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By Johnna Villaviray, Senior Reporter
First of two parts
Paterno “Ka Peter” Tuminhay, 53, has been a
farmer all his life, helping his father and eight other siblings
till a land not their own in southern Sumilao, Bukidnon.
Now a father of seven children who would become
farmers themselves in the future, Tuminhay has worked to make the
world better for them: the cornfield they would till belongs to
them.
After an arduous legal battle that spanned three
presidents and two landowners, Ka Peter and 60 other farmers of the
Mapalad cooperative have been given legal control over the land
promised by the government’s agrarian reform program.
Members of Mapalad, or Mapadayonong Panaghiusa
sa mga Lumad Alang sa Damlag, were issued certificates of
landownership award (CLOAs) sealing their right to develop 47
hectares of a hacienda in San Vicente, Sumilao, in Bukidnon.
The tragedy of the Mapalad farmers’ protracted
struggle has come to characterize the difficulties of carrying out
the program that intended to distribute 10 million hectares of land
to 4 million farmer-beneficiaries by 1998.
Their victory, which came 13 years later, is
what several hundred other farmers nationwide–including those from
Negros Occidental staging a hunger strike in front of the Department
of Agrarian Reform (DAR) office in Quezon City–are hoping for.
“But we are not entirely happy. Eight men have
been awarded CLOAs but they are not really farmers,” the
soft-spoken Tuminhay said.
“We’ve decided to leave them alone. But I
hope they till the land, otherwise we’ll take action.”
Tuminhay’s protectiveness of the property was
the result of a 13-year campaign for the land assured him and
thousands other farmers by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP), the centerpiece project of the Aquino administration.
The Mapalad farmers–seasonal workers for the
144-hectare Quisumbing estate in Bukidnon–were granted in 1990 a
portion of the hacienda owned by Norberto Quisumbing, the patriarch
of a wealthy business family from Cebu. The Quisumbings weren’t
keen on the idea, because they were still awaiting payment for
another 400-hectare property the government acquired.
The Quisumbings, with the assistance of then
six-term Bukidnon Governor Carlos Fortich, who also convinced
Ramos’s Executive Secretary Ruben Torres of the soundness of the
project, obtained the approval of the Provincial Board around 1994
to convert the property for non-agricultural use. Fortich had
switched from farming to cattle-raising to exempt his own property
from reform.
The Quisumbing property lies near the highway
leading to Cagayan de Oro and could be prime real estate in the
future, a potentially good source of revenue for the province.
The Provincial Board’s approval and the
support of Torres and an administration in the middle of a massive
industrial modernization program effectively exempted the Quisumbing
land from agrarian reform despite resistance from the DAR.
The frustration at the influence wielded by the
powerful political family drove the farmers to stage a hunger strike
at the DAR main office in 1997.
“It was difficult during press conferences
when reporters eat in front of us. But the thought of getting the
land kept us going,” said Tuminhay, who traveled from Cagayan de
Oro to Manila on the 12th day of the strike to give his comrades a
moral boost.
The fast was broken on its 40th
day–then-President Fidel Ramos assured the farmers that 100
hectares of the Quisumbing property would be awarded to them.
The triumph was short-lived. The farmers were
denied access to the land and their old jobs as farmhands, and the
wait for government action was interspersed with harassment and
bloody encounters with the security guards hired by the Quisumbings.
Acquiring the services of security personnel is
an option resorted to by many landowners resisting the CARP.
The country’s history is heavy with the pain
of farmers who fought in vain against feudal landlords. The 32-year
communist rebellion has been largely an agrarian unrest set off by
the crushing poverty and landlessness of farmers.
The Philippines is largely an agricultural
economy, but with a farming industry that is vastly underdeveloped.
The more than 2 million rice, corn and coconut
farmer-households–representing about 46 percent of the country’s
total labor force that contributes as much as 22 percent to the
gross domestic product (GDP)–make up 40 percent of the total poor
households in the country. The National Statistical Coordination
Board estimates that, based on 2002 records, 34 percent of the
country’s 82 million population earn an average of P11,695 a year.
In 1999 the Supreme Court gave the land back to
the Quisumbings because the DAR failed to appeal an earlier decision
within the prescribed period and because the Mapalad farmers were
seasonal workers, not the actual tillers of the land.
The Supreme Court’s decision revived the
debate on justice’s seeming tendency to side with the
moneyed–the Court junked the DAR’s appeal owing to a
technicality but accommodated the Quisumbings’ interpretation that
seasonal workers are not qualified beneficiaries under the CARP.
In the end, the Mapalad farmers were instead
given 19 hectares in the adjacent property owned by Salvador Carlos,
who eventually left a will offering 47 hectares more for
distribution to the farmers. Carlos’ goodwill provoked a fresh
round of struggle between the farmers and Carlos’ caretaker,
Francisco Reyes, who wanted the area converted for non-agricultural
use.
This time, however, the farmers had an
unexpected champion.
Carlos’ widow and their two children did not
contest the will left by the old man and threw their support behind
the Mapalad farmers, telling them in 2001 to occupy the land and
protect it from squatters.
On May 27 Agrarian Reform Secretary Roberto
Pagdanganan handed the CLOAs to each of the 60 farmer-beneficiaries
from Mapalad and 8 other beneficiaries.
“The 47 hectares are fully planted now. But we
can farm only corn, because we don’t have irrigation,” Tuminhay
said.
“If we had irrigation, we could plant other
vegetables.”
The case of the Mapalad farmers points up the
flaws in carrying out agrarian reform and in the environment that
makes it problematical to enforce.
Agrarian reform was supposed to have ended in
1998, but Congress approved a 10-year extension since more than 40
percent of the targeted 10 million private and agricultural lands
had yet to be distributed.
A conflict highlighted in the case of the
Mapalad farmers was the clash between the program and the greater
autonomy given to local government units, many of which are inclined
to allow the conversion of agricultural lands for non-agricultural
uses for higher revenues for the city coffers.
The Quisumbing property had been leased for a
10-year period to Del Monte Philippines Inc. in 1984 and, according
to the People’s Campaign for Reform Network (AR! Now), could be
eventually leased or sold to San Miguel Corp., which supposedly
plans to set up a meat processing plant in the area.
Conclusion
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