Hacienda Luisita peasants and farm workers' fight banners nationwide struggle of peasants for land
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Hacienda Luisita peasants and farm workers' fight banners nationwide struggle of peasants for land
November 16, 2009
The Communist Party of the Philippines together with the entire revolutionary movement and the mass of the struggling Filipino people join the peasants and farm workers of Hacienda Luisita and their advocates and supporters in the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Hacienda Luisita Massacre and the vow to continue the fight for genuine agrarian reform at the hacienda and throughout the Philippine countryside. We are one in this historic struggle with the peasants and farm workers throughout the country in their fight for land to till, and with the rest of the Filipino people in their fight for liberation, democracy, justice, livelihood and social progress.
The Hacienda Luisita Massacre was another grim chapter in the ongoing story of the struggle of poor Filipino peasants and farm workers for land to till. It is the second recent massacre involving the Cojuangco family. The first one was the Mendiola Massacre on January 22, 1987, during the presidency of Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. Majority of those killed and maimed in that massacre that took place right in front of the gates of Malacañang were peasants demanding land reform--many of them from Central Luzon.
While the Filipino peasantry have been demanding genuine land reform, the Aquino regime tried to beguile them with a bogus land reform program a year later by way of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Bogus and pro-big landlord as CARP already was, the Cojuangco family still did all it could to evade it. The Aquino regime and the Cojuangco family skirted the implementation of CARP at Hacienda Luisita by coming out with a so-called stock distribution option (SDO) scheme, which "granted" nominal shares of stock in Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) in lieu of distributing the hacienda land to the tillers. The Cojuangco family proceeded with more and more manipulations to reduce the peasants and farm workers' stocks in the firm as well as their wages and the size of the workforce itself.
In the meantime, the Cojuangco family commercialized ever bigger portions of the 6,453-hectare sugar estate and even took in millions of pesos in profit by colluding with the government for the purchase of a right-of-way at more than ten times the price of the land for the building of a P170-million expressway right in the middle of the hacienda.
In 2006, the Cojuangco family managed to get a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the Supreme Court preventing the Department of Agrarian from distributing the hacienda land to the peasants. The Cojuangco family is now using this TRO to eject the peasants from the land which is supposed to be distributed to them. On December 18, 2008, Hacienda Luisita, Inc. issued a memorandum giving 1,676 peasants of the hacienda up to October 30 this year to vacate the land. The deadline was extended up to yesterday, November 15, as the peasants refused to leave the land that is rightfully theirs.
The United Luisita Workers' Union (ULWU) and Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) consider the HLI memo illegal and that it is they, the peasants and farm workers, who have all the right to the land they have been tilling and working on. They are prepared to continue the fight for their land and their livelihood, despite the difficulties and the risk to their lives and limbs. They were undaunted by the Mendiola Massacre of 1987 and the Hacienda Luisita Massacre of 2004 and will remain undaunted in the face of more threats and harsher measures by the big feudal landlord family that persists in blocking land reform at the hacienda, and even using violence to do so.
The Communist Party of the Philippines calls on the entire revolutionary movement; the progressive, antifeudal and progressive forces; and the mass of the Filipino people throughout the country to give full support of the struggle of the peasants and farm workers in Hacienda Luisita.
The continuing struggle for land and livelihood of the peasants and farm workers of Hacienda Luisita serves as a historic national symbol and inspiration for the whole struggle for agrarian reform in the present stage of the Philippine revolution.