Class struggle in Hacienda Luisita
The last three months saw one of the fiercest class struggles between landlords and farm workers. Despite the Cojuangco family's employment of outright violence, barefaced deception and threats, the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita were never once fazed.
After several months of steadfast struggle, the victory of the Hacienda Luisita strike is now within sight. It will be recorded in history as one of the biggest victories of farm workers in their struggle not only for higher wages but also for genuine land reform.
Cacique. The Cojuangcos who own Hacienda Luisita are despotic landlords. The hacienda is a lifeline for five branches of the family. Their wealth primarily comes from Hacienda Luisita Incorporated (HLI) which was established to evade land distribution, and the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) sugar mill. Income from the two companies has sustained the luxurious lifestyles and unproductive activities of several generations of Cojuangcos that now live in the hacienda. Except for a few pieces of farming equipment, the family has never invested in the development of the land.
Like the caciques or local chiefs of the Spanish colonial regime, they have long lorded over the hacienda. They operate the hacienda through feudal patronage. So-called company supervisors are in fact no different from the kabo or feudal overseers of the old system who served as the landlords' henchmen. They determine who, where and for how long farm workers can work. The third-generation Cojuangcos who run the hacienda, graduates as they are of prestigious universities abroad, are no different from their forebears in their feudal attitude and treatment of the farm workers.
The Cojuangcos secure their rule through the use of reactionary laws, deception and violence. Aside from the Northern Luzon Command headquarters in Tarlac, the 69th IB, CAFGU units and even the paramilitary Yellow Army infest the barrios of the hacienda. This unholy connection has led to the dastardly massacre of farm workers.
To continue to reap benefits from the hacienda in the face of the sugar industry's collapse, the Cojuangcos have resorted to large-scale land-use conversion. But they have not taken any steps to invest in industry. Land-use conversion by the Cojuangcos has been limited to leasing and selling land to local and foreign companies. The family has not made any significant investments even in the Luisita Industrial Park. Neither does the family plan to place any direct investments in other industries in the next round of land-use conversion.
Land question at the core of the strike. Majority of the farm workers in the hacienda are of the traditional type. They are the poor peasants who are the real owners of the land seized by the Cojuangcos. Their ownership of the land has basis even in reactionary law.
Their tools are no different from those of the cane cutters of old. Their livelihood depends on the planting cycle. Even the modern farm workers inside the sugar mill are mere adjuncts in the backward process of sugar cane production.
The principal enemies of the hacienda's farm workers are the despotic Cojuangco family, the reactionary state and military, and the Cojuangco henchmen within and outside the hacienda. They are struggling for a wage increase at the minimum and for their right to the land at the maximum. They have at the same time issued a call for national industrialization. The HLI farm workers' union (United Luisita Workers' Union or ULWU) and the CAT sugar mill union (CAT Labor Union or CATLU) are partners in this fight.
There is solid basis for the farm workers' claim to the the land. Thus, the Cojuangco family has left nothing undone to drive them out of the hacienda. As early as 1957, the Cojuangco family and Tabacalera, the hacienda's former owner, already had an agreement to distribute the land to the farm workers in the area. The agreement also stipulated that the Cojuangcos were not actually being awarded the title to the hacienda but only acquired the right to lease out the land. The agreement likewise covered only portions planted to sugar cane and did not include other areas now occupied by HLI. The land was already supposed to be covered by land reform as early as 1947. Even the land that Luisita Mall stands on in Tarlac City is not owned by the Cojuangcos but is public land that was used by the then US military base as a pasture!
The Cojuangcos cannot deny the legal basis for the farm workers' claim to the hacienda. In a way, the deceptive Stock Distribution Option serves to recognize such right. The SDO scheme provides that 33% of the company's stocks be owned by the farm workers. Although the SDO is extremely favorable to the Cojuangcos in their desire to avoid land reform, they have nonetheless persistently been looking for ways to circumvent it.
In August 2003, the farm workers were secretly and illegally made to sign a document stating that if a farm worker loses his job, he likewise loses his standing as an HLI stock owner. In fact, the reactionary law itself states that a farm worker remains a stockholder regardless of his employment status. Under the "buy-back option," HLI offers a terminated farm worker `30,000-40,000 for the return of the stock certificates issued by the Cojuangco family. Over 300 farm workers have been terminated and others deceived if not coerced into having their names stricken from the list of HLI stockholders.
In the face of the Cojuangcos' relentlessly deceptive and exploitative schemes, the farm workers' strike was justified and timely. The cooperation between CATLU and ULWU, which has effected the hacienda's total paralysis, has proven to be a major factor in the strike's success.
The farm workers have firmly demanded the immediate reinstatement of all those terminated by the Cojuangcos. Aside from the 76 workers laid off last August, 35 CATLU members were also kicked out this January through an order from the Department of Labor and Employment. They have clearly issued demands for an increase in the daily wage and other benefits. They have also demanded that the Cojuangcos recognize all of the listed HLI stockholders, whether currently employed by the hacienda or not.
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