“THE fight that you are doing is right. We, in the government, promise to grant you the lands that you deserve. It is yours,” President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was quoted as saying when he met aggrieved farmer beneficiaries of Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association Inc. (Marbai).
At the same, the President admonished Lapanday, telling them that they have had enough, and must now return the lands to the real owners, the small farmers who are impoverished and needing help.
Thus, it was not very surprising that Marbai members backed by thousands of supporters finally claimed what was rightfully theirs and occupied it.
While it was not the first time that we saw this event unfolding before us, such will always be inevitable against unjust structures that would always crumble in the face of truth and genuine people power.
The tentacles of capitalism as an economic system where private entities own the factors of production, have been rooted to the very core in our cultural and social systems and in our consciousness such that it became a yolk that continued to enslave us in our land.
Under this oppressive system, most of the small farmers, the hands that literally feed the Filipinos, have become slaves in their own land, subservient to the fake "masters," who cheated them into giving up their land, livelihood and their lives.
Such is the irony of the so-called democracy of the elite that is making slaves of the very people who are the true masters of food security because theirs are the hands that nurture the earth and make it abundant with food so that the people can survive.
Through hundreds of years, our society have been shackled and enslaved in this system, and persisted through the years, but everything has to come to an end.
Once they stepped into the land they have claimed, the farmers knew theirs was still a huge struggle to surmount as the whole landscape presented before them the need to resuscitate the land.
It is public knowledge that banana plantations had to use fertilizers and pesticides for years so that it would yield the desired products that would make bananas palatable to the international markets. Studies have it that continuous application of chemicals can turn the land acidic, and so faced with this reality, the farmers are bracing themselves.
It would take perhaps years before the land could yield crops that would sustain the farmers’ basic needs for survival, but for now, they have to persevere and stand firm on their basic rights to their land.
So much is at stake and they would need all the help and support that they can muster for now. Still, we have witnessed how they have waited and worked to reclaim their lands for years, thus there is no reason to give up now no matter how daunting the immediate future may seem.
There must be a plan of action that they must follow that must be supported by government agencies concerned to keep them going. The support must not only come from the Department of Agrarian Reform but from all national line agencies, and in effect, make the people’s taxes work.
Marbai’s struggle is not only theirs but it symbolizes a people’s will that must be recognized by the government that is mandated to SERVE the peoples’ interests. It is therefore government’s duty to see to it that the gains of the farmers be protected and sustained and be supported all throughout.
We hope Marbai’s efforts will continue to inspire more people from all walks of life as it has already sparked hope in the hearts of the Filipinos.