Short answer. Yes. Article 313 makes it an offence to alter the boundary marks or monuments of towns, provinces or estates, or any other marks intended to designate their boundaries. The punishable act is the alteration of the marker itself, quite apart from any civil dispute about where the true line runs.
What the law says
Any person who shall alter the boundary marks or monuments of towns, provinces, or estates, or any other marks intended to designate the boundaries of the same
Revised Penal Code, Article 313 — Altering Boundaries Or Landmarks. Read the full provision →
The article protects the marker, not the title
Article 313 reaches any person who shall alter the boundary marks or monuments of towns, provinces, or estates, or any other marks intended to designate the boundaries of the same. The closing phrase is broad on purpose. A concrete monument set by a surveyor is the obvious case, but so is any other mark placed to show where a boundary lies — a post, a stone, a line of markers agreed between neighbours. What the provision guards is the reliability of the sign, because everyone in the neighbourhood relies on it.
Being right about the line is not a defence to moving it
The commonest version of this dispute is a neighbour who genuinely believes the marker was set in the wrong place. The article does not carve out that situation. It punishes the alteration, and it says nothing about who was correct about the boundary — for the good reason that if being convinced were enough, no marker anywhere would be reliable. A person who thinks a monument is misplaced has a route: a relocation survey and, if necessary, a civil action to fix the boundary. Moving the marker himself is not that route.
What such a case is proved with
Two things have to be shown: where the mark stood before, and that the accused altered it. The first usually comes from the approved survey plan, the technical description in the title, and any earlier relocation survey, which together fix the monument's proper position. The second is harder and is often circumstantial — photographs taken before and after, disturbed ground, work being done on that side, and witnesses. Because the marker's original position is documentary, a relocation survey by a licensed geodetic engineer is normally the first useful step.
Two disputes, running separately
A criminal complaint under this article and a civil action about where the boundary actually lies are different proceedings answering different questions, and neither settles the other. It is quite possible for the line to be resolved one way and the question of who altered a marker another. The money penalty in the article has been revised by later legislation, so any amount should be read from the current text. Bring the title, the survey plan and the photographs to a lawyer before deciding which route matters more to you.