Gov’t to ignore Luisita farmers’ own land deals

HARD TOIL Thorns along their path and the seething heat do not discourage farmers of Hacienda Luisita in Mapalacsao village in Tarlac City from doing their daily work in the fields. Last week, the Supreme Court upheld with finality their ownership of land parcels in the sugar estate. EV ESPIRITU / INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

The government will not honor “informal arrangements” made previously by farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita that had them parceling out the land among themselves or leasing it to other parties.

Beneficiaries will have to sign an undertaking that they will pay for the land before it is turned over to them. The .68-hectare share of each beneficiary is not final, and appeals on the valuation of the land will not stop the distribution process that could take from six to 12 months.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Gil de los Reyes made these statements Monday to clarify the complicated process of land distribution at Hacienda Luisita, the sugarcane plantation owned by maternal relatives of President Aquino that the Supreme Court recently affirmed should be covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

De los Reyes said the Office of the Solicitor General received a copy of the Supreme Court ruling affirming the November 2011 decision calling for the distribution of the land last Friday. “We will start a week or so after we get a copy,” he said. De los Reyes said the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) wants to complete the process in six to 12 months. “The clock is ticking above my head,” he said.

Reports from the ground revealed that farmer-beneficiaries of the land reform program had divided up the land among themselves or leased the land to sugarcane growers in an arrangement called ariendo.

But the DAR will not honor these “informal arrangements” as recognizing these illegal contracts would lead to “chaos,” De los Reyes said.

An Inquirer report recently quoted a study by the Center for Research and Special Studies (CRSS) that showed that more than 3,000 hectares of the land had been leased to financiers, among them, local politicians and groups connected with the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT), the milling firm owned by the Cojuangco family.

De los Reyes said the DAR’s survey of the entire Hacienda Luisita would include lands that were informally leased, sold or mortgaged. “These are part of the equation. Maybe a farmer will say, this plot is mine because I sold it already. That is not allowed because the DAR is the only one that can decide it,” he said.

The DAR official said the farmer-beneficiaries would have to pay for the land.