CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Tension greeted the first day of peasant leader Rafael Mariano as agrarian reform secretary, as conflicts between two groups of agrarian reform beneficiaries in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province escalated on Friday.
Village leaders and policemen destroyed 30 hectares of farms planted with rice by 50 farm workers in Hacienda Luisita, on behalf of people claiming to have certificates of land ownership award (Cloa) over these areas.
Florida Sibayan, chair of the group Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala), said the team, led by Edison Diaz, barangay captain of Lourdes (formerly Texas), sprayed chemicals on month-old rice plants at 7 a.m. on Friday.
Reached by telephone, Diaz said Ambala members cultivated lots that were not theirs.
Mariano issued a status quo order over the disputed lands, which span 70 hectares, in Sitio Calumpang in Mapalacsiao village behind the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT).
CAT is a sugar mill in the 6,300-ha estate owned by relatives of former President Aquino.
“My village mates are the ones who have [Cloa] to these lots and they have found business partners to grow cash crops on a 50-50 percent [profit sharing agreement],” Diaz said.
Sibayan said Ambala members had been cultivating the lots even before the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) distributed the Luisita lands on orders of the Supreme Court in 2012.
The allocation of lands was done by drawing of lots from a “tambiolo” (lottery device) and most Ambala members did not get the areas they had staked claims on for years.
“Our members have the right to till those lots. DAR should have given the lots to those who cultivated [the lands], not through the tambiolo system,” Sibayan said.
Joseph Canlas, chair of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas which Mariano used to head, said the DAR chief should cancel the tambiolo system which he described as “divisive.”
Diaz did not identify the Cloa holders he was helping. But he said they were undertaking land preparations on Friday, which required them to clear the lands of plants.
“When my village mates start land preparations, these Ambala members throw mongo beans on the soil and then say the land is theirs,” Diaz said.
He said he stepped in to help village mates who received the Cloa.
He accused Ambala of removing the “mojon” (boundary stones) installed by the DAR as a tool to locate the lots, and of renting out the lots to growers in Nueva Ecija province.
In a press statement on Thursday, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) urged President Duterte to make Hacienda Luisita “the signal fire for a genuine land reform.”
CPP spokesperson Salud Rojas said the estate, bought by the grandfather of Aquino from a Spanish industrialist in 1957, “merely represents the transformation of the rural landscape in the region, and the entire country as well, where the vast sea of golden grains and the greenery is being quickly replaced by high-rise condominium, vast business and commercial and industrial complexes.”