Interview with a Filipino
PHILIPPINES
"Those left without land have no choice but to go look for work on the plantations.
"The minimum wage is 39 pesos, two dollars, a day, and it is estimated that the minimum for supporting a family is 110 pesos. So, even two peasant leader incomes are not enough to sustain a family, and the children usually work, especially on the sugar plantations.
"A child can be paid as little as eight pesos a day. So the plantation owners prefer child workers.
The KMP calls for distributing
FILIPINO PEASANT leader, Maria Rosario Felizco, is one of the pioneers in organizing workers on the land. Six years ago, she began working in the Central Luzon Farmers Union. Last year she participated in the formation of the national union of small farmers and agricultural workers, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).
"For the majority of the people, democratizing the Philippines means recognizing their just demand for
"But Cory has been very quiet about this question. Before the elecpeasants getting better credits. Credits have land to cultivate."
"The poor peasants and agricultural workers so far have not seen any sign of change since Marcos' fall. It is the military that is most responsible for
The power of the military is still very great in the rural areas.
"The landless peasants, who make up two-thirds of all the people on the land, cannot but be skeptical about the new government when they see how influential the big landowners are in it. They don't believe that they get any land, and rightly so, because the landowners have always blocked every attempt at land reform in the Philippines.
"But the land question is the problem that overshadows everything in the countryside. Those who have no land live as laborers or tenants. Either they pay up to 60 percent of the harvest to those who own the land they work, or they rent land and pay 25 per cent of their incomes to the landowners, but then they have to pay all the expenses themselves.
"In both cases, this is exploitation, because the landowner gets an income without working which is larger than the portion that the families who work the land can keep.
"All the other problems in agriculture have to do with the fact that many people have no land. Since the poor farmers have nothing left after they have paid their rent and production costs, they are driven into the moneylender's net. Since few farmers own capital, the moneylenders can take from 20 percent to 400 per cent
"By law, of course, it is forbidden interest. But all too often, the local government representatives, lenders and landowners are the same people. Even for state loans, you can pay up to 45 percent.
*What makes the situation worse is that more and more land is being most swallowed by the plantations of multinational companies
"According to the law, no foreign firm is supposed to own more than 1,000 hectares of land. But Dole owns 30,000 hectares. Del Monte owns 24,000 hectares and so on.
force the small farmers off land already under cultivation, because there is no longer any 'fallow land' to take. Maria Rosario Felico (DR)
the land free of charge. "The poor have already paid for their land many times over by their rents or their starvation wages.
"Agriculture can only develop if the farmers own the land and control production. And it is only by working together that the small farmers can improve production and market their products without being cheated."
However, no land reform is in sight. The KMP is worried about what the new trade minister, Jaime V Ongpin, proposes. Agricultural development strategy
"Last year, something called the 'balanced agricultural development strategy' was launched. It was backed by the World Bank. The proposal was that the Philippines should rely on its agricultural resources for development. In the rulers' version this meant that foreign investment should be increased in agriculture, with the result that still more land would be taken from the poor peasants and become plantations.
"We protested strongly against this idea. Now Ongpin is proposing a development strategy that in principle is the same. Nothing has changed. We were dumbfounded. But really we should not have been so surprised. Ongpin himself is a big businessperson. The same, more or less, goes for Cory Aquino, whose family owns 6,000 hectares in sugar plantations."
Therefore, the KMP does not intend to wait for government measures.
"We know that a strongly organized movement is the only power we have when we deal with the authorities. And if there is going to be any real change, it is going to have to come from us ourselves.
"It is going to take time to win. Millions of poor people have yet to be organized. But we are on the right road and we have already come quite a way." Excerpts of an interview given to the 'Internationalen, the paper of the Swedish section of the Fourth International.