News in Pictures | Faces of rural poverty

Report and photos by Viggo Sarmago

Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Peasants and farmers, together with other multisectoral organizations, march from Liwasang Bonifacio to Mendiola for this year’s Peasant Day. Their demands: genuine agrarian reform and to stop corruption and state-sponsored harassment and attacks against their communities and their lands. 

Farmers from Rizal, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Oriental Mindoro, Negros Island, and other provinces protested to express heated frustrations toward rampant corruption, environmental destruction, state neglect, and the lack of genuine agrarian reform. They decried the state’s land use conversion process, which has threatened their livelihoods in order to make room for corporate-backed development projects.

Fe Baldo, an agricultural worker from Guimba, Nueva Ecija, went to Mendiola to hold the government accountable for the rampant corruption, rice prices, and the worsening of their communities’ well-being. She cited that the lowering rice prices have strained their finances. “Our rice prices are getting lower, because no one wants to buy our rice, so we’re here today to let the president know about our people’s struggles,” she said in Filipino.

Rohen Afable Calapan, a farmer from Oriental Mindoro, shared the same sentiments. Calapan’s community is on the brink of losing the title to their land to large mining corporations. He also stressed the need for a wage increase, worrying for the future of their children. 

While farmers struggle to sustain themselves and their families, groups also condemned land-use conversion that allowed corporations to destroy their lands.

Jennilyn Ajeda, a farmer from Rizal, stressed that the biggest problem her community faces is the lack of just compensation and support of their farmers amid environmentally destructive projects such as the Kaliwa and Wawa Dams and mining projects. She explained that these projects have displaced local farmers and Indigenous peoples and destroyed their lands and made them more vulnerable to severe flooding.

In Negros, farmers such as Mario Tapi-On are being displaced to make way for solar energy. “The farmers in Negros are landless; the crops they plant are stolen, because their lands are being converted into solar energy,” he explains. He cites that the solar energy project is allegedly owned by Citicore Renewable Energy Corporation and is backed by local capitalists. He also emphasized that his community was never consulted about the project and only knew once they were told to relocate as they started development. 

For farmers like John Paul Olis from Hacienda Luisita, decades of state neglect was what led him and his community to mobilize in Manila. According to him, they will eventually be displaced as a result of the ongoing land theft by the fabric industry, other industries, and infrastructure projects like malls reportedly by Ayala, Aboitiz, and other corporations. His community was also not consulted about these projects. “We are only getting angrier towards the president as our resources continue to be stolen,” he ended. (CAM, RVO)

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