Laurel, Batangas: The Complicated Road to Township

The Municipality of Laurel, Batangas, did not emerge as an independent town in a single, straightforward act. Its territory passed through several municipal jurisdictions during the American colonial period, portions of it were later involved in a territorial transfer involving Tagaytay, and the movement to establish an independent municipality culminated only after several years of petitions, endorsements, an executive order, and finally an act of Congress.

The documentary trail begins with Talisay. When the Philippine Commission reorganized the municipalities of Batangas through Act No. 708 on March 28, 1903, it consolidated the municipality of Talisay with Tanauan, with the seat of the resulting municipality at Tanauan¹. Thus, the territory that would eventually become Laurel was, at this stage, under the municipality of Tanauan together with the former municipality of Talisay.

A further change came the following year. Act No. 1244, enacted on October 7, 1904, specifically transferred five barrios then belonging to Tanauan to the municipality of Taal: Bayuyungan, Bugaan, Balaquilong, San Gabriel, and Binirayan². These five names are particularly important because all would eventually be included in the municipality of Laurel.

The political map changed again in 1906. Act No. 1514, enacted on July 23 of that year, separated the former municipality of Talisay from Tanauan and reconstituted it as a municipality. The law provided that Tanauan should consist of the territory it had possessed before Act No. 708, while Talisay was to be reconstituted with the territory it had possessed before that same act³. The five barrios previously transferred to Taal would subsequently be associated once more with Talisay, and eventually with Laurel.

Above, an AI-imagined image of the shoreline of Laurel, Batangas in 1969.

There was another complication in the territorial history of Binirayan. In 1941, the barrio had been annexed to the City of Tagaytay, but Republic Act No. 1418, approved on June 7, 1956, expressly separated the former Talisay barrios of Caloocan and Birinayan from Tagaytay and transferred them back to Talisay⁴. Decades later, the Supreme Court would specifically rule that the law returned the entire barrio of Birinayan to Talisay, rather than merely a portion of it⁵.

By the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, the territory that would eventually constitute Laurel was once again within Talisay. But the idea of creating a separate municipality had already begun to develop among the inhabitants of the area. According to the official history published by the Municipality of Laurel, Jose Macaraig, Placido T. Amo, and Severino Amo took the initiative in obtaining signatures from residents of eight barrios — Birinayan, Balakilong, As-is, San Gabriel, Bugaan, Buso-buso, Ticub, and Bayuyungan — on a petition seeking an independent town with its own government⁶.

The petition was first endorsed to Senator Maria Kalaw Katigbak, who in turn presented it to President Diosdado Macapagal. The same municipal account records that when Placido T. Amo later became vice-mayor of Talisay, Macaraig continued to follow the matter up, while Amo brought the issue before Talisay Mayor Amando Laurel and the municipal council. A resolution was subsequently forwarded to Batangas Governor Feliciano Leviste, after which the Provincial Board endorsed the matter to Jose B. Laurel, Jr., then a prominent congressional figure from Batangas⁷.

The effort produced an unusual development in December 1965. On December 8, President Macapagal issued Executive Order No. 224, creating the Municipality of Bayuyungan from eight barrios of Talisay: Sampaloc, Birinayan, Balakilong, As-is, Bayuyungan, Bugaan, Buso-buso, and San Gabriel, with Bayuyungan as the seat of government⁸.

This executive order is an important part of Laurel’s history, but it should not be confused with the final legal creation of Laurel. Only sixteen days after the order was issued, the Supreme Court decided *Pelaez v. Auditor General*⁹ (Emmanuel Pelaez, Vice President and petitioner in the case), holding that the creation of municipal corporations was a legislative function and that Section 68 of the Revised Administrative Code did not validly delegate that power to the President. The surviving documentary record does not establish here precisely what legal effect Executive Order No. 224 subsequently had, but its timing places the Bayuyungan episode squarely within a significant constitutional dispute over presidential authority to create municipalities.

The movement for an independent municipality nevertheless continued. The final legal instrument was not a presidential proclamation but an act of Congress. House Bill No. 17628 eventually became Republic Act No. 5689, approved on June 21, 1969. The law expressly separated eight barrios from Talisay — Bayuyungan, Ticub, Balakilong, Bugaan, Borinayan, As-is, San Gabriel, and Buso-buso — and constituted them into a distinct and independent municipality to be known as the Municipality of Laurel. Bayuyungan was designated as the seat of government¹⁰.

The list in Republic Act No. 5689 is significant because it is the definitive legal statement of the territory from which Laurel was created. It also reveals a discrepancy with the present-day official municipal history, which describes Laurel as having been created with seven barrios while Bayuyungan became the poblacion. The statute itself, however, names eight barrios in Section 1, including Bayuyungan¹¹. It is therefore more precise to say that Laurel was legally constituted from eight barrios, with Bayuyungan designated as the seat of government.

The name Laurel was chosen in honor of former President Jose P. Laurel, Sr.¹². The new municipality did not immediately have its first elected local officials, however. According to the official municipal history, the first set of municipal officials assumed office on November 8, 1971, with Placido T. Amo as mayor and Deogracias J. Natanauan as vice-mayor¹³.

The history of Laurel is consequently more complicated than the simple statement that it was once a barrio of Talisay and became a municipality in 1969. The documentary record shows a territory whose political jurisdiction changed repeatedly: from Talisay to Tanauan in 1903, with five future Laurel barrios transferred from Tanauan to Taal in 1904, followed by the reconstitution of Talisay in 1906; Binirayan was subsequently transferred to Tagaytay and then returned to Talisay in 1956; and finally, after a locally organized campaign for municipal independence and the extraordinary Bayuyungan episode of 1965, eight Talisay barrios were separated by Congress in 1969 to form Laurel¹⁴.

What makes the story particularly valuable is that the names of several of the people who pushed for separation have survived in the official municipal record. Jose Macaraig, Placido T. Amo, and Severino Amo are identified there as the principal initiators of the petition, while Maria Kalaw Katigbak, Diosdado Macapagal, Amando Laurel, Feliciano Leviste, and Jose B. Laurel, Jr. appear at successive stages in the documented effort that eventually brought the proposed municipality before Congress¹⁵.

Laurel, therefore, was not simply carved out of Talisay by a single administrative decision. Its creation was the final stage of a much longer process in which boundaries changed, jurisdictions were restored and transferred, local residents petitioned for their own government, and the question of who possessed the constitutional authority to create a municipality became part of the story itself. Republic Act No. 5689 of June 21, 1969 finally gave that movement its permanent legal form.