Three farmers face charges in militarized Lupang Ramos

By Shan Kenshin Ecaldre

Bulatlat.com

Cabuyao City, Laguna — Three farmers from the contested farmlands of Lupang Ramos are facing criminal charges after a confrontation with soldiers inside their community on August 11, sparking renewed fears of harassment to silence dissent.

They were charged with grave coercion, grave threats, and other light threats. Residents described these as baseless, fabricated, and intended to intimidate those asserting their right to the land. Community members said that the confrontation did not begin with aggression but with the sudden influx of uniformed troops and intensified surveillance inside their barangay.

Farm tools as weapons

Among those charged was Miriam Aledia Villanueva, secretary-general of KASAMA-LR, who said that she was cited as threatening simply for holding a kalawit, a curved iron tool commonly used to clear rice paddies.

“They described it as a sharp, pointed machete,” Villanueva said in an interview with Bulatlat. “As farmers, we cannot live without a kalawit coming from the fields. When I speak, my hands move, and the tool moves with them. That’s all.”

She called the complaint absurd, stressing the irony that “a soldier trained to kill and die” would fear a farm implement. What troubles her more is the refusal of local officials to talk.

“It’s disheartening that officials we believed would defend constituents obey salaried state forces instead,” she said. “No one even bothered to understand why we struggle.”

Birthday marred by fear 

For young farmer Jojo Mercado, the incident interrupted what was supposed to be a quiet birthday celebration for his wife.

A female soldier twice approached his small sari-sari store, first for soft drinks, then sanitary napkins. Mercado said that he politely refused. Community rules, formed after previous tensions with state forces, discourage selling to soldiers.

Contrary to military statements, Mercado said that he never confronted anyone angrily, nor was he shirtless. Days later, he found out that he had been charged.

“You grow fearful because they have more power,” he said. “Anything can be made to look legal.” Still, he refuses to abandon his home.

“I cannot run. I fight for my children’s future,” he said. His wife, though anxious, refused to ask him to hide.

Elder’s defiance

Also implicated was 71-year-old farmer Anna Padilla who arrived carrying her kalawit on her way to the fields, only to find neighbors in turmoil.

“When there is trouble, we don’t abandon each other, this is our struggle for land,” she said.

Padilla’s crops are easily destroyed by rain or drought. She relies on her children for support. The charges angered her family but she replied, “If you don’t fight, you gain nothing. No one will give you land if you don’t defend your own.”

Padilla has resisted since 1987, recalling previous confrontations with soldiers. “We must defend the land we cultivate.”

Century-old problem

According to peasant alliance Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (KASAMA-TK), Lupang Ramos reflects the failure of agrarian reform across Southern Tagalog. Despite the longest and most expensive land program in Philippine history, Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms

(CARP/CARPER), the majority of farmers remain landless.

Large landlord clans continue to dominate hacienda estates while state programs have cancelled titles, redistributed lands through “table mapping”, or reconcentrated holdings to private firms. Out of every 10 farmers, seven to eight do not own land.

Militarization, red-tagging

Residents trace the escalation of harassment to the government’s Whole-of-Nation Approach, a counter-insurgency framework that embeds soldiers inside civilian communities under the banner of “peace and development.” On paper, it promises service delivery. On the ground, Villanueva said that it results in  surveillance.

“Before, they would only pass through the barangay,” Villanueva said. “Now, they stay here. They watch who we talk to. They take pictures.” The presence of uniformed troops, armed rifles slung casually as children walk to school, has blurred the line between public safety and occupation.

Farmer leaders in Lupang Ramos have been red-tagged, harassed, surveyed, and now slapped with trumped-up charges. Residents point to elements of Task Force Ugnay, an intelligence unit active in Southern Tagalog, as allegedly behind the complaints against the Ramos 3.

“They say we are rebels,” Padilla said, shaking her head. “But we are just farmers. Our weapons are seeds.”

“The government insists militarization protects investments. But for decades, state forces have guarded mines, quarries, dams, logging sites, plantations, and resorts, many connected to powerful families or foreign capitals.” said Jojo Pilario, Regional Executive Council member of KASAMA-TK in an interview with Bulatlat.

“Each development displaces rural communities deeper into hunger. Rivers run shallow, forests thin, and watersheds dry.” he said.  

Criminalizing expression

Farmers who speak about landlessness, human-rights violations, and hunger are frequently labeled as belonging to “communist fronts”, a narrative amplified by the Anti-Terrorism Law which grants broad discretion to security forces. Organizers said that the law punishes even the simplest forms of dissent.

Residents described local media coverage as shallow and deferential, reinforcing what they call the state’s “illusion of democratic space.” While nightly newscasts celebrate investment, they rarely ask who shoulders the cost.

Land conversion, legal loopholes

Legislation such as the National Land Use Act (NLUA) and the World Bank-funded Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling 

(SPLIT) program accelerates the conversion of agricultural land into industrial estates. By slicing collective titles into individual plots, SPLIT makes each smallholder vulnerable to buy-outs. A single illness, an unpaid debt, or a bad harvest can force a sale.

“Divide the farmers, and the land becomes easier to take,” Padilla observed.

“Only 7 million of the country’s 12 million agricultural hectares are covered by CARP,  and many of those have already been converted into subdivisions, golf courses, and industrial parks.” Pilario said. “A title, farmers lament, does not guarantee security against speculation.”

Microcosm of larger war

For peasant alliances KASAMA-TK,  Lupang Ramos symbolizes land monopoly, bureaucrat capitalism, and imperialist investment. Three structural forces they say shape the countryside. From Cavite to Coron, Lucena to Laguna, farmland is being converted into industrial parks, tourism enclaves, and agri-business corridors.

“What is happening here is happening everywhere, land for profit, not for food,”  Jojo Pilario, of KASAMA-TK said, pointing to farms converted into industrial zones, tourism enclaves, and agribusiness corridors. As boundaries shift, residents said that corporations quietly expand while communities are fractured.

Criminalizing farming

For the Ramos 3 and their neighbors, their only “crime” is planting on land powerful interests want cleared. Their kalawit, hoes, and sickles which are used to prune rice and weed soil become “weapons” in the state’s eyes.

“If they truly listened,” Villanueva said, “they would see these tools feed children, not armies.”

Residents stressed that the confrontation could have been avoided through dialogue. Instead, they received soldiers, summons, and threats.

Harassing farmers

Harassment against farmers in Lupang Ramos has escalated as their collective cultivation (bunkalan) challenges the shaky legal basis used to exempt the land from agrarian reform. The exemption hinges on a supposed 1972 ordinance converting the area into a subdivision, an ordinance no agency has been able to produce.

 “If the ordinance is real, then show it. The question is simple; it’s the answer they refuse to give,” Villanueva said.

Under the Whole-of-Nation Approach, residents reported surveillance, red-tagging, and military presence meant to pressure communities to vacate. “They call us ‘red suns’ because we defend our right to land.”

When legal remedies stalled, farmers turned to bunkalan in 2017 to assert their claim. “Collective cultivation becomes the answer when the courts remain silent.”

Struggle rooted in soil

Farmers of Lupang Ramos said that genuine land reform cannot be achieved through piecemeal legislation. It requires dismantling the structures that concentrate land in the hands of a few: landlord families, bureaucrat capitalists, and foreign companies.

Until then, communities like Tartaria, Kapdula, and Lupang Ramos will continue to confront poverty, displacement, criminalization, and the silencing of their right to organize.

“Without land, what do we eat?” Padilla asked, gripping her kalawit. “We stand because we must live.” 

Mercado glanced at his children playing on the dirt road. “For them,” he said. “So one day, they won’t have to choose between food and fear.” (DAA)

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