Every October, Filipinos commemorate peasant month. Originally, it was only Peasant Day that was commemorated every October 21, which coincides Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s signing of the failed Presidential Decree (PD) 27 or known as Emancipation of Tenant Farmers of Rice and Corn Lands, a month after Marcos Sr declared the infamous Martial Law. Such a declaration clearly confirmed that the reason for Marcos Sr’s Martial Law was flawed, and in fact it was aimed to destroy the growing social volcano of peasant resistance.
Peasant advocates led by the progressive peasant network Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the widest national alliance of peasant organizations, declared October as peasant month and commemorated this with protest actions and mobilizations to reach the broader public to inform them of the continued relevance of the peasant month in particular the continuing struggle for land and justice.
In commemorating peasant month, a review of the peasant movement’s history is a must, to understand its relevance and context on the contemporary issues that confront the Filipino peasantry.
The pre-colonial Philippines as described by historians and scholars, is an archipelago with vast resources and its civilizations are located usually in bodies of waters. In Luzon, the Pasig River was one of the primary human settlements, in Davao it was the Davao River where civilization was also located. Economic activities of the pre-colonial Filipinos primarily rely on bountiful resources.
When the Spanish colonizers arrived in the country, the combination of “cross and sword” was employed in grabbing our land. The colonizers declared the Jura Regalia or the Regalian Doctrine as a formal land grabbing policy of the Spanish conquistadors, declaring that all lands belong to the Crown. Thus, naming the archipelago as Philippines in honor of King Philip II. This is the first instance where the lands of our ancestors were taken from us.
As the colonial rule advanced, trade between colonies such as the Manila-Acapulco became competitive, thus, a strong demand for trading increased. Alongside attacks of pirates along the Caribbean, the Spanish colonial rulers declared the hacienda system, the first instance that pushed the monocropping system of farming. The hacienda system aimed to increase production of specific crops to satisfy the gap for the growing trends and recover losses from pirate attacks.
The centuries of Spanish colonization were confronted by around 200 peasant uprisings prior to the 1896 Katipunan Revolution. While all of these uprisings were foiled by the strong Spanish colonial forces, the Katipunan of Andres Bonifacio drew lessons from those peasant resistances, thus when they launched the 1896 Revolution it carried the anti-feudal and anti-colonial revolutionary character.
While the Katipunan successfully defeated the Spanish colonizers, it fell short to defend the gains of the revolution when they were confronted by the rising empire of the United States. Thus, ended through carnage and sellout through the Treaty of Paris, which also included another colony, Cuba. In between American colonization, Japanese invaders colonized us briefly when World War II was brewing. For centuries, justice and access to land became elusive to the Filipino people.
The past regimes issued several agrarian reform programs like Marcos Sr’s PD 27, and Cory Aquino’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) that paved the way for Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) that was implemented by the succeeding administrations through lengthy extensions.
Yet for more than half a century of implementing and re-hashing these programs, the glaring reality remains that only 26% of Filipinos own the land that they are tilling, leaving around seven out of 10 farmers without land. Thus, we can only conclude that from Marcos Sr. to Marcos Jr’s administrations, land and justice are still elusive for the Filipino peasantry.
History teaches us that the struggle for the Filipino peasantry for land and justice is a continuing struggle. Also, history of societies around the world taught us that social evolutions or revolutions are inevitable when land and justice remains elusive.
peasant month, philippines
