The Ati of Boracay: Paradise and the Price of Progress

Before sunrise on March 24, 2024, security guards arrived in a small community where Ati families had been farming for years. They carried sheets of galvanized iron and a government order. By the time the sun broke the horizon, fences already surrounded their homes, their fields, and their lives.

What happened that morning would echo through the news and reach Congress. But it wasn’t a sudden crisis—it was the latest turn in a centuries-long story of displacement, written in bureaucratic language and stamped with official seals.

The Island’s First People

The Ati are Boracay’s first inhabitants, part of the Negrito groups believed to have migrated to Panay long before the Spanish came. Even the island’s name traces back to their language. They fished its waters, farmed its soil, and buried their dead in sacred ground. Boracay, to them, was never a commodity. It was home—rooted, sacred, irreplaceable.

That started to change in the 1970s. Investors from Manila, and later from abroad, began to see something else in the island’s quiet shores: business. Roads were built. Resorts rose. The Ati watched their gathering places turn into commercial space. Some families crossed to the mainland; others stayed and saw their land shrink year after year.
By the time Boracay became a global destination, few visitors even knew anyone had lived there before the resorts.

A Small Victory: Ancestral Domain Recognition

Recognition came in 2011 after years of petitions and documentation. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples issued the Ati a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title for 2.1 hectares—the smallest in the Philippines.
It wasn’t much, but it was something solid to stand on.

They built houses, a church, a school, and a tribal museum to keep their history alive. By 2018, 234 people from 55 families lived there—a foothold in an island transformed by tourism.

The Promise: CLOAs Under Duterte

In 2018, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Boracay’s six-month closure for rehabilitation. At the same time, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) awarded Certificates of Land Ownership (CLOAs) to 44 Ati families covering 3.2 hectares.

At the ceremony, Duterte told them:

“Go till the land for the benefit of your children and make it self-productive. And someday, sell it. At least your children and grandchildren will be millionaires.”

The Ati took his words as a promise. They began planting dragon fruit, papaya, lemongrass, and bananas. Community farming cluster leader Leonida Bartolome started more than 400 dragon-fruit plants on her plot, selling harvests to hotels and restaurants every six months. They built a chicken farm, too. Those CLOAs became their livelihood, proof that they could thrive on their own land.

Sister Elvie Oliamot, a Catholic nun who had worked with the community for years, recalled the sudden shift:

“We are fighting because DAR said the land is not suitable for agriculture. We have worked hard to develop this as agricultural land. But now they want to take it back.”

Hope turned into disbelief. What they had nurtured was now being taken away.

The Reversal: Developer Petitions and DAR’s Decision

In 2022, six wealthy hotel developers—among the richest land developers in the Philippines—filed petitions to cancel the Ati’s land titles. Their claim: the area was unfit for farming.

DAR sided with them. Tests by the Bureau of Soils and Water Management said the soil was rocky and full of limestone, unfit for crops. Yet the same report recommended the land for “Eco-Tourism Zones and Medium Density Tourist Commercial Zones.”

The contradiction was glaring. Land declared too poor for the Ati’s farms was perfect for resorts.

DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III issued four resolutions backing the petitions. On March 27, 2024, the CLOAs were formally cancelled.

The Fences Go Up: March 24, 2024

The Ati weren’t notified. Their lawyer heard nothing. They found out when security guards arrived early that morning and began fencing their land.

One mother had to climb the barrier to pass her breastfeeding infant to relatives on the other side. Neighbors handed food through small gaps in the iron sheets. Local officials tried to talk to the guards. A priest asked to mediate. Every attempt was refused.

The guards said they were following orders—from people the Ati had no way to reach.

That morning wasn’t just a land dispute. It showed how dispossession works when indigenous people collide with commercial interests: first the promise, then the reversal, then enforcement. At every stage, the power imbalance deepened.

Legal Arguments and Circular Logic

Daniel Dinopol, the lawyer representing the Ati pro bono, questioned DAR’s reasoning. The Bureau of Soils and Water Management was supposed to determine agricultural suitability for farmer-beneficiaries. If DAR had authority to grant the land, how could it also revoke it?

“The logic,” Dinopol said, “was made to look sound while serving a predetermined outcome.”

Undersecretary Napoleon Galit defended the decision, claiming that splitting 3.2 hectares among 44 families would create lots too small to use. But the Ati had already farmed collectively, proving cooperation worked.

Galit also invoked Section 56 of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act—meant to protect existing property rights—but he used it to justify the developers’ claims, not the Ati’s.

DAR said it had erred in awarding the land, then used that “error” as grounds to take it back. Officials promised “alternative” land—one to three hectares per family—but gave no map, no address, no timeline.

The Ati saw through it: relocation framed as generosity, displacement disguised as help.

A History of Violence and Intimidation

The Ati had seen this kind of threat before. In 2013, Dexter Condez—a young Ati leader outspoken about ancestral land rights—was shot dead after leaving a meeting. The main suspect was a security guard employed by a hotel. The case went nowhere.

It was a message delivered in bullets: speak up, and you risk your life.

Solidarity, Advocacy, and Institutional Response

When the fences went up, support came quickly. The Boracay Ati Tribal Organization reached out to the Commission on Human Rights, calling the eviction a violation of fundamental rights.

The Ati filed motions for reconsideration, appeals to DAR’s central office, and later a petition for certiorari before the Court of Appeals.
House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro of the ACT Teachers party-list called for a Congressional investigation, asking why DAR favored developers over indigenous people.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines issued a statement of concern. The Asia Land Coalition amplified the story internationally, calling it an example of the ongoing displacement of indigenous peoples across Asia.

Yet the fences stayed. The land the Ati had cultivated and improved remained closed off.

Systemic Dispossession: How the Machine Works

What happened in Boracay isn’t an exception—it’s how the system behaves when money and influence enter the picture.

The agrarian reform program, meant to protect the landless and uphold indigenous rights, bends under pressure from those who benefit from development. CLOAs meant as shields can be withdrawn. The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act promises protection that often collapses in implementation.

Maria Tamboon, an Ati leader whose family had lived there for 48 years, described that morning:

“At around 6 a.m. on March 24, armed guards put up iron sheets around our land.”

No warning. No notice. When she asked why, the guards showed a DAR resolution dated March 5—something the Ati had never received.
Resolution issued. No communication. Fence built. People locked out.

Voices from the Community: Resistance and Loss

When asked if they would accept relocation, Tamboon said:

“It’s not right and it’s not legal what they are doing to us, but if it were legal, we would’ve given way. We don’t want this mess and we don’t want to lose land again, that it would become the reason that the Ati have been truly dead here in Boracay.”

Her words carried the fear of cultural death—the erasure of a people from their own island.

Another leader, Delsa Justo, voiced her disbelief:

“If we were given land, we give value to it and protect it, and we don’t want to give it if it was not in the right process. We follow. We’re not going to use force against them until we get the land. We didn’t ask for it, the government gave it to us and pushed us to accept it. And this is what is happening to us? The government itself is getting the land?”

She recalled that before the pandemic, DAR had given the community a used transport vehicle, solar panels that never worked, and a greenhouse that was unusable. Later, when they declined a seven-million-peso loan out of caution, the area was described as a “dumping site,” cleaned up with government help, improved by the Ati’s labor—and then fenced off.

Sister Elvie Oliamot added that DAR never conducted an onsite survey before declaring the land unfit for agriculture. No visits. No soil samples. Decisions made from afar.

What Remains: Legal Limbo and Uncertain Futures

Dinopol continued filing appeals while the Commission on Human Rights monitored the case. Some lawmakers pressed for answers, but nothing changed on the ground.

The Ati now wait for their case to reach the Supreme Court—the same institution that upheld their ancestral domain certificate in 2019. A ruling in their favor could overturn the cancellation, but such cases take years.

Meanwhile, developers wait comfortably. The community waits behind fences.

The Larger Question: Development Without Dignity

Tourists come to Boracay for its white sand and sunsets. Few realize they’re walking over land once farmed by the island’s first people.

For the Ati, this struggle isn’t just about land titles. It’s about dignity—the right to exist in the place where their ancestors lived, worked, and were buried.

Boracay’s tourism boom brought wealth for investors, jobs for locals, and taxes for the state. But it brought no security for the Ati. Their success lies in persistence, not profit.

They have organized, farmed, and fought through courts. And even fenced out of their own soil, they keep fighting. Because for them, to leave would mean erasing who they are.

They’ve endured for centuries. The fight continues.

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