It took eight months but President Aquino’s promise to 63-year-old Dorita Vargas, one of the long-suffering faces of the agrarian struggle, has finally borne fruit.
Vargas, a single mother of six children, now owns the land she has been tilling for 29 years in Negros Occidental, as one of the latest beneficiaries given certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in January.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes, in a statement, said the woman was one of the 13 farmworkers awarded land on Jan. 14 from a sugar estate formerly owned by Victorino Manalo in La Castellana town.
In a meeting last June, Vargas, who marched to Malacañang with more than 300 peasants belonging to the farmers’ group Task Force Mapalad, personally received a CLOA, in fulfillment of Aquino’s promise that the piece of land she tilled would soon be hers.
The CLOA was handed over to Vargas on Feb. 13 in a ceremony held at the DAR municipal office in La Castellana, the DAR said.
“I pray that Aling Dorita will take good care of the land awarded to her under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). The land is hers and she is free to use it in whatever way she wishes to,” De Los Reyes said.
“When you won the presidential election, we were so happy because we voted for you,” Vargas had told Aquino, as recounted in an earlier Inquirer report.
“We all voted for you because you came from a good family … beloved President, you are our only hope of getting our own land,” she was quoted as saying.
Abandoned by husband
Vargas did not miss the chance to reveal how she raised her six children—all girls. After her husband abandoned her, she took over his job on the farm. It has been 29 years since her husband left her, Dorita told the President.
To support her family, she worked as a farmhand at Hacienda Manalo in La Castellana town, planting sugarcane, fertilizing the fields, picking weeds and harvesting for only P85 a day.
After she joined a clamor to bring the plantation under CARP in 1995, she was fired and her hut was torched, she recalled.
“Hayaan mo, Nay, tutulungan ko kayo (Don’t worry, I will help you),” the President told her in June. Flanked by Cabinet officials, Aquino promised to fully implement the CARP before its expiration in June 2014, renewing a vow he made when he ran for president.
‘Chop-chop’ titles
De Los Reyes said Vargas’ struggle for land ownership took years due to complications brought by the so-called “chop-chop,” or parceling of land titles, a tactic used by some landowners to evade CARP coverage.
The official defined chop-chop titles as land titles sold piecemeal by the original landowner whose landholdings, usually beyond the five-hectare limit set by law, were covered by agrarian reform.
The problems posed by chop-chop titles prompted the DAR and the Land Registration Authority (LRA) to sign Joint Memorandum Circular No. 17. The memorandum requires the LRA through the Register of Deeds (ROD) to annotate notices of coverage on land titles that certain lands are subject to acquisition and distribution under CARP.
The ROD’s annotation on the land titles aims to curb the widespread practice of selling CARP-covered lands even without the requisite clearance from DAR.
It also seeks to prevent buyers from invoking the status of innocent purchasers for value due to non-notification of the fact of CARP coverage.
In a report sent to De Los Reyes, the DAR office in Negros Occidental said the 10-hectare Hacienda Manalo was subdivided into three titles of more than three hectares, with two lots transferred in the names of Venysse Laurel and Lorenzo Manalo, immediately after the agrarian reform law was passed more than two decades ago.
De Los Reyes said he had worked for the approval of the joint memorandum with LRA considering how illegal transfers of CARP-covered landholdings unduly impeded, delayed or suspended the implementation of agrarian reform.
“The cause of the problem is the lack of an effective means of notification to the world that a parcel of land had been subjected to agrarian reform coverage,” De Los Reyes said.