About 1,500 Negros Occidental peasants on Wednesday trooped to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Provincial Office in Barangay Montevista, Bacolod City, and staged an indefinite campout to protest against the administration’s deceptions and trickery in the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
According to a press release from the organizers, the protesters, belonging to national peasant federation Task Force Mapalad (TFM), are landless tillers in 250 sugar haciendas in the cities of Silay, Talisay, Cadiz, Sagay, Victorias, Escalante, Bago, La Carlota, and Himamaylan, and the towns of Manapla, E.B. Magalona, Murcia, Pontevedra, La Castellana, Isabela, Moises Padilla, Hinigaran, and Binalbagan.
“This is among the biggest pickets that we’ve organized and perhaps the longest campout that we will carry out to show President Bongbong Marcos and DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III how exasperated we are over how this administration is dibbling and dabbling with CARP, robbing us of any hope that we will be awarded with lands before the end of their terms,” said Teresita Tarlac, president of the Negros chapter of TFM.
“We are questioning the sincerity of the Marcos administration in completing the acquisition and distribution of CARP-covered lands, especially vast private agricultural landholdings that up to now remain under the control of landlords,” she added.
CHA-CHA TO STATUE DANCE
TFM farmers said that they had always expressed their frustration over the DAR’s snail-paced CARP implementation. But the present administration appears to be the worst CARP implementor as it appears to be finding ways on how to abort the program.
“Previous administrations did CARP like Cha-cha – one step forward and two steps backward. That is why the program’s land acquisition and distribution (LAD) phase dragged on for 36 years, instead of being completed within just a decade,” said TFM peasant leader Arnel Amaro of the 44-hectare Hacienda Bias in Brgy. Guimbalon, Silay City.
LAND BACK TO THE LORD
The statement added that DAR records show that on January 23 of last year, Estrella decided to return the 44-hectare hacienda to its former landowners Ma. Lydia Flores and Ma. Lourdes F. Vargas, represented by their heiress Gretchen Marie Vargas Celes, years after the previous two administrations completed all but one of the 27 steps in having the land finally distributed to its tillers via certificates of land ownership award (CLOA).
The DAR chief made the move six years after the government acquired the hacienda, titled it in the name of the Republic of the Philippines (RP) compensated the landowners in exchange for taking possession of the land for CARP, and gave tillers usufructuary rights over the hacienda – or the right to use the land and enjoy the fruits thereof on the state’s behalf – in preparation for issuing them their own titles.
Estrella’s order became final on April 18, 2024. But Amaro said he and his fellow farmers, who were already given usufructuary rights to the land, were not informed by the DAR about the case and the DAR chief’s decision.
“Having already rights to the land, we should have been made party to the case and defend those rights. We only discovered that the DAR had already stripped us of our rights when we followed up regarding the long-delayed issuance of our CLOAs and found out about Secretary Estrella’s decision on June 13, 2024 or almost two months after the secretary’s ruling became final and executory,” said Amaro.
RETURNING LAND TO EX-LANDLORDS
Hacienda Bais is among the 56 landholdings in Negros Occidental covering a total of 396.754 hectares that have already RP titles, records from the DAR as of January 2025 obtained by TFM show.
These landholdings, already owned by the government, are with RP titles that were generated as early as 10 to five years ago. This means that these lands, found in Hinigaran, Silay, Cadiz, Manapla, Sagay, La Carlota, Isabela, E.B. Magalona, Himamaylan, Manapla, and Talisay, are just one step away from CLOA issuance but remain undistributed to farmer-beneficiaries (FB).
SLEEPING ON THE JOB
Also, TFM farmers complain against the DAR’s inaction in many other big private agricultural landholdings in Negros Occidental that are already in the advanced stages of LAD.
A case in point is Hacienda San Roque in Brgy. Cubay, La Carlota City. The DAR started to acquire the 111-hectare plantation in 2012 when it issued a notice of CARP coverage of the hacienda to the Lopez family-owned Ancar Farm Corp.
Twelve years since the notice, the DAR has yet to conduct a survey of the hacienda to be able to segregate the CARPable portions of the landholding from its non-CARPable areas.
The survey is a requirement for the Land Bank of the Philippines to determine the value of the land and compensate the landlord for acquiring the property in favor of farmer-beneficiaries of the CARP. The compensation, issued by the LBP through a certificate of deposit to the landlord, will then pave the way for the DAR, through the Registry of Deeds, to title the land under the RP and eventually to farmer-beneficiaries through CLOAs.
Section 73 of Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988 prohibits the “willful prevention or obstruction by any person, association or entity of the implementation of the CARP.”
UNDISTRIBUTED HACIENDAS
TFM farmers say that with the Marcos administration’s lack of political will to complete LAD, undistributed haciendas will virtually become graves of living peasants.
The remaining nationwide LAD balance still stands at 507,575 hectares, excluding over 100,000 hectares of the CARP balance in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The BBM administration has been the slowest in LAD with a yearly accomplishment rate of only 10,738 hectares. Its predecessor, the Duterte administration, was also the slowest, notwithstanding the current administration at 25,520 hectares annually, which Marcos Jr. could not even reach half of.
LOW LAD SCAPEGOATS
TFM said that it appears that the BBM administration is using two scapegoats to cover up its low accomplishment on LAD: (1) The passage and implementation of the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA) and (2) the implementation of the World Bank loan-financed SPLIT project.
Republic Act 11953 or the NAEA wrote off obligations of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARB) to pay amortizations, principal loans, estate taxes, and interests and penalties incurred from non-payment or delays for CARP-distributed agricultural lands.
This though contributes towards the enjoyment of land rights for ARBs, but only insofar as they have already been awarded land previously, hence does not qualify as awarding land to the landless.
Project SPLIT (Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling) on the other hand is a World Bank loan-financed program that aims to facilitate land markets through the awarding of individual titles over agricultural lands to ARBs.
The individualization of land ownership provides the opportunity for ARBs to utilize their land to access financing but also run the risk of enabling swifter and legalized transfer and sale of their land rights.
Accomplishments in SPLIT are not newly awarded lands, but redocumentation of earlier issued collective titles to be parcelized for awarding as individual titles.
Rhetoric on accomplishments in the NAEA and SPLIT is used to misdirect public attention from dismal accomplishments in LAD. This messaging is consistently deployed by the current Administration including public statements made by the President in his annual State of the Nation Address.*
