Cruz and Europa v. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

leadership and governance worked to splinter the population of the islands into numerous small and separate communities.[66] When the Spaniards settled permanently in the Philippines in 1565, they found the Filipinos living in barangay settlements scattered along water routes and river banks. One of the first tasks imposed on the missionaries and the encomenderos was to collect all scattered Filipinos together in a reduccion.[67] As early as 1551, the Spanish government assumed an unvarying solicitous attitude towards the natives.[68] The Spaniards regarded it a sacred "duty to conscience and humanity to civilize these less fortunate people living in the obscurity of ignorance" and to accord them the "moral and material advantages" of community life and the "protection and vigilance afforded them by the same laws."[69] The Spanish missionaries were ordered to establish pueblos where the church and convent would be constructed. All the new Christian converts were required to construct their houses around the church and the unbaptized were invited to do the same.[70] With the reduccion, the Spaniards attempted to "tame" the reluctant Filipinos through Christian indoctrination using the convento/casa real/plaza complex as focal point. The reduccion, to the Spaniards, was a "civilizing" device to make the Filipinos law-abiding citizens of the Spanish Crown, and in the long run, to make them ultimately adopt Hispanic culture and civilization.[71] 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.[72] 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.[73] The concept that the Spanish king was the owner of everything of value in the Indies or colonies was imposed on the natives, and the natives were stripped of their ancestral rights to land.[74] Increasing their foothold in the Philippines, the Spanish colonialists, civil and religious, classified the Filipinos according to their religious practices and beliefs, and divided them into three types . First were the Indios, the Christianized Filipinos, who generally came from the lowland populations. Second, were the Moros or the Muslim communities, and third, were the infieles or the indigenous communities.[75] The Indio was a product of the advent of Spanish culture. This class was favored by the Spaniards and was allowed certain status although below the Spaniards. The Moros and infieles were regarded as the lowest classes.[76] The Moros and infieles resisted Spanish rule and Christianity. The Moros were driven from Manila and the Visayas to Mindanao; while the infieles, to the hinterlands. The Spaniards did not pursue them into the deep interior. The upland societies were naturally outside the immediate concern of Spanish interest, and the cliffs and forests of the hinterlands were difficult and inaccessible, allowing the infieles, in effect, relative security.[77] Thus, the infieles, which were peripheral to colonial administration, were not only able to preserve their own culture but also thwarted the Christianization process, separating themselves from the newly evolved Christian community.[78] Their own political, economic and social systems were kept constantly alive and vibrant. The pro-Christian or pro-Indio attitude of colonialism brought about a generally mutual feeling of suspicion, fear, and hostility between the Christians on the one hand and the non-Christians on the other. Colonialism tended to divide and rule an otherwise culturally and historically related populace through a colonial system that exploited both the virtues and vices of the Filipinos.[79] President McKinley, in his instructions to the Philippine Commission of April 7, 1900, addressed the