Barren and Besieged
The Wraths of Social Injustice in Hacienda Luisita
by Jore-Annie Rico and Jesse Nicole Rubio Santos
Bastardized land tillers. Ruthless landowners. A history of injustice. Hacienda Luisita.
More than just sugar, the land of Hacienda Luisita yields centuries of injustice under the hands of wealthy and powerful landowners. For the farmers whose lives were laced with violence, poverty, abuses and fear, the dream of owning a piece of Luisita land transformed into the fight for justice. The struggle continues unless justice is the ruling force in the hacienda, and ultimately, in the society.
Of Colonization and Feudal Systems
More than the sweat poured into hard labor, the identity of Hacienda Luisita has been characterized by the lives claimed and the blood sacrificed to advance the cause of the impoverished farmers, embodied by land distribution. The people continued being the victims of social injustice even after liberations from foreign oppressors. Yet it is local feudalism that fanned the flames of disparity between the peasants and the landlords.
The foundations of the struggle of the peasantry was established as Spanish colonizers seized the land from its tillers, claimed it as their own, and forced their rules upon the farmers who had no other choice but to adhere to the enforced atmosphere of maltreatment. Feudalism in Hacienda Luisita began when Spanish settlers acquired the Compaña General de Tabacos de Filipinas, otherwise known as the Tabacalera, the world’s oldest Spanish tobacco monopoly. It was renamed Hacienda Luisita and by 1927, growing sugar markets attracted Spanish capitalists to shift their produce; thus, the Central Azucarera de Tarlac was created.
Peasant abuse in the hacienda found its roots in the Spanish era. The most powerful Spanish business magnates of the Philippine sugar industry (the Lopez clan) were granted the privilege to become “encomenderos .” The emergence of patriarchal slavery was the result of continuous debt customs, coupled with unjustified maltreatments due to forced labor conscriptions. This event persisted until the American regime where liberalization policies resulted in hoarding and underselling of farmers’ produce, selling expensive farm inputs and renting farm equipments with high rates of interest.
The most critical part of these early abuses lay on the fact that the farmers do not benefit from the land that they laboriously till. Furthermore, inconsiderate wage systems are carried on in spite of current economic advancements. Up until the current Hacienda Luisita management, the farm workers are getting a meager daily salary of Php 9.52. This does not only violate workers’ right to gain access on a substantial wage system, it trespasses human dignity as well. To be inhumanely treated as a worker is one of the gravest human rights violations.
The Cojuangco-Aquino acquisition of Hacienda Luisita began when Jose “Pepe” Cojuangco, Sr. (the father of former President Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco-Aquino and the grandfather of incumbent President Noynoy Aquino) initiated a ten-year loan with the help of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) to purchase both the Central Azucarera de Tarlac and Hacienda Luisita.
As the GSIS aided Cojuangco, Sr. in procuring both properties, an agreement was finalized stating that the land must be distributed to the farmers within the next ten years and that the farmers would pay for it through an installment scheme. Cojuangco, Sr. readily agreed to the condition, and by 1958, the Tarlac Development Corporation (TADECO), owned by Cojuangco, Sr., became the new owner of Hacienda Luisita and the Central Azucarera de Tarlac.
Little did everyone know that fifty-three years after the two parties agreed that land distribution would follow from the deal, the Cojuangco-Aquinos still maintain a tight grip on the land, and the struggle of the peasantry against this abusive clan continues.
The Cojuangco-Aquinos dodged this very first due date of land distribution. They have done so until the present, using increasingly clever tactics.
Of Social Schism
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
An adequate example would be how Westerners introduced the feudal system to the country, which it is now bound to. As the country gained its independence and tried to place society in order, the once abusive foreign landowners were replaced with local ones. It is questionable if retrospective methods such as the SDO used to solve the crisis on land can be attributed to the inerasable i l l — e f f e c ts of colonization or merely to the simple concept of human greed. Even with the absence of colonizers, the issue on land reform symbolizes a struggle between Filipino and Filipino with only one distinction: their economic status.
The severe rich and poor divide in Philippine society caused many of the nation’s problems. As the gap widens, the adage holds true: the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer. As policy elites continue to dominate, they will stop at nothing to tighten their grip on what rightfully belongs to the masses. Even government positions were exploited to strengthen the Cojuanco-Aquino hold on the land and to further postpone land distribution or avoid it entirely. In a land where wealth becomes power and power determines position, influence knows no bounds.
Of Fraud and Deception
In a clan-based country where society values the preservation of familial property and wealth, the clever ruses devised by former President Corazon Cojuanco- Aquino to silence the whole issue and evade land distribution, manifested this notion. More than these ill-effects, her actions eventually dug deeper into the rich-and-poor divide.
After former President Aquino toppled the autocratic regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the masses expected that what she promised will take form. Her slogan for the snap election, “Land to the Tiller”, left the aspiring tenants of Hacienda Luisita waiting in vain as the president indefinitely deferred the distribution scheme through her temporary control of both the legislative and judiciary bodies of the state. Being the country’s premier executive, former Aquino had easily manipulated passing of bills and the creation of a pro-government agency — one that can be referred to as the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) which was headed by Aquino herself. This caused censures to her decisions with regards to the Hacienda Luista cases.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) was the most blatant evidence of social injustice during Aquino’s term. Due to the inclusion of the Stocks Distribution Option (SDO) in CARL, it became a means of deception with the non-fulfillment of its supposed purpose–a law created for the sake of having one. Instead of merely redistributing the land to the farmers, stocks distribution hampered this immediate bargaining. As stockholders, the f a rme r s w e r e deprived of their right to be well-informed on the dealings so their casted votes did not reflect their real intents. The SDO was voted upon by supposedly more than 90% of the farmers during a controversial two-part referendum in 1989. Furthermore, disparity can be seen as 67% of stocks went to the landlords while a meager 33% was left to the farmers. This is because valuation of capital shares attested to the Cojuangco-Aquinos’ financial gains contrary to the farmers’ share of hard-earned labor. The contrast mirrored the elites’ supremacy through political and economic domination while the peasants trade their selves to ensure corporation stabilities.
The SDO is a barrier to achieving social justice, and its evils are not only contained within itself but also with the process by which it was implemented. This process is laced with fraudulent plots, all created to ease the transition from paper to reality without dealing with protests from the unknowingly deceived farmers.
Representatives of the two parties, the farmers and the landowners were needed to sign a document for the SDO to be finalized. Two people, namely Noel Mallari and Ildelfonso Pingol, were bribed by the HLI to illegally represent the two labor unions of Hacienda Luisita, the Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Hacienda Luisita (AMBALA) and the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU), respectively. The impostors then signed the bogus agreement, representing the questionable fact that the farmers preferred this settlement scheme to settle the issue rather than land distribution.
At a glance, the Cojuangco-Aquinos retained their public prestige at the expense of thousands. The SDO which they invariably preferred cannot possibly compensate for all the suffering the farmers endured to advance their cause. The Cojuanco-Aquinos defended their partiality for the SDO by citing that with the current number of peasants, the 0.78 hectare of land that would be allocated to each is insufficient for them to survive; that stocks are better than land. Contrary to this claim, NEDA proved that 0.78 hectare of land would be of a greater income-generating source for farmers. This fact was ignored by PARC which was then headed by former President Aquino. The farmers’ stocks cannot exceed a produce of P9 a day — a clear manifestation of how this agreement had become a wile ploy by the landlords to conceal oppression. The scheme itself, made a mockery of the farmers’ struggle, and the injustice which characterized their lives. The SDO simply aggravated the already tense situation inside the hacienda, and ultimately, the injustice enforced inside it.
The discriminations endured by the peasants with regards to the division of stocks, partnered with their long wait for socially just actions of those in government, are already manifestations of severe dehumanization. Even before the creation of CARL, rumors of land conversion plagued the workers’ every waking moment. The hacienda is classified under “agrarian lands” and properties under this category are required by CARL to be distributed to the farmers. As such, the management thought of other uses for the land, other than agricultural purposes to purposely exempt Hacienda Luisita from land distribution. More than just a matter of material possessions, it turned into a battle of principles and the eventual search for equality among haves and have-nots.
The SDO is a clear indication of a reconciliatory move done by the Cojuangco-Aquinos to lessen social criticisms which resulted from their egoistic endeavors. Life is land and land is life. What lie in it are not mere livelihoods but the totalities of the aspirations of these landlocked farmers. Because of these, the injustice committed by those who are in power is not only a crime to the agrarian country but to the dignity of its people as well. This is a matter of critical conjuncture to the commoners because it shows the incapability of the two Aquino administrations to resolve the conflicts in their own backyard. National concerns would not prove to be the government’s main priority unless incumbent President Aquino makes a stand regarding the matter that is Hacienda Luisita.
Of Bloodshed and Martyrdoms
Mass killings are mere representations of the devious perspectives of the Cojuangco-Aquinos to secure their possession of the Hacienda Luisita. One such incident that left a scar on the collective memory of the Filipinos is the bloody Luisita massacre that happened on November 16, 2004, where 7 people were slain and 121 were injured.
More than being the most brutal killing in line with peasant revolts, the Hacienda Luisita massacre represents the abuse of power and position to quell the overwhelming uprising and perpetuate the Cojuanco-Aquino ownership of the hacienda. The desperation of the clan to keep their source of wealth reached its highest ebb–they were willing to use arms and violence just so the land will remain in their hands.
At the time, Senator Aquino and his family exhibited inner close ties with President Arroyo, by means of voting against the presentation of the Hello Garci tape in the Senate, and by campaigning for her six months before the 2004 elections, in which his sisters also participated. Arroyo then allowed the presence of a military infantry inside the hacienda four days after the strike started, through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) declaration of an Assumption of Jurisdiction–a ruling which enforces a militarized rule in a labor setting. This uncanny alliance mirrors a social class preference between the two who are members of the same division. Through the events that transpired in government within the time frame of the peasant uprisings, interests were protected and social justice was yet again denied.
The stand-off embarked on November 6, 2004 when HLI management retrenched hundreds of farm workers, as well as union officers. Picket lines were immediately launched by ULWU until the Philippine National Police (PNP) convened, unable to disband the protesters with tear gas, truncheons, and water cannons. Ten days of uprisings blazed the PNP to rear a series of firings in the Gate 1 of Hacienda Luisita. A thousand rounds of bullets were spurted in the air, eventually leaving heavy casualties among the picketeers.
Due to public clamor aroused by the horrifying massacre, the Arroyo administration launched Task Force Luisita to probe the murder cases. But after six years, no formal reports of litigation were presented both by the Senate and the Department of Labor and Employment. Thus, the seven counts of murder cases against military fronts and the Cojuangco-Aquinos are still hanging in the courts. No proceedings were carried to pursue the investigation among the slain peasants. The Hacienda Luisita massacre will forever remain as the sole effigy of a despotic society blatantly controlled by the blinded aristocracy.
Execution of union activists, including an Aglipayan priest and a councilor, awakened the unconsciousness of the masses. Assassinations included shooting or stabbing to death, a horrifying scene for the traumatized co-workers who had testified in the courts. Despite these appalling manslaughters, the military fronts and Cojuangco-Aquinos did not swerve into the calls of their conscience. The refutations of the crimes they have been committing, for all intents and purposes, echoed their avid detachment from public accountability. The martyrdoms of the concerned peasant leaders turned the ember of conflicts into a unified ideological force that strengthened the morale of their colleagues.
Human right violations showcased the unfailing determination of the Cojuangco-Aquinos to avoid Hacienda Luisita’s distribution. Their quarry over government positions may be more than just an attempt to ensure that Luisita remains in their hands. An increase in the power and immunity they already possess may be another objective.
As expected, the murders faced no legal procedures over the span of years. Case proceedings were eventually started to cover up insurgencies but these did not develop into full litigation processes. These created a social structure bound upon contrasting divisions of rich and poor, wherein the latter’s rights can easily be trespassed and violated. More than the impunity that has been cultured through the series of political assassinations, unsolved peasant murders show the exploitation of government positions to favor a few, and the failure of the government itself to bring justice and democracy to all, especially to those who not only deserve it but those whose lives necessitate its enforcement.
Of Cons and Contradictions
The incumbent president Aquino, like any politician, shows a preference for inspiring his constituents, be it through media campaigns or his latest SONA. An important aspect of his SONA was the plea for help he threw on the table, asking the populace to start change within their selves and society will follow.
Despite all this, Aquino cannot make a difference in his family’s land.
As the issue on Hacienda Luisita turns more controversial by the second, Aquino is determined to stand by his choice of not intervening in the matter. Instead of initiating genuine agrarian reform, Aquino chose to keep silent about the whole controversy, allowing his relatives to solve the crisis in yet another inequitable and unjust manner. Now that he is in the position, the platform turned out to be another shattered dream for the farmers and one of the first broken promises of his administration.
Aquino is also widely perceived to be a purveyor o f democracy, as though he inherited his mother’s supposed legacy during her presidency. But as recent events in Hacienda Luisita show, democracy under his watch may not be for all. Presently, there has been another grave violation of human rights inside the infamous hacienda.
Before the agreement on the SDO was finalized, militarization invaded the farmers of Hacienda Luisita. Armed soldiers were scattered across the fields as farmers especially the leaders of AMBALA and ULWU were being vigilantly watched and followed by the said officers. The farmers who lived in constant poverty and misery now also lived in fear. It was a blatant attack on insurgency. Anyone who was against what the administration wanted was an enemy.
The goal was to instill fear among unarmed workers, to coerce them into eventually accepting the unacceptable method of non-land transfer embodied by the SDO. As the workers are already enduring hardships under the harsh conditions inside the hacienda, the Cojuangco-Aquinos are aggravating the situation even more, with new and improved tactics to eventually bend the farmers to conform to what they want. They are willing to exhaust every possibility to avoid dealing with the issue, as long as their perfect image remains untarnished.
Now with a pseudo-dictatorial and partly militarized enforcement reigning in Luisita, it would be interesting to see how Aquino can create an atmosphere of democracy in his own backyard.
Of Power and Prominence
It is apparent that the two Aquino administrations who handled the agrarian cases are subjected to their own personal goals and interests. This haunted the farmers for decades, luring them away from the promised social justice and further thrusting them into the black hole of misery and poverty. The current battle for genuine land reform is still apparent as the government pursues landlord-laden policies without taking into consideration the welfare of the struggling farmers.
Former president Cory Aquino’s move to include the SDO in CARL created the loophole in the said law to avoid land distribution. And now, through the same preference for the SDO, incumbent President Aquino disclosed the distribution scheme for the second time around. It is not far off that the incumbent President Aquino will propose an atrocious yet clever way by which genuine agrarian reform will be bypassed.
Aquino also promised that land distribution in his family’s hacienda will take place, regardless of his election bid. There is no valid reason for the Cojuangco-Aquino clan to defer or entirely revoke the distribution of the hacienda among the farmers. Now that a member of the family is president, depriving the tillers of the land they should rightfully own is absolutely inexcusable.
In spite of all this mayhem surrounding the Cojuangco-Aquinos and their valuable Luisita, family members nevertheless continue to hold significant positions in government. There may
be something powerfully blinding about the yellow movement, as a large portion of the populace incurred a bout of selective amnesia after the death of the former president, Cory Aquino. Society’s perception of the powerful political clan does not transcend the highly positive realm. Even every politician shadowed by the yellow light is suddenly crowned with a halo. The power this family holds is exhibited in the fact that no matter how foul a controversy associated with them can be, society keeps them locked on their pedestals.
Appearances will eventually fail to compensate for deficiencies in action. Even in a supposedly democratic regime, selfish interests will never cease to manifest itself in governance, provided that family sources of luxury are on stake.
Of the Continuing Struggle
Demanding genuine land reform, Luisita farmers rallied in front of the Supreme Court (SC) on August 18, 2010 and August 24, 2010. The former date marked the start of the presentation of oral arguments concerning the battle over land of the Cojuangco-Aquinos and the farmers and the latter is the continuation.
The presence of the farmers outside the SC and the exuberance of both rallies symbolized that the farmers are not about to give up on this centuries-old war over land. The deceit, violence and injustice have to come to an absolute end. The farmers, along with the whole nation, are eagerly anticipating the government’s next move, with open ears and vigilant minds.
After the Spanish and American colonization, land was supposed to be given back to the farmers, whose ancestors tilled the land long before foreign influences came into play. But as history would reveal, the richer Filipinos replaced these foreign masters and widened the rich and poor divide among themselves and their fellow countrymen. And each succeeding generation of agrarian reform policies either highly encouraged this worsening gap in society or failed to solve the problem.
The deception of the two Aquino administrations is a cry of awareness for society. It represents the fact that appearances are merely covers. Underneath bright yellow wrapping may be a core, rotting and reeking malevolence.
With all the gruesome bloodshed and loss of life, each bogus law passed to supposedly benefit the land’s tillers, and every rally waged against the president and what he stands for, only one conclusion can be drawn from the foul carcass. Centuries have passed yet there is still no true agrarian reform.
The previous sufferings inflicted on the farmers may be deliberate but prolonging the agony is unforgivable. As the soldiers who terrorized the hacienda stated, “something will happen” if farmers do not conform to the SDO and the same will hold true if the government keeps on prolonging this unresolved issue. Unless land is distributed to the farmers, the government will drown in hypocrisy along with all its lies and society will forever remain to be a testament of this injustice.
The government should take immediate action. And this action should be no less than land distribution among the farmers whom they allowed to be impoverished for long enough.
The article and illustration were first published in The Manila Collegian Vol. 24 Issue №6–7, September 10, 2010.
