100 Capiz farmers finally get land

WAIT IS OVER Around 100 farmers in Capiz will soon be able to till about 188 hectares of land granted to them by the government 24 years ago after they received their certificates of land ownership award from Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones on Tuesday. —PHOTO COURTESY OF TASK FORCE MAPALAD

ILOILO CITY—Farmer-leader Teresita Billonid never thought the day would come when she could finally get to own the land awarded to her over two decades ago.

But the long wait ended on Tuesday when she became one of the 100 farmers in Capiz province who would soon be able to till the land long granted to them by the government.

“We are thankful that President Rodrigo Duterte and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) finally made this happen … The wait took a lifetime, spanning four government administrations,” said Billonid of the Montecarlo Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organization (Montecarba) in a statement issued by the national peasant federation Task Force Mapalad.

Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones on Tuesday awarded certificates of land ownership award (Cloas) to agrarian reform beneficiaries in Capiz, including 100 farmers who were given land titles in 1997 but had not been formally installed. The Cloa covered about 188 hectares in the villages of Dulangan and San Esteban in Pilar town and Barangay Culilang in President Roxas town, all in Capiz.

Bloody dispute

The land beneficiaries had been fighting for their installation amid the resistance of the now-deceased landowner Nemesio Tan and his heirs, with 49 of the 147 Montecarba farmers themselves having died, mostly of old age, without seeing their Cloas.

One of the farmers, Orlando Eslana, was killed on Feb. 11, 2017, when armed men fired at about 68 beneficiaries who occupied part of the property in Pilar town. Four other farmers were wounded, including Eslana’ sister Melinda Eslana Arroyo who remains paralyzed with a bullet still embedded in her head.

The land beneficiaries filed murder and frustrated murder complaints against Ferdinand Bacanto, administrator of the property, and several others but the Capiz Prosecutor’s Office indicted only one of them, Leopoldo Lachica, and downgraded the charge to homicide and frustrated homicide.

In 2019, the Regional Trial Court Branch 18 in Roxas City dismissed the charges against Lachica due to inconsistencies of a prosecution witness. The Court of Appeals subsequently dismissed a petition for certiorari filed by the farmers.

The physical injury case filed by Nida Amo, one of those wounded, is still pending before the President Roxas Municipal Trial Court in Cities.

Brighter future

The awarding of Cloas was implemented after Malacañang, on June 29, 2020, dismissed the petition of Tan’s heirs to cancel the Cloas.

“Now we can look forward to a brighter future that would have been impossible if we didn’t unite and endure the hardships as we asserted our right to the land. After this legal victory, we expect the government to ensure that we will have control over the land and not just win on paper. We expect to benefit from the fruit of the soil and work peacefully,” Billonid said in the statement.

The installation of the farmers has been tentatively set in April, according to Lanie Factor of Task Force Mapalad. —NESTOR P. BURGOS JR.