A Filipino tribe fights to stay as a ‘Smart City’ rises on a former US base

Sapang Kawayan, Philippines – Two hours northbound of the capital, Manila, connected the immense grounds of a erstwhile United States subject base, the Philippine authorities is pushing up with plans for a multibillion-dollar “smart city” that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr hopes to crook into a aboriginal “mecca for tourists” and a “magnet for investors”.

The New Clark City, which is being built connected the erstwhile Clark Air Base, is cardinal to the government’s effort to pull overseas concern and easiness congestion successful Manila, wherever astir 15 cardinal radical live.

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To travel the city’s development, the authorities has besides laid retired an ambitious slate of projects astatine a adjacent airdrome analyzable — caller bid lines, expanded airdrome runways, and a $515m stadium that officials anticipation volition beryllium enticing capable to gully the planetary popular vocalist Taylor Swift.

Caught betwixt the rising caller metropolis and the tract of the projected stadium lies the Indigenous Aeta colony of Sapang Kawayan. For the astir 500 families who unrecorded there, successful houses of nipa writer and rattan, the developments spell disaster.

“We were present earlier the Americans, adjacent earlier the Spanish,” said Petronila Capiz, 60, the chieftain of the Aeta Hungey people successful Sapang Kawayan. “And the onshore continues to beryllium taken from us.”

Historians accidental American colonisers, who seized the Philippines from Spain successful 1898, took implicit the 32,000-hectare (80,000-acre) tract that became Clark Air Base successful the 1920s, dispossessing the Aetas, a seminomadic and dark-skinned radical thought to beryllium among the archipelago’s earliest inhabitants.

Many were displaced, though immoderate moved deeper into the jungle wrong the basal and were employed arsenic labourers.

The US turned implicit the basal to the Philippine authorities successful 1991, immoderate 4 decades aft granting the state independence. Since then, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, oregon BCDA, has managed the complex. Some 20,000 Aetas are thought to stay successful the Clark country today, dispersed crossed 32 villages.

But astir of their claims to the onshore are not recognised.

In Sapang Kawayan, residents fearfulness the government’s improvement roar means they could beryllium pushed retired agelong earlier they tin found specified claims. The assemblage – on with different Aeta villages successful Clark – is moving with researchers from the University of the Philippines to expedite a long-pending exertion for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, oregon CADT — the lone ineligible mechanics that would let them to asseverate rights to their territory and its resources.

In January, July and September, Aetas young and aged gathered nether makeshift woody shelters successful Sapang Kawayan, assembling household trees and sharing stories and photographs. Volunteers documented each item successful hopes of demonstrating that the assemblage determination predates assemblage rule.

Their 17,000-hectare assertion overlaps with astir each of the 9,450 hectares designated for New Clark City, portion 14 kilometres to the southbound is the airdrome analyzable wherever the caller railway line, runway and stadium are slated to rise.

Together, the caller metropolis and airdrome analyzable “will devour up the fields wherever we farm, the rivers wherever we food and the mountains wherever we get our herbs”, Capiz said.

Aetas enactment with researchers astatine the University of the Philippines to expedite their exertion for an ancestral onshore rubric [Michael Beltran/Al Jazeera]

‘Taylor Swift-ready’

The Philippine authorities archetypal announced plans for New Clark City nether then-President Rodrigo Duterte, promoting it arsenic a solution to the crippling congestion successful Metro Manila. The BCDA describes the improvement arsenic a “green, astute and disaster-resilient metropolis”.

Construction began successful 2018 with large roads and a sports analyzable that hosted the Southeast Asian Games successful 2019.

Designed to accommodate 1.2 cardinal people, the metropolis is expected to instrumentality astatine slightest 30 years to complete.

The BCDA is present gathering 3 highways linking New Clark City to the airdrome complex, wherever the “Taylor Swift–ready” stadium is planned. Officials person hyped that the stadium, to beryllium built by 2028, volition lure Swift aft she skipped the Philippines during the South Asian limb of her Eras circuit past year.

“One of the main elements that marque Clark truthful charismatic to investors is its unmatched connectivity,” the BCDA’s president, Joshua Bingcang, said this year, citing the airport, a adjacent seaport and large expressways. “But we request to further physique connected this connectivity and put much successful infrastructure.”

That enlargement has travel astatine a outgo for Aeta communities.

Counter-Mapping PH, a probe organisation, and campaigners estimation that hundreds of Aeta families person been displaced since operation of the metropolis began, including dozens of families who were fixed conscionable a week successful 2019 to “voluntarily” vacate up of the Southeast Asian Games.

They pass that thousands much could beryllium uprooted arsenic improvement continues.

The BCDA has offered fiscal compensation of $0.51 per quadrate metre arsenic good arsenic resettlement for affected families. In July, it broke crushed connected 840 lodging units, though it is unclear whether they are intended for displaced Aetas.

The bureau maintains that nary displacement has occurred due to the fact that Aetas person nary proven ineligible assertion to the area. In a connection to Al Jazeera, the BCDA said it “upholds the payment and rights of Indigenous peoples” and acknowledges their “long humanities presence” successful cardinal Luzon, wherever Clark is located. However, it noted that Clark’s boundaries travel “long-established authorities ownership” dating to the US subject base, and that the New Clark City does not encroach connected immoderate recognised ancestral domains.

The BCDA besides contended that it is the National Commission connected Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) that deals with the applications for a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, and stressed that it respected “lands awarded to Indigenous peoples”.

The Clark International Airport Corporation, which oversees the airdrome complex, offered akin assurances, stating that “there are nary households oregon communities existing successful the said location”. The radical added that portion the extended Clark country has Aeta communities, nary beryllium wrong the airdrome analyzable itself.

Labourers enactment connected buildings successful the games colony for the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) successful New Clark City successful Capas town, Tarlac province, northbound of Manila, connected July 19, 2019 [Ted Jibe/AFP]

‘Since clip immemorial’

Only a fistful of Aeta tribes person been awarded CADTs.

Two certificates person been granted connected the outskirts of Clark, portion the exertion filed by Sapang Kawayan and different villages wrong the basal person languished since 1986.

Marcial Lengao, caput of NCIP’s Tarlac office, told Al Jazeera that to assistance Aetas successful Clark a CADT they indispensable “prove that they person been determination since clip immemorial”, meaning, during oregon earlier the accomplishment of the Spanish colonisers to the archipelago 400 years ago.

The commission, helium said, specifies minimum requirements for a CADT: a genealogy of astatine slightest 5 clans dating backmost astatine slightest 3 generations oregon to the precolonial period, testimonies from elders, a representation of the domain and a census of the existent population.

Lengao said Sapang Kawayan’s exertion has yet to implicit these.

But adjacent if the exertion is granted, the colony faces different unsocial hurdle. Because the BCDA owns onshore rights to Clark, immoderate CADT approved by the committee successful the country indispensable past beryllium deliberated by the enforcement subdivision oregon the president’s office.

“They volition beryllium liable for uncovering a win-win solution,” Lengao said.

Activists, however, denounced the NCIP’s requirements arsenic onerous and warned that the longer Aetas stay without a CADT, the much susceptible they are to losing their lands.

“Without a CADT and without genuine designation from the government, the Aetas volition proceed to beryllium treated similar squatters connected their ain land,” said Pia Montalban of Karapatan-Central Luzon, a section rights group.

‘Among the astir abused Indigenous Filipinos’

The Aetas, who trust connected small-scale subsistence farming, are among the astir historically disenfranchised Indigenous peoples successful the Philippines. No authoritative information exists connected the Aeta population, but the authorities believes them to beryllium a tiny subset of the Philippines’s Indigenous peoples, numbering successful the tens of thousands nationwide.

The Aeta Tribe Foundation describes them arsenic among the “poorest and slightest educated” groups successful the nation.

“They are among the astir abused Indigenous Filipinos,” said Jeremiah Silvestre, an Indigenous science adept who worked intimately with Aeta communities until 2022 portion teaching astatine the Tarlac State University. “Partly due to the fact that of their good-natured culture, galore person taken vantage of Aetas. Worse, they unrecorded disconnected a onshore that is continuously taken from them.”

Silvestre, too, described the CADT process arsenic “unnecessarily academic”, saying it required Indigenous elders to contiguous implicit genealogies and elaborate maps to authorities officials successful what helium likened to “defending your dissertation”.

Changes successful authorities unit tin restart the full process, helium noted.

A World Bank study past twelvemonth recovered that Indigenous peoples successful the Philippines “often look insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles successful their efforts to process CADTs”. The study called recognising and protecting Indigenous onshore rights a “crucial measurement successful addressing poorness and conflict”.

For the families of Sapang Kawayan, experts fearfulness the deficiency of ceremonial designation could pb to displacement and homelessness.

“There’s nary information net,” Silvestre said. “We whitethorn spot much Aetas begging connected the thoroughfare if this continues. Systemic poorness volition besides mean the nonaccomplishment of an Indigenous culture.”

Victor Valantin, an Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative for Tarlac Province, which includes parts of Clark, fears that the territory for the Aetas successful the erstwhile basal is shrinking arsenic the caller projects accelerate.

“We’ll person to determination and move,” helium said. “Shopping centres won’t determination for us.”

Valantin went connected to lament what helium sees arsenic a acquainted imbalance.

“BCDA projects hap truthful fast,” helium said. “But thing for america volition beryllium awfully slow.”