Spanish Period

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The core of agrarian reform is change. It is change resulting from the transfer of ownership from landowner to landless farmer, change from being formerly landless to being an owner cultivator, and change from being powerless to being empowered. Its very nature, therefore, easily becomes a source of resistance, dispute, controversy and conflict.

In the case of the Philippines, agrarian reform is being implemented by the state as a social justice measure to change the prevailing situation of unjust and inequitable ownership of land and resources by a few individuals in society. For hundreds of years, from the Spanish occupation of the Philippines in the 1500s to the present, agricultural lands have been in the possession of a few powerful landlords and corporations. The majority of people have remained as tenants, farm workers and landless agricultural labourers, a factor that has contributed to the poverty in the countryside. Land conflict stems mainly from agrarian disputes brought about by the prevailing agrarian situation.

Hayami, Quisumbing and Adriano (1990) relate three major sources of agrarian unrest in the Philippines to the social transformations that occurred in the evolution of the Philippine agrarian structures. First, the emergence of agrarian institutions in the Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog regions in the Philippines represent disputes between tenants and landlords. Second, the development of the sugar industry in Luzon, based on tenanted haciendas, and then Negros Islands, based on centrally managed haciendas employing hired labour, represent confrontations between wage labourers and hacendero planters in traditional plantations. Third, the emergence of modern plantations and commercial farms in the southern island of Mindanao represents confrontation between wage labourers and corporate management in modern agribusiness plantations.

Agrarian Conflict in Tenanted Lands

Landownership was communal in pre-Hispanic Philippine society. Land was owned by the barangay (village) and individuals had rights to use the land and make it productive. The Spaniards introduced private ownership through the granting of legal titles. Thus began the accumulation of land by indigenous elite groups in connivance with the Spanish authorities. Landlordism proliferated in the Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog regions, where the main crops planted were rice and coconut.

The transformation of smallholders to tenants was aided by the usurious and oppressive practices of landlords. Hans Bobek (1962) calls "rent capitalism" what arises from the commercialization of a feudal economy in such a way that the original claims of the aristocracy upon peasant services are transferred into more explicitly profit-seeking obligations. According to Bobek, "it is an absolute ideal of the rent capitalist to get as many peasants as possible into debt so permanently that with all their yearly payments they can never liquidate the initial debt, which soon becomes legendary." Being deeply mired in debt, therefore, has become a condition of tenancy and has added stress to the already strenuous landlord-tenant relationship.

It is not surprising that the early government land reform programmes from 1933 to 1972 were designed to address tenancy regulations and redistribute lands in the tenanted rice and maize areas. Yet, after almost 30 years of Marcos' Operation Land Transfer (OLT, in 1972), which sought to emancipate the tenant from the bondage of the soil, there still remain a sizeable number of tenanted farms that have not been placed under land reform. Approximately 50 000 ha, half of which are considered problematic, are still targeted for distribution from an original scope of more than 600 000 ha (DAR, Land Acquisition and Distribution Status as of 31 July 2001).

A more recent source of tension and conflict in OLT areas is the growing number of cancellations of emancipation patents or land reform titles under the OLT programme. Organized peasant groups have criticized the DAR for what it calls "land reversion" because the DAR bodies adjudicating the petitions made by the former landlords were cancelling land titles already given to farmers. The farmer who has been given the title has legal recourse to object to the cancellation. In most cases, farmers who have access to legal or paralegal support have better chances of winning their cases. Otherwise, the landlords are able to use their money and power to get their lands back.

Agrarian Conflict in Sugar Haciendas

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), ratified by President Corazon Aquino in 1988, was hailed as an important piece of legislation because it went beyond the scope of previous land reform programmes by including in its coverage the acquisition and distribution of all private agricultural land regardless of the crop produced. Finally, there was hope that the thousands of hectares of land planted to sugar under the hacienda system that had been in existence since the time of Spanish occupation would be given to thousands of poor landless workers. But more than ten years after the implementation of CARP, the sugar haciendas, especially in the Negros Islands, have barely been touched. These haciendas continue to be the last bastion of feudalism in the Philippines.

The sugar industry in the Philippines employs more than half a million workers. The Spanish introduced sugar in the 1500s through the encomienda system, whereby lands were awarded by the colonial government to the church (friar lands) and to the local elite. The industry developed further when the Americans came and opened up trade with the United States. Sugar was booming until 1985, when a crisis hit the industry, the price of sugar went down and the Americans cancelled the sugar quota. Most hacienda owners were forced to sell or mortgage their properties or convert their farms to other commercial uses. However, for several years these planters had enjoyed accumulating profits that were then channelled to other investments. The hardest hit by the crisis were the farm workers, who belong, together with agricultural labourers in the sugar haciendas, to the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.

To illustrate the gravity of the slow-paced implementation of agrarian reform in the sugar haciendas in the Negros Islands, a report from the Regional Director of the Department of Agrarian Reform to the Under-secretary for Operations shows that, as of September 1999, in Negros Occidental alone, more than 90 000 ha of lands measuring 50 ha and larger had still not been distributed to farm workers.

Furthermore, in the same report, a section entitled "Problematics" refers to properties undergoing difficulties in terms of proceeding with the land reform process. These "problematic" lands constitute about 10 000 of the 90 000 ha. Hence, these problems are the causes of various forms of land conflict. For instance, problems relating to land that is subject to applications for exclusion and exemption from land reform, or applications for the conversion of land from agricultural to commercial and industrial uses, or where the landlord has protested against the coverage of his or her farm under the agrarian reform programme often lead to conflict between the landlord and the farm workers. The farm workers react to attempts by the landlord to evade the land reform programme. They counter these attempts by filing legal opposition with the DAR. The landlord retaliates by dismissing from the farm those workers who have signed up under the agrarian reform programme or filed opposition to his or her application for exemption and conversion. The dismissed farm workers then file complaints with the Department of Labour for illegal dismissal. Organized farm workers have the advantage of providing safety nets for fellow workers who have been illegally dismissed. They also have the advantage of extralegal action to force the government to act in their favour. However, farm workers who do not have access to organized action can become easy prey to recruitment by communist insurgents advocating armed struggle against the government.

The conflict in the sugar areas is such that the DAR has hundreds of cases docketed in its adjudication bodies. The case study on Task Force Mapalad, presented below, demonstrates how organized farm workers have used extralegal methods to achieve social justice through agrarian reform.

Agrarian Conflict in Commercial Farms and Plantations

Mindanao, the southernmost part of the Philippines, is home to thousands of hectares of commercial farms and modern plantations. These farms are planted mainly to bananas, pineapples and rubber. Corporations such as Del Monte, Dole and B.F. Goodrich operate in the area. Although Philippine law prohibits landownership by foreign companies, these corporations have gained control over lands through lease arrangements or through local Philippine companies. A more recent phenomenon is a leaseback arrangement in which farmer beneficiaries of the agrarian reform programme surrender to the multinational corporation the use of their farm for a period of 10-15 years. In exchange, they are given cash advances equivalent to five years of the annual lease rate. This offer is especially attractive to farmers in need of cash.

The majority of conflict cases in commercial farms emanate from labour relations. Farm wage labourers are usually organized into labour unions that deal with the agribusiness corporations. Thus the most common issues include, among others, the provision of mandated wages and benefits, observance of fair labour practices and ensuring occupational safety.