“Thirty years after the law was passed, land has not been given to peasant farmers who have tilled the land for generations.”
LITO LAO, Mindanao agricultural workers’ union chairman
ADOZEN bamboo and tarpaulin tents are pitched on the pavement, festooned with washing and banners — the department in charge of agrarian reform in Tagum City is sporting a new facade.
Inside the tents are hammocks, boxes of groceries and cooking vessels, presenting a tranquillity that belies the urgent appeals on banners demanding land for peasants and an end to the killing of farmers on the island of Mindanao.
Peasant farmers and leaders in the camp say they want genuine reform, as the government’s agrarian reform programme, known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and enacted in 1988, has failed.
“Thirty years after the law was passed, land has not been given to peasant farmers who have tilled the land for generations,” said Lito Lao, chairman of the agricultural workers’ union in Mindanao, known by its Tagalog acronym, UMA.
“Instead, farmers are getting killed for demanding their right to land and dummy beneficiaries have been settled by landlords on land meant for the landless,” he said.
CARP, signed into law by then president Corazon Aquino, was initially set for 10 years, with an aim to distribute about 7.8 million hectares of land — roughly the size of Portugal — to reduce inequality and help alleviate poverty.
In 1998, the programme was extended by another 10 years.
In 2009, Gloria Arroyo, who was president, unveiled CARPER, adding an Extension with Reforms to CARP and a deadline of 2014.
Of a total area of 5.4 million hectares that fell under CARP’s scope, the government has distributed 4.8 million hectares as of December last year, according to a spokesman for the Agrarian Reform Department.
Activists say officials accepted thousands of fraudulent claims, and that about 44 per cent of land distributed is public, requiring farmers pay to an amortisation fee they say is excessive.
Land reform has long been a contentious issue in the Philippines, where a lasting legacy of Spanish colonial rule was a concentration of ownership among a wealthy few.
Large corporations came to control the bulk of farm land for plantations of coconuts, bananas and pineapples.
Matters came to a head in 1987, when the military attacked peasants marching in Manila, killing more than a dozen.