Hacienda
Luisita Farmers Demand Full Land Distribution
Farm workers of
Hacienda Luisita are challenging President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to
prove that she is not merely using the Hacienda Luisita issue to spite
former Pres. Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, heir to the Luisita estate and one
of the president’s main political opponents.
BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat
Farm workers of
Hacienda Luisita, the 6,419-hectare sugar estate owned and operated by the
influential Cojuangco clan of Tarlac for the last five decades, demand the
immediate distribution of the whole property after the Presidential
Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) ruled with finality the revocation of the
estate's Stock Distribution Plan (SDP).
The hacienda, located
at the boundaries of three major municipalities of Tarlac – Tarlac
City, Concepcion and La Paz – is
comprised of 10 barangays (villages) and the Central Azucarera de Tarlac
(CAT), the second largest sugarmill the country. Seven striking farm
workers were killed and more than a hundred wounded when police and
military dispersed the picketline at the hacienda’s gate on Nov. 16, 2004.
Hacienda Luisita was
subjected to land reform in 1989, under the administration of President
Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, an heir of the Cojuangco family. However, the
land reform scheme adopted was the SDP where only stock certificates
instead of actual land parcels were distributed to the beneficiaries.
The Stock
Distribution Option (SDO) provided by Aquino’s Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP) allows landlords to run landholdings like a
corporation wherein the farmer-beneficiaries are given stocks in exchange
for land.
Through the SDO, the
Cojuangcos declared only 4,915 ha. of the hacienda as subject to land
reform and placed it under the corporate name Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI).
The remaining 2,000 ha. were declared non-agricultural.
After 16 years of SDP,
farm worker beneficiaries have become more impoverished and petitioned for
its revocation. In their petition, the FWBs reported to the Department of
Agrarian Reform (DAR) that their take-home pay went to as low as P9.50 a
week. They also complained of unfair labor practices and illegal
retrenchment.
Fruits of struggle
On Nov. 6, 2004,
around 5,000 Luisita farm-workers and 700 mill workers staged a strike
that lasted for 11 months. The strike was lifted on Dec. 8, 2005.
Rene Galang, a
hacienda beneficiary and president of the United Luisita Workers' Union (ULWU),
the farm-workers' union, said the strike succeeded in asserting their
claim to the land. It was only during the strike that the DAR acted upon
their petition for SDP revocation, he added.
"The PARC resolution
to finally distribute the land could not have been achieved if not for the
unwavering struggle of the hacienda people and the martyrdom of at least
14 of our co-workers and supporters," Galang said.
Seven other peasant
leaders and their supporters have been killed by suspected military men
since the strike. The latest victim was ULWU Board member, Tirso Cruz, who
was slain by motorcycle-riding men at dawn of March 17. Another
farmer-beneficiary, Ronald Intal, was abducted on April 3 and remains
missing.
Land questions
Although Galang views
the land distribution as a victory for the hacienda people, he said the
issue raises many persistent land questions.
He said they would
clarify with the DAR and the PARC all transactions entered into by HLI
after the SDP implementation. He said these transactions entailed
illegalities and must be carefully reviewed.
Galang said the
illegalities include the conversion of 500 ha. sugar land to industrial
and residential use, the 66-ha. Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Project (SCTEP)
of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) that will
traverse through 90 km. of the hacienda, and the 40-ha. quarry contract in
Concepcion and Tarlac
City declared illegal by the Department of
Environment Natural Resources (DENR) on April 24.
Galang added that the
ULWU had applied for lis pendens, or a notice that will warn all
persons that the property is being disputed. They filed for the lis
pendens after they discovered last year that a big chunk of the
land have been mortgaged by HLI to the Bank of Commerce, without approval
of the farmer-beneficiaries who own 30 percent of HLI stocks under the SDP.
Partial distribution
The Luisita land will
only be partially distributed, DAR Undersecretary Narciso Nieto said in a
phone interview with Bulatlat. Only the 4,915 has. declared by HLI
as agricultural land will be distributed.
The DAR official said
95 percent of the beneficiaries have been identified, but they are ready
to distribute only about 1,000 hectares to 1,000 beneficiaries in two
barangays in Tarlac City. The distribution is expected to be made on June
10 on CARP’s 18th anniversary.
He said it would take
DAR six months to one year to complete distribution of the covered
agricultural land to more than 8,000 farm-worker beneficiaries.
Nieto also said the
DAR would be issuing a Collective Certificate of Land Acquisition (CLOA)
instead of Individual CLOAs. There will be one mother title for the estate
that would include all the names of the beneficiaries.
He said the hacienda
has not less than five titles that the DAR still has to document and
submitted to the Land Bank for valuation.
Challenge
After the PARC
ruling, Macapagal-Arroyo received flack from HLI spokesperson and legal
counsel Vigor Mendoza who charged the president of using the issue to get
back at Aquino, a political opponent.
The former president
has joined calls for Arroyo’s ouster after electoral fraud issues haunted
Macapagal-Arroyo last year. Cojuangco-Aquino also lobbied for the
president's impeachment last year and has now joined an anti-Charter
Change alliance to counter the president's People's Initiative for Charter
Change.
"We challenge the
president to prove that she is not using the Hacienda Luisita issue to get
back at the Cojuangcos by immediately distributing all of 6,000 hectares
of the sugar land to the beneficiaries," Galang said.
"We also demand the
immediate pull-out of military deployment in the hacienda and render
justice to our martyred kin and supporters by punishing their murderers,"
Galang ended. Bulatlat
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