Counter-Maps and Counter-Stories: Privileging Community Perspectives on Land Use Conversion and Sustainable Resource Management in Sta. Cruz, Laguna

Abstract

This critical inquiry aims to privilege the voices of the marginalized to understand land use conversions (LUCs) in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, through the theoretical lens of Accumulation by Dispossession (ABD), community-based land & rice ethics (LRE), and everyday resistance (ER). Situated within neoliberal development paradigms, infrastructure projects such as the Laguna Lake Road Network (LLRN) and the various middle-class housing subdivisions have resulted in dispossession, degradation of rice paddies (tubigan), and the marginalization of tenant farmers, landless agricultural workers, and peasant women. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) and counter-mapping, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, walking, and working interviews, the study uncovered spatial injustices and agroecological disruptions brought about by these projects, especially in terms of hydrosocial inequity in their irrigation. The findings also show that agricultural communities experience poverty intensification, as the polluted spaces cause income reduction, indebtedness, and displacement from their livelihood. With the localization and deurbanization of the macro (ABD), meso (LRE), and micro (ER) theories, the study was able to (re)discover the phenomenon of invisible labor suffered by the agricultural workers, water apathy by the farmers, or their undervaluation of water over land, etc. At the same time, participatory counter-mapping exposed where and how LUCs contribute to agroecological degradation, labor displacement, and “spaces of resistance” where community members resist through everyday acts—ranging from illegal grazing, theft, monetization of aid up to their construction of counter-infrastructures and deconstruction of power from their oppressors through humor, profanity, quiet quitting and the power to name places/projects. These resistances do not only stem from their everyday dispossession experiences but also from their deep ethical commitment to land as life (Ang lupa ay buhay) and rice as their breath and burden (Hininga at Pasanin), revealing that LUCs not only commodify space but also deeply violate community values. This study reveals how infrastructure fetishism and neoliberal land/water governance reinforce economic, ecological, and epistemological dispossession under the guise of development. Ultimately, this study contributes to spatial justice discourse by documenting local resistance and proposing alternative, community-driven land use management strategies that foreground equity, sustainability, and locally rooted ontologies.