TACLOBAN, the Philippines — A mile offshore from this typhoon-wrecked city lies a postcard-perfect tropical islet fringed with golden sand beaches and topped with a mansion and swimming pool: the private island of one of this country's most powerful families, the Romualdez clan of the former first lady, Imelda Marcos.
Facing the island are the devastated remains of what used to be the city's most densely populated squatter settlement, a flattened jumble of broken boards and twisted sheets of corrugated steel on land also owned by the family. An estimated 1,000 people in this settlement alone drowned a month ago when Typhoon Haiyan sent a tsunami-like storm surge rushing across the peninsula, obliterating the spindly homes in its path.
Now the Romualdez family, which has dominated city politics for decades, is locked in a battle with the squatters, trying to block rebuilding on the site.
The family says it is for the squatters' good; the area was so exposed that even the evacuation center, in a school, was overwhelmed. Waves and wind slammed cars and other debris repeatedly into bodies that were trapped against the school's walls, a local official said, sending sprays of blood onto terrified parents and children seeking shelter there. Even some in the federal government, stacked with rivals of the Romualdez family, say such vulnerable land should be abandoned.
The squatters doubt the family's sincerity, and the ability of the government to help them build lives in a safer place. They contend that the clan sees the storm's devastation as a way to finally clear the land, which some in the family have wanted to do for years.
The immediate payoff: The national government is considering buying the land to extend the runway of Tacloban's airport for international flights — a move that could not only benefit family members financially, but also embellish their political fortunes by making their hometown a bigger, more important city.
"They should provide jobs and a place to live to help us recover," said one of the squatters, Rowena Versoza, who lost 15 family members to the storm and has almost single-handedly rebuilt her hut. "No one talks to us about that."
Land disputes at this settlement and similar shantytowns up and down the coast are among the many reasons the recovery effort here is faltering. The typhoon destroyed or severely damaged the homes of four million people — more than twice as many as those left homeless by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Virtually no new permanent houses are being built yet, as the local and national government wrangle about which areas are too vulnerable to storm surges to be rebuilt.
But the standoff over the roughly six-acre strip of land owned by the Romualdez family is particularly fraught, emblematic of troubles that have plagued the Philippines for decades: an unequal distribution of property that keeps many mired in poverty, together with a degree of lawlessness and political expediency that allows the poor to settle on land that is not legally theirs. An estimated one-third of Tacloban's residents are squatting on other people's land.
The landowning aristocracy includes not only Mrs. Marcos's clan — Romualdez was her maiden name — but also the family of the president, Benigno S. Aquino III, which has begun to parcel out rural land to more than 6,000 tenant farmers under a court order.
Hanging in the balance here in Tacloban is the fate of up to 175,000 people who lived in crowded, rat-infested shantytowns with no sewage systems before the storm. The national and local governments say they will build temporary wood homes inland, and Mrs. Marcos, who now lives on the main island of Luzon, has offered her estate on the southern outskirts of Tacloban for some of those shelters.
That is not enough to calm the squatters. Many are fishermen who do not want to move inland, and practically all distrust that enough new government housing will be built in an impoverished country with a history of graft.
Robert Gonzaga contributed reporting.
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