Life in PNoy’s Enchanted Kingdom

This article on the Sumilao farmers is another Patricia Evangelista classic.

This line says it all: “What I do not understand is this—why prime agricultural land, situated beside a natural irrigation canal is judged by the DAR as land suitable for pigs, and inappropriate for the people who have tilled it for generations.”

REBEL WITHOUT A CLUE
Calloused
By Patricia Evangelista

It is a day when the yellow heat licks through rubber slippers and thin cotton shirts, a day when car windows are rolled down and car accidents happen on street corners where blue-uniformed policemen are stationed. To my left, a blond bombshell in a black lace bra smirks from a mammoth Guess billboard. High on the balcony of a dingy three-story apartment, three bare-chested boys watch the quiet march.

The shaved heads of the Sumilao farmers are covered with old towels. I do not know what to call this — a procession, a protest, a rally? None of the words fits the parade of dark-skinned farmers who plod with grim persistence down Manila’s cracked concrete highways. Two of the farmers carry long bamboo poles on their shoulders, hung with pairs of battered rubber slippers. They walk in file, long white banner billowing, while trucks trundle beside them.

There is a man who walks beside me, his small knapsack, a pink plastic bag, secured by graying string. His name is Napoleon Merida Sr., 59 years old, and he says he is on his fourth pair of slippers. Merida is one of the 55 farmers who walked from Barangay San Vicente in Sumilao to Malacañang. They began with more, but the rest have fallen back, unable to withstand the killing pace and unpredictable weather. Every day, at least two of them faint, and are carried by other farmers on a length of cloth hung between two poles.

Samar, says Merida, was the worst part of the trek — the rain, the boggy ground, the wetness. The 1,700-kilometer march is part of their long struggle for their ancestral land. The marching farmers are Higaonon natives, early settlers in the 144-hectare land they consider holy ground.

In 1997, the Department of Agrarian Reform issued certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) to 137 farmers. The grant was contested by landowner Norberto Quisumbing’s application for conversion of the land from agricultural to agro-industrial, in an attempt to evade the land’s redistribution.

The DAR denied Quisumbing’s request, claiming the land by rights belonged to the indigenous farmers. However, then Bukidnon’s Gov. Carlos Fortich wrote to the Office of the President — at that time, Fidel Ramos — on behalf of Quisumbing. The letter became the basis for Executive Secretary Ruben Torres to release an order giving the land to Quisumbing. In 1997, the farmers’ 28-day hunger strike in front of the DAR central office raised public awareness and compelled Ramos to issue what he called a “win-win” solution, granting 100 hectares to the farmers and 44 to Quisumbing.

In 1999, the Supreme Court overturned Ramos’ order and upheld Torres’ order on a technicality. Justices Reynato Puno and Jose Melo argued that procedural rules must give way to a consideration of the substance of the issue, but the conversion went through.

It has been eight years since the Supreme Court gave the land back to the Quisumbings, long past the five-year deadline that permits the developer to fulfill its promises. Quisumbing never filed for development permits — his intentions do not appear to be as benevolent as he claimed, when he said his agro-industrial area was his “way of helping insure food, shelter and lifetime security (for) the greater majority of Sumilao’s 22,000 people.” In 2002, he sold the land to San Miguel Foods Inc.

San Miguel filed for development permits in 2004, two years after they acquired the land. The clock for the five-year deadline did not begin in 1999, they say, it only began ticking when they applied and were issued permits in 2004.

Their development plan is a far cry from the original grandiose Quisumbing proposal that proposed research institutes, colleges, a library, a cultural center, a sports complex, processing plants, forest development, housing projects and various support facilities. San Miguel’s project is composed of piggeries, poultry farms and processing plants. As to whether there will be farming — “By farming do you mean planting?” — they say no, there will be no farming. They claim, however, that it is “a corporate social responsibility model” that is “anchored on creating shared value both for the company and the community.” They claim the piggery had direct permission from the DAR central office.

What I do not understand is this—why prime agricultural land, situated beside a natural irrigation canal is judged by the DAR as land suitable for pigs, and inappropriate for the people who have tilled it for generations.

Now the Sumilao farmers are in Manila, appealing for a cease-and-desist order to stop the ongoing construction of a hog farm in their property. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita has remanded the case to the DAR, ordering the department to come to a decision even before the farmers arrive in Manila. Last Thursday, instead of a decision, Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman asked for position papers from both sides, in spite of the bulk of documentation his department has been provided with.

Twenty-one-old Bajek-jek Merida stops in front of the row of policemen who guard the road leading to Malacañang. “We have walked 1,700 kilometers,” she says in Filipino, “and we’re not allowed to even see the gates of the Palace.” There will be 4,999 pigs living in Sumilao, she rages. “Are pigs more important than the farmers of Sumilao?”

Even the policemen are sympathetic. I hear murmurs of disbelief as to the distance the farmers have walked, and the hope that it was all worth it. In Caritas Manila, on orders from Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, policemen carry in boxes of food, distributing Jollibee cheeseburgers and fries to the farmers. And then there is a cry, and in a corner of the garden is Bajek-jek, sitting with two other girls on the broken grass.

“We did not come here to beg for food.” Her voice is hoarse. “Don’t you see us? We are so tired, so tired that we can barely walk. But we have walked. And we were stopped before we reached Malacañang. Do you want to see us die? We do not want food. We want our land.”

Around her, farmers bow their heads — in exhaustion, I think. And then I see how towels flop over faces, how a tattooed young farmer hides his eyes, how an older woman shivers in the heat, and I realize that all over the garden, men and women with calloused feet are crying quietly,