Landowner wants CARP for family hacienda
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:01:00 01/17/2009
Filed Under: Agrarian Reform
Our extended family — through a family corporation, Eusebio Inc. — owns a 70-hectare hacienda in Negros Island. As a firm believer of land reform, I recently emailed my cousins and other relatives (some are now based abroad) who co-own the land, asking them to voluntarily offer the property for land reform coverage. I hope my e-mail will touch their hearts and prod them into helping our workers who have silently accepted their bondage and existence as landless farmers. This in essence is what I told them.
In the final weeks of December 2008, a number of news stories in Philippine media centered on the issue of whether or not the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of the Philippines should be extended as is or with some amendments, or scrapped altogether. The issue practically pitted the farmers against the government (more particularly the Department of Agrarian Reform) and Congress.
The members of our family who are now based abroad might feel that the issue does not concern them anymore. But the fact is our family still owns Hacienda Sta. Ana, a 70-hectare sugarcane plantation.
It’s almost 100 years since our great-grandparents acquired the plantation. Some of the workers in the hacienda are the great-grandchildren, grandchildren and children of the workers who had worked for our great-grandparents, grandparents and parents years back. The present workers remain in bondage to the land they till but do not own. I call this “generational poverty/bondage†where those who till the soil can never fully realize their dream of freedom from poverty for their own children and grandchildren.
Ironically this is the same dream that we, especially those of us who have migrated, have for our own children: that they live a much better life. We as parents are, therefore, no different from the workers of our hacienda, who are also parents.
In 2007, my mother commissioned a study by the Ateneo de Manila University-based Fr. John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues. The study covered three successful farmers’ cooperatives in Negros, which helped improve the lives of the farmer-owners. The study showed a very obvious reason for the cooperatives’ success — a P40,000 income going to a landowner was not enough for his family’s basic needs and wouldn’t last a week; but P40,000 in the hands of farmers allowed them to purchase not only their basic needs but also house appliances such as stoves, washing machines and even TV sets. This, plus the realization that they were the masters of their own destinies made their hard work fulfilling.
I appeal to my relatives: in the name of social justice, give the land to the tillers. Let’s help them. With all the blessings we now enjoy as a family, let’s express our gratitude to God by following what the Church has been teaching and help the workers in our hacienda.
Let us make 2009 a happy and socially relevant year for our family and for those who have worked for us for generations.
GERRY REONISTO, 139 Lipa St., Muntinlupa City
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