Lynch Chapter 16 : A Hidden Agenda Allocation Shortcomings and Responses Throughout the Taft era, majority of the Filipinos

s were not benefiting from the colonial land laws. o Customary rights were being ignored despite the ruling in Carino. o Millions of people from rural areas disappeared from the official statistics. Worcester and others blamed this on the ignorance of the people, their contentment of being able to till and squat on other peoples lands and their unwillingness to bear the costs (ie., moving to a different place) of having their own land. The officials never considered that the problems might be within the process itself, the free patent programs, etc. They made it appear as if the laws were accommodating enough but the truth was they wanted to maintain status quo and didnt want to implement the Public Land Act properly. A Hidden Agenda Worcester and Taft wanted to have wealthy investors in the sugar industry to come in, so they felt the need to have control over the Philippine lands. One of the manifestations of this was when Taft vigorously lobbied the Spooner bill allowing the insular government to lease upto 30K acres. o For investors to come, corporations must be allowed to hold as much as 25K acres of land, and that wouldnt be possible if the rights of millions of small land owners were recognized. Solution: scheme of keeping the estimates of occupants of public land low ensuring that the process for recognizing and allocating legal rights to lands are inefficient and cumbersome. In pursuit of the hidden agenda, 2 laws were passed o Act 618 allowed the civil reservations of public domain. Under the law, the lands under reservation cannot be sold or inhabited until the reservation is dissolved, the problem was that most of the lands being reserved already had settlers. o Act 718 stated that all grants made by Moro sultans and datus or chiefs of non-Christian tribes were void. Also the commission excluded the Moro Provinces from the Public Land Act so that millions of people could not have their property rights documented. Of course they tried to justify all of these efforts to disenfranchise indigenous property rights. Forbes Insight and Initiative Forbes shared Tafts and Worcesters enthusiasm in bringing in investors but he was not privy to the hidden agenda. He was concerned about the disparity between what officials were saying and the actual practice in land allocation. He disapproved of the actual practice and even announced that his regime would not object in issuing land titles where it will benefit the public interest. But this never happened because of the presence of Worcester. US Congressional Investigation of 1911 During Tafts presidency, Worcester found a loophole in the Organic Acts restriction on large corporate holdingsthe large friar estates. These estates were not part of the public domain when the Treaty of Paris was signed so corporations can actually hold them. With owners eager to sell, Worcester was finally able to negotiate a sale of a 58K acre land in Mindoro with an American

corporations. This was what sparked the investigation. The democrats regained control over the House of Representatives so they were looking to uncover the wrongdoings of the republicans. But during the investigation, Worcester used his usual defense: o Filipinos are ignorant and disinterested in owning titles to the lands they occupy. o There is even no need for them to purchase the lands because the insular government gives free patents. o Every effort is being made so that people will take advantage of the opportunity to document their rights. o Even tried to go on offensive saying that the restriction on corporate holding of large lands hamper the development of agriculture in the country. Ultimately Worcester was absolved. The officials were also asked whether they or their family were buying lands in the country but they denied it. Of course it was a lie because most of them were buying lands in Baguio. Worcester Reappraised Rumors were flying around that Taft was going to replace Worcester so he wrote a letter to Taft justifying his retention. The reason he gave was that it was only him who proposed a measure that benefited the non-Christian tribes. o Scholars and writers actually praised him for that. But the absence of policy on recognizing ancestral domain rights underscored the contradiction between Worcesters rhetoric and the double disenfranchisement of the non-Christian tribes that he secretly promoted. o They werent even given the right to secure the recognition of their land rights o Procedure for securing such was dramatically skewed in favor of the elites, and even when this became apparent, he never did anything to change the status quo