El Niño impacts show US-Duterte regime’s neglect of peasant plight

The onslaught of El Niño in the countryside reveals, yet again, the passivity and inutility of the US-Duterte regime in addressing the plight of peasants in the country. Hungry, desperate and forsaken, the peasant class is left with no choice but to fight for their survival and to take their just struggle for land and rights to a higher level–the path of armed revolution.

This is the reality faced by the poorest of the peasants, those who remain shackled to oppressive feudal ties to landlords and those who have been forced out of their land by greedy compradors and their mercenary armies. They are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of El Niño, and are pushed to further desperation by cyclical economic problems such as the increasing price of basic goods and falling prices of agricultural produce.

The government’s systemic lack of support for the agriculture sector becomes more fatal for farmers during El Niño season, when drought and intense heat cause decreased agricultural productivity and total destruction of crops. As of April, barely two months into El Niño, the total damage in agriculture has reached more than P5.35 billion, with rice and corn as the two most affected crops. Hard-hit areas include provinces in Southern Tagalog , where 23.85% of the land area is devoted to agriculture and more than 1.3 million people earn their living as farmers, farm workers and other related jobs.

As El Niño worsens, famine and death become inevitable, sparking unrest and various forms of struggle in the countryside. These will no doubt be met with violence by the fascist reactionary regime as illustrated when the state’s armed forces fired at protesting farmers in Kidapawan, North Cotabato in April 2016 as well as the farmers of Hacienda Nene in Sagay City, Negros Occidental in October 2018.

These dire conditions lay down the basis for the peasants to wage an armed struggle for land and other democratic rights. Without the revolution, peasants will languish in poverty until they perish. Without the people’s army, peasants will never muster enough power and strength to engage and defeat their enemies: the despotic landlord class, bourgeois compradors and the mercenary armed forces.

Thus, joining the armed revolution is the only way for peasants to free themselves from the shackles of poverty. They must advance the national democratic revolution to implement a pro-peasant economic program that will ensure the resilience of the local agricultural sector in times of calamity and drought. They have to bring the revolution to victory to realize their aspirations for land and life with dignity.

The US-Duterte regime has, in many instances, mocked the revolution, saying that the revolutionary movement is not capable of providing land to landless farmers. and pays lip service to the rapid distribution of government lands to peasants. . This statement proves Duterte’s ignorance and inability to grasp why the revolution persists and how it empowers the oppressed.

The five-decade armed revolution of the people grows because of the unwavering support of the peasant class that has benefited from the agrarian revolution implemented by the revolutionary movement in the countryside. Beneficiaries of the agrarian revolution number by the millions across the country. In ST, hundreds of thousands of families have benefitted from the triumphs of RA campaigns, with tens of thousands tilling land freed by the revolutionary movement.

The chronic tumult of a semicolonial, semifeudal society drives the peasants to take up arms and fight , feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, imperialism and the puppet regime. They embrace the revolution as their own, and are committed to fulfilling their revolutionary tasks including the immediate removal of the inutile and tyranical US-Duterte regime from power.