MACTAN Island, one kilometer southeast of the island province of Cebu, is a famous rest and recreation destination in the Visayas. It is host to some of the country’s world-class, pricey hotels and resorts. At its northern tip is also a popular dive spot, Punta Engaño.

This piece of paradise is home as well to coastal dwellers of Sitio Mangal who have been living off the bounty of the sea as far as they can remember. But the recent entry of a real-estate project converting 13.4 hectares of beach lots into a tropical resort-themed 10-story condotel with recreational and water sports facilities has displaced them from their homes by the sea. Already twice demolished, the Sitio Mangal residents have been settling in makeshift shanties along the beach road for a year now.

They are told they can no longer fish in the area. Their access to drinking water is scarce. No help has yet come from local officials regarding their request for a permanent relocation site.

As part of i Report‘s series on Faces of Change and Changeless Places, this videocast shows how change — if it has not yet turned for the worse — has been scant in Sitio Mangal in Mactan, whose capital Lapu-Lapu City, named after the Visayan chieftain who valiantly fought and defeated the Spanish colonizers led by Portuguese voyager Ferdinand Magellan, is a first-class and highly urbanized city in Cebu.

File size: 22.8 MB
Length: 00:07:31
Producer: Alecks P. Pabico
Video editor: Francis Ventura

(Acknowledgment: Still photos of Shangri-la Mactan and Hilton Resort by Paulo Alfajardo were taken from Wikipedia; photo of Lapu-Lapu Shrine, also taken from Wikipedia, is originally from ngkhai.net.)

2 Responses to Banished from ‘paradise’

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paulo_alfajardo

May 3rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm

by the way alecks or francis or to whoever is responsible for making the video, i was just surprised to see that my pic was in your video, konting respeto lang sana, pero hindi naman siguro mahirap magpa alam dun sa may ari nung pic, i am very much familiar with the two pic, that of hilton and shangrila kasi i took them last year and i usually post them in a forum (skyscrapercity.com/pinoyexchange.com). investigative journalism nga ang advocacy ninyo pero namimingwit lang naman pala kayo ng media inputs, worse eh hindi pa kayo nagpapa alam. hindi naman namin kayo hihindian pero show a little respect naman sana, this is not the first time na may gumamit ng pics namin sa forum but the thing is naggpapaalam naman ang karamihan sa kanila, unfortunately, your group is not one of them.

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Alecks P. Pabico

May 3rd, 2007 at 10:27 pm

Sorry about that Mr. Alfajardo. We saw the two photos posted on the Mactan page of Wikipedia. Since it’s an online public, open-content site, we assumed that they were part of its copyright-free content. There was however no intention to claim the photos as our own. Nonetheless, we will provide proper attribution to you on the post. Again, our apologies.

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