We, from Amihan, the National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines, are pleading with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to hear our voices on their decision to support House Bill No. 4296 and HB 4375 despite the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and its “extension with reforms” (Carper) to address the landlessness problem of the estimated 40 million poor Filipino peasants.
Before sunrise every day, women peasants, together with the men, are in the field, doing the backbreaking work of weeding, planting and plowing to make the land they till productive. The farmers are food producers. But the Aquino administration, like the 14 administrations that preceded it, has failed to do its part in alleviating the condition of majority of the poor and hungry in the rural areas where the worst poverty and hunger can be found. Farmers are evicted from their land by their land-grabbing, well-off landlords with the connivance of corrupt government officials.
There is hope: We can end the misery of our farmers by implementing a genuine agrarian reform program. Twenty-seven years of CARP has not been able to address landlessness. Exploitative practices—e.g., usury, high cost of farm inputs and production tools and unjust wages of farm workers—which are the loopholes and flaws of CARP, weaken and destroy the livelihood of farmers.
As we celebrate Women’s Month this March, Amihan is asking the good men of CBCP to end the misery of farmers by opening their hearts to a genuine agrarian reform program. Only through the implementation of a genuine agrarian reform program will the women’s land rights be secured and the bright future of the country realized.
—ZENAIDA SORIANO,
national chair, Amihan,
amihan_psntwn@yahoo.com