1 Module 3 Topic 1 Part 1

Colonial Land Use Policies

This module gives you an overview of the Regalian Doctrine and other colonial land use
policies that marginalized the indigenous peoples and undermined their indigenous resource
management.

Learning Outcome
1. develop an awareness and understanding of how the colonial land use policies
dispossessed and marginalized the indigenous peoples particularly the Cordillera IPs

Key Terms to Understand

Maura law Mortgage law Public Land Acts Regalian doctrine Torrens system

Part 1

Table 1
Colonial Policies and Legacies that Affect the IPs’ Land Use and Tenure

Colonial Goals/Salient Features

Policies/Legacies
Regalian Doctrine considered the entire Philippine archipelago as property of the Spanish crown
except those lands that were titled to private individuals (Hermoso, 1994)
Torrens System, “all lands be registered with the State, and that private land would be issued
or Land titles under the Torrens titling system” (Tapang, 2007)
Registration Act “Privately-owned lands – by individuals and corporations – were registered
No. 496, 1902 and titled” (Danguilan-Vitug, 1993)
“Land registration system in which the government is the keeper of all land
and title records, and a land title serves as a certificate of full, indefeasible, and
valid ownership.” (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Torrens-system.html)
Philippine Bill of Set the ceilings on the hectarage of private individuals and corporations may
1902 acquire: 16 has. for private individuals and 1,024 has. for corporations.
The Torrens system, which the Americans instituted for the registration of
lands, did not solve the problem completely. Either they were not aware of the
law or if they did, they could not pay the survey cost and other fees required in
applying for a Torrens title. http://www.dar.gov.ph
Land Registration “declared all lands subject to the Torrens system of formal registration of land
Act of 1902 (Act title and empowered the State to issue to any legitimate claimant secure proof of
No. 496) title over a parcel of land. This system turned land into a commodity that could
be traded by the exchange of a piece of paper”
(http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf)
Commonwealth … the Director of Lands shall have direct executive control of the survey,
Act 141 (Public classification, lease, sale or any other form of concession or disposition and
Land Act) management of the lands of the public domain, and his decisions as to questions
of fact shall be conclusive when approved by the Secretary of Agriculture and
Commerce. (C.A. No. 141, sec. 4)
… President, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of Agriculture and
Commerce, shall from time to time classify the lands of the public domain into —
(a) Alienable or disposable; (b) Timber, and (c) Mineral lands, and
may at any time and in a like manner transfer such lands from one class to
another, for the purposes of their administration and disposition (C.A. No. 141, sec. 6)

Commonwealth Section 3. All mineral lands of the public domain and minerals belonging to the
Act No. 137 State, and their disposition, exploitation, development, or utilization, shall be
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limited to citizens of the Philippines, or to corporations, or associations, at least

60% of the capital of which is owned by such citizens, …
Section 4. The ownership and the right to the use of land for agricultural,
industrial, commercial, residential, or for any purpose other than mining does not
include the ownership of, nor the right to extract or utilize, the minerals which
may be found on or under the surface.
Section 5. The ownership of, and the right to extract and utilize, the mineral
included within all areas for which public agricultural land patents are granted
are excluded and excepted from all such patents.
Section6. The ownership of, and the right to extract and utilize, the minerals
included within all areas for which Torrens titles are granted are excluded and
excepted from all such titles.

Philippine “ordered that all unregistered lands become part of the public domain, and that
Commission Act only the State had the authority to classify or exploit the same”
No. 178 of 1903 (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf)

Forestry Act, 1904 “to encourage rational exploitation of the forests by installation of an appropriate
regulatory environment to prescribe fees and taxes, and to define parameters for
conversion of forest land to agriculture” (Pulhin, 2002)

Mining Law of “gave the Americans the right to acquire public land for mining purposes”
1905 (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf)

Public Land Acts “opened Mindanao and all other fertile lands that the State considered
of 1913, 1919 and unoccupied, unreserved, or otherwise unappropriated public lands to
1925 homesteaders and corporations, despite the fact that indigenous peoples were
living in these lands” (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf)

Section 9. (Jones ―Public Property and Legislation on Public Domain, Timber and Mining
Law, 1916) That all the property and rights which may have been acquired in the Philippine
Islands by the United States under the treaty of peace with Spain, …, except
such land or other property as has been or shall be designated by the President
of the United States for military and other reservations of the Government of the
United States, and all lands which may have been subsequently acquired by the
Government of the Philippine Islands by purchase …, are hereby placed under
the control of the government of said Islands to be administered or disposed of
for the benefit of the inhabitants thereof …

Section 11, Jones … taxes and assessments on property, …, may be imposed for the purposes of
Law, 1916 the Philippine Government and the provincial and municipal governments
thereof, …
Forest Law 1917 … “established communal forests and pastures for the use of communities,
though the forest land itself remained under state control” (Pulhin, 2002)
1935 Constitution Stipulated that all forest lands belong to the state (Pulhin, 2002)
Forestry … “residents of a municipality were granted the privilege to cut, collect and
Administrative remove free of charge, forest products for their personal use … issuance of a …
Order No. 14-1 permit by the Bureau of Forestry was needed … in order to harvest timber in the
(1941) communal forest” … (Pulhin, 2002)
Notes: Entries were directly lifted from the cited sources.

The colonial land use policy that has a great impact on the indigenous land use system is the
Regalian Doctrine. The following is Puno’s (Isagani Cruz v. Secretary of Environment, 2000) discussion of
the development of the Regalian Doctrine in the Philippine legal system.
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A. The Laws of the Indies

The capacity of the State to own or acquire property is the state's power of dominium.
This was the foundation for the early Spanish decrees embracing the feudal theory of jura
regalia. The "Regalian Doctrine" or jura regalia is a Western legal concept that was first
introduced by the Spaniards into the country through the Laws of the Indies and the Royal
Cedulas. The Laws of the Indies, i.e., more specifically, Law 14, Title 12, Book 4 of the
Novisima Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias, set the policy of the Spanish Crown with
respect to the Philippine Islands in the following manner:
We, having acquired full sovereignty over the Indies, and all lands, territories, and
possessions not heretofore ceded away by our royal predecessors, or by us, or in our
name, still pertaining to the royal crown and patrimony, it is our will that all lands which
are held without proper and true deeds of grant be restored to us as they belong to us,
in order that after reserving before all what to us or to our viceroys, audiencias, and
governors may seem necessary for public squares, ways, pastures, and commons in
those places which are peopled, taking into consideration not only their present
condition, but also their future and their probable increase, and after distributing to the
natives what may be necessary for tillage and pasturage, confirming them in what they
now have and giving them more if necessary, all the rest of said lands may remain free
and unencumbered for us to dispose of as we may wish.
We therefore order and command that all viceroys and presidents of pretorial
courts designate at such time as shall to them seem most expedient, a suitable period
within which all possessors of tracts, farms, plantations, and estates shall exhibit to
them and to the court officers appointed by them for this purpose, their title deeds
thereto. And those who are in possession by virtue of proper deeds and receipts, or by
virtue of just prescriptive right shall be protected, and all the rest shall be restored to us
to be disposed of at our will.
The Philippines passed to Spain by virtue of "discovery" and conquest. Consequently,
all lands became the exclusive patrimony and dominion of the Spanish Crown. The
Spanish Government took charge of distributing the lands by issuing royal grants and
concessions to Spaniards, both military and civilian. Private land titles could only be
acquired from the government either by purchase or by the various modes of land grant
from the Crown.
The Laws of the Indies were followed by the Ley Hipotecaria, or the Mortgage Law of
1893. The Spanish Mortgage Law provided for the systematic registration of titles and
deeds as well as possessory claims. The law sought to register and tax lands pursuant to
the Royal Decree of 1880. The Royal Decree of 1894, or the "Maura Law," was partly an
amendment of the Mortgage Law as well as the Laws of the Indies, as already amended by
previous orders and decrees. This was the last Spanish land law promulgated in the
Philippines. It required the "adjustment" or registration of all agricultural lands, otherwise
the lands shall revert to the state.
Four years later, by the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, Spain ceded to the
government of the United States all rights, interests and claims over the national territory of
the Philippine Islands. In 1903, the United States colonial government, through the
Philippine Commission, passed Act No. 926, the first Public Land Act.
All lands lost by the old barangays in the process of pueblo organization as well as all
lands not assigned to them and the pueblos, were now declared to be crown lands or
realengas, belonging to the Spanish king. It was from the realengas that land grants
were made to non-Filipinos.
The abrogation of the Filipinos' ancestral rights in land and the introduction of
the concept of public domain were the most immediate fundamental results of
Spanish colonial theory and law. The concept that the Spanish king was the owner of
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everything of value in the Indies or colonies was imposed on the natives, and the natives
were stripped of their ancestral rights to land.

B. Valenton v. Murciano
In 1904, under the American regime, this Court decided the case of Valenton v.
Murciano. Valenton resolved the question of which is the better basis for ownership of land:
long-time occupation or paper title. Plaintiffs had entered into peaceful occupation of the
subject land in 1860. Defendant's predecessor-in-interest, on the other hand, purchased
the land from the provincial treasurer of Tarlac in 1892. The lower court ruled against the
plaintiffs on the ground that they had lost all rights to the land by not objecting to the
administrative sale. Plaintiffs appealed the judgment, asserting that their 30-year adverse
possession, as an extraordinary period of prescription in the Partidas and the Civil Code,
had given them title to the land as against everyone, including the State; and that the State,
not owning the land, could not validly transmit it.
The Court, speaking through Justice Willard, decided the case on the basis of "those
special laws which from earliest time have regulated the disposition of the public lands in
the colonies." The question posed by the Court was: "Did these special laws recognize any
right of prescription as against the State as to these lands; and if so, to what extent was it
recognized?"
Prior to 1880, the Court said, there were no laws specifically providing for the
disposition of land in the Philippines. However, it was understood that in the absence of any
special law to govern a specific colony, the Laws of the Indies would be followed. Indeed, in
the Royal Order of July 5, 1862, it was decreed that until regulations on the subject could
be prepared, the authorities of the Philippine Islands should follow strictly the Laws of the
Indies, the Ordenanza of the Intendentes of 1786, and the Royal Cedula of 1754. Quoting
the preamble of Law 14, Title 12, Book 4 of the Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias, the
court interpreted it as follows:
In the preamble of this law there is, as is seen, a distinct statement that all those lands
belong to the Crown which have not been granted by Philip, or in his name, or by the
kings who preceded him. This statement excludes the idea that there might be lands
not so granted, that did not belong to the king. It excludes the idea that the king was
not still the owner of all ungranted lands, because some private person had been in
the adverse occupation of them. By the mandatory part of the law all the occupants of
the public lands are required to produce before the authorities named, and within a
time to be fixed by them, their title papers. And those who had good title or showed
prescription were to be protected in their holdings. It is apparent that it was not the
intention of the law that mere possession for a length of time should make the
possessors the owners of the land possessed by them without any action on the part of
the authorities.
The preamble stated that all those lands which had not been granted by Philip, or
in his name, or by the kings who preceded him, belonged to the Crown. For those
lands granted by the king, the decree provided for a system of assignment of such
lands. It also ordered that all possessors of agricultural land should exhibit their title
deed, otherwise, the land would be restored to the Crown.
The Royal Cedula of October 15, 1754 reinforced the Recopilacion when it
ordered the Crown's principal sub-delegate to issue a general order directing the
publication of the Crown's instructions:
xxx to the end that any and all persons who, since the year 1700, and up to the
date of the promulgation and publication of said order, shall have occupied royal
lands, whether or not xxx cultivated or tenanted, may xxx appear and exhibit to
said subdelegates the titles and patents by virtue of which said lands are
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occupied. xxx. Said subdelegates will at the same time warn the parties interested
that in case of their failure to present their title deeds within the term designated,
without a just and valid reason therefor, they will be deprived of and evicted from
their lands, and they will be granted to others.
On June 25, 1880, the Crown adopted regulations for the adjustment of lands
"wrongfully occupied" by private individuals in the Philippine Islands. Valenton construed
these regulations together with contemporaneous legislative and executive interpretations
of the law, and concluded that plaintiffs' case fared no better under the 1880 decree and
other laws which followed it, than it did under the earlier ones. Thus as a general doctrine,
the Court stated:
While the State has always recognized the right of the occupant to a deed if he proves
a possession for a sufficient length of time, yet it has always insisted that he must
make that proof before the proper administrative officers, and obtain from them his
deed, and until he did that the State remained the absolute owner.
In conclusion, the Court ruled: "We hold that from 1860 to 1892 there was no law in
force in these Islands by which the plaintiffs could obtain the ownership of these lands by
prescription, without any action by the State." Valenton had no rights other than those which
accrued to mere possession. Murciano, on the other hand, was deemed to be the owner of
the land by virtue of the grant by the provincial secretary. In effect, Valenton upheld the
Spanish concept of state ownership of public land.
As a fitting observation, the Court added that "[t]he policy pursued by the Spanish
Government from earliest times, requiring settlers on the public lands to obtain title
deeds therefor from the State, has been continued by the American Government in
Act No. 926."

C. The Public Land Acts and the Torrens System

Act No. 926, the first Public Land Act, was passed in pursuance of the provisions of
the the Philippine Bill of 1902. The law governed the disposition of lands of the public
domain. It prescribed rules and regulations for the homesteading, selling, and leasing of
portions of the public domain of the Philippine Islands, and prescribed the terms and
conditions to enable persons to perfect their titles to public lands in the Islands. It also
provided for the "issuance of patents to certain native settlers upon public lands," for the
establishment of town sites and sale of lots therein, for the completion of imperfect titles,
and for the cancellation or confirmation of Spanish concessions and grants in the Islands."
In short, the Public Land Act operated on the assumption that title to public lands in the
Philippine Islands remained in the government; and that the government's title to public
land sprung from the Treaty of Paris and other subsequent treaties between Spain and the
United States. The term "public land" referred to all lands of the public domain whose title
still remained in the government and are thrown open to private appropriation and
settlement, and excluded the patrimonial property of the government and the friar
lands.
Act No. 926 was superseded in 1919 by Act 2874, the second Public Land Act. This
new law was passed under the Jones Law. It was more comprehensive in scope but limited
the exploitation of agricultural lands to Filipinos and Americans and citizens of other
countries which gave Filipinos the same privileges. After the passage of the 1935
Constitution, Act 2874 was amended in 1936 by Commonwealth Act No. 141.
Commonwealth Act No. 141 remains the present Public Land Law and it is essentially the
same as Act 2874. The main difference between the two relates to the transitory provisions
on the rights of American citizens and corporations during the Commonwealth period at par
with Filipino citizens and corporations.
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Grants of public land were brought under the operation of the Torrens system under
Act 496, or the Land Registration Law of 1903. Enacted by the Philippine Commission,
Act 496 placed all public and private lands in the Philippines under the Torrens system. The
law is said to be almost a verbatim copy of the Massachusetts Land Registration Act of
1898, which, in turn, followed the principles and procedure of the Torrens system of
registration formulated by Sir Robert Torrens who patterned it after the Merchant Shipping
Acts in South Australia. The Torrens system requires that the government issue an official
certificate of title attesting to the fact that the person named is the owner of the property
described therein, subject to such liens and encumbrances as thereon noted or the law
warrants or reserves. The certificate of title is indefeasible and imprescriptible and all claims
to the parcel of land are quieted upon issuance of said certificate. This system highly
facilitates land conveyance and negotiation.

D. The 1935 Philippine Constitution

The Regalian doctrine was enshrined in the 1935 Constitution. One of the fixed and
dominating objectives of the 1935 Constitutional Convention was the nationalization and
conservation of the natural resources of the country. There was an overwhelming sentiment
in the Convention in favor of the principle of state ownership of natural resources and the
adoption of the Regalian doctrine. State ownership of natural resources was seen as a
necessary starting point to secure recognition of the state's power to control their
disposition, exploitation, development, or utilization. The delegates to the
Constitutional Convention very well knew that the concept of State ownership of land and
natural resources was introduced by the Spaniards, however, they were not certain whether
it was continued and applied by the Americans. To remove all doubts, the Convention
approved the provision in the Constitution affirming the Regalian doctrine. Thus, the 1935
Constitution, in Section 1 of Article XIII on "Conservation and Utilization of Natural
Resources," reads as follows:
Sec. 1. All agricultural, timber, and mineral lands of the public domain, waters,
minerals, coal, petroleum, and other mineral oils, all forces of potential energy, and
other natural resources of the Philippines belong to the State, and their disposition,
exploitation, development, or utilization shall be limited to citizens of the Philippines, or
to corporations or associations at least sixty per centum of the capital of which is
owned by such citizens, subject to any existing right, grant, lease, or concession at the
time of the inauguration of the Government established under this Constitution. Natural
resources, with the exception of public agricultural land, shall not be alienated, and no
license, concession, or lease for the exploitation, development, or utilization of any of
the natural resources shall be granted for a period exceeding twenty-five years, except
as to water rights for irrigation, water supply, fisheries, or industrial uses other than the
development of water power, in which cases beneficial use may be the measure and
the limit of the grant.
The 1935 Constitution did not carry any policy on the non-Christian Filipinos.
The raging issue then was the conservation of the national patrimony for the Filipinos.
In 1957, the Philippine Congress passed R.A. No. 1888, an "Act to effectuate in a more
rapid and complete manner the economic, social, moral and political advancement of the
non-Christian Filipinos or national cultural minorities and to render real, complete, and
permanent the integration of all said national cultural minorities into the body politic,
creating the Commission on National Integration charged with said functions." The law
called for a policy of integration of indigenous peoples into the Philippine mainstream and
for this purpose created the Commission on National Integration (CNI). The CNI was given,
more or less, the same task as the BNCT during the American regime. The post-
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independence policy of integration was like the colonial policy of assimilation understood in
the context of a guardian-ward relationship.
The policy of assimilation and integration did not yield the desired result. Like the
Spaniards and Americans, government attempts at integration met with fierce
resistance. Since World War II, a tidal wave of Christian settlers from the lowlands of
Luzon and the Visayas swamped the highlands and wide open spaces in Mindanao.
Knowledge by the settlers of the Public Land Acts and the Torrens system resulted
in the titling of several ancestral lands in the settlers' names. With government
initiative and participation, this titling displaced several indigenous peoples from their lands.
Worse, these peoples were also displaced by projects undertaken by the national
government in the name of national development.

The preceding discussion is reiterated by Molintas (2015):

The superimposition of colonial laws started with a legal fiction – the Regalian Doctrine –
that declared arrogantly that the Crown of Spain owned all lands. This would later become
the “theoretical bedrock upon which Philippine land laws were based . . . .” This signaled
the start of the undermining of indigenous peoples’ concepts of land use and land rights ( It
should be noted, however, that many indigenous peoples were able to retain their tribal sovereignty so that their land laws
exist independent of Spanish promulgated land laws.).
Between 1523 and 1646, it is said that at least twenty-one laws related to the
Philippines were enacted by Spain. Royal decrees and various memoranda would later
follow. The Spanish introduced laws that essentially contradicted and even denied
customary concepts of land use and ownership. The royal decrees of October 15, 1754
called for titling of lands on the basis of “long and continuous possession.” In support of
this, the Royal Cedula Circular of 1798 and the Royal Decrees of 1880 followed. By July
1893 the Spanish Mortgage Law that provided for the systematic registration of land titles
and deeds was put into effect. As expected, many did not avail themselves of this
opportunity, so in 1894 the Maura Law was issued.
The Maura Law is said to be the last land law under Spain. Article 4 of the Maura Law
denied and contradicted customary laws of land ownership declaring that any lands not
titled in 1880 “will revert back to the state.” This meant that landowners were given only a
year within which to secure title. After the deadline, untitled lands were deemed forfeited.
The Maura Law also reiterated that “all pueblo lands were protected lands and could not be
alienated because they belonged to the King.” …
The Regalian Doctrine (Jura Regalia or Spanish Royal Law) remained in favor throughout the
American administration of the Philippines from 1898 to 1945, providing the American
government, like its Spanish predecessor, legal justification for centralizing and controlling
the islands’ natural resources. The Regalian Doctrine, in effect, endured as land laws were
passed which dispossessed the indigenous peoples of all claims to their lands. Indeed, the
Treaty of Paris in 1898 expressly stated that “all immovable properties which in conformity
with law, belong to the Crown of Spain” and were to be ceded and relinquished to the new
colonial master.
To further strengthen the colonizer’s hold over the islands’ resources, the Public Land
Act was enacted in 1902, giving a mandate to the American government to expropriate all
public lands. It subjected all lands to the Torrens system, a proof of land title, thereby
leading to the commodification of land resources. The Philippine Commission Act No.
178 of 1903 followed. This ordered that all unregistered lands would become part of the
public domain, and that only the State had the authority to classify or exploit the same.
Two years later, the Mining Law of 1905 was legislated. This gave the Americans the right
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to acquire public land for mining purposes and revealed the Americans’ goal of extracting
resources from indigenous territories. In the same year, the Land Registration Act of 1905
institutionalized the Torrens Titling system as the sole basis of land ownership in the
Philippines. The Torrens System of land titling was patterned after the land registration law
of the State of Massachusetts, U.S., which in turn was copied from the Australian model. ( Sir
Richard Torrens of South Australia originally conceived the idea of land transfer of ownership by easy alienation of land .)
Any lands not registered under the Spanish colonial government were declared public
lands owned and administered by the state. By virtue of the Public Land Acts of 1913,
1919, and 1925, Mindanao and all other fertile lands that the State considered unoccupied,
unreserved, or otherwise unappropriated public lands became available to homesteaders
and corporations, despite the fact that there were indigenous people living on these lands.
Still, in 1918, the Public Land Act No. 2874 was passed providing for the claiming and
registration of lands through a free patent system. This law contained the restriction that
“free patents and certificates shall not include nor convey title to any metal or mineral
deposits which are to remain the property of the government.”
In 1929, Proclamation No. 217 declared 81.8% of the total land area of the Cordillera
as the Central Cordillera Forest Reserve. This rendered the indigenous peoples “‘squatters
in their own land’” according to formal state laws. Forest lands are inalienable and non-
disposable. In 1935, the Mining Act banned indigenous mining activities; while the
Commonwealth Act 137 granted timber and water rights within mining claims for the
development and operation of mining explorations. These land laws denied outright the
existence of indigenous peoples who have controlled and managed their lands since time
immemorial.
The 1935 Constitution (of the new self-governed Commonwealth of the Philippines) essentially retained
the colonizers’ view of land. This philosophy is embodied in Sec. 1, Article XIII, which
states:
All agricultural, timber, and mineral lands of the public domain, waters, minerals, coal,
petroleum, and other mineral oils, all forces of potential energy, and other natural
resources of the Philippines belong to the State, and their disposition, exploitation,
development, or utilization shall be limited to the citizens of the Philippines, or to
corporations or associations at least sixty per centum of the capital of which is owned
by such citizens, subject to existing right, grant, lease or concession at the time of the
inauguration of the Government established under the Constitution.

ENHANCEMENT ACTIVITY
A. Briefly describe the following in relation to land use and tenure:
1. Regalian doctrine
2. Mortgage Law
3. Maura Law
4. Treaty of Paris
5. Public Land Act
6. Valenton v. Murciano
7. Torrens system
8. Proclamation No. 127
9. 1935 Constitution

B. Briefly explain how the indigenous people were dispossessed and marginalized by the colonial land use
policies.