Editorial:
Direct class anger towards the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling classes and the entire ruling system

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

For several decades now, the workers, peasants and farm workers of Hacienda Luisita and Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) have been raging in anger due to the oppression and exploitation they have suffered in the hands of the big landlord and comprador-big bourgeois Cojuangco clan.

Intense class anger burns in the hearts of the victims of the terrible massacre in Hacienda Luisita. Their cries for justice reach out to the heavens over the fascist troops� merciless shooting of the strike and demonstration launched by workers and farm workers of Central Azucarera de Tarlac and the massacre of up to 14 peasants and farm workers on November 16.

Hacienda Luisita paints a portrait of undeniable injustice. While the Cojuangco family lives in a stately mansion and could indulge its every whim, the workers and farm workers who cultivate and enrich the land live in cramped hovels and endure measly wages. With the continued land-use conversion inside the hacienda, they are not even sure that the tiny lots where their shacks are set up would remain in their possession.

Peping Cojuangco�s horses who live in air-conditioned stables lead far more comfortable lives. In fact, the shampoo used to bathe these horses cost a lot more than the P9.50 daily take-home pay of farm workers in the hacienda.

This is the despicable situation that the Cojuangcos sought to maintain when they concocted the stock distribution option (SDO) scheme in 1987. The SDO was designed to take advantage of loopholes in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) which was initiated by the reactionary regime of Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, one of Hacienda Luisita�s owners. Through this scheme, the hacienda would no longer be subject to land reform. The CARL, already watered-down and bogus, was further diluted and rendered ludicrous by a scheme to distribute worthless stocks to peasants and make them appear as co-owners of the hacienda.

Back then, it was already clear how the state defended the class rule of big landlords and the comprador-big bourgeoisie. The massacre at Luisita has bared this even more, with the state flagrantly using its armed forces to inflict violence and crush the just actions of peasants and farm workers in the hacienda. Prior to this, the state was ever quick to scuttle the strike at the hacienda through an order from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). It was tantamount to ordering the workers to surrender their struggle and blindly follow whatever the Cojuangcos wanted.

The massacre at Luisita has once again proven that the exploitative ruling classes of big landlords and comprador-big bourgeoisie will never relinquish their power and privilege of their own accord; that the state and its minions are mere instruments of the ruling classes and not friends but enemies of the working class and peasantry; and, that barefaced violence is the state and ruling classes� response to a people who would no longer be deceived.

With its use of counterrevolutionary armed violence, the reactionary state directly provokes the people to advance and intensify their armed revolutionary resistance.

The class hatred that seethes in the hearts of peasants and farm workers not only in Hacienda Luisita but across the archipelago must be directed at the revolutionary overthrow of their class enemies and the entire ruling system.

21 November 2004
English Edition

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