What should be done in Hacienda Luisita?

In last week’s column, I promised to dwell in today’s piece on the issues raised by the Hacienda Luisita farmworkers concerning the Department of Agrarian Reform’s implementation of the Supreme Court’s final ruling on April 24, 2012. This involves the distribution of 4,915 hectares of the 6,453-hectare estate to 6,296 farmworker-beneficiaries.

As the DAR was proceeding to distribute the land via a tambiolo (lottery drum) raffle, the farmworkers belonging to AMBALA complained to the Supreme Court last July, calling this method a sham. “Not an inch of land has been physically distributed,” they charged, and many supposed beneficiaries were “disenfranchised,” their rights violated.

The complaints, affirmed by an on-site fact-finding mission in September, included the following:

• Insertion of nearly 1,000 questionable names in the master list of beneficiaries;

• Exclusion from distribution of hundreds of hectares of land, sowing confusion, dislocation and dispute among beneficiaries over lot allocation and individual titling;

• Imposition of compulsory signing of promissory notes to ensure amortization payments;

• Inaction on the farmworkers’ appeal to revoke a 1996 conversion order on 500 hectares of prime agricultural land that was left undeveloped after five years, contrary to the requirement of the law;

(Consequently, farmworker families have occupied portions of the “converted” land and planted rice and other food crops, under a project called bungkalan. The bungkalan began in 2005, at the height of the farmworkers’ and sugar-central workers’ strike, historically marked by the ignominious Hacienda Luisita Massacre of Nov. 16, 2004.

(The Cojuangco-controlled Tarlac Development Corp. and the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., employing armed security guards and filing cases in court, have repeatedly tried, unsuccessfully, to evict the farmworkers.)

• Grant of overpriced landlord compensation to the HLI.

(The SC final ruling set “just compensation” at the 1989 HLI land value, or P40,000 per hectare. Yet, last August, DAR Sec. Virgilio delos Reyes told a congressional hearing that, by factoring in 12% interest on the land since 1989, the Cojuangcos’ compensation may exceed P100,000 per hectare – more than double the amount set by the high tribunal). 

Two important conclusions were made by the fact-finding mission participated in by 11 peasant organizations, peasant-support and agrarian-reform advocacy groups. In their report last November, they said:

1. That the farmworkers’ demand for free land distribution was “just and must be granted”; and

2. That the farmworkers’ demand for recognition of their right to collective (rather than individual) land ownership should be heeded, as it is “equitable and just.”

Why should they not have to pay?  Because the HLI land should have been distributed among the farmworkers 46 years ago — in 1967! That was the condition set by the government for financially supporting Jose Cojuangco Sr. in buying the estate in 1957.

Underlining the justness of the demand is this straightforward statement by Maria Domingo-Corpuz, 99-year-old resident of Barangay Cutcut, Tarlac City. A farmworker since 1930 (when Tabacalera was still managing the hacienda), she and her 10 children have continued working for the Cojuangcos.

“Ang Hacienda Luisita ay pag-aari ng mga magsasaka at hindi ng mga Cojuangco. Sinangla lang ito nang 10 taon at hindi na isinauli, inagaw na nila,” she said. (The hacienda is owned by the farmers, not the Cojuangcos.  They mortgaged the land for 10 years and they haven’t returned it, they grabbed it.)

Apong Maria’s grievance — shared by 6,000 longtime farmworkers — is compounded by what the Cojuangcos allegedly did, which worsened the hardships endured by her family over the past 56 years.  She disclosed:

“We used to have a hectare of land (under Tabacalera) where we planted rice for our consumption. But that piece of land was taken by the Cojuangcos when they came in 1957.” 

Other families who also cultivated parcels of land for their own food before 1957, may have suffered the same fate as the Corpuzes.

One of Apong Maria’s five daughters, Leonarda “Nanay Leoning” Corpuz-Halili, 57, mother of six, has taken after her mother.  She has joined the United Luisita Workers Union and is one of the women leaders in Barangay Cutcut. During the 2004-2005 strike, she was active in both the picketline and the bungkalan.

Exultantly she related her experience-cum-discovery, saying:

“I was in the picketline since day one of the strike. I stopped doing other jobs and focused on contributing to the strike as I realized the importance of our struggle for our land rights. I helped in the cooking. I helped plant crops for our food on patches of land adjacent to the picketline.”

 â€œI thought to myself then, that if we had done this earlier, I could have sent my children to school. There’s been a big improvement in our income now that we are cultivating the land through the bungkalan, unlike before when we were only earning a measly P9.50 as take-home pay.”

The eight-year bungkalan experience has shown the benefits of collective land ownership and cultivation vis-a-vis individual ownership-cultivation.

It’s more economically viable, as the reduction of distributable HLI land to only 4,915 hectares for 6,296 beneficiaries would mean, otherwise, that each farmworker family may eventually own less than a hectare —  and this, after paying amortization over 30 years.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]