civilian residents, while hosting the bunkhouses of the PMA’s military staff.
During the council’s session on Monday, the Ibaloy clan of Chacchacan (also spelled Chakchakan) complained that on March 26, armed soldiers tore down and confiscated the perimeter fences at their 28-ha ancestral land claim, which has served as a barrier between the PMA and their cattle field.
The clan has been at odds with the military school for years because the Ibaloy’s ancestral land claims overlap with the PMA reservation at Loakan, one of the oldest Ibaloy settlements here before the American colonial government was put up in Baguio.
In 2023, a Baguio court ruled in favor of the PMA when it slapped two Chacchacan women with a ten-day jail term for clearing and farming a section of their claims, which is inside the military school property.
Evictions
Anthuro Chacchacan, the clan president, urged the council to appeal to Teodoro for the separation of Ibaloy lands from military reserves.
Last year, the PMA informed the council that it was ordered by the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to evict unauthorized settlers occupying military lands so these areas could be developed as part of the Armed Forces modernization program. But the evictions also targeted the surviving World War II veterans who put up a staff house filled with memorabilia inside Camp Allen.
Teodoro and Mayor Benjamin Magalong are expected to discuss these issues in an April 14 dialogue here, said Councilor Peter Fianza, an Ibaloy lawyer who pushed for the status quo alongside fellow Ibaloy Maximo Edwin, the council’s Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative.
Teodoro is expected to outline the development projects for all three military reserves, he said.
No longer used
But the PMA had also accelerated its land recovery program to preserve military lands from the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD), which was instructed by President Marcos to take over government lands that no longer function the way these were originally intended, Fianza told the council.
“The reason why the DND has become more aggressive about recovering Baguio military lands is the possibility that (the) DHSUD will take portions of the reservation that are not being used for its original purpose,” he said partly in Tagalog.
The DHSUD was empowered to sequester abandoned government lands for the government’s social housing program through Executive Order No. 34 issued in 2023 by President Marcos. The EO requires local governments to inventory properties within their respective territories and identify suitable lands for housing.
Reservation lands that have not been utilized for the past ten years would likely fall in the list of potential Baguio social housing sites, said Fianza. The DND, he stressed, “does not want any of its military lands to be declared as abandoned.”
Councilor Isabelo Cosalan, Jr., also an Ibaloy, said council deliberations about the PMA should also be transmitted to Malacañang because of the peculiar nature of indigenous lands here. Recent Supreme Court rulings have nullified certificates of ancestral land titles issued to some Ibaloy families because of a special provision in the 1997 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act that excludes Baguio from the coverage of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.
