THE

HACIENDA
LUISITA
MASSACR
E
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 THE HACIENDA LUISITA
MASSACRE
A CASE STUDY OF POWER AND MYTH

INTRODUTION
The Hacienda Luisita massacre is the worst slaughter of Filipino workers in recent
years. It underlines the fraud of bourgeois “democracy,” which rains death on the exploited
and oppressed fighting for their rights. It is all the more significant because the police and
army attack was ordered directly from the central government, by Labor Secretary Patricia
Sto. Tomas, and was carried out on behalf of the Cojuangco family, prominent landowners
including former president Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.
Then, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, responded to the mass killing with empty
platitudes and “prayers.” Spokesmen for the Hacienda justified the bloodbath as a
“legitimate exercise of state power,” saying the work stoppage was “illegal and left-
inspired.” Plantation workers had gone on strike November 6 demanding the reinstatement
of some 327 unionists, including nine union leaders, fired ten days earlier by the
management of the hacienda and the sugar mill (Central Azucarera de Tarlac, CAT). As
thousands of strikers and their supporters occupied the facilities, the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE) declared it was assuming jurisdiction for the dispute and ordered
in three military battalions to take down the picket lines and disperse the strikers.

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PREVIEW OF THE CASE

The 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation is owned by the Cojuangco

family, of which President Benigno Aquino is the leading scion. When his mother, Corazon
Aquino, assumed the presidency in the aftermath of the Marcos dictatorship, she was
immediately confronted with demands from working people for concessions, including for
land for the country’s impoverished peasantry.
On January 22, 1987, a group of peasant protestors marched across Mendiola
Bridge to the presidential palace with the basic demand written on their banners, “Land to
the tillers.” The police opened fire on the unarmed and peaceful demonstrators. Thirteen
peasants were killed, and more than fifty injured. The event became known as the Mendiola
massacre.
Corazon Aquino engaged in a series of half-hearted gestures at land reform, which
culminated in the misnamed Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). This
toothless legislation has over the past two decades served as a concrete demonstration of
the objective impossibility of genuine land reform under capitalism.
Under CARP, large landholders avoided the redistribution of their land to tenants
by either reclassifying their land as commercial or industrial land, or by using the Stock
Distribution Option (SDO), which changed the ownership of the land to joint stock
ownership and distributing a small portion of the shares to the tenant farmers.
The Cojuangcos did both with their land. They reclassified a portion of it and placed
the rest under joint stock ownership. Thus President Cory Aquino preserved the family
hacienda.
The Cojuangco family hacienda spun off much of its holdings into industrial and
commercial holdings that would not be subject to land reform. The estate today boasts a
mall, complete with Starbucks, McDonalds and multiple cinemas. Phelps Dodge, Sanyo
and International Wiring Systems operate factories there. There are hotels and a golf

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course. And through their gross manipulation of government, the Cojuangcos routed the
new SCTEX expressway through their land and have been illegally charging tolls to
motorists. These actions are representative of the behavior of the large landed elite as a
whole in the Philippines.
The remaining land that was ostensibly to be subject to redistribution under CARP
was dramatically undervalued. No improvements—roads, irrigation, etc.—were included
in the calculation of its value. The 6,400 tenants of Hacienda Luisita were made to vote to
determine if they wanted a parcel of land or a stock option in Hacienda Luisita,
Incorporated. The election was run and tabulated by the hacienda management. The results
supported the stock distribution option and the tenants were promised a share in the
incorporated estate. This was in 1989.
The tenants, now called Farmer Worker Beneficiaries (FWB), received shares that
were so undervalued as to be practically worthless. As the nature of the estate changed,
many of them shifted from tenant agriculture to working on the estate as factory hands.
The demand for genuine agrarian reform surfaced again and again.
In November 2004, 6,000 workers and family members staged a blockade of the
hacienda’s sugar mill. President Gloria Arroyo ordered the police to break up the
protestors. The police opened fire and 12 protestors and 2 children were killed. Hundreds
were injured. Benigno Aquino, a congressman at the time, blamed the massacre on his
family’s estate on ‘leftist provocateurs.’ Among those firing upon and murdering the
workers were Aquino’s own bodyguards.
Tensions between political families with ties to rival sections of the bourgeoisie
emerged rapidly. In July 2005, as an election fraud scandal rocked the Arroyo
administration, Cory and Benigno Aquino first supported Arroyo and then, a week later, in
response to public outrage, they called upon her to resign.
Within two weeks, President Arroyo reacted by seeking the breakup of the
Cojuangco land. Agrarian reform cases, filed before the Presidential Agrarian Reform
Council, have long been a tool used by those in power to prosecute their interests against

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rival sections of the elite. Arroyo’s administration argued that the Stock Distribution Plan
enacted at Luisita was illegal.
The case has been languishing in the Supreme Court for years. When Aquino was
elected president in 2010, he confronted a court composed entirely of Arroyo appointees.
The tensions between the branches of government were sharp. Aquino’s proposed
initiatives were declared unconstitutional, and his attempts to remove Arroyo’s appointees
were blocked. It was widely speculated that a ruling on Hacienda Luisita would go poorly
for the president and his family.
However, Aquino struck back at the court. A plagiarism scandal emerged which
revealed that several justices had lifted entire sections for some of their decisions from
journals and other sources, without citation. Several justices were repeatedly threatened
with impeachment. By February, the court had backed down and the conflict between the
two branches of government quieted.
At that time, the court ruling 6-4 ruling employed twisted logic and rhetorical
legerdemain to arrive at a decision that both upholds the court’s allegiance to Arroyo and
serves the interest of Aquino. It ruled that the specific stock distribution plan enacted at
Hacienda Luisita in 1989 was invalid. But crucially it also ruled that the Stock Distribution
Option, the longstanding loophole that has revealed all the Philippine agrarian reform laws
to be farcical, was constitutional.
The Supreme Court mandated that the 6,500 potential beneficiaries of the land
redistribution of Hacienda Luisita vote if they wished to receive stocks or land. This is
precisely the same position that the tenants were in at the enactment of Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform in 1989. Some 22 years later, scores of peasants have been shot dead
protesting, former tenants are aged and dying, and not a scrap of land has been
redistributed.
Where, in 1989, the hacienda management monitored the voting, now the
Presidential Agrarian Reform Commission, with Aquino at its head, will supervise. The
court ruled that the election would be conducted by secret ballot, “each ballot marked with
a thumbprint or a signature.” The stench of abused power in these lines is overpowering.

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The voters will be submitting ballots which clearly identify them to the man whose family
owns the land they have tilled and whose bodyguards shot their brothers and sisters only
seven years ago.
Not surprisingly, the lawyer for Hacienda Luisita hailed the decision as “a graceful
validation of the stock option.”
Then Chief Justice Renato Corona issued a noteworthy dissenting opinion. He
condemned the majority decision stating, “History will be the unforgiving judge of this
court. We cannot correct a historical anomaly and prevent the eruption of a social volcano
by fancy legal arguments and impressively crafted devices for corporate control.” He
argued, accurately, that “Hacienda Luisita has always been viewed as a litmus test of
genuine agrarian reform.”
Hacienda Luisita’s more than two-decade history of violence, broken promises and
legal machinations demonstrate cogently that the failure of agrarian reform is not an
‘historical anomaly.’ A genuine solution to the fundamental democratic problem of land
rights is not possible under capitalism. The bourgeoisie is intimately tied to the landed elite
and as such is intrinsically incapable of distributing land to the impoverished peasantry.

THE CASE AND PHILIPPINE LAWS

At that time, appealing to the Arroyo government or to the den of corruption of the
Philippine Congress for a fair investigation will be no more successful than earlier
campaigns for compensation of the victims of the Mendiola massacre. Destruction of the
hacienda system of large landholdings will not be accomplished by begging the capitalist
rulers to break up their profitable estates and hand land titles over to the impoverished
peasantry. That is a program for more Mendiola and Luisita massacres, and for swindles
like the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), by which landowners like
the Cojuangcos managed to hold on to their ill-gotten estates through frauds like the bogus
“stock distribution option,” creating the fiction that the employees were part “owners” of
Hacienda Luisita.

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Here are some of the laws that are related to the case as stipulated in this case study:

1. Agricultural Land Reform Code (RA 3844). This law was enacted by
the time of then President Diosdado Macapagal for the advancement of land
reform in the Philippines. It was the same code that abolished the tenancy
and established a leasehold system in which farmers paid fixed rentals to
landlords, rather than percentage of harvest.
Land reform, a purposive change in the way in which agricultural
land is held or owned, the methods of cultivation that are employed, or the
relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy. Reforms such as these
may be proclaimed by a government, by interested groups, or by revolution.
2. Land Reform Act (Republic Act No. 1400). The law provided the security
of tenure of tenants. Republic Act No. 1400 (Land Reform Act of 1955) –
Created the Land Tenure Administration (LTA) which was responsible for
the acquisition and distribution of large tenanted rice and corn lands over
200 hectares for individuals and 600 hectares for corporations.
The difference between Land Reforms and Agrarian Reforms. Land
reforms generally comprise the takeover of land by state from big land lords
with partial compensation and transfer it to small farmers and landless
workers. Land reforms are aimed at changing the agrarian structure to bring
equity and to increase productivity.
Presidential Decree 27 laid down a system for the purchase by small
farmers of the lands they were tilling. Presidential Decree 27 was anchored
upon the fundamental objective of addressing valid and legitimate
grievances of land ownership giving rise to violent conflict and social
tension in the countryside.
Recognized the necessity to encourage a more productive
agricultural base to the country’s economy. The certificate of land transfer
under Presidential Decree 27 provides that the tenant farmer is deemed to

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 be the owner of the agricultural land subject to the conditions that the cost
of the portion transferred to him, including the interest, shall be paid in 15
equal annual amortizations, and that he must be a member of a barrio
association upon organization of such association in his legality
3. Presidential Decree No. 27 (PD 27). According to the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “land is not a mere
commodity, but an essential element for the realization of many human
rights.”
Aside from preventing them from achieving the right to adequate
food, the lack of a genuine agrarian reform program actually prevents the
farmers from achieving their economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC)
and consequently, the right to development. These refer to human rights
relating to livelihood, social security, family life, participation in cultural
life, and access to food, water, housing, healthcare, and education. Thus,
forced displacement of rural communities due to mining, mega dams, or
agricultural plantations result to homelessness, loss of livelihood, and even
the wellbeing of the people.
4. Executive Order No. 229 (EO 229). Executive Order provides for
compulsory registration by natural and legal persons owning land, in order
to permit valuation of the property in case it should be acquired by the
Government for purposes of agrarian reform. The registration is to include
a listing of the names of all tenants and farmworkers. The Order sets forth
the modes of compensation to landowners, as well as the options available
to them regarding voluntary land transfers. For lands with multiple
beneficiaries, ownership of whole parcels or estates may be transferred
collectively or individually, as the beneficiaries prefer.
The Department of Agrarian Reform is granted quasi-judicial
powers to determine and adjudicate agrarian reform matters; its decisions
have immediate effect but may be appealed to the regional trial courts. The

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 Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, of which the Secretary of Labor and
Employment is a member, is to co-ordinate implementation of the
programme.
The Order reiterates constitutional principles, including the right of
farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless to own directly or
collectively the lands they till, and respect for prior rights, homestead rights
of small settlers and the rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral
lands. Persons or associations who prematurely enter the land to avail
themselves of rights and benefits under the Order shall be permanently
disqualified.
5. RA 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988 (CARP).
The legal basis for CARP is the Republic Act No. 6657 otherwise known
as Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) signed by President
Corazon C. Aquino on June 10, 1988. It is an act which aims to promote
social justice and industrialization, providing the mechanism for its
implementation, and for other purposes.
The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has as its
primary objectives both the improvement of equality and the increase in
productivity and growth in the rural areas. It was a land reform law
mandated by Republic Act No. 6657, signed by President Corazon Aquino
in June 10, 1988.
The free encyclopaedia mentions that the Agrarian reform can refer
either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed
redistribution of agricultural land (see land reform) or, broadly, to an overall
redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land
reform measures.
Enacted in 1988, the Philippines' National Agrarian Reform
Program - Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) - which was
later termed as Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Extension with Reforms

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 (CARPER), aimed to distribute all agricultural lands beyond five hectares
to landless farmers and farm workers.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

Very often, the Cojuangcos garnered criticism for their ownership of the estate with
some critics comparing the situation to problems seen in oligarchy based systems. The
estate's incorporators control 70 percent of the stock shares of the Hacienda. The remaining
30 percent of the stock shares was given to farm workers under the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program's Stock Distribution Option scheme.
The signing into law of Republic Act No. 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Law (CARL) on 10 June 1988 signalled the beginning of the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) under former President Corazon Aquino. One of the
clauses of the CARP provided for a Stock Distribution Option (SDO), which would allow
for compliance with the agrarian reform law by distributing stocks of the hacienda to the
farm workers rather than actual land.
On 9 May 1989, a referendum was held among the farm workers of Hacienda
Luisita to determine whether stocks or land would be the means by which the hacienda
would be distributed. The results of the May 1989 referendum, as well as a second
referendum held in October of the same year, found that a great majority of the Hacienda
farm workers voted in favor of distribution of stock rather than land. The terms of the SDO
agreement of the Hacienda are quoted as follows:

“At the end of each fiscal year, for a period of 30 years, the
SECOND PARTY (HLI) shall arrange with the FIRST PARTY (TADECO)
the acquisition and distribution to the THIRD PARTY (farm workers) on
the basis of number of days worked and at no cost to them of one-thirtieth
(1/30) of 118,391,976.85 shares of the capital stock of the SECOND
PARTY (HLI) that are presently owned and held by the FIRST PARTY

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 (TADECO), until such time as the entire block of 118,391,976.85 shares
shall have been completely acquired and distributed to the THIRD PARTY
(farm workers)."

The SDO agreement however was met with considerable criticism, most
notably in 2003 when hacienda workers (farmers, HLI supervisory group workers,
union officers) began filing petitions to the Department of Agrarian Reform
(DAR) to have the SDO agreement revoked due to their dividends and other
promised benefits not being given. Daily wage was at P194.50, and there was only
one working day per week, due to the mechanizing of some tasks in the hacienda.
A petition with more than 5,300 signatures was filed to revoke the SDO agreement
and stop land conversion in the hacienda.
In 2004, the workers' union tried to negotiate with the management to
increase daily wages to P225 and increase work days to 2-3 days weekly.
Management refused. In 1 October of that year, 327 workers (farm workers and
union officers) were retrenched.
In the aftermath of the November 2004 massacre, the DAR established
Task Force Luisita to conduct further investigations and conduct focus group
discussions among the farmers. On 22 September 2005, based on the findings of
its investigations, Task Force Luisita recommended the revocation of the SDO
agreement forged between Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) and the farm workers.
Three months later, on December of the same year, the Presidential
Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) issued a resolution ordering the revocation of
the SDO agreement and the distribution of the hacienda's land among the farm
workers. Land distribution and the cancellation of the SDO agreement was halted
however in June 2006 when the Supreme Court granted the petition of HLI and
issued a temporary restraining order on the PARC resolution

DISPUTES OVER LANDOWNER COMPENSATION

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 In compliance with agrarian reform laws, the Supreme Court decisions further
stated that HLI was entitled to payment by the government as just compensation for
distributing the hacienda's lands to the farm workers. The corporation was to receive
compensation for the distributed land based on its valuation on the date of its taking from
HLI.
In line with this, HLI presented 2 January 2006 as the appropriate date of taking
based on when a Notice of Coverage was issued by the DAR placing the hacienda's land
under compulsory acquisition.
However the Supreme Court maintained its initial stance that the date of taking be
marked at 21 November 1989, based on when the original stock distribution plan was
approved, stating this was when ownership of the lands was initially relinquished to make
way for its distribution to the farm workers via stock. Under the 2006 valuation of the
distributed land, the compensation payment would have amounted to about P5 billion while
under the 1989 valuation of the distributed land, the compensation would total only about
P200 million.

RESOLVING THE CASE – CASE RESOLVED OR NOT

On 24 April 2012, the Supreme Court released a final and executory decision
regarding Hacienda Luisita:
"To recapitulate, the Court voted on the following issues in this manner:
1. In determining the date of taking, the Court voted 8-6 to maintain the ruling
fixing November 21, 1989 as the date of taking, the value of the affected lands
to be determined by the LBP and the DAR;
2. On the propriety of the revocation of the option of the FWBs [Farmer-Worker
Beneficiaries] to remain as HLI stockholders, the Court, by unanimous vote,
agreed to reiterate its ruling in its November 22, 2011 Resolution that the [stock
distribution option] granted to the FWBs stays revoked;

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 3. On the propriety of returning to the FWBs the proceeds of the sale of the 500-
hectare converted land and of the 80.51-hectare SCTEX land, the Court
unanimously voted to maintain its ruling to order the payment of the proceeds
of the sale of the said land to the FWBs less the 3% share, taxes and expenses
specified in the fallo of the November 22, 2011 Resolution;
4. On the payment of just compensation for the homelots to HLI, the Court, by
unanimous vote, resolved to amend its July 5, 2011 Decision and November 22,
2011 Resolution by ordering the government, through the DAR, to pay to HLI
the just compensation for the homelots thus distributed to the FWBS.
WHEREFORE, the Motion to Clarify and Reconsider Resolution of November 22,
2011 dated December 16, 2011 filed by petitioner Hacienda Luisita, Inc. and the Motion
for Reconsideration/Clarification dated December 9, 2011 filed by private respondents
Noel Mallari, Julio Suniga, Supervisory Group of Hacienda Luisita, Inc. and Windsor
Andaya are hereby DENIED with this qualification: the July 5, 2011 Decision, as modified
by the November 22, 2011 Resolution, is FURTHER MODIFIED in that the government,
through DAR, is ordered to pay Hacienda Luisita, Inc. the just compensation for the 240-
square meter homelots distributed to the FWBs.
The July 5, 2011 Decision, as modified by the November 22, 2011 Resolution and
further modified by this Resolution is declared FINAL and EXECUTORY. The entry of
judgment of said decision shall be made upon the time of the promulgation of this
Resolution.
No further pleadings shall be entertained in this case.
SO ORDERED."

CONCLUSION

CURRENT STATUS OF THE HACIENDA

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 The Supreme Court ruling states that the 4,916 hectares of Hacienda Luisita is to
be redistributed to 6,296 registered farm-worker beneficiaries, while the Hacienda Luisita
Incorporated (HLI) will be receiving 40,000 pesos per hectare as compensation. This is
based on the 1989 valuation of the Hacienda Luisita that the Supreme Court had voted
upon.
But from the 4,916 hectares to be redistributed, 500 hectares were converted into
non-agricultural use in 18 August 1996 by the Department of Agrarian Reform, while 80.5
hectares was also subtracted for the development of the Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway
(SCTEX). Other inconsistencies within area size have caused conflicting numbers, but
according to the DAR, this then leaves only 4,099.92 hectares of land to be distributed.
The process of land distribution was decided to be through lottery system, wherein
the names of the beneficiaries are placed into a drum, and those chosen will be given the
Lot Allocation Certificate (LAC). Farmer-worker Beneficiaries then sign the Application
to Purchase and Farmers' Undertaking (APFU), for the registry of their Certificate of Land
Ownership Award (CLOA), which is the actual land title.
The lottery system had started on 18 July 2013 in Barangay Cutcut, Tarlac City
with 340 farmers being given the first batch of Lot Allocation Certificates. But it was on
30 September 2013, where DAR Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes started awarding the
actual Certificate of Land Ownership (CLOA) to 600 Farmer-worker beneficiaries in
Barangay Pando.
As of 12 July 2016, 4,099 hectares have been already distributed to farmers, but the
sales shares from the Hacienda Luisita's converted land to be paid to the farmer-worker
beneficiaries have been left unpaid which amounts to 1.3 billion pesos. On 24 April 2017,
protesters consisting of the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) and other
militant organizations had gone to Hacienda Luisita to protest against the 348 hectare land
that was turned over to Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) back in 25
November 2004 for a 431.7 million peso loan obligation. The protest led to property
damage, where protesters had destroyed over 100 meters of a wall surrounding the

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contested lot. On 21 February 2018, Luisita Land Corporation has since filed a case against
15 farmers for the protest, for malicious mischief and trespassing of the RCBC owned land.
As of 4 July 2018, the Hacienda Luisita has fully complied with distributing the
sales shares to farmers. The 1.3 billion peso was broken down as such: P500 million
received from Luisita Realty Inc. for a 200 hectare lot sold in 1996, P750 million for the
selling of Luisita Industrial Park, and around P80 million for the 80.51 hectares used for
the SCTEX road network. The ruling also states that 3% of the earlier stock transfers that
were paid to the farmers will be deducted from the 1.3 billion to be received.
It is with this premise that I must say, there really is still justice in this this country
where corrupt and prejudices are insurmountable among a few. When there is really union,
there is strength. I consider this as the weapon of the farmers that have gone through a lot
of trials just so they can have everything that is due to them be theirs really.
At this point in time, however, it cannot be said that the CASE IS CLOSED. Until
when there is the full implementation of the law and all the farmers will have what is due
to them according and as provided by law and the rule of court, then I can totally say that
the case has finally laid to rest. All over the country, the battle cry of farmers are almost
like those of the farmers in Hacienda Luisita. Let them be heard… and let their case be
heard!

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