Peasants cultivating 21 and 79 hectares of land in Hacienda Chiquita in E.B. Magalona, Negros Occidental are facing threats of eviction. The land was supposed to be distributed under the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER), but is again being taken away from them.

Since 1952, peasant families and residents have lived and farmed in Hacienda Chiquita, which spans Barangay Tuburan and Barangay Poblacion 1. The land grabbing will affect more than 120 farm workers, and threatens to displace 300 households or about 1,500 individuals.

In 2012, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) urged farmers to apply for CARPER to cover the 21-hectare land. With the help of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), they submitted their documents, officially titling the land in 2019.

Landlord opposition and the slow processing of documents during the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the distribution of the land. The Duterte regime also killed and suppressed peasant leaders and support groups.

Instead of proceeding, DAR cancelled the already awarded Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) in 2022, but informed the farmers only in 2023. They appealed the cancellation the following year.

While the appeal was being processed, road construction began in December 2024, destroying four of the 21 hectares of land.

Farmers fear this is a precursor to land-use conversion, a common tactic used to nullify CLOAs and stop land distribution. The land is also reportedly being prepared as a commercial center.

The adjacent 79-hectare land also faces threat of seizure. The dwindling of funds for CARPER under the Duterte and Marcos regimes slowed the progress of related cases and petitions. Authorities are now set to reclassify the land, to use it in a housing project for those displaced by coastal developments in nearby barangays.

On July 9, farmers held a protest at the E.B. Magalona market, near the DAR office, to assert their right to the land.

Marcos’ bogus land reform

Agrarian reform and distribution has covered no new land under the Marcos regime. Of the 195,000 CLOAs distributed by the DAR between July 2022 and January 2025, 68% or 132,000 came from previously farmer-owned collective CLOAs that were parcelled under the World Bank’s SPLIT program. SPLIT is used to subdivide large landholdings and subject them to market valuation for taxation, sale, and eventual land-use conversion.

Under the New Agrarian Emancipation Act (NAEA), Marcos claims to have “amnestied” CARP beneficiaries’ unpaid amortization. In reality, it waived only a small percentage of old debts but did not include the beneficiaries’ new debts incurred. It covered only 14% of its beneficiary target and just 6% of farmers. Moreover, NAEA did not eliminate the massive compensation mandated by CARP for landlords; instead, passing the burden onto the public. This year, the Court of Appeals ordered the government to pay a staggering ₱28 billion to the Aquino-Cojuangco family for Hacienda Luisita.

At its core, both SPLIT and NAEA are simply additions to the long list of schemes that allow landlords and hacienderos, plantations, and large foreign agribusiness, real estate, and other corporations to grab and monopolize land.