FINALLY, Malacañang took a positive stand on the festering wounds inflicted on the Filipino nation, the peasant sector and our Republic’s justice system by the Hacienda Luisita Massacre of 2004. The Palace announced on Tuesday it was instructing the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to do justice to the Hacienda Luisita farmers and resolve their case against the Cojuangco-clan-owned hacienda in Tarlac province.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the President’s office will “direct the DAR to act with dispatch on the disposition of this case so that there will be justice and fairness.” He then appealed to all parties in the dispute, including the Aquino and the Cojuangco families and the complainant farmers, “to fully cooperate with the DAR in the immediate resolution of this case.”

Some would surely speculate that Malacañang’s sudden interest in having this case resolved could only be tainted with a political motivation.

The Aquino and Cojuangco scion, Sen. Benigno Simeon Aquino 3rd, is the ruling party’s foe. He is leading the surveys. Many Filipinos believe Noynoy Aquino, the Liberal Party candidate for president, will beat his cousin former Defense Secretary Gilberto Cojuangco Teodoro, who is the Lakas-Kampi candidate.

One of Noynoy Cojuangco Aquino’s vulnerabilities is his being the principal scion of Hacienda Luisita.
Compared to him, Gibo Cojuangco Teodoro is quite a distance from Hacienda Luisita for his branch of the Cojuangco clan has but little or no interest at all in HLI. They also have lands in Tarlac but in other municipalities.

But whether politics is driving the Arroyo administration’s new determination to have justice done in Hacienda Luisita, there is every reason to be glad that the poor maltreated farmers would be given a better deal at last.

What the farmers are commemorating

On November 16, 2004, about 3,000 sugar mill workers and farmers went on a labor and agrarian strike over the old issue of land held by the Hacienda Luisita Inc. that should be distributed to the farmers whose families had been tilling the Luisita farms for decades. Another issue was relatively new. It was the demand for increased wages and benefits for workers in the Luisita’s sugar mill (the Central Azucarera de Tarlac).

The situation turned ugly. Seven strikers were killed early and the final count reached 14, including women and children, and up to 200 were injured when the Hacienda’s management unleashed the might of the HLI security forces, aided by government soldiers and policemen.

Every year the labor and farmers’ unions—and the widows and orphans of the fallen farmers—have been commemorating the Luisita Massacre, massing at the main gate of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac and holding rallies berating the Hacienda Luisita owners and management. The peasants and unionists claim that Hacienda Luisita’s land should be transferred to them according to the land reform law.

They aim their bitter accusations at the Philippine state as well. For they charge the government with conniving with Hacienda Luisita’s owners and managers in doing these injustices.

This November 2009 is special. It is just about seven months before the May 2010 national elections. So the farmers and unionists of Tarlac—supported by their comrades from other parts of the country—have made this commemoration of the massacre more elaborate. They organized a 100-vehicle caravan to Hacienda Luisita. And renewed their calls for justice and at the same time pointed out similar injustices against farmers in other parts of our country.

Violence against farmers must stop

The Hacienda Luisita Inc. labor dispute is that of the hacienda corporation’s 5,000 or so farmers and 700 milling workers against the HLI and its management.

The workers were demanding, among other things, the reinstatement of 300 laid-off workers. The
corporation managers and owners rejected the farmers and workers’ demands. There was a deadlock.
The farmers and their families were so poor and hungry. Their wages were not enough for their household and illness expenses. The HLI managers kept threatening to fire all the workers. The workers were left with no recourse but to go on strike and hope this would make the HLI relent.

Commentators have faulted the Cojuangco clan of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino of being too dependent on the state’s police and military to quell strikes and complaining farmers. For it is now
forgotten that the military has always been present in Hacienda Luisita.

This is something that is often left unmentioned in articles about this case. The farmers and unionists have complained that the military—and police—had been harassing peasant and union leaders, accusing them of being New People’s Army members or at least sympathizers. As in other parts of the rural areas, these harassment operations and accusations against people suspected of being leftists and rebel supporters are soon followed by their disappearance and extrajudicial killing.

A description by a Bulatlat writer of the area in 2004 says: “Just across the commercial complex that adjoins the hacienda along the MacArthur Highway in Tarlac is the Philippine Army’s Camp Aquino. Camp
Aquino, while serving as the headquarters of the Army’s Northern Luzon command, virtually guards the vast hacienda and its units are at the beck and call of the Cojuangcos and other powers-that-be in the region during times of labor unrest or during election.”

This commemoration of the Luisita Massacre should also remind the right-minded and truly rule-of-law devoted members of the government that similar situations exist elsewhere in the Philippines.

Massacres, like that of Hacienda Luisita, must not be allowed to happen again.