Land to the Tillers, Ancestral Lands to Indigenous Stewards!

Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines face a deepening crisis of land loss caused by the aggressive encroachment of profit-oriented projects such as mining, dams, plantations, so-called renewable energy, tourism, and real estate developments. The biggest land grabber is the state itself, which declares ancestral lands as public lands and opens them to corporations for profit. This crisis is integral to the broader agrarian question in the country. The majority of Indigenous Peoples are peasants, farmers who till the land for survival. Thus, repression of farmers, land grabbing, and the demand for genuine agrarian reform are shared conditions and struggles of both the peasantry and Indigenous Peoples.

The fight for the recognition of ancestral lands is not separate from the agrarian struggle; it is an integral part of it. The denial of ancestral land rights is a denial of land to the tillers; it is a continuation of land monopoly, dispossession, and exploitation that has long plagued the countryside.

January 22 shall remain a dark reminder of the fascist response of the state to the decades-long struggle for land. Today marks the 39th anniversary of the Mendiola Massacre, when thousands of farmers, including Indigenous Peoples, marched to Malacañang Palace to demand genuine agrarian reform under the Cory Aquino administration. Police and military forces opened fire on the protesters, killing 13 farmers and injuring more than 50 others.

Mendiola exposed the bankruptcy of bogus land reforms. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), touted as a solution to landlessness, failed to address the conditions of the peasantry. Wide-ranging exemptions, land conversions, and landlord control left millions of farmers still landless and more impoverished than before.

Today, Indigenous Peoples face the same condition of landlessness and are disguised by the same rhetoric by the state as “development.” As mines, dams, and energy projects encroach on ancestral territories without genuine free prior informed consent (FPIC), Indigenous communities are dispossessed, displaced, and militarized, much like peasants under feudal and semi-feudal bondage in the countryside.

Similar to the flaws of CARP, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) remains bound to the oppressive land ownership system. IPRA reduces ancestral land to private property concepts and bureaucratic titles, rather than recognizing collective ownership and stewardship rooted in Indigenous lifeways of land is life. The Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and Certificate of Ancestral Land Title (CALT) are obtained through tedious, costly, and exclusionary processes. While corporations freely enter and plunder ancestral territories with state backing.

The cost of this system is paid in blood. Indigenous Peoples have sacrificed lives in defense of lands and due to environmental destruction, displacement, and intensified militarization. We saw this most recently in the bombings carried out by the 2nd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army in Barangay Cabacao, Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro. Three Mangyan-Iraya children and a youth researcher were killed, an atrocity that sparked widespread outrage and calls for justice.

Just as in the aftermath of the Mendiola Massacre, repression has never silenced the people’s demands for land, justice, and dignity. Instead, it has laid bare the true character of the state as a defender of elite interests, landlords, and corporations, and strengthened the resolve of peasants and Indigenous Peoples to resist.

Indigenous Peoples remember Mendiola not only as a massacre, but as a lesson and a call to action. It reminds us that justice will not be handed down by a system built on dispossession. Land rights can only be won through the organized strength and unity of peasants and Indigenous Peoples.

From Mendiola to the ancestral lands, the struggle continues. Lupa hindi bala. Hustisya para sa biktima ng Mendiola massacre. 

Reference: 

Beverly L. Longid