The Villar family, through its company Communities Iloilo Inc, a subsidiary of Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc, forcibly evicted nine farming families from their homes in Barangay San Jose, San Miguel, Iloilo last October 2. According to reports, the company’s goons entered the area that day and demolished the families’ houses.

The bourgeois comprador and political dynasty Villar family is notorious for seizing and then converting agricultural lands into subdivisions.

Ang Mangingisda, a student newspaper from the University of the Philippines-Visayas, reported that an Iloilo court granted Communities Iloilo Inc. permission to “forcibly enter” the property belonging to the Saul family. However, the affected families maintain they have a rightful claim to the land they have long inhabited.

The farmers hold the local office of the Department of Agrarian Reform responsible for refusing to classify their land as agricultural, which should have prevented its conversion ito a subdivision.

The residents staged a protest against Villar’s goons and police forces and soldiers who surrounded the area.