Marching for land

They braved bad weather, endured hunger, fatigue, and travelled more than a thousand kilometers, for a cause martyred and fought for by generations of their class.

They are the landless peasants from the Southern and Northern regions of the Philippines led by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) who conducted a 10-day nationwide march and caravan from January 12 and culminated at the foot of Mendiola Bridge on January 22 – the 23^rd year of the Mendiola Massacre that happened during the presidency of the late Corazon Cojuangco Aquino in 1987. Thirteen farmers died on that tragic day.

Since day one of the march that kicked off in Davao City and Cagayan De Oro City, the farmer-marchers, called Lakbayanis by their supporters, cried out for the implementation of genuine agrarian reform or the free distribution of lands to landless tillers.

In a report, Pedro Arnado, KMP - Southern Mindanao chair, said the long march, is the first simultaneous long march staged by farmers.

“An entire generation today may not be aware of it and many could have already forgotten Mendiola massacre, but for those who have become widows and orphans, certainly they would not settle for just that. They seek retribution for the lives taken that will never be brought back,” he said.

The march dubbed as ‘Lakbayan ng Anakpawis para sa Lupa at Katarungan’ is “an expression of their disgust over the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the “deceptive” nature of its extension and the worsening conditions of farmers all over the country.”

From CARP to CARPer

The CARP or Republic Act 6657, called as the centerpiece program of the Aquino administration, was enacted on June 10, 1988 and is to be implemented for ten years. Before the ten-year period lapsed, Congress extended the program for another ten years on February 1998.

However, before its enactment into law, Executive Order 229 issued by President Aquino on July 22, 1987, exactly six months after the carnage in Mendiola, laid down the framework of the kind of agrarian reform program of the government. EO 229 put into place the Stock Distribution Option (SDO), a non-land transfer scheme, adopted by CARP and was implemented in 1989 at the Cojuangco-Aquino-owned Hacienda Luisita to escape land distribution.

Under the CARP’s SDO, stocks were distributed to farmers and farm workers instead of land. This non-land transfer scheme turned the supposed farmer-beneficiaries into salaried farmhands and so-called “co-owners” or “stockholders” of the corporation. In reality, however, the so-called “farmer-stockholders” were made to give up their ownership and rightful claims to the agricultural lands.

On August 8, 2009, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed RA 9700 or the CARP Extension with Reforms (CARPer) law that did not categorically repeal non-land transfer schemes like the SDO and, in fact, put into place additional loopholes and a string of attestation requirements for farmer-beneficiaries and for the benefit of landlords.

Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano described the law as a “death sentence to farmers.”

“No agrarian reform law in the past has given landlords such power to identify farmer-beneficiaries,” Mariano said.

Mariano, who also chairs the KMP, in an interview with bulatlat.com, said the CARPER bill will aggravate the farmers’ fundamental problem of landlessness and will only strengthen the land monopoly of a few.

“A Congress that represents the class interest of landlords and big local and foreign corporations can, unsurprisingly, railroad an ultimately anti-farmer legislation like the CARP extension bill,” Mariano said.

Cory’s promise

The SDO implemented in Hacienda Luisita is a 180-degree turn to President Aquino’s electoral campaign promise during the 1986 snap elections, to implement genuine agrarian reform with Hacienda Luisita as the first to be distributed. But she made a turnaround on the distribution of the 6,435 hectares Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.

A special report by gmanews.tv noted that on January 6, 1986, Aquino delivered the first policy speech of her campaign in Makati and said, “We are determined to implement a genuine land reform program . . . to enable [beneficiaries] to become self-reliant and prosperous farmers.”

Ten days later, on January 16, 1986, Aquino delivered her second major speech in Davao and said, “Land-to-the-tiller must become a reality, instead of an empty slogan.”

According to the report, Aquino also said, “You will probably ask me: Will I also apply it to my family’s Hacienda Luisita? My answer is yes.”

Fifteen years later, the Cojuangco-Aquino family’s circumvention of land distribution through the SDO fueled the flames of agrarian unrest in Luisita and in what seems to be a repeat of the 1987 Mendiola massacre, another massacre occurred on November 16, 2004. Farmers and farm workers who staged a strike calling for the scrap of the SDO and the distribution of lands were violently dispersed by the military and the police. Seven farm workers died and scores were injured on that fateful day that is now known as the “Hacienda Luisita Massacre.”

Hot potato for bets

The land question is a political hot potato in the coming May elections especially for candidates whose family own and control vast tracts of lands. On top of the list of candidates with landlord class origin is the presidential and vice-presidential tandem of the Liberal Party, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III and Sen. Manuel “Mar” Araneta Roxas II, respectively.

Sen. Aquino is the only son of former president Cory while Sen. Roxas is a scion of the influential Araneta clan who owns more than 1,000 hectares in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, also a subject of agrarian dispute.

Demands for Sen. Aquino to decisively act on Hacienda Luisita’s distribution to farm workers was immediately posed as a challenge to him and turned out to be a heavy baggage to his candidacy.

For instance, Bayan Muna Rep. and senatorial candidate Satur Ocampo said, “Sen. Aquino has been citing the lives and legacies of his parents to the Filipino people as a sort of guarantee that he will be a good president. Given this, he should then admit and take stock of the failure of former Pres. Aquino to implement a genuine agrarian reform program.”

“It has been 22 years since the Mendiola Massacre, but justice still eludes the victims and the survivors. Majority of the the country's farmers remain landless and impoverished,” Ocampo added.

“Filipino farmers challenge Sen. Aquino to rectify this. Can he and will he take a stand for genuine agrarian reform? Up to now the struggle between the Hacienda Luisita farmers and the Cojuangco family remain unsettled, and Sen. Aquino has issued nothing but platitudes,” he said.

In a message of solidarity and support for the farmers’ caravan, International League of Peoples’ Struggle chairperson Prof. Jose Maria Sison said that, “two major presidential candidates, Benigno Cojuangco-Aquino III and Gilberto Cojuangco-Teodoro belong to the same big comprador-landlord clan which owns vast haciendas in Tarlac, Pangasinan, Isabela, Negros, Caraga, Palawan and elsewhere in the country.”

“The land question must be in the agenda of the current electoral struggle. The progressive parties and candidates who espouse land reform deserve support,” Sison said in his message posted at arkibongbayan.org.

Human rights abuses

The peasant caravan, described by Mariano as an “opening salvo” of sustained protest actions for this year, also highlighted the brazen human rights violations under the Arroyo administration’s counter-insurgency plan Operation Bantay Laya.

Adding insult to the injury were the different forms of harassments like, infiltration by military intelligence agents and actual blockades, confronted by the Lakbayanis in Northern Samar, Sorsogon, Albay, and Quezon provinces. A military chopper also hovered above the farmers as they marched towards Legazpi City until they reached the AFP’s Camp Simeon Ola in Legazpi City.

“Gross and systematic human rights abuses and landlessness in the countryside are the very same reason why the farmers have launched an exodus towards the national capital,” Mariano said.

“The AFP is paranoid over the farmers’ caravan that aims to expose the Arroyo administration’s outright denial of their demands for land reform and the blatant human rights violations perpetrated by the military against the peasantry,” says Mariano in a statement from anakpawis.net.

The KMP noted that a total of 561 farmers have fallen victims of extrajudicial killings, or more than half of close to a thousand victims monitored by the human rights group Karapatan since President Arroyo took power in 2001.

Of the 561 peasants killed, 119 were KMP members and leaders while 129 peasants were victims of enforced disappearances.

The political killings, enforced disappearances, violation of farmers’ rights, coupled with the deceptive CARPer – basically a program to dampen the Filipino peasantry’s escalating struggle for genuine land reform – are the government’s response to farmers’ legitimate demand for land.

Photo by arkibongbayan.org. Some rights reserved

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