The right to land is one of the most contested in Philippine history. In a feudal society, vast land holdings translate to political and economic clout; to distribute land is to distribute power. Thus, landlords are unlikely to give up their holdings voluntarily or peacefully, making the peasant movement a violent struggle between the powerful and the powerless.

In a country constituted by a peasant majority, programs for agrarian reform is a cornerstone of every administration. Cory Aquino’s initial popularity was bolstered by promises to voluntarily distribute the 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita to the peasants. When it became apparent, however, that Aquino was actually stalling agrarian reform, 20,000 peasants marched towards Malacañang to demand that Aquino deliver more than lip service. Nothwithstanding the peasants’ legitimate call, the military open-fired, killing 13 members of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) in Mendiola on Jan. 22, 1987.

The resulting public pressure forced Aquino to make land redistribution a national priority. With the strong lobbying of peasant groups, former Cong. Bonifacio Gillego drafted House Bill (HB) 400 which incorporated the ideals of the peasant movement. The landlord-dominated Congress, however, was outraged and moved swiftly to water down HB 400. Despite the condemnation of peasant groups, HB 400 was amended and passed in 1988, creating the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Year 2008, twenty years after CARP’s initial implementation, land remains beyond the grasp of the Filipino masses.

Landed interests
Mindanao is endowed with natural abundance; its lands and waters are profuse with a diversity of flora, fauna and minerals. Yet, it is this abundance that has damned the land to an array of interests including foreign powers, land-grabbers and the state, making its inhabitants one of the poorest in an already impoverished nation. And just as indigenous communities were driven out from their ancestral lands by settlers from Luzon,  the land’s wealth was directed from the region to Luzon; Mindanao’s depressed economic condition was “exacerbated by internal colonisation” (Tadem, 1992).

Meanwhile, the Sumilao farmers’ 1700 km “March for Land” made headlines, directing attention to Mindanao’s decades-old predicament. At the heart of Mindanao is Bukidnon, whose friendly climate and fertile soil attracted the attention of landowners and transnational corporations. Subsequently, the native inhabitants in Sumilao, Bukidnon were evicted as their ancestral land was converted into a poultry farm.

After the implementation of CARP, the Department of Agriculture (DAR) announced Bukidnon as the leading province for agrarian reform due to its “extensive land area” and the ubiquity of “land tenure arrangements.”  Included within the ten-year, three-phase coverage of CARP was the Sumilao farmers’ 144-hectare ancestral land.

Section 25 of CARP, however, allows the reclassification of agricultural land to commercial, residential, industrial, and ecotourism parks, effectively exempting the land from redistribution. Landowners promptly took advantage of the land use conversion, with DAR approving an average of 95 percent of the conversion applications, according to think-tank IBON Foundation. The Sumilao property was reclassified from agricultural to agro-industrial, nothwithstanding that prime and productive agricultural lands are excluded from reclassification or conversion. The land was later sold to San Miguel Foods Inc. (SMFI) owned by Danding Cojuangco, who owns over 30,000 hectares – the greatest amount of accumulated land in the country. Although CARP’s definition of agro-industrial lands warrants the existence of support facilities, such as housing projects and schools, what SMFI established was a piggery.

A decade after the conversion, the supposed agro-industrial land is still empty of the purported developments, initiating the Sumilao farmers’ march from Bukidnon to Malacañang.

Mistaken demands
Although Gloria Arroyo has already given a revocation order, converting the ancestral land back to agricultural, the Sumilao farmers still demand the immediate redistribution of the land under CARP. The farmers also call for the “extension of the agrarian reform program” as the CARP will expire on June. In an interview, Sumilao farmer Rene Peñas describes the CARP as “perfect” but at the same breath admits that the program’s provision on conversion and reclassification has allowed landowners to retain ownership of lands that were supposedly theirs.

In Congress, Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros has filed HB 1257, which seeks to “extend and reform the program.” Although Hontiveros declares that the Sumilao farmers’ plight is a manifestation of CARP’s  failure, she adds that “Congress is duty-bound to extend and overhaul the existing agrarian reform program.”

KMP Chairperson Rafael Mariano, however, disagrees. He points that the CARP has already been extended in 1998, yet “majority of the peasants remain landless,” keeping seven out of every ten Filipino peasants landless. To date, over 65 percent of agricultural lands are not covered by CARP. Nothwithstanding CARP’s goal of land redistribution, full land ownership has continued to decline, owing to the intensification of tenancy and lease arrangements. Thus, Mariano declares, “ Extending the CARP again will not solve the nation’s land problems.”

Moreover, Sonny Africa, research head of IBON, states that “CARP cannot address peasant poverty and landlessness because it was never meant to.” He recalls how HB 400 was amended by Congress to cater to landlord interests, deliberately adding provisions to prevent genuine agrarian reform. For instance, Aquino used CARP’s stock distribution option to avert the redistribution of Hacienda Luisita by distributing stocks to peasant beneficiaries instead of awarding them the land.

Meanwhile, Rural Development Fellow Saturnino M. Borras Jr. states that CARP was patterned after the “market-led agrarian reform, ” an approach supported by the World Bank based on the “willing-seller, willing-buyer principle” wherein peasant beneficiaries pay the landlords an amount equal to the the market value of the land. In this system, peasants are burdened by amortization fees, burying them further in debt. Thus, Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo points that even if DAR issues a certificate of  land ownership award to the Sumilao farmers, they must first pay an estimate of P2.4 B to SMFI in 30 years at six percent interest before they could fully regain their land. Thus, Mariano concludes that efforts to amend CARP are futile simply because of the “sheer number of loopholes in the program.”

In a country where landed classes remain entrenched, where economic and political power feed upon the feudal relations in society, it will take much more than legislation to eradicate the eschewed system of land ownership. For true agrarian reform can only be ensured through the persistent struggle of peasants and other allied sectors, unimpeded by deceptive programs that posture as pro-peasant in nature. #Philippine Collegian

Reference:
Tadem, E. (2002). Mindanao: Land of Unfulfilled Promise. The Political Economy Of Mindanao: An Overview. New day Publishers, QC.

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