Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 36 October 12 - 18, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
New
Land Reform Alliance Rises in Negros Driven
by the idea of agrarian justice, farmers and farmhands in Negros have formed a
new umbrella organization, the Negros Coordinating Council for Genuine Land
Reform (NCC-GLR). Peasant
leaders view the federation as a consensual body that will start and push a
massive campaign for genuine land reform in the island.
By
Hannah A. Papasin The
tension is so thick you can almost slice it with a meat cleaver.
A throng of men and women toting placards faces a phalanx of armed guards
of the hacienda house. Amid orders
to disperse, they refuse to budge. Their
faces are grimly etched in a mix of emotions:
fear, indignation, and anxiety. But
they stay their ground, silently defiant. Behind
their determined gaze and a glimmer of hope in their eyes is a deep-seated
hunger for the land they till. Government
officials assure them they will get their land despite opposition from the
landowner. But they know better.
The haciendero is lord and his words are often the law itself.
Like their skin scorched dark-brown by the sun, their hopes have all too
often been burnt by false government promises. But
the grave, uneasy silence does not last long.
A shot rings out…then some more. A
melee breaks loose. Men and women
scamper to safety. Somewhere, in
the distance, is the piercing cry of a child, soon drowned out by bitter,
haunting sounds of wailing. Angry
shouts and curses follow, but in the end it is the cries of anguish that
prevail. As
the panic clears, in the midst of a gathering crowd is the lifeless body of a
stocky-broad shouldered man in his early 30’s, his farmer’s hand calloused
by years of deftly wielding a machete in sugar fields, and still clutching a
stone meant to stop the hail of bullets fired by elements of the Regional Mobile
Group of the Philippine National Police. This
is Negros, land of sugar and sacadas (seasonal migrant sugarcane
cutters). In this island of central
Philippines, large sugar estates and centrals owned by many of the country’s
richest elite families are hotbeds of abject poverty and social unrest. Welcome
to the Philippines, social volcano, land of social extremes. Such
a scene of hacienda terror and dangerous farmer protest is typical in Negros’
sugar estates. Land
hunger in Negros Studies
show that of the total 532,180 hectares of sugar lands in the Philippines, 78.8
percent of these are concentrated in the hands of only four percent of the
population. With
its lopsided land distribution, Negros has stood out as among the country’s
major flashpoints of agrarian disputes and land reform.
Here in the island, former Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco, launched his
corporative scheme, under which tenants are offered shares of corporations
instead of land titles. Cojuangco’s
media handlers have packaged him as the country’s “land reform godfather”
and his scheme as government’s new land reform formula.
Political
observers have feared Cojuangco to have recently struck a deal with President
Macapagal-Arroyo to drop a presidential bid and to pledge to support Arroyo’s
candidacy in exchange for maintaining control over San Miguel Corporation, the
country’s largest manufacturing firm. This
scheme favored by the country’s biggest landlords is nearly identical to the
stratagem adopted by Cojuangco’s cousin, former President Cory Aquino, to
retain control over the 8,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita under the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the Philippine government land reform plan.
Luisita is some 70 kms north of Manila in the heart of Tarlac province. Peasant
groups have since condemned this corporative model of Cojuangco as a deceptive
ploy to perpetuate peasants’ lack of control over their land.
The struggle for control over the land between a dominant aristocracy
that includes Cojuangco and a poor peasantry continues to shape the changing
power configuration in Negros island. A
new organization Driven
by the idea of agrarian justice, farmers and farmhands in Negros have formed a
new umbrella organization, the Negros Coordinating Council for Genuine Land
Reform (NCC-GLR). Peasant
leaders view the federation as a consensual body that will start and push a
massive campaign for genuine land reform in the island.
“We
have seen that there is a need for individuals, institutions and organizations
to band together and campaign for genuine land reform,” Roy Mahinay, National
Federation of Sugarworkers-Negros chairman and one of the NCC-GLR’s convenors
said last week. “Historically,
individual undertakings in the struggle for land are vulnerable to manipulations
and machinations of those in power, thus the need to pool together resources,
strengths and efforts for a more effective campaign.” At
the core of the NCC-GLR are a council of leaders recommended by its member
organizations, a coordinating council, a working secretariat and the working
committees. Sister
Aquila Sy of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) is the alliance’s
chairperson, and Fr. Gordoncillo, its over-all coordinator. The
NCC-GLR has lined up as among its tasks for genuine agrarian reform:
Broad
unity As
a force for broad-based solidarity, the NCC-GLR was able to harness the support
of the diocese of the Catholic Church through its Social Action Center director
Fr. Aniceto Buenafe. The
impressive turnout of participants during the NCC-GLR’s official launching
last Sept. 27 at the Scala Retreat House nurtures high hopes for the long-term
success of NCC-GLR. Delegates
from all over Negros – some from peasant organizations, others from churches
like the Philippine Independent Church and a representative from the landlord
class – traveled to Bacolod to
listen to the agrarian justice message of the NCC-GLR convenors. Organizations
with track record of support to the peasant struggle for land attended:
the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), the party-list Bayan Muna, the
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Anakbayan,
Gabriela, the Paghiliusa sa Paghidaet Development Group (PDG), the fisherfolk
organization Pamalakaya, and the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines. All
member groups have their own idea of how to go about with the struggle that have
been started centuries ago, Fr. Gordoncillo said. “We
are not latching our hopes on the land reform program of the government, which
has since degenerated into a farce,” added NCC-GLR executive director and
NCC-GLR co-convenor and lawyer Ben Ramos. Still,
Ramos said, that does not mean that the NCC-GLR would not exploit the
opportunities made available by law in the pursuit of its goals and objectives. Feudalism
in Negros The
statistics on peasant conditions in Negros that NCC-GLR aims to address remain
grim and depressing. Consider,
for instance, that an average sugar farmhand in Negros receives P60 – or
several times below the daily minimum wage - for a day’s work of weeding the
canefields; P75 per ton of cane cut and loaded in a truck, and P308.55 for every
10,000 canepoints planted. Most
hacienda laborers take home only P20 to P80 a day, a condition worsened by the pakyaw
system (the piece-rate system that pegs pay to the output). Even
worse off is child labor, which grows from the need of the poor to maximize
income-earning opportunities by having children spend time in farm work what
they would otherwise devote to play or study.
Figures showed a dramatic rise in the number of women employed in the
plantations, as roughly 50 percent of the total workforce in sugar haciendas are
women and children. And
then there is the fact that gender discrimination remains pervasive.
Women and children receive less than what men do, with women getting only
50 percent of the pay received by men, and children receiving only a quarter of
those for adult males. A
rapid appraisal of Negros also shows that a similarly deplorable level of
poverty affect the poor fisherfolk, who are also hit hard by privatization of
uplands and coastal areas in the island. “The
feudal structure in the countryside is really disgusting,” Barreta said, as he
stressed the need for “just and equitable distribution of land and its
resources” by means of production. Without
the “just and equitable distribution of land,” he said, “true peace could
not exist.” “But
since the land reform laws are crafted by members of the ruling elite and
designed to protect their interests, it would be foolish if we depend on these
laws to serve the interests of the marginalized,” Barreta said. A
shared dream The
assembly discussions stressed that the council members share one dream: that the peasants and farmers, whose “blood, sweat and
tears help sweeten sugar” and “who mold history and chart the destiny of a
nation” – finally own the land that they have been tilling for years. In
his speech during the assembly Gordoncillo summed up delegates’ hopes: “Our ancestors have been struggling for land for centuries.
And we are continuing that struggle.
I hope none of us here has given up hope.”
“We should not give up hope,” he said, adding, “It would be better to have struggled and lost than not to have struggled at all.” Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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