Republic Act No. 1790 is a short, highly specific piece of legislation enacted on June 21, 1957, during the presidency of Carlos P. Garcia and the 3rd Congress of the Republic. It belongs to a large class of 1950s Republic Acts (roughly RA 1500–RA 2500) that dealt almost exclusively with the creation, division, renaming, or boundary adjustment of barrios in the provinces.
Full Title and Exact Content
The complete title of Republic Act No. 1790 is:
“An Act Creating the Barrio of Cabatuan in the Municipality of Lupon, Province of Davao.”
The entire law consists of only three sections and occupies less than one page in the Official Gazette:
Section 1. The sitio of Cabatuan in the Municipality of Lupon, Province of Davao, is hereby converted into a barrio to be known as the barrio of Cabatuan.
Section 2. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.
Approved: June 21, 1957.
That is literally the whole statute. No additional provisions on boundaries, population, appropriation of funds, or transitional governance were included — all of that was governed by the general provisions of the Revised Administrative Code then in force.
Historical and Political Context
In the immediate post-war decade (1946–1960), the Philippines experienced rapid rural population growth and the reconstruction of local communities destroyed during the Japanese occupation. Many large barrios contained distant sitios that had grown into substantial settlements with their own churches, schools, markets, and resident populations of several hundred families. However, under the legal framework of the time (primarily Commonwealth Act No. 58 as amended and the Revised Administrative Code), only Congress could create new barrios. Provincial boards and municipal councils had no authority to do so.
Consequently, congressmen routinely filed individual bills for every sitio in their districts that met the informal criteria (usually 500+ inhabitants and a functioning elementary school). The 3rd Congress (1954–1957) and 4th Congress (1958–1961) passed hundreds of such “barrio-creation charters” — often twenty to thirty in a single session day. June 21, 1957 alone saw the approval of more than fifteen barrio-creation laws (RA 1777 to RA 1795 or thereabouts).
These laws were non-controversial, passed unanimously, and signed immediately by the President. They represent one of the clearest examples of constituent-service legislation in Philippine congressional history.
Legal Effects and Continuing Validity
The creation of Barrio Cabatuan by RA 1790 had the following permanent legal consequences:
It became a distinct local government unit entitled to elect its own barrio lieutenant (now barangay captain) and barrio council under the election laws then applicable.
It became eligible for its own share of the real-property tax, internal revenue allotment (when the IRA system was later introduced), and national aid for school buildings, roads, and artesian wells.
Its territorial boundaries were fixed by the metes-and-bounds description implicitly accepted when the law was passed (usually based on the technical description attached to the committee report).
Under the present Local Government Code of 1991 (Republic Act No. 7160), all barrios created by Republic Acts prior to 1991 automatically became barangays without need of further legislation (Sec. 397, RA 7160, in relation to the transitory provisions). Therefore, Barangay Cabatuan in the present-day Municipality of Lupon, Davao Oriental (the former undivided Province of Davao having been split in 1967 by RA 4867) continues to derive its legal existence directly from Republic Act No. 1790.
The barangay has never been abolished, merged, or had its name changed by subsequent legislation, so RA 1790 remains good law sixty-eight years after its enactment.
Significance (or Lack Thereof) in Philippine Legal History
RA 1790 has no jurisprudential history. It has never been cited by the Supreme Court, never been the subject of constitutional challenge, and never been amended or repealed. It is a purely administrative statute with exclusively local application.
Its only broader significance is as an illustrative specimen of mid-20th-century Philippine legislative practice: a Congress that functioned in large part as a national barangay-creation assembly before the decentralization reforms of the 1987 Constitution and the 1991 Local Government Code transferred such powers to sanggunians.
In short, everything there is to know about Republic Act No. 1790 can be stated in a few sentences: it created one barangay in what is now Davao Oriental on June 21, 1957, and that barangay still exists today under the authority of that same 68-year-old law. There are no hidden provisions, no controversial legislative history, no subsequent amendments, and no scholarly commentary. It is a perfect example of the quiet, workaday legislation that constitutes the overwhelming majority of the 12,000+ Republic Acts on the Philippine statute books.