8,975 farmers, agri workers hopeful of finally getting land under CARP

By MARVYN N. BENANINGAugust 16, 2010, 3:54pm

No less than 8,975 farmers and agricultural workers are pinning their hopes of finally getting land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in the event the Supreme Court (SC) junks the already invalidated stock distribution offer (SDO) implemented in Hacienda Luisita.

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said Monday these farmers and workers work in 14 plantations in Tarlac, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Iloilo and Davao del Sur.

The KMP said the biggest is still Hacienda Luisita, which has 4,916 hectares of land covered by the SDO and beneficiaries numbering 6,296.

The Hacienda Luisita SDO was approved on Nov. 11, 1989, or more than two years after former President Cory Aquino announced her agrarian reform program that would cover all plantations producing a variety of crops.

At five members per household, the total number of people affected is about 50,000.

All told, the total area covered by the 14 SDOs is 8,388 hectares, which is large enough to provide more than 29,000 metric tons (MT) of rice per cropping season or thousands of kilos of vegetables during the off-season.

Of the 14 SDOs approved, 11 were granted during the incumbency of the late President Cory Aquino.

However, the Hacienda Luisita SDO was revoked by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) under Resolution No. 2005-32-01 dated Dec. 22, 2005.

Only three SDOs were approved during the term of President Ramos and covered only smaller plantations in Iloilo, Negros Occidental and Davao del Sur.

The KMP is campaigning for the junking of the Hacienda Luisita SDO and its drive has been buttressed somewhat by a statement from the High Court that the SDO, recently affirmed in a referendum, does not have anything to do with the verdict of the magistrates.

The holding of such referendum was questioned by Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Bayan Muna and other progressive party-lists.

Based on documents, the large plantations that would have to be dismantled if the High Court rejects the Hacienda Luisita SDO are six SDOs for sugarcane plantations in Negros Occidental

approved on Feb. 15, 1991: Archie Fishpond, Inc., with 102 hectares; Arsenio Al. Acuna Agricultural Corp., 108 hectares; Elenita Agricultural Dev't Corp., 113 hectares; Ma. Clara Marine Ventures, Inc., 58 hectares; Palma Kabankalan Agricultural Corp., 219 hectares, and; Tabigue Marine Ventures, Inc., 50 hectares.

The others are: Ledesma Hermanos Agricultural Corp., with1,024 hectares in Negros Occidental, approved on May 13, 1991; SyCip Plantation, Inc., 685 hectares in Negros Oriental, approved on Nov. 13, 1991; Negros Industrial By-Products and Processes, Inc., in Negros Occidental, with 438 hectares, approved on Feb. 28, 1992; Wuthrich Hermanos, Inc., with 174 hectares in Iloilo, approved on Sept. 1, 1992; SVJ Farms, Inc., with 170 hectares in Negros Occidental, approved on Nov. 16, 1992, and; Asia Agro-Industrial Enterprises, with 100 hectares of coconut plantation in Davao del Sur. approved on April 26, 1994.

Mariano said the SDO was based on Section 20 of Executive Order No. 229 issued by the late President Cory Aquino in 1987 ostensibly to implement agrarian reform.

Hacienda Luisita management has banked on Section 31 of Republic Act No. 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which was enacted into law in 1988, to justify the SDO and the referendum to ask beneficiaries whether they would hold on to their shares of stock or just get land.

Mariano said a reading of RA 6657 would show that SDO was not contemplated, and thus could not be invoked as the basis for the latest compromise agreement.

Hacienda Luisita

April 30, 2005

Little by little, I'm trying to see all of the Philippines. Last week, on my way home to the USA from Cebu, I stopped off in Manila so I could travel up to Tarlac Province in northern Luzon.

The busy MacArthur Highway (named after Gen. Douglas MacArthur) which traverses Tarlac, is full of heavily-loaded sugar cane trucks. Where do they all come from?

Much of the sugar comes from Tarlac's most (in)famous piece of real estate, Hacienda Luisita. Comprising 6400 hectares (15,814 acres), Hacienda Luisita is the second largest single piece of contiguous land in the Philippines (after the 20,000-hectare Canlubang Sugar Estate of the Yulos in Laguna.) The estate was purchased in 1957 by the Cojuanco-Aquino family, one of the small number of oligarchic families who "own" the Philippines.

Entrance to Hacienda Luisita, San Miguel, Tarlac City.

When I got off the jeepney in San Miguel, my first stop was the Las Haciendas de Luisita sales office. Part of the vast hacienda has been converted into a residential development. To quote the sales brochure, "Enter the world of Hacienda Luisita....a 121-hectare of five villages named after the second generation Cojuanco sisters: Carmen, Corazon, Josefine, Pacita and Teresita. A sprawling community surrounding the Luisita Golf and Country Club....with individually titled lots, a fully operational sports complex, Spanish-Mexican inspired multi-purpose community clubhouse, function room, swimming pool and picnic area." The sales agents inquired about the whereabouts of my Filipina wife, and offered to sell me a beautiful residential lot ready for immediate construction priced from only P750,000 (13,888 dollars.)

The sales agents suggested I tour the Hacienda and look at some of the available lots....but upon discovering that I hadn't brought my car ("You're riding a JEEPNEY?!?"), they suggested it might be better if I were to come back another time. I decided it was time to see the Hacienda. I asked around and was advised to ride a (motorized) tricycle into the estate. For once I followed local advice, P60 for a one-way ride. We drove past miles of pastoral sugar cane fields.

In about five miles we arrived at the great Central Azucarera de Tarlac, Hacienda Luisita's sugar refinery and one of the largest in the Philippines.

Clustered outside the gates of the refinery were a number of grass shacks full of families. The sign on the fence reads: ITULOY ANG LABAN NI KGD ABEL LADERA PARA SA KATARUNGAN NG MGA MINASAKER SA HACIENDA LUISITA!"("CONTINUE THE FIGHT AND STRUGGLE OF ABEL LADERA FOR JUSTICE THE FARM WORKERS OF HACIENDA LUISITA!")

Excerpt from an article in LabourStart online journal November, 2004:

14 DEAD, 133 ARRESTED, HUNDREDS MISSING IN THE VIOLENT DISPERSAL OF HACIENDA LUISITA STRIKE

In a violent strike dispersal in Hacienda Luisita last November 16, 2004, 14 people were killed, including two children aged 2 and 5 years old who died from suffocation from teargas lobbed by the police and army dispersal teams. One of the victims was allegedly strangled after being shot and his dead body hanged in the factory's gate. At least 35 people were reported to have sustained gunshot wounds, 133 were arrested and detained, hundreds were wounded and another hundred still missing. The carnage is a gruesome reminder of the infamous Mendiola Massacre and Lupao Massacre, which also arose from the peasants demand to own their land.

More than 5,000 sugar mill workers and sugarcane farmers of Hacienda Luisita went on strike last Nov. 6. Members of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU) barricaded the factory's Gate 2 while members of the United Luisita Workers' Union (ULWU) simultaneously locked up the mill's Gate 1. CATLU is the employees union while ULWU is the farmworkers union.

The strike arose from the deadlock in the negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between CATLU and Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) and the illegal dismissal of 327 farm workers belonging to ULWU last Oct. 1. Among those illegally dismissed were ULWU president and vice president, Rene Galang and Ildefonso Pingul, respectively, and eight other union officers.

On its part, CATLU demands a P100 (US$ 1.78) salary increase and hospitalization benefits. But the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) management said that it can only provide a measly

P12 wage hike and a P12,000 bonus. Series of negotiations ensued between CATLU and the management but the latter stood pat on its decision thereby resulting in a deadlock.

More than the issue of wage and jobs, land distribution, land distribution remains to be the major demand of Hacienda Luisita workers. The workers, led by ULWU, are calling for the scrapping of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO), which the Cojuangcos used to purportedly escape land distribution to its tenants under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Ironically, it was then Pres. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, whose family owns the Hacienda, who signed the CARP law in 1987.

Complete article

More articles on the massacre:

Kasama articleBulatalat analysis

Gate 1, site of November's massacre. Today it's a quiet place, the giant sugar refinery behind it still shut down by the continuing strike.

 

Martyrs: Photos of striking workers killed by soldiers and police.

Here at Gate #1 is an encampment of striking azucarera workers, members of CATLU (Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union.) They have been camped here since November, waiting and hoping that the company will return to the bargaining table (talks are presently deadlocked.)

I spoke with Rene Tua, an advisor to the CATLU union. He told me that during the last negotiation between the union and the company, they were offered a raise of 48P (.88 cents US) per day. The union is asking for an additional 150P ($2.77 US) per day during the first year of a new CBA (collective bargaining agreement.) The previous CBA expired in June 2004, and the workers have been without one since then.

In spite of the militant banners and flags, friendliness of the picketers, and enthusiastic curiosity of the children, the scene was depressing. I wonder if the Cojuanco clan has any motivation to even negotiate at all? The future of Hacienda Luisita is clearly not with sugar.

On the way back out to the highway, I passed two new industrial parks within the hacienda.

I saw a map showing planned development within the hacienda: the proposed North Luzon Expressway will run right through the middle of the hacienda (it's nice to have friends in high places) and will be surrounded by residential subdivisions and industrial parks. These have much higher profit potential than an industry such as sugar where global prices have dropped and the workers have shown a disinclination to continue living as slaves.

A land use plan (LUP) was prepared in 1996 outlining the planned comprehensive land conversion of the entire Hacienda Luisita into a commercial and industrial complex. According to the Bulatlat online journal, The Hacienda Luisita Land Use Plan shows that the family of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino plan to convert all its agricultural lands in Tarlac into commercial, industrial, residential and recreational parks. Getting ready for the full-blast conversion, several parts of the hacienda have already been converted to alternative uses since 1989: the Luisita Industrial Park 1 (120 hectares), the Aqua Farm and Homesite Phases I and II (50 hectares), the Luisita Business Park (20 hectares), the recently-converted Luisita Industrial Park 2 / Central Techno Park (500 hectares). If the plan is fully implemented, more than 5,000 sugar farmers stand to lose their jobs and worse, their right to Hacienda Luisita as farm beneficiaries under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Interestingly, in 1986 newly-seated President Corazon Aquino announced that land reform for millions of landless farmers would be the central platform of her new government. Yet while she presided over passage of the landmark CARP land reform law, she pointedly excluded from the process her own family estate of Hacienda Luisita. For many, this exposed the hollowness of her commitment to promoting progressive social change in the Philippines.

Earlier, when I had been invited to tour the Las Haciendas de Luisita Homesites, I noticed that one of the five villages was named Corazon. The President who trumpeted land reform has an exclusive residential subdivision named after her, on the family estate which was intentionally excluded from land reform....the true legacy of "People Power" in the Philippines.

Corazon Aquino, 1986 (photo courtesy of Time magazine)

When Hacienda Luisita is full of factories, villas and golf courses, where will these children of sugar cane workers live?

On my way out, I stopped at the new airconditioned Luisita Mall for lunch (yes, that's a Starbucks in the foreground.)

Outside the mall, I spotted some advertising banners.

I guess it's important to keep local security forces well-equipped in order to assure that the Hacienda Luisita Land Use Plan gets implemented without "bothersome interference."

Update 2007

In 1988 then-President Corazon Aquino launched the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARP) as the "centerpiece program" of her administration. She initially vowed to place her family's 6,400 hectare estate under the land reform.

In 1989 her government allowed Hacienda Luisita to adopt the so-called Stock Distribution Option (SDO) under which the 5,000 HLI (Hacienda Luisita Incorporated) workers obtained shares of stock in the company instead of individual titles to the hacienda land. This was widely viewed as an attempt to skirt the CARP redistribution of the hacienda.

In December 2005 the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman issued an order revoking the SDO agreement, instead directing that the hacienda land be parceled amongst the tenant farmers. Critics interpreted this as a politically-motivated slap at Cory Aquino for having called on President Arroyo to resign following the "Hello Garci" election scandal.

In June 2006, the Supreme Court reversed the PARC order by issuing a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the PARC plan to parcel out Hacienda Luisita to farmer-beneficiaries.

In March 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that sugar lands remained within the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP.) In response, the Cojuangco family petitioned the court to honor the stock distribution option (SDO) scheme at the hacienda.

As of June 2007, the legal case surrounding the property in still in limbo. The Cojuangco family continues to run the hacienda while the workers who have been tilling the land for years remain in limbo.

 

Update 2010

On May 10, Noynoy Aquino was elected as the new Philippine President. He is the son of Corazon and Benigno Aquino Jr., and says he owns less than a 1% stake in the hacienda. He has suggested the family is considering a scheme to transfer part of the propety to the 10,000 farmer-beneficiaries currently residing there. However, he has bristled at the media attention which the estate aroused during the electoral campign, charging that his opponents were using Hacienda Luisita as a political issue: "Di mahalaga sa kanila ang katotohanan. Kami na nga po ang naaapi d’yan (The truth is not important to these people. We are the oppressed party in this issue.)"Time will tell what he really plans to do with the hacienda during his presidency.

Hacienda Luisita Belongs to Cojuangco Tenants, Ex-DAR Exec Says

In a deal with government funders 46 years ago, Don Jose Cojuangco pledged to distribute the land now occupied by Hacienda Luisita to tenant farmers. A former director of the Department of Agrarian Reform says a court order binds the Cojuangcos to do so.

BY DABET CASTAÑEDABulatlat

The Cojuangco family, owners of the embattled Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) and the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT), is legally bound to distribute the 4,000-hectare land to the sugar farm workers of the plantation, a former Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) director said. The 4,000 hectares are what is left of the 6,400-hectare plantation estate whose 2,400-ha portion is said to have been earmarked as “homelots” for the HLI’s “shareholders.”

 Hacienda Luisita workers in a mass action for land,

 just wages, and rightsPhoto by Dabet Castañeda

The former DAR official, Jose Santos, is one of government lawyers who on April 18, 1980 assisted Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza in filing Civil Case No. 131654 at the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Manila, Branch XLIII against the Tarlac Development Corporation (Tadeco), the former company name of HLI and CAT.

Santos, who is now retired, is known to his colleagues to be an expert in handling big land disputes during his tenure at the government’s agrarian agency then known as the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MAR). He worked there as director of the Bureau of Agrarian Legal Assistance (BALA).

In an exclusive interview with Bulatlat last week, Santos said he is breaking his silence to shed light on what actually transpired since 1958 when the late Cojuangco patriarch, Don Jose, acquired the hacienda. He also recalled the conditions on why Don Jose Cojuangco was able to do so, and the court case which government won over the family that legally binds them to distribute land to the hacienda’s tillers. 

Acquisition

Court records from the Manila RTC show that Don Jose was able to purchase Tadeco on March 31, 1958 using government funds from two agencies, the Central Bank of the Philippines (CBP) and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS). The CBP, under Monetary Board Resolution No. 1240, granted a loan of US $2,128,480 to Don Jose on the condition that the latter would also buy the Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation. The patriarch’s original plan was to only purchase the sugar mill. As part of the condition, the hacienda is to be distributed to small farmers in line with the administration’s social justice program, Santos recalls.

But since the dollar loan was not enough to purchase both the sugar mill and the plantation, Don Jose again applied for a loan with the GSIS, court records show. The GSIS Board of Trustees, through Resolution No. 3202 approved the sum of P5.9 million in loan for the purchase of the 6,400-hectare Hacienda Luisita on the condition, among

others, that the estate should be subdivided among tenants who shall pay the cost under “reasonable terms and conditions.“

Tents of sacada (seasonal) workers at Hacienda LuisitaPhoto by Dabet Castañeda

Inquiry

In 1967, Conrado Estrella of the now defunct Land Authority inquired in writing with the Tadeco owner whether he has complied with the conditions set by the CBP and GSIS, citing in particular the distribution of the land among its tillers. Don Jose answered that when his group took over the hacienda, they found no tenants and that they had to begin operating the hacienda by hiring farm workers.

Ten years later, the CBP made a similar inquiry with the heirs of Don Jose, who by then had died. In March 1978, the Evening Post daily reported that about 100,000 residents of the 10 barrios comprising the hacienda filed a petition demanding the expropriation of the hacienda and its distribution to small farmers. 

Consequently in May of the same year, MAR officials made their own inquiry into the case. Tadeco vice-president Demetria Cojuangco replied that the condition with regards the land distribution could not be enforced.

Case

In 1980, Santos recalls, he assisted Solicitor General Mendoza in filing a case against the owners of Tadeco before the Manila RTC.  Mendoza and Santos asked the RTC to compel Tadeco to honor its pledge in the 1958 loan deal with the CBP and GSIS and transfer the 6,400-hectare hacienda to the MAR who shall then subdivide, distribute and resell the land at cost to small farmers. 

Again, Tadeco insisted the CBP and GSIS conditions could not be enforced first, because there were no tenants in the hacienda and, second, sugarcane plantations were not part of the scope of the government’s land reform program. To do so, Tadeco lawyers said, would be giving in to what could be seen as a “disguised confiscation of private property.” 

The case dragged on for five years until Dec. 2, 1985 when Judge Bernardo Pardo of the Manila RTC Branch XLIII decided in favor of government.  The Cojuangcos immediately appealed the decision before the Court of Appeals (CA). 

Dismissal

Santos recalls that the RTC decision vindicated the sugar farm workers’ cause. Before the appeal could be heard at the CA, however, one of the Cojuangco’s heirs, Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino (widow of Marcos’ arch-rival Benigno

Aquino), became president of the country on the crest of a popular uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986.

But since the new president was one of the owners of the hacienda, Santos said he began to lose faith that the court decision would bear fruit. His fears were proven right when in 1986, President Cojuangco-Aquino appointed Sedfrey Ordoñez, the Cojuangco family’s own legal counsel in the Hacienda Luisita case, as solicitor general. As solicitor general, Santos added, Ordoñez was also to represent government that in the first place, originally filed the case for expropriation.

As expected, the case at the CA did not move and out of frustration, Santos resigned on the same year from MAR, which had been renamed as Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

In 1988, the appellate court issued a dismissal resolution mainly due to the fact that President Cojuangco-Aquino had guaranteed that sugar farms would be included in her agrarian reform program known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Francisco Chavez, who replaced Ordoñez as solicitor general, asked through the CA whether the CBP, DAR and the GSIS, as parties to the case, were still interested in following up the appeal, Santos said. The three parties, based on court records, answered in the negative but pointed out that Hacienda Luisita should be part of the CARP with the land distributed to small farmers. On May 18, 1988, the CA dismissed the appeal. 

Santos clarifies, however, that in dismissing the appeal the CA did not actually say that it was nullifying the RTC Manila decision of 1985 which orders that Hacienda Luisita should be subdivided, distributed and resold to the hacienda’s small farmers at cost.

In fact, the CA dismissal-resolution emphasized “it is not only conditional but also without prejudice to the reopening/revival of the case if the conditions of the DAR are not met,” Santos says.

SDO

Saying that agrarian reform was the centerpiece of her administration, Mrs. Aquino instituted the CARP stating that land reform can be achieved by either actual land distribution or through a stock distribution scheme through the Stock Distribution Option (SDO). Subsequently, the Cojuangcos turned Hacienda Luisita into a corporation and is now known as Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI), with the sugar farm workers classified from farm laborers to “stockholders” or “co-owners” of the said hacienda.

Ed Tadem, associate professor of Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, in a statement emailed to Bulatlat said that the SDO was implemented by the former president, who is part of a landlord clan, to “evade land reform.” 

This scheme was inserted into the so-called CARP (R.A. 6657) by pro-landlord legislators during the term of President Aquino, he said, to allow landowners who run their farms as corporations to distribute shares of stocks to farm workers in lieu of outright land transfer.

Tadem added that serious observers and scholars of agrarian reform contend that stock distribution can never be a substitute for land transfer which is the heart and soul of any genuine land reform.

Santos, on the other hand, said that the SDO deprives the farmers’ right to the land they till which, first and foremost, is a legitimate issue.

Solution

In a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed by Tadeco, the HLI, DAR and a handful of farm beneficiaries stated that they have entered into this agreement “in the spirit of the CARP with the end view of improving the lot of farm beneficiaries of the stock distribution plan and obtaining for them greater benefits.’

“The question is: Is the purpose of the SDO achieved? Has it become successful?” Santos asks. 

This question also rings in the mind of the sugar farm workers who have staged a work stoppage since Nov. 6 to, among their demands, force the DAR to review the implementation and effects of the SDO on their daily lives. 

Sugar farm workers say that since the incorporation of the hacienda, they have experienced greater hardships due to, among others, diminishing mandays caused by mechanization of sugar cane production and the land use conversion.

In Tadem’s statement, the Luisita stock option plan had been denounced as "unconstitutional" by the University of the Philippines Law Center in a position paper submitted in June 1990 to the Senate Agrarian Reform Committee. The memorandum stated that the "scheme is violative not only of the social justice provisions but even more so of the specific provisions of the Constitution on agrarian reform" since it "allows the original owners to remain the controlling interest at the expense of the supposedly farmer beneficiaries."

If the SDO does not actually benefit the sugar farm workers of the HLI, Santos, said it is imperative for the DAR to nullify the implementation of the SDO at HLI and pursue the lower court decision against the Cojuangcos.

Under these circumstance, the former DAR official said, that makes the Cojuangcos legally bound to distribute the hacienda to small farmers.

Santos also scored the DAR and the administrations after President Aquino for having no political will to settle the agrarian unrest in the hacienda.  It is sad that it had to take the lives of the fighting farm beneficiaries to put this issue into the government’s attention once more, he said. Bulatlat