FAST BACKWARD: A reservation area, not an alienable land (1)

Davao Prison and Penal Farm (Dapecol) was once an uninhabited forest and swampland. Under Proclamation No. 414, issued on October 7, 1931 by American governor-general Dwight F. Davis, it was classified as a reservation area with roughly 28,816 hectares straddling the areas of Kapalong and Tagum (now a city) in the undivided Davao province. The size of the penal colony was eventually reduced by about eighty-one percent following the issuance of many presidential edicts and the implementation of the comprehensive agrarian reform program.

In the proclamation, the reservation was specifically set aside as future home of a prisons colony to be managed by the Bureau of Prisons, then headed by Director Paulino T. Santos. In line with this, a team led by Bilibid Supt. Pablo J. Noroña was dispatched to Davao region to find a strategic location and there build a penal farm. The contingent included Asst. Supt. Severo Yap, Supt. Guillermo Peralta, Mariano Dimaanlig, Forest Ranger Juan Acenas, a few subalterns, and 64 inmates from San Ramon Penal Colony on board the vessel SS Mactan.

Finding a place for inmates was a tough assignment. Supt. Noroña had to negotiate the waterways linking the open sea because there were no roads to speak of, and there were no settlements in the interior regions. His perseverance, though, paid off. On January 21, 1932, he found a location for the future colony and named it Mactan, after the ship that brought them to Davao. The future prison camp, located at the junction of Tuganay and Lacutan rivers, would become the sanctuary of evacuees when the war broke out and the detention camp of prisoners of war (POWs) when the Japanese took control.

Far from an ideal farming area, Dapecol was initially cultivated for food such that it became a major source of rice for the inmates during the conflict. POW Carl S. Nordin wrote in “We Were Next to Nothing: An American POW’s Account of Japanese Prison Camps and Deliverance in World War II” (2004), saying:

“If there was any area or department of the Davao penal farm that should be given special consideration or treatment, it would certainly have to be Mactan and the rice field operation. It was the largest and most important crop of any in the colony, and cultivating it was by far the hardest, dirtiest, and most disagreeable work of any at Dapecol. Plowing and harrowing were done with carabao, the local beasts of burden.”

Much of the original reservation area would be decimated after the war following efforts initiated by the national government to distribute lands to veterans and their dependents. In the end, some 20,800 hectares became part of the cities of Panabo and Tagum, and the juvenile town of B.E. Dujali. Over a thousand hectares were later ceded to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in the 1990s.

Taking off from the productive abaca farms cultivated by the Japanese during the war, the state, following the liberation of Davao, encouraged the development of some areas in Dapecol into abaca plantations. The cultivation of abaca under the supervision of the prisons bureau, which became very successful, sooner or later covered 2,800 hectares. It was the excess banana stalks produced by the farms that caught the attention of Antonio O. Floirendo, then a rising entrepreneur.

Using his firm, the Tagum Development Company (Tadeco), as conduit, Floirendo, on May 16, 1956, entered into a partnership with the Bureau of Prisons (now Bureau of Corrections) by signing and executing a contract to decorticate the excess abaca stalks on a 60-40 percent arrangement, with Bucor getting the bigger share.

The fruitful partnership between Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) and the Tagum Development Company (Tadeco), first sealed in 1956, eventually became the stepping stone that led the two parties to agree on a joint venture agreement on July 11, 1969. Akin to the original accord, the new contract, a joint venture agreement (JVA), authorized the Floirendo firm to decorticate abaca stalks from the Panabo sub-colony plantations using the old 60-40 percent sharing.

A major provision, however, was introduced into the new covenant which provided Tadeco with the obligation to report to the bureau, based on its sound judgment, lands no longer profitable for abaca cultivation. In case this happened, the unproductive farms would be planted to sorghum and other marketable crops as part of the government’s food production program.

Shortly thereafter, the production of abaca stalks dramatically dropped following the spread of a disease that brought down yields. This occurred at a time when demand for hemp fiber outside was falling due to the discovery of synthetic fibers. In effect, this meant a renegotiation of the contract and the introduction of amendments, which were adopted on December 26, 1969.

The amended contract, signed by Alejo S. Santos, as Bureau of Prisons acting director, and Juan Ponce-Enrile, as justice secretary, allowed the use of lands devoted to abaca to be planted with export products currently in demand abroad, especially bananas.

Prior to the signing of the JVA, Davao Prison and Penal Farm (Dapecol) lands ceased to be cultivated due to low productivity and were abandoned, while some areas became dense thickets months after neglect. The prison estates that were not planted with abaca or any other crop remained as it was during the early years of its proclamation as reservation area, mainly forested, swampy, cogonal, and leech-infested. Lands previously planted to abaca but left out became the focus of invasion of parasitic worms.