Agrarian injustice legacy lives on

We, 1,200 farmworkers of Negros Occidental, many of us ailing and aging, are grieving over the failure of Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. to return to us our landholdings before he died last June 16.

While many people remember Cojuangco as an astute kingmaker and a benevolent tycoon, what we will never forget about our former boss was his refusal to give up control over vast tracts of land that were no longer his.

The 4,654-hectare land comprises 12 contiguous sugar haciendas that used to be owned by Cojuangco through his firm, ECJ & Sons Agricultural Enterprises Inc. In 1997, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) awarded the land to us via the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

However, we were unable to directly manage the haciendas and benefit from the fruits of our labor because Cojuangco remained the lord of these landholdings.

Cojuangco’s continued grip over the haciendas became possible during the Estrada administration. The DAR issued Administrative Order No. 2 of 1999 that set the regulations for the establishment of a joint agribusiness venture between us—the CARP beneficiaries—and Cojuangco.

Under the business deal, the use of our CARP-awarded landholdings would be assigned to the joint enterprise in exchange for a 30-percent equity in the venture, while Cojuangco’s camp would get a 70-percent equity in exchange for providing capital, facilities, and technical expertise to operate the haciendas.

But there was really no deal, no mutual benefit. What we only had was a paper, a title, saying we owned the land. Cojuangco was still the boss and we remained as his farmworkers, overworked but underpaid. He didn’t allow us to plant and harvest what we wanted and needed in our own land.

Cojuangco’s unwillingness to let go of the haciendas has prolonged our hardship. Nearly half of us surviving CARP beneficiaries of the landholdings are already sickly senior citizens aged between 60 and 70. Those who are in their 80s have either become paralyzed or have died already.

They’ve spent most of their lives serving no one but Boss Danding. They’ve stayed poor and are now suffering from serious illnesses, but can’t afford treatment, and perhaps, would later on die without having a decent burial.

Among them is 63-year-old Mario Sorbito, who has skin cancer. He has many lumps as big as eggs and calamansi in his soles, elbows, hands, and buttocks, and can’t walk anymore. Mario started working in 1972 in San Enrique town’s Hacienda Caridad, among the landholdings controlled by Cojuangco. He was often assigned to spray insecticide and pesticide on crops. Another is Margarita Bibangco, a farmworker in La Carlota City’s Hacienda Fe, who was promised by Cojuangco that she would become a doña through the joint-venture deal with him. Margarita, now 75, is already deaf and blind, and remains destitute.

Cojuangco left us a legacy of injustice that made it impossible for us to live a life worthy of a human being. He wallowed in wealth up until his last breath because he never stopped squeezing riches from our broken backs.

In 2017, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council Executive Committee (PARC ExCom) sided with us in our plea to end the joint venture with Cojuangco. In its resolution, the committee said the business deal with Cojuangco must be revoked because it was “no longer financially and economically viable” and “fails to provide benefits” to the CARP beneficiaries of the Negros haciendas.

The PARC ExCom further resolved that the “next step… for the speedy delivery of justice to the ARBs (agrarian reform beneficiaries)” would be the “parcelization of subject lands… installation of ARBs to the areas under petition, and the provision of adequate support services.”

Three years have passed, but the PARC ExCom’s resolution remains unimplemented. Injustice lives on even when Cojuangco is already gone.

NOEL MAGAN
President
ECJ CLOA Holders and Farm Workers Association-Task Force Mapalad