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Friday, March 29, 2024

No taking the country out of ‘Ka Paeng’

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AN experience of land displacement has led him to pursue a life-long advocacy for genuine land reform and, more than 40 years after the fact, that is still what truly defines Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano. 

Mariano was still a student of agriculture in Nueva Ecija when he decided to embark on a militant’s life in the 1970’s after the Department of Public Works and Highways decided to build a flood control dike at their barrio at the very heart of Talavera town.

“We were displaced from our lands for the flood control dike. Our crops and houses were transferred from our barrios to the other one,” recalled the 60-year-old Mariano, who now leads an agency with a budget of P10.38 billion last year. 

Still fighting. Agrarian Secretary Rafael Mariano still finds time to join demonstrations even after being appointed to a key Cabinet portfolio. 

“But even after the dike and irrigation were built, we did even benefit from it. The floods from the canals caused the destruction of our crops. That’s why we decided to fight the anti-people project of the government,” said Mariano, who is known as “Ka Paeng” in peasant circles. 

From then on, Mariano pursued the struggle of a peasant leader, serving as the first secretary-general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, a farmers group who opposed the regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos. 

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Mariano said he “graduated” from local issues, like small-town dikes and irrigation canals, to the greater issues confronting farmers. 

“The farmer thinks that his problem alone is just boxed within his own barrio but we need to raise this thinking,” Mariano said. “Our eyes should open to the situation in our own barrios and the struggles in other places.” 

“I saw how farmers were being exploited. They work very hard and yet they become poorer. Gradually, I saw the roots of exploitation and oppression and how rotten the system really is,” said Mariano, who  represented the party-list group Anakpawis before being appointed Agrarian reform secretary. 

He said one of the roots of the agrarian problem is that nine out of 10 farmers do not own the land that they till and that means he must now prioritize the inventory of lands that still have to be distributed, properties that were already turned over to farmer-beneficiaries, among others.

He said he will initiate a review of resolutions, exemptions, cancellation of land titles and emancipation patents which, he admitted, are still flawed and products of loopholes in the existing agrarian reform law. 

During his time as partylist congressman, Mariano and his fellow leftist lawmakers pushed for a Genuine Agrarian Reform Law and he hopes it will be passed in Congress while he is agrarian reform secretary. 

On top of his priorities is the inventory of Hacienda Luisita, owned by the clan of former President Benigno Aquino III.

“It’s not only in Hacienda Luisita that there are many land distribution problems, there are also problems in Negros,” he said.

As of December 2015, the DAR has distributed 4.7 million hectares, but this comprises only 10 percent of the total number of hectares that still have to be awarded to farmer-beneficiaries.

Mariano was among those who criticized the implementation of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and its sucessor program. 

While there have been some success in improving food security and reducing overall poverty, Mariano said that there are still many implementation problems, including resistance of landowners, legislative gaps and funding shortfalls.

The problems of farmers, however, “does not stop at receiving land because there are other issues and payments that have to be considered, such as land amortization and real property tax,” he added, hoping that he would be able to fulfill his original objective so many years ago.

“No farmer should be evicted from the land that he tills,” he promised.

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