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Image by CJ Chanco
Filipino farmers out on the fields toiling for hours of back-breaking work for little pay, often brining in tow a carabao and an araro, make up a common scene in the nation’s far-flung provinces and rural barrios. With them are children as young as five, who share in their labour – and their poverty.
More adept at handling a "karit”, a panabas, or a sickle than grade school textbooks, only some of them manage to finish primary education; few if any reach high school, and many can neither afford nor see the need to aim for a college degree, tied as they are to the land and eager to help out their parents.
In their spare time, though, some of them fly kites.
Backgrounder
In early March, students from De La Salle University-College of Saint Benilde, through Ambala (Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita) and the Hacienda Luisita Peasants’ Support Network, joined the children in a weekend of solidarity with the farmers of Hacienda Luisita – Incorporated, as it is now referred to (HLI).
HLI is a 6,435-hectare sugar plantation estate in Tarlac owned by the Cojuangco-Aquinos and the latest array of private corporate interests that have once again strengthened the clan’s hand – further weakening hopes for stable employment and genuine agrarian reform for some five thousand-plus farmers and their families who have yet to recover lands historically theirs in a struggle well over two decades in the making.
As in most conflicts over land in the Philippines and elsewhere, they have faced militarization of their communities, frequent legal and physical harassment by authorities, extrajudicial killings, and at least two major massacres of peasants and activists: once under the ‘pro-democracy’ Cory administration in 1987 in Mendiola, and again in 2004 under Arroyo.
Five presidents later, the same farmers have received neither land nor compensation apart from slave wages, sophisticated legal maneuvering and bogus land distribution programmes at the behest of the President’s relatives.
For a better perspective on the history of Hacienda Luisita, and the context of farmers’ struggles over land in the rest of the country, please see:
bulatlat.com/main/luisita/
haciendaluisita.wordpress.com/about/
www.interaksyon.com/hacienda-luisita
“Sa Ngalan ng Tubo” (Tudla Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebetyUHC9hE
“Ang Pagbawi sa Luisita”(Mayday Multimedia)
www.maydaymultimedia.org/2010/11/17/ang-pagbawi-sa-luisit…
Image by CJ Chanco
Filipino farmers out on the fields toiling for hours of back-breaking work for little pay, often brining in tow a carabao and an araro, make up a common scene in the nation’s far-flung provinces and rural barrios. With them are children as young as five, who share in their labour – and their poverty.
More adept at handling a "karit”, a panabas, or a sickle than grade school textbooks, only some of them manage to finish primary education; few if any reach high school, and many can neither afford nor see the need to aim for a college degree, tied as they are to the land and eager to help out their parents.
In their spare time, though, some of them fly kites.
Backgrounder
In early March, students from De La Salle University-College of Saint Benilde, through Ambala (Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita) and the Hacienda Luisita Peasants’ Support Network, joined the children in a weekend of solidarity with the farmers of Hacienda Luisita – Incorporated, as it is now referred to (HLI).
HLI is a 6,435-hectare sugar plantation estate in Tarlac owned by the Cojuangco-Aquinos and the latest array of private corporate interests that have once again strengthened the clan’s hand – further weakening hopes for stable employment and genuine agrarian reform for some five thousand-plus farmers and their families who have yet to recover lands historically theirs in a struggle well over two decades in the making.
As in most conflicts over land in the Philippines and elsewhere, they have faced militarization of their communities, frequent legal and physical harassment by authorities, extrajudicial killings, and at least two major massacres of peasants and activists: once under the ‘pro-democracy’ Cory administration in 1987 in Mendiola, and again in 2004 under Arroyo.
Five presidents later, the same farmers have received neither land nor compensation apart from slave wages, sophisticated legal maneuvering and bogus land distribution programmes at the behest of the President’s relatives.
For a better perspective on the history of Hacienda Luisita, and the context of farmers’ struggles over land in the rest of the country, please see:
bulatlat.com/main/luisita/
haciendaluisita.wordpress.com/about/
www.interaksyon.com/hacienda-luisita
“Sa Ngalan ng Tubo” (Tudla Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebetyUHC9hE
“Ang Pagbawi sa Luisita”(Mayday Multimedia)
www.maydaymultimedia.org/2010/11/17/ang-pagbawi-sa-luisit…
Abay Tsehaye and Kassa Tekleberhan on Current Political Events in Ethiopia
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