ANGELES CITY- A fact-finding mission on Hacienda Luisita has released a 40-page report on the estate owned by Pres. Aquino’s family and recently distributed to farm workers, as it issued recommendations defying the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
The recommendations included distribution of hacienda lands without compensating the Aquino family, collective hacienda land ownership and the dismissal of the land distribution scheme of the DAR as a “sham”.
The report was titled “For Land and Justice: The Continuing Agrarian Struggle in Hacienda Luisita” and was finalized by the Hacienda Luisita National Fact-Finding Mission (NFFM) spearheaded by the Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), its local affiliate Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang-Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (AMBALA) and the office of Anakpawis Party-list Rep. Fernando Hicap.
“The study was launched to verify reports of fraud, militarization and new cases of landgrabbing before, during and after the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) land distribution activities in Hacienda Luisita,” UMA said in a statement.
Justifying free land distribution at the hacienda, the study noted that “the Cojuangco- Aquino clan acquired the estate through loans from the government in 1957. After so many decades, the Cojuangco- Aquino family never fulfi lled the government loan condition to distribute land to the farmers.
Instead, they have enriched themselves through the blood, sweat and tears of generations of Hacienda Luisita sugar farmworkers.” The study also noted that “for land distribution to be equitable and just, state entities must seriously heed the farmworkers’ demand for collective land ownership.
“The type of individual titling that the DAR has imposed and the complimentary promotion of block farming, in the context of the Luisita experience, are but modes that serve to reverse the course of land reform. What must be given full recognition and support is the organized rank of the farmworkers in their campaign to increase production and improve their livelihood through mutual aid, cooperativization and collective farming,” the study said.
The study also accused DAR of “blatant abuse of discretion in most, if not all the actual steps it has undertaken in its recent distribution of lands via raffle to the farm workers. It said DAR “inserted questionable names in the master list of beneficiaries, procured dubious and overpriced land survey and, excluded hundreds of hectares of agricultural land from distribution.
It also hit DAR for the “imposition of compulsory signing of promissory notes to ensure amortization payments, grant of overpriced landlord compensation to the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (controlled by the Cojuangco- Aquino families), inept facilitation of the audit of the assets of hacienda companies of the two families.”
The study also cited “intimidation, illegal arrest and filing of trumpedup charges against critics” and other “rights violations” allegedly with the backing of the police and the military. “The DAR has been recently exposed as a “pork clearing house” for corrupt politicians and fake non-government organizations (NGOs) to illegally partake of lump sum public fund allocations.
But even under land reform laws, the DAR has merely served as legal conduit for the blatant misuse of public funds for its ineffective land reform schemes and as milking-cow of landlord families entitled to ‘just compensation’”, the study noted.
