Earlier, in her open letter to ATC’s friends, Mugar stressed that ATC’s profits from its operations are used to provide production assistance to farmers and set up alternative livelihood projects in the communities.

But to guerrilla priest Fr. Frank Fernandez, spokesperson of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in Negros, Mugar’s description of ATC is the opposite of what it is in reality.

“Fake and promoter of unfair trade”

“ATC is a fake and a promoter of unfair trade,” charged Fernandez in a statement sent to media outlets.

“In reality, these hypocrites lead by Edwin Lopez and Norma Mugar are big NGO (non-government organization) bureaucrats, promoters of semi-colonial unfair trade and anti-communist propagandists of the U.S.-Arroyo regime,” Fernandez said.

“Since 1992, the leaders of Alter Trade Corp. had strengthened the politics of the said NGO as a partner of the local reactionary government and foreign capitalists in promoting their reformist programs for the masses; they also made the masses their instruments and milking cows to enrich themselves,” he added.

He also said that the “NGO bureaucrats” of Alter Trade Corp. serve as “middlemen” who dictate cheap buying prices for the peasants’ products that are in turn sold at high prices to foreign consumers in order to amass “huge profit” for their personal and family luxurious interests.

“They are part of the psy-war machinery of the U.S.-Arroyo regime in spreading anti-revolutionary and anti-communist propaganda,” said Fernandez.

ATC defense

Mugar however stressed that ATC was a response to the widespread hunger that gripped Negros Occidental when prices of sugar – the single commodity the province’s economy highly depended on – plummeted in the world market in 1984.

She said that same year, a series of natural calamities also hit the province, the famine worsened.

Due to the sugar crisis, one out of every four workers employed in the haciendas lost their jobs. Starvation spread among the rural population, severely hitting the children.

Mugar clarified that the company was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with five original incorporators to engage in both domestic and international trading. It had paid-up capital of P12, 500 ($256.62 at an exchange rate of $1=P48.71). The company borrowed P50, 000 ($1,026.48) from its Japanese partners to start operations. The five original stockholders also became the initial staff. The number of stockholders later expanded to 13.

She said the first commodity that was traded by ATC was muscovado sugar. Muscovado, largely considered as “poor man’s sugar,” was viewed by Alter Trade as an apt symbol of its vision to help the poor of Negros. The enterprise adopted the brand name Mascobado, “mas” meaning the masses – the ordinary people. Thus, Mascobado means “people’s sugar” in contrast with the sugar produced by the hacenderos and the big multinational milling companies.

The first shipment to Japan was in 1987, with its initial market being the cooperatives in that country. A year later, trading firms from Switzerland and Germany, and then Italy, also espousing the principles of fair trade, began buying ATC’s sugar.

Mascobado trading had impacted significantly in the development of an alternative trading system that seeks to change the socio-economic system prevailing in the country, especially in Negros.

The commodity had truly become a symbol of solidarity between Filipinos and Japanese, as well as other peoples, who are concerned with the environment and in changing the “exploitative social relations” prevailing in the Philippines. The demand for non-plantation bananas in Japan had grown continuously since the beginning. Demand has always exceeded supply. Mascobado demand had also been growing steadily in Japan and Europe.

Cooperative to corporation?

Fernandez, however, cited a number of bases for calling Alter Trade Corp. as “anti-people and a fake fair trade promoter.” The following are lifted from his statement:

* In 1992, the said NGO bureaucrats grabbed the properties, assets and operations of Alter Trade from the legitimate ownership of the accredited beneficiary people’s organizations and small farmers cooperatives that in 1984 had a membership of 158,000. They converted Alter Trade into a private business corporation with profit-making as their sole mission, vision and goal. They created Alter Trade Foundation in 1997 to cover their private ownership and to control the integrated branches of the different operations in manufacturing, trading and finance. These criminal manipulations of the NGO bureaucrats resulted to the disenfranchisement and deprivation of 158,000 peasants and farm workers of their rights to Alter Trade.

* Grave Fraud. First, Alter Trade Corp does not really engaged in fair trade. The truth is, their sources of “balangon” bananas for export to Japan and other countries are NOT from the poor or small farmers cooperatives in Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Bohol and Mindanao, but from the small and rich peasants including landlords. These bananas are being bought from middlemen or through their buying stations where individual peasants bring their bananas to sell. However when the NPA meted punishment by burning ATC’s hauler truck in Toboso last Aug. 13, 2006, they hurriedly organized peasant associations that they will use as shield and maneuver to preserve their interests.

* The mascubado products that they sell in the local market and export to Japan and other countries are not REAL mascubado nor products of organic farming. They do not buy the sugarcane from the small farmers to be made into mascubado products. What they do is buy big volume of raw sugar from the sugar milling centrals and convert this to mascovado while making a showcase of planting sugarcane through organic farming to demonstrate and fool their costumers and buyers in order to hide the big volume of fake mascubado.

* Exploitation of balangon farmers-suppliers. These poor farmers walked several kilometers bringing their products, or spend more for transport fares if there are farm-to-market roads leading to the buying stations. When the bananas arrived in the buying station, export-quality bananas are sorted out if it passes quality test (age, size and undamaged) and are bought at P0.90 ($0.018) per piece if it is packed or P0.75 ($0.015) if unpacked. Exported bananas are sold in consumer cooperatives in Japan at P51.25/kilo ($1.05) or P10.25 ($0.21) per piece. In a buying station in Northern Negros Occidental, they buy bananas at P0.50 ($0.01)  per piece. Bananas that they sort out as reject are bought at P0.25($0.005) or being asked for free from the poor producers. Because of their (ATC) low buying price and a lot of rejected bananas, 58-70 banana growers transfered to other buyers.

* Banana farmer-suppliers deceived by NGO bureaucrats. When Alter Trade Corporation was punished by the NPA (New People’s Army) last Aug. 13, 2006, ATC used the farmer-suppliers as instruments in preserving and protecting their interests thru a petition signing and mobilization against the revolutionary movement, raised their buying price, increase wages of their workers, loans and other benefits. They hurriedly organized farmer cooperatives and the Negros Federation to cover their fraudulent modus operandi.

Fernandez further said that the typical example of Alter Trade maneuvers in “using the masses” is a certain Teody Allabo, an Alter Trade Corp. field assistant in Bonawon, Zamboangita, Negros Oriental who is also the adviser of the Bonawon-Catipon-Calangag Bolongan Farmers Association.

Fernandez stressed that Alter Trade Corp. had already junked the principles of fair trade and sustainable organic farming. “They no longer give due importance to their partners who are the peasants, workers and farm workers and consumers but only their pockets; they are pure and simple businessmen using NGO politics in enriching themselves at the expense of the people,” he said.

Warning

Fernandez warned that Alter Trade Corp. must be held accountable to the 158,000 poor peasants, farm workers and laborers who are the accredited members and beneficiaries from people’s organizations and farmers’ cooperatives in 1984.

“The cries of the masses for justice will remain as haunting ghosts to these NGO bureaucrats so that they will find no peace in their greedy happiness of the money they have stolen; they cannot hide their criminal acts by just creating new cooperatives of farmers and federations of banana growers and use these for their survival and self-serving political and economic interests,” he said.

Mugar revealed that in early 2000, they sought the help of local and foreign governments on the same issue.

“That time we received a letter from the Communist Party of the Philippines-Negros Island Regional Party Committee demanding that ‘P30 million ($615,889) (be) turned over to the Party treasury,’” she said. “The said letter urged us to “take positive response to the will of the Party” and reminded us that ‘whatever action (we) take will be dealt with accordingly by the Party.’”

She said they brought the matter up to Philippine authorities, foreign governments who are involved in the peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP, and to their partners in the fair trade movement. “Maybe the situation now has allowed them to get back at us, with the breakdown of the peace talks,” she added.

“The NPA will not stop in protecting the interests of the masses and in attaining justice for them; the NPA will punish these NGO bureaucrats of Alter Trade Corp as equivalent to the exploitation, oppression and sufferings that ATC inflicted on the masses,” Fernandez meanwhile said. Bulatlat  

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