Two things may help to explain the violent power politics in this impoverished part of the southern Philippines: the red-roofed and high-walled mansions that have long dominated the center of this town, and the men in uniform carrying automatic weapons who guarded them.
The opulent mansions, the only ones here in the capital of Maguindanao Province, are owned by the family of Andal Ampatuan Sr., the patriarch of the political dynasty that has ruled this part of the island of Mindanao for much of this decade.
Today, the mansions are surrounded by soldiers and police officers, while family members face multiple charges of murder for alleged involvement in a massacre that shocked a country seemingly inured to political violence.
On Nov. 23, a convoy of vehicles — carrying the wife, three sisters and an aunt of Esmael Mangudadatu, the vice mayor of a small town nearby, as well as supporters, journalists and lawyers — was stopped by dozens of armed men at a checkpoint outside Shariff Aguak. At gunpoint, the vehicles, along with another car that had happened to be behind them, were forced down a dirt road to a windblown hilltop.
The armed men — who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — then shot and hacked 57 people to death. Some of the women, investigators say, were raped and sexually mutilated.
“They were so confident with their power that they carried out something like this and believed they could get away with it,” said Kim Bagundang, a Maguindanao resident and president of the Liguasan Youth Association for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit organization.
The reason for the massacre was clear, the authorities said. Mr. Mangudadatu’s relatives and supporters had been on their way to file his candidacy papers for governor of Maguindanao in elections next year — a direct challenge to the Ampatuans, who have ruled virtually unchallenged.
The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao is almost absolute. Most of the province’s 36 towns are run by mayors and deputy mayors who are either sons, grandsons, cousins, nephews, in-laws or close allies of the senior Mr. Ampatuan, according to a study by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Since he became governor in 1998, Mr. Ampatuan has carved out at least eight towns from existing ones and named all of them after his sons and other relatives. The entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which is composed of five predominantly Muslim provinces, including Maguindanao, is run by Governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of his sons.
The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao was enforced with guns and a culture of fear in towns governed by the family, residents and the authorities said. Many residents are afraid to talk at all about the Ampatuans. “No, no, no,” a resident in the town of Datu Unsay said when asked to comment on the massacre.
“People here live in fear,” a driver who lives in nearby Cotabato City, said of Shariff Aguak. “No one will dare go against the Ampatuans.”
One factor in what experts have called the “culture of impunity” that the Ampatuans have enjoyed in Maguindanao may be suggested by the enormous billboards erected at infrastructure projects around the province lauding the accomplishments of the family. Almost all of them also thank President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her help in making the projects possible — highlighting the political connection between the Ampatuans and the central government in Manila.
“The Ampatuan family dynasty has backed President Arroyo since 2001, and its rise to power is likewise attributed to Mrs. Arroyo’s support,” said Bobby Tuazon, an analyst at the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a Manila nonprofit organization that has studied the political dynamics of the provinces. The Ampatuans, he said, were “an extension of Arroyo’s political base.”
In the 2004 elections, Mrs. Arroyo won resounding victories in Maguindanao; in at least three towns, her opponent, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., got no votes at all, according to the official results. An independent election monitor found widespread fraud in the election that year.
For the Ampatuans, as well as for the chiefs of other impoverished provinces, there are very lucrative reasons for chasing political patronage in Manila.
Maguindanao is the second-poorest province in the Philippines, according to government statistics. It is mainly agricultural and has no industry to speak of. What it does have, however, is a lot of voters who can be delivered to national candidates in return for tax revenues and political patronage that can keep local politicians firmly in power.
Francisco Lara, at the Development Studies Institute of the London School of Economics, says the potential for making money from politics has given rise to a class of “ruthless political entrepreneurs” in the Philippines.
“Political office has become more attractive due to the billions of pesos in I.R.A. remittances that electoral victory provides,” Mr. Lara said, referring to the internal revenue allotment, the share of national taxes for local governments. “The ‘winner-takes-all’ nature of local electoral struggles in Muslim Mindanao also means that competition is costlier and bloodier.”
And often more corrupt, according to Mr. Tuazon and other experts.
Figures from the Department of Budget and Management show that Maguindanao’s overall revenue in 2006 was 603 million pesos, or about $13 million — of which 570 million pesos came from national taxes. At least a third of these funds went to personnel and operating expenses. According to the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism, which has closely examined the issue, such funds are a major source of corruption within the Philippine bureaucracy.
The Commission on Audit’s annual reports on Maguindanao have consistently highlighted deficiencies in bookkeeping. For instance, in its 2008 audit report, the commission found that it could not ascertain the validity of the provincial accountant’s claim that the province had more than 107 million pesos deposited in banks. It also could not verify the existence of properties and assets worth 345 million pesos that the province said it had.
In 2006, the position of the Ampatuans was strengthened by Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to allow local government chiefs to set up armed militias to support the police and the military in their fight against criminals and insurgents.
Abhoud Syed Lingga, executive director of the Institute for Bangsamoro Studies in Cotabato City, who has studied the rise of the militias, said local chiefs across the country had used the order to create their own private armies.
The Ampatuans, he said, did so with more enthusiasm than anyone else. The police and military estimate that the Ampatuans employ between 400 and 600 of these armed men.
Up to now, the military has been supportive of the Ampatuans, Mr. Lingga said, because the clan actively fought the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the insurgent rebels fighting for a Muslim homeland in Mindanao.
All that changed on Nov. 23, when the armed men who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — among them police officers and militiamen — killed the 57 people on the hillside.
When soldiers, who had been alerted about the abduction, arrived at the mass graves — at a site overlooking the town of Ampatuan — several bodies remained unburied. Some were still in vehicles; in one van the driver was slumped, dead, on the steering wheel.
The backhoe used to dig the graves, its claw stuck in the ground, was still running — a “mute witness to this atrocity,” as Felicisimo Khu, the police superintendent who oversaw the recovery of the bodies, put it. Printed in black ink on the side of the backhoe, as on most of the equipment at infrastructure projects around Maguindanao, was the name of Andal Ampatuan Sr.
According to Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina of the Manila police, who serves as spokesman for the investigation, the primary suspect in the massacre, Andal Ampatuan Jr., was present when the armed men stopped the convoy. According to the Justice Department, he ordered his men to carry out the slaughter. He did this, investigators said, in full view of witnesses, some of whom have agreed to testify.
Mr. Ampatuan Jr., who is in custody and has been charged with 25 counts of murder, has denied the allegations. This week, the authorities said they had filed rebellion charges against more members of the Ampatuans, days after the government put the whole of Maguindanao Province under martial law. Raids have been conducted by the police and the military in which at least 1,500 firearms and more than half a million rounds of ammunition have been found. On Wednesday, the police said they had named 161 suspects in the massacre.
Andal Ampatuan Sr., his family members and lawyers for the family did not respond to requests for interviews.
With the Ampatuans on the ropes, power in this province appears likely to shift to the family of Mr. Mangudadatu, the Buluan mayor — which has controlled the neighboring province of Sultan Kudarat for years.
Mr. Mangudadatu, 41, has brothers and uncles and cousins holding local positions in Maguindanao and in Sultan Kudarat Province. Unlike Andal Ampatuan Sr., however, not one of his eight children is in power, Mr. Mangudadatu said in an interview.
That may change next year. “I want my eldest son,” he said, “to run as vice mayor to replace me.”
Just days after the massacre, Mr. Mangudadatu filed his candidacy papers for Maguindanao governor and said that only death could stop him from running. At this point, he seems certain to win.
On the day he filed his papers, he was accompanied by Gilberto Teodoro, who will be Mrs. Arroyo’s candidate for president in the election next year. Mr. Mangudadatu will run as a candidate of Mrs. Arroyo’s party, Lakas-Kampi, the same party that helped nurture the Ampatuans for years.
Philippine troops moved in on the southern strongholds of about 4,000 government-armed militiamen loyal to the Ampatuans, the military said Thursday, The Associated Press reported from Manila.
Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, a spokesman for the armed forces, said the possibility of clashes with the militiamen had risen since a deadline for them to surrender passed and troops headed to their hide-outs in at least seven townships of southern Maguindanao Province.
“We have started moving in and positioning our troops, but there is no actual firefight yet,” Colonel Brawner said, adding that the operation was meant to pressure the militiamen to surrender.
The operation was started after the militiamen failed to heed the warning on thousands of leaflets dropped by helicopters Tuesday for them to surrender in 24 hours.
More leaflets were dropped Thursday, Colonel Brawner said.
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