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Streetwise
Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

Business World
Friday-Saturday, November 19-20, 2004

Unprovoked carnage

The words of regret and commiseration ring hollow.

To the relatives of those killed among the Hacienda Luisita strikers and their supporters, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's statement calling for "prudence and sobriety on both sides" and for "settling the dispute in a peaceful and rationale manner" must be causing more agitation than calming their outrage at the violent dispersal that left seven people confirmed dead, 43 wounded and scores arrested.

Even as party-list representatives from Anakpawis and Bayan Muna, Rafael Mariano and Satur Ocampo, called for a thorough investigation of the violent enforcement by the PNP and AFP of a questionable return-to-work order issued by DoLE, it is clear the victims were the workers, their families and supporters and that the employment of superior and inordinate force lay squarely on the side of government.

It is appalling how the management and owners of Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI), the heirs of Jose Cojuangco Sr., including no less than former President Corazon Aquino, and Malaca§ang, through Labor and Employment Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, not only allowed this carnage to happen, but apparently colluded in trying to break the 11-day strike by employing the state's Armed Forces.

Contrary to the claims of HLI through its spokesperson, Atty. Vigor Mendoza, former congressman Jose "Peping" Cojuangco Jr. and presidential son Rep. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) and Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU) had not closed themselves to negotiations to resolve outstanding differences and to avoid violence at the picket lines. In fact, Rep. Satur Ocampo and other progressive party list congressmen, with the consent and cooperation of the two labor unions, had been shuttling to and from the hacienda to try to find peaceful avenues to address the issues raised by the farm and sugar mill workers.

Rep. Ocampo had been in touch with Secretary Sto. Tomas, apprising her of the situation wherein any assault on the strikers would invariably result in innumerable deaths and injuries to even family members who had been helping their kin take turns at the picket lines, cooking food and providing all-out support. He appealed to her for government to show maximum restraint and assist in mediating the conflict rather than insisting on breaking up the strike and protest rally at the hacienda gates and calling out the police and military to do it.

Hours before Tuesday's assault, Ocampo had brought representatives of the strikers to dialogue with Peping Cojuangco. The latter even refused to meet with two ULWU representatives, claiming that a new set of officers had taken over the retrenched union officials. (The management continues to obfuscate the fact that what triggered the strike of the farm workers in the first place was the dismissal of almost all of the new ULWU officials, along with 327 other workers, thus effectively undermining a new collective bargaining agreement being negotiated by ULWU with management.)

The dialogue ended in an impasse when Cojuangco insisted on both unions lifting their strike before any negotiations on their demands could be restarted and the workers refusing to do so until they had assurances that management would face their demands.

Soon after, all hell broke loose when soldiers and police commenced with their brutal attack using three armed personnel carriers, high-powered rifles, tear gas, water cannons and truncheons.

Thus, there should be no whitewash of this condemnable use of the armed might of the state to crush an unarmed workers' strike and a protest rally of their supporters. Any decent and upright person, once the facts and circumstances are brought to light, would join in the just demand for an impartial and thoroughgoing investigation to find out the truth behind the bloody dispersal as well as the historical roots of the festering social conflict in Hacienda Luisita.

The propensity of the spokespersons of the management and owners of HLI as well as that of Malaca§ang, DoLE, the PNP and AFP, to utilize the smokescreen of innuendoes against the Left, specifically Bayan, Bayan Muna and other militant organizations, should be exposed for what it is -- a blatant attempt to cover up their culpability in this massacre of defenseless people carried out to crush their fierce struggles for decent wages and better living conditions.

Instead of recognizing the miserable plight, if not legitimate grievances, of farm workers, some of whom had pay envelopes showing a take-home pay of P9.50 after deductions due to loans and advances, whose work days had been reduced to once or twice a week or who had been unceremoniously fired from their jobs, the propaganda line of the Cojuangcos is that non-workers, non-Tarlaque§os and leftist troublemakers made up the bulk of people manning the picket lines.

Moreover, these "outsiders" were supposedly agitating with issues plucked out of thin air.

According to HLI spokesperson Mendoza, these pertained to "rehashed issues" like the stock distribution option (or what the family of Cory Aquino used to go around land distribution mandated by law and demanded by generations of their farm worker employees) and other "non-labor" issues which were not specified, but by imputation had to do with political demands of the Left.

To criticism that Ocampo, Mariano and other progressive party-list representatives were partial to the strikers, their unabashed reply is "Yes, we are, because they are our constituents" and because, we may add, this is only being consistent with their genuine leftist politics which takes the interests and views of the deprived and oppressed masses as their own.

Having said this does not mean Ocampo et al. cannot be objective and could not play a positive role in helping to mediate the conflict, at least in delaying if not preventing what Bayan-Central Luzon called the "unprovoked carnage" of last Tuesday.

Any attempt by government and HLI to still use squid tactics to obscure the workers legitimate demands and red-baiting to muddle the real issues will fail in the light of their bloodied hands.
 

Hindi Ako Makakalimot
- gem karlos aramil

Nagbalik sa'king alaala
ang marahas na nakalipas.

Kung paano ka pinaulanan ng bala
habang nakapila,
sa isang lugar na tila parusa
para sa katulad mong magsasaka.

Ang mga tinig at hagulgol mo,
na kumukurot sa'king isipan.

Hanggang sa huling pagpatak ng dugo at luha mo,
sa lupang pinag-alayan-

hindi ko ito malimutan,
at kailan man hinding hindi malilimutan.

Sa bawat pag-ihip ng hangin,
sa bawat pagsibol ng inyong tinanim

Pangungulila sayo'y hindi maikubli.

Ngayong ikapitong taon
ng iyong kamatayan,
kung nasaan ka man

kaibigan.

Wag ka sanang mag-alala
patuloy ko paring
hahanapin ang hustisya
nang hindi ka manatiling

isa lamang alaala.

Sana'y Nalunod Ang Putok ng Baril
lenkurt lopez

Nasaksihan niya kung paano-
pinapahirapan ang kanyang mga kasama.

Napapikit na lang siya

Umusal ng dasal

Habang namumuo ang luha sa kanyang mga mata'y
nagiging garalgal ang kanyang panalangin.

Nang marinig niya ang putok ng baril-
hindi na niya natapos ang kanyang panalangin.
Pag-iyak na lang ang naitugon-
sa putok ng baril na kanina lang ay nagtatanong.

Magkasabay pumatak
ang kanyang luha
at ang dugo ng kanyang mga kasama

sa lupa.
 

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14 DEAD, 133 ARRESTED, HUNDREDS MISSING IN THE VIOLENT DISPERSAL OF HACIENDA LUISITA STRIKE

All they wanted is to own a piece of land to till for a living. What they got was a piece of mound to lay their bodies to rest till eternity.

In a violent strike dispersal in Hacienda Luisita last November 16, 2004, 14 people were killed, including two children aged 2 and 5 years old who died from suffocation from teargas lobbed by the police and army dispersal teams. One of the victims was allegedly strangled after being shot and his dead body hanged in the factory’s gate. At least 35 people were reported to have sustained gunshot wounds, 133 were arrested and detained, hundreds were wounded and another hundred still missing. The carnage is a gruesome reminder of the infamous Mendiola Massacre and Lupao Massacre, which also arose from the peasants demand to own their land.
 

Nine (9) of those killed in what is now called as the Hacienda Luisita Massacre were identified as Jun David, Adriano Caballero, Jhaivie Basilio, Jesus Laza, Jaime Pastidio, Juancho Sanchez, Neng Balete, Boy Versola and Jessie Valdez. Of the 133 arrested, 117 were detained at Camp Macabulos in Tarlac while 16 people were detained at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) - Tarlac. Majority of those arrested were released only yesterday.
 

The melee erupted at around 3:20 p.m., after the dispersal team of the Tarlac police under the command of Chief Supt. Quirino dela Torre and with the support of the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) forcibly broke the workers’ picketline in front of Hacienda Luisita. The police said they merely followed the order of Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas who deputized the Nolcom in enforcing at all means the Assumption of Jurisdiction (AJ) issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (D0LE). The DOLE order calls for a return-to-work order and a free ingress-egress. It deputized the Tarlac police to implement the order.
As if in a war zone, three (3) armored personnel carrier (APC), several fire trucks and 10 military trucks were stationed in the area to allegedly assist the police in enforcing the AJ. Elements of the 69th and 703rd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army were also deployed in the area. Combined elements of hundreds of military and police forces with high-powered firearms attacked the picketing workers and thousands of its supporters. As the APC rammed into the workers’ barricade, the military and police repeatedly used water cannons, high-powered rifles, truncheons and teargas to disperse the strikers and their supporters and to eventually open the factory gates.
 

Workers’ strike for land, wages and jobs
 

More than 5,000 sugar mill workers and sugarcane farmers of Hacienda Luisita went on strike last Nov. 6. Members of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU) barricaded the factory's Gate 2 while members of the United Luisita Workers' Union (ULWU) simultaneously locked up the mill's Gate 1. CATLU is the employees union while ULWU is the farmworkers union.
 

The strike arose from the deadlock in the negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between CATLU and Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) and the illegal dismissal of 327 farm workers belonging to ULWU last Oct. 1. Among those illegally dismissed were ULWU president and vice president, Rene Galang and Ildefonso Pingul, respectively, and eight other union officers.
 

On its part, CATLU demands a P100 (US$ 1.78) salary increase and hospitalization benefits. But the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) management said that it can only provide a measly P12 wage hike and a P12,000 bonus. Series of negotiations ensued between CATLU and the management but the latter stood pat on its decision thereby resulting in a deadlock.
 

More than the issue of wage and jobs, land distribution remains to be the major demand of Hacienda Luisita workers. The workers, led by ULWU, are calling for the scrapping of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO), which the Cojuangcos used to purportedly escape land distribution to its tenants under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Ironically, it was then Pres. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, whose family owns the Hacienda, who signed the CARP law in 1987.
 

The deceptive SDO resulted to massive retrenchment and suppressed collective actions of the two unions. They also said that contrary to the claim of the Cojuangco family that 33% of the plantation’s income goes to the farm workers being part-owners, only 3% are being distributed to them in stocks.
The workers also hit the reduction of their working days into once a week, which forced some of them to do laundry work, collect junks and get odd jobs for a living. While their gross income is P190 (US$ 3.39) a day, the farm workers only get a take home pay of a measly P9.50 (US$ 17 cents) due to loan deductions and cash advances. The loans are a direct result of reduced man-days and limited working opportunities. This means that the farm workers have to subsist on a P 9.50 weekly budget brought about by the once-a-week work scheme.
 

Hacienda Luisita is a sprawling 6,000-hectare property of the Cojuangco clan. It is owned and managed by HLI which was incorporated on Aug. 23, 1988. HLI incorporators are Pedro Cojuangco, Josephine Reyes, Jose Cojuangco Jr., Teresita A. Lopa and Paz Teopaco – all brothers and sisters of former Pres. Aquino. HLI had 5,067 farm workers and 487 employees in 2002. Based on submitted documents at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company posted a net income of P14 million in 2002 and had total assets of P1.59 billion in the same year.
 

Over the years, Hacienda Luisita has become very controversial because of its exemption in the land distribution program through its SDO scheme. It has become a symbol of the peasants’ long battle for genuine land reform.

Social and Class Struggle
 

In a statement, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) condemned “in the strongest possible terms the excessive use of military force and the violent dispersal that caused deaths and injuries to the striking farm and sugar mill workers of Hacienda Luisita.” It held the Hacienda Luisita management and the Cojuangco family, led by landlord and big comprador bourgeoisie Jose “Peping” Cojuangco and former Pres. Aquino, the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regime, DOLE Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, the military and police for the blood that spilled in the picket lines.
 

“The strike at Hacienda Luisita is more than just a strike. It is a concrete illustration of the lingering social and class struggle between the exploited Filipino people and exploiters from the landlord, big comprador bourgeoisie and capitalist classes,” stressed KMU Chairman Elmer Labog.
 

The strike has enjoyed massive support from various communities in Tarlac and other sectors nationwide. On Nov. 15, some 12,000 – 15,000 people from 10 surrounding communities poured at the picketlines to show support to the workers. Together, they thwarted an earlier attempt of the police and military to dismantle the workers’ barricades.
 

The bloody dispersal is the 4th such incident in the 11-day old strike of farm and sugarcane workers. The bloody row is also the third massacre case involving the Cojuangco clan and a member of its family. The other two were the Mendiola Massacre that killed 13 peasants on Jan. 22, 1987 and Lupao Massacre (also in Central Luzon) on Feb.10, 1988, with 17 peasants killed. Both carnages took place during the time of Pres. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.
 

The struggle continues
 

At present, the remains of the slain victims lie at the gates of Hacienda Luisita. The victims’ family and the two labor unions vowed to parade the bodies of the 14 fatalities as a grim reminder of the brutal carnage. They also averred to regroup and restore the picketlines, stressing that the bloodshed all the more fortified their resolve to continue with the fight. “It is better for us to die fighting than die of hunger,” said the workers.
 

Yesterday, an independent fact-finding mission was held simultaneous with the visit of four Representatives from progressive party-list groups Anakpawis, Bayan Muna and Gabriela. The four militant lawmakers, accompanied by workers and representatives from other sectors, went to the Hacienda to gather testimonies and evidence on the bloody dispersal. They were initially barred from entering the gates but were allowed to after a 30-minute negotiation.
 

The said party-list groups have asked the Congress to form a Congressional committee to conduct a full-dress investigation of the massacre and the issues being raised by the striking farm and sugarcane workers.
 

Even with the carnage, charges of assault, illegal assembly, inciting to sedition and malicious mischief are being readied against the strikers. Bayan Muna – Tarlac also reported that soldiers are conducting “zoning” activities in nearby villages to hunt and arrest the strikers and its supporters.
 

There is a snowball of protest over the overkill reaction (use of armed personnel carriers, high-caliber rifles and M-60 machine gun) of the military and police that led to the massacre. The Cojuangco family is in hot waters today, owing to their primary responsibility to the carnage. There is also a strong clamor for the resignation of DOLE Sec. Sto. Tomas, who is being held liable to the massacre because of the

deputization of the police and military to enforce her Assumption of Jurisdiction order. In utter desperation to cover-up their culpability in this crime, the Cojuangco family, the DOLE and the military connive to obfuscate and hide the real issues behind the carnage by saying that the strikers are not legitimate workers. They also maliciously insinuate that leftist elements have infiltrated the strike and agitated the people to fight. Meanwhile, former Pres. Aquino can only offer prayers while Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo offered nothing but to plead for sobriety in the two camps.
 

The KMU strongly demands that an independent body conduct a speedy and impartial investigation of the bloodbath that happened. There should be no whitewash of this condemnable act and that the investigation should be objective. Swift justice should be given to the massacre victims, to their families and to the farm workers.