After 24 years of owning a sugarcane plantation only on paper, some 100 farmers of Capiz province will finally be able to own and benefit from the landholding in flesh and blood.
On Tuesday, March 23, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) at long last cleared the legal hurdles for the peasants to take control of the 188-hectare portion of the Nemesio Tan Estate in barangays Dulangan and San Esteban in Pilar town and Brgy. Culilang in the municipality of President Roxas as ordered by the Office of the President (OP) in a 2020 ruling, upholding an earlier order issued by former DAR chief Rafael Mariano.
“We are thankful that President Rodrigo Duterte and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) finally made this happen. We thought this day won’t come. The wait took a lifetime, spanning four government administrations,” said farmer-leader Teresita Billonid of the Montecarlo Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organization (Montecarba), a member of national peasant federation Task Force Mapalad (TFM).
“Our fight for land took life and limb. Many of us, who grew old and weak tilling the hacienda, died hungry and landless. We suffered from landlord resistance to agrarian reform that resulted in violence. Our houses were razed, one of us was gunned down, and another got paralyzed because of the bullet that hit her head,” she said.
“Now, we can look forward to a brighter future that would have been impossible if we didn’t unite and endure the hardships as we asserted our right to the land,” added Billonid.
OP decision thumbs down landlord’s plea, court’s ruling
On June 29, 2020, through an 18-page decision signed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, Malacañang dismissed the petition of Nemesio Tan’s heirs represented by Ferdinand Bacanto to retain ownership of the sugar plantation, cancel the certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) issued to the farmers, and stop the DAR from implementing agrarian reform in the property.
In the same order, the OP found no merit to uphold the ruling of the Regional Trial Court-Branch18 Special Agrarian Court (RTC-SAC) in Roxas City that declared that the DAR had erred in implementing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in the Nemesio Tan Estate because it carried out the CARP in reverse by generating CLOAs for Montercarba farmers, instead of first notifying Tan that his property had already been placed under the program and compensating him in exchange for his land.
The OP upheld the May 15, 2017 order of then DAR Secretary Mariano that asserted that while the CLOAs were issued ahead of the certificate of deposit of just compensation for Tan, in violation of the procedures under Section 16 of R.A. 6657, the procedural infirmities did not invalidate the coverage of the landholding under the CARP.
In the same decision, Mariano rectified the procedural flaw by having the Register of Deeds (ROD) cancel the CLOAs and simultaneously transfer the ownership of Tan’s landholding to the government by issuing land titles named to the Republic of the Philippines.
Immediately thereafter, Mariano also ordered the Provincial Agrarian Reform Office of Capiz to generate new CLOAs in the name of the Montecarba farmers and register the same with the ROD.
Farmers already landowners since 1997 but were unaware of it
For a decade and a half ̶ between 1997, when the CLOAs were generated during the Ramos administration, and 2011, when the RTC-SAC’s ruling favoring Tan became final and executory during the Aquino administration ̶ Montecarba farmers were clueless of what was happening.
“We didn’t know that as early as 1997, through the CLOAs, we were already made the agrarian reform beneficiaries of Tan’s plantation. We also didn’t know that Tan filed a case to stop us from taking control of the land,” said Billonid.
“Both the government and the haciendero blocked CARP implementation in the land we had been tilling for decades. The DAR didn’t immediately distribute the CLOAs and install us in our land, while Tan and his heirs did all they could to retain control of the landholding,” she added.
The farmers only learned that they were already the owners of the landholding after they survived the wrath of Super Typhoon Yolanda that hit Visayas on November 8, 2013 and were visited by a non-government organization to help them recover from the disaster.
Farmers suffered from harassment, violence amid fight for land
In 2015, Montecarba farmers decided to fight for their right to the land via protest-rallies, dialogs, and legal actions and suffered from harassment and violence.
“When those from the camp of our former landowner learned about our campaign, they started to drive us away from the land and bulldoze our houses, until the violence culminated in the death of a fellow CARP beneficiary,” said Billonid.
On February 11, 2017, Montecarba farmer Orlando T. Eslana, 49, was shot dead by perpetrators allegedly linked to Tan’s camp. Eslana was killed five days after he joined 68 of his fellow CARP beneficiaries in occupying a portion of the Nemesio Tan landholding in Pilar town.
At least five men opened fire on the peasants, who had set up fences in the area. Four farmers were also wounded in the incident, namely Ana Bocala, Nida Amo, Adel Vergara, and Melinda Eslana Arroyo, the sister of Orlando, who remains paralyzed, with a bullet still stuck in her head.
Land struggle continues, farmers urge Duterte to decide vs conversion case
While Montecarba farmers are now gearing up to exercise their right over the 188-hectare portion of the landholding, their fight for land remains unfinished, according to Billonid.
This is because another portion of the Nemesio Tan Estate in Brgy. Dulangan in Pilar town covering 105 hectares remains undistributed to Montercarba farmers.
Tan’s heirs blocked CARP implementation in the said portion of the hacienda by asking the DAR in 2014 to allow them to covert the area for residential use. The department approved the application for conversion in 2016 but later on reversed its decision because the area was not converted but largely remained as a sugarcane plantation.
Tan’s heirs elevated the case to the OP where it is pending until now.
Billonid said she and her fellow farmers, who are from Brgy. Dulangan, would only get less than a hectare each as beneficiaries of the Tan Estate because of the said pending conversion case that only left an area of 40 hectares for CARP distribution.
“We also fear that harassment and violence would happen again because the portions of the plantation awarded to us by the DAR in Barangay Dulangan are within the area where Tan’s heirs applied for conversion and where they remain in control of,“ said Billonid.
“Thus we hope that President Duterte’s office will also decide in our favor in this conversion case. You have sided with us in the first case, Mr. President. We hope that you will do it again, not just for us, but also to send a strong message that your administration is bent on implementing social justice through the CARP,“ she added. -END-
