Friday, August 17, 2007 Sanchez: Tough nut for agrarian reform By Benedicto Sanchez Nature Speaks
NEGROS Occidental presents a tough nut to crack for agrarian reform. It's a ruthless class war, where might makes right, an agrarian jungle where only the fit and powerful survive to batter the loser. And the government, especially the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), exist to serve the landed gentry. The searing photographs of those killed in Hacienda Vélez-Málaga in June 2007 seems to confirm this grim picture.
Thus, the only way for the landless to acquire their own farms is through various forms of class struggle-from land occupation and even armed struggle against landlords. There is no other alternative. Last Wednesday, I was in Hacienda Baga-as, Hinigaran. I was invited as a Sun.Star Bacolod journalist and as a court-annexed mediator by the grandchildren heirs of the late Perfecta Avanceña.
As a landed estate, the 443-hectare was up for Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) land distribution under its voluntary option to sell (VOS). Represented by Eva de la Merced, the heirs agreed to the scheme. That day, the DAR set out to survey the land claims. Except it was the farm workers who opposed the survey. Hinigaran Municipal Agrarian Officer Myrrah Mercano early on warned us that we might encounter a barricade. When we got to Baga-as, some of the estate's farm workers and barangay officials met us in the highway.
A heated argument ensued between the Mercano and barangay officials and tanods which included Barangay Captain Arturo Aguilo and Councilmen Remy Sabio and Roger Espada. Mercano scolded the locals on another delay. She warned that the leaders will die of old age without ever getting a land title.
Farm workers brought espadings and iron bars, with some murmuring that if the survey pushes through without their concurrence, outsiders will go home with crack skulls.
Finally, the local officials persuaded Engr. Ignacio Cabayao to go to the barangay center to hold another dialog. Cabayao is the head of the Provincial Agrarian Reform Office. Cabayao spent an hour and a half walking everyone through the hacienda's history and the Carp process of land distribution. Although everyone knew it, he explained that the real landowners have finally surfaced with a land title, previously lost during World War II but reconstituted under Avanceña's name.
DAR canceled the farm workers' Operation Land Title (OLT) claims under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos's Presidential Decree 27 because no one knew the real landowner. The Baga-as community thought of the estate’s education department property, donated to the government by Estéban Jalandoni. That's why the local school was named the Don Estéban Jalandoni Memorial Elementary School. The festering issues were finally resolved when Cabayao assure them that even under VOS, DAR will respect any OLT delineations. With that, opposition to the land survey finally crumbled. De la Merced clinched the resolution when she assured them that as an non-government organization (NGO) worker, she and her co-heirs have no intention of disenfranchising anyone. From then on, the survey proceeded smoothly.
So many things churned in my mind. Just before we headed home, I had a talk with Cabayao. I tossed some of the things running through my head. This time as a mediator. Cabayao admitted that the DAR thought of Baga-as as a hopeless case. Time, efforts, funds might be better spent on other haciendas. In fact, Mercano suggested that they plan an early exit because nothing will come out of the survey.
I told him though that I handled more complicated land disputes in my mediation cases with the Philippine Mediation Center. The Bagaas case however seems to be a walk-over. All sides agreed on recognizing the protagonists' rights, the landowners agreeing on transferring land title to the tillers, and the farm workers not even contesting the land title of Avanceña's heirs.
Mediators are trained on interest-based negotiations. With the Bagaas case, however, everyone seems to have the missed the point. To survey or not to survey, that wasn't the question. DAR and the landowners should have focused on assuring the agrarian reform beneficiaries of land tenure, whether OLT or VOS. For the landowners, their interests lie not with the lands but with the compensation. So there is a lot of legroom for compromise agreements.
I gave Cabayao an unsolicited advice to the DAR, and I hope DAR takes it seriously. I suggested that its senior staff should acquire alternative dispute resolution and negotiations as skills. PMC can train them.
I also realized that if DAR deemed Bagaas case hopeless, most likely, they must have bungled other seeming intractable and hopeless cases. Perhaps with ADR, needless deaths and violent conflicts could have been averted. And agrarian reform in the province would have proven a softer nut to crack.
