Amid the lockdown, admonitions against staying out of the streets lose touch with the reality for farmers in Norzagaray who have no homes to return to. Their land had carried them through dire straits long before a real estate developer swooped in and dragged them through a dispute over legal titles and tenancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a puzzle to Andres* how the 75.5-hectare land in Sitio Compra in San Mateo village, which he had helped till for as long as he could recall, came into the possession of a company he had not heard of until lately. Born and raised here, he remembered how his mother used to talk about a certain Roman Aquino, the landowner whom his family and other tenants paid land rent to since the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, unbeknownst to them, Aquino\u2019s children sold their rights and interests to Royal Moluccan Realty Holdings, Inc. (RMRHI) in 1988, despite a litigation, then underway since 1956, between the Aquinos and another group of claimants to whom the former allegedly executed a deed of absolute sale. The conflict lasted for over another decade, with the country\u2019s Court of Appeals (CA) awarding the title to RMRHI for USD 98,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This legal battle went on while the unwitting farmer tenants continued to work the land and taught the next generation to keep it on. Soon, settlers arrived and learned to take on farming, too. Andres met and married one of them, Karen*, in 2005. They grew on a plot of land at the foot of the mountains all manner of fruits like bananas, soursop, and guava, and would bring their kids with them during harvest season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019d bring plastic bags and umbrellas,\u201d Karen said. \u201cEven if it was raining, we\u2019d still go on. I\u2019d just drape a jute sack over my kids\u2019 heads and tell them to wait for me in the shade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They shared the land with a host of other peasant households who, until 2005, when RMRHI came and staked its claim, developed the land as theirs. In May 2006, the notice of coverage issued by government\u2019s Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) \u2014 which identified the land as up for distribution to beneficiaries, as part of the government\u2019s comprehensive agrarian reform program (CARP) \u2014 would have been good news, if it had not been contested by RMRHI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What followed was a series of land rights claims, appeals, and a drawn-out engagement with courts and executive adjudication bodies.<\/p>\n In February 2007, RMRHI filed an application for exemption of the landholding from CARP, which, based on the land reform law Republic Act (RA) 6657 Section 10, relieves lands with slopes of over 18% from redistribution. The law derives its justification from an American-era commonwealth act that classified said lands as unsuitable for farming and unavailable for disposition, but necessary for forestry as part of the public domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For two of Karen\u2019s friends, Marie* and Ester*, what the law says does not square with their experience. They grew plentiful of bananas on the leeward side of the mountain that bisects the land into an uphill part and a flatland. Come peak season, they would carry the ripest bunch downhill to sell at the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the real estate company\u2019s appeal was granted, if only to a certain degree. The DAR Regional Office issued an order in September 2007, maintaining that portions of the land with below 18% in slope, plus those found to have been developed prior to the implementation of CARP, were still to be given out to the farmers. It then placed these parcels under the agrarian reform law\u2019s compulsory acquisition scheme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though, in the same order, the DAR told RMRHI to segregate the exempted portions at its own expense, the developer somehow moved to withdraw its appeal. A couple of years later, DAR granted the motion to withdraw. But, once again, RMRHI backpedaled and, from 2009 to 2015, asked DAR to reconsider its decision, contending that all portions with slope 18% and above should be totally exempt, regardless of whether they had been farmed before the agrarian reform took effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey just want to get everything. Five hectares\u2014that\u2019s just not enough. That doesn\u2019t sit well with them,\u201d Karen said, referring to the size of land that RMRHI could have rightly claimed\u2014less than a tenth of the total land area in question\u2014if only it had not gone on to drag out its appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RMRHI asserted that it also need not provide compensation to the tillers who would be displaced from the uplands. Because DAR stood by its original decision, the company elevated the case to the Office of the President, which also dismissed it for lack of merit and ruled in favor of the farmer beneficiaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have something concrete to hold on to,\u201d Karen said. \u201cWe\u2019re confident, because all these documents favor us. How can they say we have no rights, that we\u2019ve lost?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the decision of the Office of the President in December 2015 failed to deter RMRHI. The company pursued the case it had filed before both the DAR Adjudication Board (DARAB) and the judicial courts since 2010, even going as far as the regional trial court, to argue against the tenancy of the Norzagaray farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RMRHI reasoned that the beneficiaries of the portions of the land covered by CARP \u2014 including those that had been developed before the program was signed into law in June 1988 \u2014 could only be farmers who have lived in the area since way before the 1980s, including their descendants. Settlers and so-called outsider farmers, or those who worked the land but resided outside the community, could not rightly own the land, then, according to RMRHI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2018, the DARAB\u2019s sheriff decided in favor of the developer and later released a writ of demolition. The order went on to set a dangerous precedent for the state-supported violence the farmers would confront in defense of the land that they thought, all along, the law had agreed to be theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Law of the Land<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Together with more than 50 personnel of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Norzagaray, armed goons of RMRHI, and DARAB officials, a 30-strong demolition team tore down 26 houses and destroyed other properties of the farmer families in the area, in February 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andres\u2019s cousin\u2019s house was one of those first razed to rubble. \u201cHe was still inside when it happened. He didn\u2019t understand what was happening even when they were ripping everything to pieces around him. He had this sundry store next door that they emptied out,\u201d Karen said. \u201cEven money and jewelry were not spared. It all happened so fast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A seven-year-old child was still reportedly inside another house when the demolishers carried out the wipeout within just a few hours. Other kids were up and about, then, and shook in fear as they looked on helplessly. Local media reported that a teenager suffered seizures in the middle of all this and was rushed to the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marie\u2019s house up on the hill proved too much of a trouble to reach for the demolishers. She recalled how, even without a court order, the operations pushed through. Some community members who RMRHI had frightened into surrendering their land had had their signatures attached to an attendance sheet, which was later used as proof that a pre-demolition conference had supposedly taken place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy sibling was one of them… PHP 30,000 (about USD 580) was hard to turn down,\u201d Marie said, referring to the compensation that RMRHI had offered for every household. \u201cPlus, of course, we only have machetes. That\u2019s no match to the goons\u2019 guns.\u201d Most of the residents who had taken up RMRHI\u2019s offer only built a house on the land, Marie said. \u201cThose of us who stayed are farmers. We need the land to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet the demolition had since crippled their earnings. A checkpoint at the main road barred the delivery of harvests into and out of the farm. Private security guards of RMRHI were deployed and roamed the area. They tacked \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d signs onto the barbed wire strung all around, except on the hilly side that some farmers later discovered they could cut through to get to their crops and still sneak away harvest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They found a small portion of the land they could still till. \u201cBut it was just like \u2018guerilla warfare,\u2019 as we call it,\u201d former lawmaker Ariel Casilao of the pro-peasant partylist Anakpawis quipped, citing how farmers had to be extra-careful not to get caught by the guards or on the CCTVs installed around the perimeter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In September 2018, Casilao joined other farmers\u2019 rights groups in a fact-finding and solidarity mission in the area and launched bungkalan, <\/em>a land occupation and cultivation campaign, on a one-hectare land. No sooner had the mission ended than the goons rooted out the crops and demolished the makeshift hut the farmers had assembled to house the bungkalan <\/em>participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBungkalan is one of the highest forms of collective action to assert the right to land,\u201d Casilao said. \u201cBit by bit, we strive to raise the farmers\u2019 consciousness about the struggle for land that is not confined to just the legal aspect. It should be complementary. We confront the legal issues, all the legal needs of the case \u2014 whether in court, before DAR, or at the local government level \u2014 until we get to wherever it takes us, be it in the Supreme Court or the CA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January 2019, Casilao co-authored two resolutions in Congress regarding the matter. Both urged the parliament\u2019s committees on agrarian reform and on human rights to conduct an investigation, in aid of legislation, on the lethargic implementation of land distribution to the prospective peasant beneficiaries and on the violent demolition the latter had faced the year before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cogs of parliamentary bureaucracy, however, squeaked into motion so belatedly that, before the congressional committees could begin any inquiry, another wave of demolition swept the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lay of the Land<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Marie found her house burned to smithereens. It was a complete turnaround of fortune from a few days before. She and several other women farmers had earned handsomely from selling vegetable produce at a pop-up market set up in the middle of a park in Quezon City, a one-and-a-half ride away from Norzagaray.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never forget the faces of those who did it,\u201d Marie said. \u201cThey\u2019re still around.\u201d The RMRHI security guards assisted a demolition crew comprising more than 80 individuals who had been paid and sent in from Sapang Palay, a village in the nearby city of San Juan Del Monte, Bulacan. They burned down two houses along with Marie\u2019s, while a row of others was demolished in the morning of October 23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No court order, however, was presented to justify the hasty clearing operations. Neither did the residents receive a prior notice which they should have been furnished at least a month before the date of eviction, per the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992. The demolition team instead presented a permit from the Municipal Engineering Office of Norzagaray, citing supposed violations of the building code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the farmers argued that it was not, in the first place, within the ambit of the municipal engineer\u2019s power to allow the demolition of houses built on lands classified as agricultural instead of residential or mixed-use. \u201cWe don\u2019t own mansions, just thatched huts. Why would they demand building permits from us?\u201d said Karen, whose house similarly fell prey, alongside 11 others, to the illegal wipeout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Ester, there was no way to recover the USD 250 that the goons stole before ripping her house down and setting it afire. She said she would have spent the money on a carabao. The thought of another cropping season, though, seemed too far-fetched, then, as she and her neighbors watched demolishers ruin their belongings. Some even slashed open a sack of unmilled rice and scattered it all over the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several residents looked to the local police for help, to no avail. Meanwhile, the village authorities said they only received the report at midnight. \u201cIs that even possible? What kind of office receives paperwork at midnight?\u201d Marie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only because she had nowhere else to turn to did she again approach the village chief several months later. It was Christmas. Her 11-year-old son accompanied her husband on an errand back to the shell of their old house, now enclosed within an area fenced off with galvanized iron sheets. The child stayed put while his father went off to herd back and tether their cow. Before long, gunshots rang out. He ran crying into the woods till he chanced on an old neighbor. He said he thought his father had been shot to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like before, however, the village authorities left Marie waiting for a few hours before accommodating her complaint. She feared, too, that where they had relocated, in a rental apartment near the village hall, was no help in appeasing her son\u2019s anxiety and trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust the other night, at midnight, we couldn\u2019t sleep. Gunshots could be heard coming from just across the village hall,\u201d she said, having counted seven blasts all in all. \u201cBut nobody even bothered to tell off those goons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ester\u2019s case, a farmer household from a village close by took her family in as tenants. She continued to farm but could no longer sell her produce at a profit. Karen\u2019s family, in the meantime, settled not far away from their walled-off farm in Sitio Compra, tightening the purse strings to squeak by on Andres\u2019s USD 10 daily salary as a construction worker in an adjacent city. He worried his contract would expire soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, many of them believe they could still return to their old ways. All hope is not lost, even on the legal front, said former DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano. All the authorities that should have safeguarded them against attacks could still rectify bureaucratic lapses and deliver redress for all peasant victims, according to Mariano, who also used to chair the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The peasant leader cited, for one, the first ocular inspection report that DAR has yet to release. Should it find that there had been illegal and premature land conversion in the area, the regional office must issue a cease and desist order against RMRHI. Whether the farmers in Norzagaray could be considered tenants is moot, because the case, he said, should rather center on their legitimacy as potential agrarian reform beneficiaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s crucial that the entire process of acquisition and distribution continue, as stated by law,\u201d Mariano said, \u201cdespite whatever concurrent case is being sought in the courts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his stint as the DAR chief, Mariano made it a point to emphasize during dialogues with farmers\u2019 groups that the government, while bound by its mandate, could only actually endeavor to guarantee that those who have less in life would have more in law. Ultimately, the first port of call should come from within the consolidated ranks of the rural people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe peasant sector, as a mass movement, with their organized struggles, should be the decisive force in advancing the people\u2019s right to land,\u201d Mariano said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the Norzagaray farmers only have one another to pull through this ordeal. When, once, the armed guards caught one of them \u201cstealing\u201d away her harvest, the rest went to the police station to clamor for her release. They learned some village officials tried to force her to sign off on an affidavit withdrawing the charges of theft, arson, and malicious mischief that they had filed against two of the RMRHI goons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey thought they could fool us,\u201d Marie said. \u201cIf they\u2019re looking for criminals, it\u2019s those land grabbers!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no shortage of support they gather from even the seemingly unlikeliest groups. A local church has gone so far as to open its doors to them, offering to host their meetings now that they have been driven out of their lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the days ahead, they also hope to get enough relief and financial subsidies to set up a community kitchen at the church. There they could feed farmer families who can neither work at their farms anymore, nor transport supplies to and from the province, amid the lockdown expected to last for at least a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pandemic looms like another crisis they have to ride out until, once the dust settles, they will carry on standing their ground for the land that is, after all, theirs for the taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * All the names used are not real. They were given anonymity for security purposes.<\/em> #NoLandNoLife Features<\/strong> discuss recent developments, events, and trends on land and resource grabbing and related human rights issues in the region as well as the factors and forces that drive it. Send us your feedback at nolandnolife@panap.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BULACAN, Philippines \u2013 While governments around the world scramble to cushion the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic primarily on cities, not much has been clamored, at the same pitch, about relief for rural communities where the crisis has also rippled across. Their vulnerabilities are doubly sharpened in light of startlingly deficient aid and inequalities in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1615,"template":"","update_categories":[110],"class_list":["post-1613","panap_updates","type-panap_updates","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","update_categories-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/panap_updates\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/panap_updates"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/panap_updates"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/panap_updates\/1613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"update_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update_categories?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/panap.net\/beta\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/NLNL-Garay-02-1-1.jpg\")
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