Negros Island: The Struggle for Land, Wages and Social Benefits

July 3, 2008

Geography, Economy and Social Situation

Negros has a long history of Spanish and then US colonial occupation and plunder. Yet, Negros also has a long and rich history of struggle for land, wages and social benefits.

Negros is the 4th largest island in the Philippine archipelago, with over 1,322,837 hectares of land, majority alienable and disposable agricultural land. 2/3 of the land of Negros is under private control by large landlords and local and national elites; in addition, irrigations systems necessary for productive farming are also under control of local elites.

In 2001, 56% of the land mass was given over to the sugar industry, dominant in Negros Occidental, and controlled largely through the semi-feudal ‘hacienda’ system stemming from Spanish colonialism. Semi-feudal in that most farms and haciendas are not corporate productions, or ‘capitalized farms’, but rather the hacienda system operates on a semi-feudal means of production, whereby workers and their families live on the hacienda, many owning their own tools and carabao, but yet inadequately compensated for their labour in Pesos, as opposed to pure feudalism with a crop-sharing arrangement. There is also a large pool of surplus labour, or the underemployed ‘sacadas’, who move from hacienda to hacienda selling their labour where work is available. During the ‘tiempo muerta’ or ‘dead time’ the majority of hacienda workers are forced to migrate to the urban areas or to eek out meagre livelihoods on small plots of land. The corruption and failure of the IMF/WB enforced, pro-landlord CARP program for land re-distribution is a major issue on Negros (see earlier blog posts for information on CARP).

Other products of Negros, primarily in Negros Oriental, include rice, corn, coconut, bananas, peanuts, vegetables, and fish in the coastal (as opposed to mountainous) regions. Monocrop culture enforced by the IMF/WB SAPs (structural adjustment programs) essentially eliminates a farmer’s ability to sustain their families on what they produce, and contributed to a crisis in displacement to the urban centres. In Bacolod, in Negros Occidental, there are 61 barangays, 41 are urban poor communities, with 15,000 families living in dire poverty and 4335 families living in shanties in “extreme danger zones” such as overhanging unpredictable and typhoon-frequent coastal waters. For fisher folk, environmental damage and off-shore oil exploration have had dire impacts on fishing yields, with yields dropping from 20 kg/5 hours to 3 kg/5 hours.

Mining claims currently cover 47% of the total land mass and 88% of agricultural land. In Negros Occidental Philex, a 90% Canadian owned gold mining corporation has contributed to displacement, environmental destruction, and the rapidly growing gap between the rich and the poor, the owners and the workers and peasants.

Per capita income is dropping, there is an annual 8.89% increase in hunger on Negros, and illiteracy is increasing. Many children stop schooling at grade 3 with a full 70% drop out rate by grade 6, in order to contribute to the family income through formal or informal work. It is estimated that there are 334,900 working children on Negros, 26% of these children working on haciendas.

Human Rights Situation

In these dire economic times of growing hunger, increasing poverty and massive land displacement the people’s struggle for national and social liberation strengthens, even in the face of heightened military repression.

Where in 1999 there were only two active battalions under the control of the Philippine National Police (PNP), in 2008 there are currently 2 full brigades of 4 battalions under the control of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with additional military personnel providing assistance where necessary. The primary target of these military bases is the ‘neutralization’ of the liberation struggle of not only the New People’s Army (NPA), but also the legal struggle, including the workers and the peasants. Although these figures are currently being updated to correct 2008 numbers, since 2001 there have been 31 victims of extrajudicial killings, 4 forced disappearances, 11 political prisoners detained, 4 attempted assassinations, 5 cases of torture, 13 cases of physical assault, and over 2,000 evacuations due to military operations.

Community members report that the attempts of the community to implement co-operative farming operations, initiate health programs, increase community-controlled social programs, and to collectively raise the community from poverty and isolation, are determined by the AFP to be insurgent activities directly related to the armed liberation struggle of the NPA and result in the community having a strong military presence.

The result of this labelling is intense political harassment, death threats, false accusations, red-baiting local leaders, people’s organizations, unions, and mass organizations. But against these odds the people continue to struggle!

…More to come on the health situation and the organized people’s response in a month when we return from the rural area. For tonight, it is late, and we have a full day tomorrow!

PS: Data courtesy of our Negros hosts! Please see new links on this blog site.