HOMAGE TO THE CAMPESINOS
Last January 17, farmers all over the archipelago joined hand in hand in marching towards Manila. And all of them, despite the soreness of their feet, hunger as well as thirst around their bodies made their own best in order to speak of their grievances against the present government. The main cause: a call for a genuine land reform.
These peasants, first and foremost, are not like others who are tardy and contented but instead of a fighting and an active one, fighting with a centuries-old noble cause to have a land to till in order to feed their families, but the government, who impliments faux-agrarian reform programs, seemingly gave little or no result to counter the perennial problem given, worst is the options within that said program the government being made, like Land Conversion and Stock Distribution Options.
These options seemed to be pleasing, of turning farmers into stockholders by giving them stocks, of seeing their land be developed, these kind of ideas the government wanted is seemingly a part of a plan wherein to counter the age old farmer's want of having a good fertile soil till, and instead given them stocks that contradicts much to their less earning work; and also shows how the landlords wanted to continue their age-old feudalistic practise with a pinch of capitalist development, especially in producing cash crops in their haciendas.
I wonder that through the years these industrious farmers had little or no earning despite their work; increase in pesticides and fertilizers, of seeing their produce as low quality, these people tried much to do their best and yet they end up as serfs or full of debts to be paid? What's the use of every document being implimented before the CARP and its successor CARPER? Do you remember how Marcos, in his own handwriting issued his decree "emancipating the tenant from the landlord" as what he stated? Or Macapagal in his Agrarian Reform code? These documents seemingly pleasing to the eyes, and yet they failed to curb the landlord problem, only to give additional problems regarding that centuries-old question.
Perhaps,
These perennial problems, of continuous serfdom and loss of land to till, of militarization and of civil oppression, made every campesino to rise up from the land and march from every archipelago, uniting in Manila to speak off their grievances against the Department of Agrarian Reform, whose program is full of holes to fill upon, then marching on to Mendiola like those from the past demonstrations, shouting and speaking aloud their grievances against a ruler whose idea focused much on the oppressor than those who are being oppressed for years in the name of economic development. I hope there would never be bloody friday for this! AMEN
