CAPÍTULO II: MARCO TEÓRICO
2.2. Bases teóricas
2.2.1 Plataforma Virtual
Sugarcane 0-3 14 2,912 66.7 3-8 2,183 8-18 92 18-30 186 30-50 437 Coconut 3-8 533 803 18.4
348 E. Eller and V. Asio, “The flash flood tragedy of Ormoc.” 349 Ibid.
350 Ormoc Task Force Scientific Study Group, “Scientific Assessment Report.”
351 The original report lists figures in this table totalling 4,500 hectares. However, as the
102 | F L O O D W A T E R S O F D E A T H 8-18 40 18-30 80 30-50 150 Grassland 18-30 404 425 9.7 30-50 21 Shrubland 18-30 173 173 4 Built-up areas 3-8 52 52 1.2 TOTAL 4,365 100
Source: Land Resource Evaluation Project (LREP), Leyte Province, BSWM (1986) as quoted in Ormoc Task Force Scientific Study Group, ”Scientific Assessment Report: Ormoc City flood on 5 November 1991,” 8.
Growth of the timber industry in Ormoc
At the turn of the twentieth century, Leyte’s forests were abundant with such timber as Lauan, Molave, Guijo, Malasantol, Maacasin and Betis.352 Lumbering in the province only began to emerge as an important
industry in the 1900s. Sawmills were recorded in the municipalities of Palompon and Tacloban, which shipped timber to all parts of Leyte.353
In Ormoc, it was Dr. Hermeneghildo Serafica, a government district health officer from Pangasinan with a salary of seventy-five (75) pesos per month, who introduced commercial logging in the 1930s. He later quit his job in 1931 and commenced life as a sugar planter.354 In 1936, he built his first sawmill and operated a 5,000-hectare concession. Within five years, Serafica became the wealthiest individual sugar planter in Ormoc, with 500 hectares of sugar lands to his name and an annual income of 30,000 pesos.355 He invested 50,000 pesos to build another sawmill in the municipality of Kananga in the same year, in partnership with Gregorio Mania, a former
352 G. Ahern, Opportunities for Lumbering in the Philippine Islands, Circular No. 1(Philippine
Islands: Bureau of Forestry, 1 December 1906),637-643. According to Ahern,Lauan was a light and soft wood used for light and temporary construction, cabinet-making, inferior furniture, and small boats. Molave, on the other hand, was a hard wood most highly valued for general building purposes, shipbuilding, cabinetmaking and turnery. Guijo was moderately hard and is used for general construction and shipbuilding, for carriage wheels and shafts, and inferior furniture. Malasantol was a moderately heavy wood used in general construction, while Macaasin was also a moderately hard wood generally used as flooring, joists, and rafters of houses, and in cabinetwork. Finally, Betis was a high grade structural timber used in general high-grade construction and shipbuilding.
353 P. Borseth, “Report of the Governor, Province of Leyte,” in Appendix H, Annual reports of
provincial governors, Sixth Annual Report of the Philippine Commission to the Secretary of War, 310.
354 R. Middleton, “Causes of the Ormoc flash flood disaster in Leyte, Philippines,” 9. 355 Ibid.,10.
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supervisor in the Bureau of Education.356 In addition to his lumber business,
Serafica continued to cultivate his increasingly vast sugar lands. By 1937, he was described in the Sugar News, the official organ of the Philippine Sugar Association (PSA), as a “prominent sugar and lumber man.”357
During the Japanese occupation of Ormoc beginning 25 May 1942, the logging industry, as with other industries, was brought to a virtual standstill. Most of the large landholders opted to remain within towns directly supervised by the Japanese forces or went to live in the provincial capital, Tacloban, thus leaving the sugarcane estates as well as their forest concessions under the care of tenants.358 An Administrator of Abandoned Estates, Ramon Advincula, was appointed under the Western Leyte Guerrilla Warfare Forces (WLGF) to recruit laborers during the wartime period to undertake unpaid labor on the sugarcane estates, including forest concessions and sawmills. Forests all over the country were ravaged for the war effort under the Japanese occupation, but the overall extent of deforestation immediately after World War II is unknown.359 By 1948, other large sugar landholders became loggers too. Feliciano Larrazabal, Potenciano Larrazabal, and Agapito Pongos, all from Basque mestizo
bloodlines, became important sawmill operators in addition to being sugar planters by this time.360 Between 1950 and 1960, a total of twenty-two (22) Ordinary Timber Licenses (OTL)361 was awarded for operation in two Leyte
provinces, with five of these in the Ormoc area.362 Each OTL covered an
area of almost 1400 hectares and an annual allowable cut of a little over 20,000 cubic meters. All timber license agreements in Leyte, however, were
356 Ibid. 357 Ibid.
358 E. Lear, “The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, Leyte, 1941-1945,” Data Paper
No. 42, Southeast Asia Program, Department of Far Eastern Studies (New York: Cornell University, 1961), 115-117.
359 D. Kummer, Deforestation in the Philippines, 45-46.
360 R. Middleton, “Causes of the Ormoc flash flood in Leyte, Philippines,”10.
361 Ordinary Timber License (OTL) is a short-term commercial license for timber, i.e. for a
period of four years and renewable upon expiration. It was later abolished by virtue of Presidential Decree 389, known as the Forestry Reform Code of the Philippines enacted on 5 February 1974, in favor of longer-term licenses of ten (10) and twenty-five (25) years.
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cancelled during the Marcos years, and a total log ban imposed in northern Leyte since 1967.363
By the 1970s, Serafica had become one of the wealthiest families in Ormoc with interests in neighboring municipalities in Leyte. Between 1965 and 1970, its logging concession in Barangay Tongonan paved the way for the construction of logging roads.364 H&Sons Serafica owned 9.9 per cent or 2,577,804 square meters of the total 25,945,890 square-meter lands surveyed within the watershed.365 The Serafica family then expanded its
interests in Ormoc immediately afterwards. By 1979, the Hermeneghildo Serafica and Sons Corporation (HSSC) was managing a 290-hectare farm in Barangay Sambulawan in the municipality of Leyte in Leyte province, first utilizing the land for sugarcane, then sorghum, mung bean, and finally cattle- raising.366 As a ranch, it employed fifteen personnel with responsibility over more than 64 heads of Brahman and Indo-Brazil breeds of cattle purchased from the Larrazabal Farm in Taglawigan, San Isidro, Leyte, and the rest from the Muertegui Farm in Masbate.
A 1987 forest resources inventory undertaken by a Philippine-German group found that by 1989 there was only 96,300 hectares of forest in Leyte, down from the 171,600 hectares recorded in 1969.367 However, DENR Secretary Ernesto Maceda allowed one firm, Timber Producers and Marketing Corporation (TPMC), to operate in Leyte in November 1986. TPMC began operations in 1987, with a license expiration date in November
363 Cited in R. Villadiego, “Factoran bares list of DENR men linked to illegal logging,”
Philippine Daily Inquirer, 15November 1991, 1 &12.
364 Local Government of Barangay Tongonan Ormoc City website, “Home.” Copyright 2016,
accessed 20 June 2016 (Online).
365 Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), “List of Cadastral Lots,
Ormoc Cadastre,” Annex in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)- Region VIII, Investigative Report of the Ormoc City Disaster.
366 The hacienda stopped the cultivation of sugarcane when the market value of sugar
dropped. It then shifted to sorghum, but was later stopped again due to pest and disease outbreak in sorghum. It then shifted to mung bean, but this was besieged by the same problems as sugarcane. See H. Napoles, “Animal production and management practices of Hacienda Serafica and Sons Corporation (HSSC) Ranch at Sambulawan, Leyte, Leyte” (Bachelor of Animal Science thesis, Visayas State College of Agriculture, 1986).
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2011.368 Its total concession area was 26,600 hectares or 27.5 per cent of
the remaining forest cover.
Timber and the Codillas
The story of the Codilla family, the most recent political dynasty in Ormoc, is central to the story of Visayan timber. Theirs is testament to the relative openness of the local economy to recent economic upstarts despite the early monopoly of land and resources by old elite families. The Codilla family will attain political influence only after the November 1991 flood, when the patriarch, Eufrocino Codilla Sr., wrestled political power from the ruling Larrazabal family for the first time. However, the roots of the Codillas in Ormoc date back to the nineteenth century.369 There had been Codillas serving in public offices very early in Ormoc’s history. Reverend Father Lino Codilla, a Cebuano, was assigned as parish priest at the Ormoc Parish from 1892-1910,370 and Jose Codilla371 was appointed mayor by the Japanese forces in 1943. In addition, far from being impoverished farmers, the Codillas had also been identified as plantation owners under the Ormoc Sugar Company in 1935.372
368 Rene de Rueda, a consultant with the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources (DENR), who was interviewed in the aftermath of the 1991 Ormoc tragedy. Quoted in C. Pablo, “Illegal logging caused floods,” 1&3. Timber Producers and Marketing Corporation (TPMC) was allegedly owned by Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Luis T. Santos. TPMC was also allowed by the DENR to cut some 80,000 cubic meters of logs in the towns of Hinatungan, Hinunangan, Saint Bernard, Silago and Sogod in southern Leyte, and in Baybay, Leyte. In addition, it had also been alleged that TPMC maintained payola for police, military, local officials and the NPA through the so- called revolutionary tax. This payola was managed by a Jimmy Uraya, the TPMC president’s brother. See D. Petilla, “Cory exec tagged big illegal logger,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 9 December 1991, 1&9.
369 A cursory survey of the Codilla family name in Ormoc, Leyte, in the “Philippine Deaths
and Burials, 1726-1957” yield numerous entries. Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Family Search. Copyright 2016, accessed 18 February 2014 (Online). In the “History and Cultural Life of Maticaa,” compiled in the “History and Cultural Life of the People of the Communities of Ormoc II District, Ormoc City”, in Historical Data Papers, a Basilio Codilla was listed as one among fifteen original settler families in the barrio. The barrio of Maticaa was established in 1907.
370 Ormoc City Public Library, “Briefing Folder, Ormoc City 1989,” Unpublished article. 371 Ibid.
372 Listed as separate entries: Basilio Codilla, Jose Codilla, and Lucio Codilla. Executive
Orders Relative to Sugar Allocation Issued by the Governor-General during the Year 1935,
Part 3 Nos. 675-795 (Manila: Bureau of Printing, Government of the Philippine Islands, 1936).
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Eufrocino Codilla Sr. himself was a successful lumber middleman and had achieved financial success even prior to entering politics in 1992. Born in Barangay Valencia in 1933,373 Dodong, as he was called, could not afford to go to university due to poverty. However, he was an extraordinarily resourceful man who entered cycling contests for monetary rewards and sold a variety of merchandise like clothes, rice and, later, lumber, GI sheets and nails.374 It was in selling lumber and construction materials where he built his
fortune. But, like all other elites in Ormoc, he soon diversified his business interests. By 1992, he was reported to own a 100-hectare sugar plantation, a cockpit and gasoline station.375 It is notable that the family already possessed a 90-hectare sugarcane plantation in Barangay Maticaa by 1984, which had expanded from the original six hectares in 1978.376 Managed by a son, Eduardo Codilla, the plantation employed a total of eighty-five (85) personnel, composed of one farm administrator, three (3) capatazes, and twenty-seven (27) laborers per capataz paid on an hourly or contractual basis.377 By the 1990s, another son, Eric Codilla who would become Ormoc mayor for three consecutive terms from July 2004 to June 2013, managed a thriving piggery farm in Barangay Valencia also in Ormoc. The Eric Codilla piggery farm was listed as a sole proprietor medium-scale enterprise operating on a one-half hectare area. In 1991, it had 115 hogs managed by a caretaker and two aides paid on a daily wage basis.378 Almost by sheer luck,
373 C. Pedong, “Eufrocino ‘Mejares’ Codilla: Businessman turned Politician,” in Mithi og
Bahandi sa Dakbayan sa Ormoc, Unpublished learning resource material, compiled by the Department of Education Region VIII-Eastern Visayas (Undated), 140-142.
374 M. Vitug, Power from the Forest, 6. 375 Ibid.
376 R. Agbisit II, “Codilla Farm” (Bachelor of Science thesis in Agricultural Business
(Business Management. Baybay, Leyte: Visayas State College of Agriculture, 1984).
377 Ibid., 6-11. A farm administrator, in this case Claro Arguilles who started out as personal
driver to the Codillas, supervised the three capatazes and reported to the farm manager, Eduardo Codilla. A capataz, on the other hand, supervised the laborers assigned under him/her and reported to the farm administrator. The harvested sugarcane was milled at the nearby Hilongos Development Corporation (HIDECO), which was only five (5) km away. In 1984, the Codilla plantation was not yet mechanized, but used carabaos instead. In the fiscal year ending December 1980, it incurred a loss of 13,862.54 pesos, but enjoyed a profit of 5,667.00 pesos in 1981 and 8,214.67 pesos in 1982. The sharing basis between the Codilla plantation and the HIDECO sugar central was on a 65-35 percent basis, with 65 percent of the sugar and molasses produced going to the owner and the 35 percent to the sugar central.
378 F. Gabor and E. Mantua, “Production management practices in Eric Codilla Piggery
Farm,” (Bachelor of Science thesis in Animal Science (Animal Production Major). Baybay, Leyte: Visayas State College of Agriculture, 1992).
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therefore, the November 1991 tragedy created the perfect opportunity for the family to transition into the political sphere, with Dodong Codilla’s backhoes and construction trucks becoming the instruments of a family’s enduring political clout. However, it would be their close links to timber that would come to haunt them again and again in post-November 1991 Ormoc.379
Ramon Larrazabal, mayor of the municipality of San Isidro in Leyte, even went as far as accusing Dodong Codilla as being among the illegal loggers in Ormoc, an allegation denied by another son, Eufrocino “Wennie” Codilla, who stressed that the family’s logging business was legal and “duly accredited” by the DENR.380
Illegal logging
Surprisingly, given the highly political nature of illegal logging and extensive media coverage, there is no universal definition of what it is.381 In the Philippines, the basic provision of law on illegal logging prior to 1991 was section 68 of Presidential Decree No. 705, otherwise known as the Forestry Reform Code. Here, the crime of illegal logging was committed when “[a]ny person…cut[s], gather[s], collect[s], remove[s] timber or other forest products from any forest land, or timber from alienable or disposable public land, or from private land without any authority, or possess timber or other forest products without the legal documents as required under existing forest laws and regulations.”382 Historically, illegal logging had been difficult to document or measure. In a study on illegal logging in the northern Sierra Madre Natural Park in Luzon, the biggest island of the Philippines, based on field observations and informal interviews from 1992 to 2008, it was found to be undertaken, not as small-scale livelihood activities by rural poor farmers, but
379 See, for example, E. Justimbaste, “NBI accuses Ormoc mayor of forging logging papers,”
Philippine News and Features 10:28, 8 January 1994, 12; and, E. Justimbaste, “Ormoc mayor’s son hiding more hot lumber?” Philippine News and Features 12:70, 15 June 1996, 13.
380 C. Pablo and R. Puaben, “Factoran spurns solon on seized narra logs; Isabela’s
Domingo says shipment is legal,” Malaya, 19 November 1991, 1&7.
381 M. Nilsson Rosander, “Illegal Logging, Current issues and opportunities for Sida/SENSE
Engagement in Southeast Asia” (Bangkok, Thailand: Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC) & Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 2008), 4 (Online).
382This was amended by Executive Order No.277 (1987). Department of Environment and
Natural Resources, Primer on Illegal Logging. Manila: Legal Affairs Office (Undated), accessed 17 February 2014, 4 (Online).
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comparable to commercial scale activities.383 Middlemen and financiers, who
spearheaded these activities, commonly paid bribes fixed at one peso per board feet to DENR officials in Isabela, another peso per board feet to the insurgent National People’s Army (NPA) contingent in the area, and 1,500 pesos (or $30) per truck to pass through at least eleven checkpoints set up by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) along the national highway from Isabela to central Luzon.384
The discourse on illegal logging in Leyte also invariably involved politicians and the police. Representative Manuel Horca, Jr. of the second district of Leyte385 for the Eighth Congress (1987-1992) had been identified as “one of the major illegal loggers in Leyte,” who openly conspired with corrupt DENR officials and “syndicates” in logging.386 Also implicated in the allegations were DENR regional technical director in Eastern Visayas for forestry, Vicente Paragas; DENR deputy and chief of forest resource conservation, Christopher Kuizon; Elpidio Simon; Danilo Javier; Robin Tumolva; and Rizalido Casco, all technical assistants; and lawyer Antonio Oliva of the legal department. Paragas, Kuizon and Simon all denied involvement in the alleged syndicate.387 Two top police constabulary officials
383 Van der Ploeg et al, “Illegal logging in the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park The
Philippines.”
384 Cited in Van der Ploeg, Ibid.
385 The second district of Leyte includes the municipalities of Barugo, Burauen, Capoocan,
Carigara, Dagami, Dulag, Jaro, Julita, La Paz, MacArthur, Mayorga, Pastrana, Tabontabon, and Tunga. On the other hand, Ormoc is part of the fourth district of Leyte, together with Albuera, Kananga, Merida, Palompon and Isabel.
386 According to Thompson, Horca was fired from his position as an engineer for forgery in
the late 1970s, but later appointed as provincial engineer in Leyte. In 1987, he ran under the banner of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino and won the congressional seat for the second district of Leyte after receiving monetary funding from his brother-in-law, Pedro Go Porciuncula, one of the biggest gambling lords in Metro Manila as well as an illegal logger himself. H. Thompson, “The economic, political and biological degradation of the Philippines,” Working Paper No. 184, Journal of Economic Literature (Australia: Murdoch University, School of Economics, 2001) (Online). Also see, N. Abrimatea, “Two suspected illegal loggers charged,” Philippine Star, 30 November 1991, 6; and, D. Petilla, “Leyte solon, gambling lord in illegal logging,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 3 December 1991, 1&9.
387 It should be noted here that illegal logging is a highly political issue, with real dangers to
those who expose its activities. Danny Petilla, who was then a 28-year old multi-awarded journalist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1991, wrote a series of investigative news articles on illegal logging in Leyte in the aftermath of the 1991 Ormoc tragedy. After publishing these articles, he “fled the Philippines in December 1991 to escape death threats