Thirty-five years ago, on January 22, 1987, police and marine forces opened fire on a large gathering of peasant demonstrators at the foot of Mendiola Bridge, killing 13 and injuring dozens. The 1987 Mendiola Massacre tarnished the image of then President Cory Aquino and marked the beginning of a turning point in her 11-monthold administration.
Coming to power in a bloodless uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986, Cory raised expectations that she would undo the disastrous policies and programs of her predecessor and usher in a new era of hope and progress for the Filipino masses.
For the farmers, that hope hinged on the adoption of a new agrarian reform program that would finally grant to landless rural poor their long-cherished dream of owning the lands they till. The Mendiola rally raised precisely this demand, but instead the people were met with a hail of bullets from the state’s repressive arm.
Cory Aquino had inherited a sinking economy, a political structure marked by runaway corruption and wanton thievery of public funds, and a social climate mired in large-scale poverty, inequality and unrest.
The national poverty index deteriorated to 59% in 1985 compared to 49% in 1971, with the rural areas faring much worse with 64% in the 1985 index compared to 56% in 1971. Business Day newspaper estimated that 73% of rural households slipped below the poverty line in 1983, compared with 33% in 1971. Rural income distribution was highly skewed with 45% sharing a mere 21% of income while the top 19% had 43%. Daily farm wages declined from a consumer-price-index value of P5.03 in 1968 to only P2.82 in 1984 – a 44% fall.
Marcos’ agrarian reform program, which he proclaimed “the cornerstone of the New Society,” was a colossal failure after 12 years with only 2.45% of targeted land area distributed and only 3.29% of farmer-beneficiaries obtaining titles. This record was even more disastrous since coverage was limited to only 33% of tenanted croplands and 28% of tenants in all farms.
The so-called “Green Revolution” in rice trapped the farmer in an endless cycle of ballooning costs of production, recurring indebtedness and diminishing shares of net incomes. The ironically named Masagana 99 small farmer credit program had virtually stagnated by 1980-1984, with only 60,000 rice farmers availing themselves of credit compared to 500,000 in 1974-1975.
Rural unrest was accelerating with a revitalized peasant movement staging protests all over the country, a Moro separatist armed movement emerging in Mindanao-Sulu, and a leftwing guerrilla army making inroads in the countryside.
All these were the catastrophic legacies of the authoritarian Marcos regime.
Cory Aquino, however, was clueless about the agrarian issue and complacent about its urgency. For a whole year, despite having declared a “revolutionary government” that invested her with both executive and legislative powers, no major initiative on agrarian reform was undertaken.
Business Day even quoted her as claiming that her family’s 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita was exempted from land reform because it had no tenants, only wage workers.
It took the deaths of 13 peasant demonstrators at Mendiola to awaken the government and take steps to address the land issue. Cory herself expressed
“shock” over the killings, convened a special commission to investigate it, and held consultations with peasant leaders.
Government spokespersons talked of “granting the highest priority for an accelerated and comprehensive land reform program.” Mimicking Marcos, Cory proclaimed land reform her “centerpiece” program. The newly found enthusiasm, however, would not last. Government agencies and their consultants could not agree on specific aspects such as landowner compensation, beneficiaries’ repayment and priority areas for land redistribution. While the government procrastinated, farmers’ groups took matters into their hands by occupying idle, abandoned, foreclosed and sequestered lands totaling over 70,000 hectares. A broad coalition of peasant organizations and NGO support groups established the Congress for a Peoples’ Agrarian Reform and later drafted its own People’s Agrarian Reform Code.
A whole year passed before the government would finally enact Republic Act 6657, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). By expanding coverage to all tenants and wage workers in all lands regardless of crop produced, the law put to rest Cory Aquino’s misguided thought with respect to her family’s vast landholdings. Beyond these, it did little else. To persuade the landowning class to agree to redistribution, the law offered generous concessions in terms of retention limits and compensation.
On the whole, the CARL was a watered-down version of the original House Bill No. 400 filed by Rep. Bonifacio Gillego, then the chair of the House agrarian reform committee. Anticipating the calamity of a mangled law, Gillego resigned as committee head in disgust. The CARL was rejected by peasant groups and agrarian reform advocates.
Today, agrarian reform remains an unfinished task. Successive amendments to the original law failed to plug loopholes and prevent reversals. Several large landholdings remain to be distributed and land conversions from agricultural to commercial use continue unabated. The lack of support services has forced farmers with awarded lands to mortgage their properties, thus losing control over them. Violence against organized farmers has increased coupled with harassment, Red-tagging and killings.
Cory’s “centerpiece” had gone the way of Marcos’ “cornerstone,” and succeeding regimes have not done much better. Agrarian reform remains an unfulfilled dream for the Filipino farmers.