LAND-GRAB IN THE PHILIPPINES
MILLER, BRAD
LAND-GRAB in the Philippines U.S. corporations make their own law BY BRAD MILLER Three green lizards cling to the fluorescent lamp, feeding on the moths that circle the light. The moths fly too...
...multinationals, has great influence over U.S...
...You should not have come to Paqui-bato...
...nessmen, brought in anticommunist activist Jun Alcover to convince the workers to join a new union...
...They were among the fifteen men killed by NPA rebels while guarding a mining corporation...
...Del Monte, they are no good," a resident of Bukidnon says...
...They are exposed to severe heat, humidity, rain, and harmful chemicals...
...The twenty-year-old war between the leftist New People's Army (NPA) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines reached into the Lapanday plantation...
...The tribal people and small farmers of Bukidnon province see things differently...
...TADECO also found a cheap source of labor in the Davao Penal Colony, using prisoners to pick bananas...
...The rebels cite the companies' abuse and oppression of Filipinos, and their occasional refusal to pay "revolutionary taxes" to the insurgents...
...The KMU were warned they had no basis for a strike...
...Labor strikes were banned, dissatisfaction and rebellion were more easily quelled...
...It was distributed to Dole employees, enabling the company to lease the land for its pineapple crops...
...Outside, thunderclouds form...
...These conditions give small farmers only one option—to sell out to Del Monte...
...The lizards are greedy...
...Despite Del Monte's promises to cease expansion, they continue to take land...
...The strike was declared illegal by the National Labor Relations Committee," says Lorenzana...
...In October 1988, a two-month-long labor dispute between the KMU-affiliated union and the Lapanday management turned into a strike...
...Lured by fertile soil and cheap labor, companies such as Dole, Del Monte, and United Brands established their operations on the island of Mindanao—the Land of Promise...
...Banana fields spread from one side of the highway, graveyards from the other...
...But the management sent the soldiers and KADRE to our houses...
...They live without electricity, amid piles of garbage...
...Dole gobbled up land owned by private farmers and minority tribes...
...The shelling destroyed houses and killed a villager...
...Before the corporate invasion, which began in the 1960s, Mindanao's settlers and tribal communities had been growing enough food to live...
...Mendoza watches the road begin to flood...
...Down the road from Little Tondo live the tribal minorities...
...Lapanday, owned by former Marcos crony Don Luis Lorenzo, grows bananas for Del Monte...
...Field hands work up to fifteen hours a day, while those in the packing plant do not finish until all the fruit has been processed...
...According to Erasto Li-brado of the KMU, Jun Alcover has been used to influence union elections at other U.S...
...At Delta and other corporate plantations, workers are obligated to put in overtime when the fruit is ripe...
...They have no security of tenure and can be terminated at any time...
...While the people of Kapungagan go hungry, the company throws away many bananas because they don't meet export standards...
...According to KAANIB, an organization helping small farmers oppose Del Monte's expansion, the company used the Bolo Battalion to force people off their land...
...National Federation of Labor Secretary Oscar Bontayan was slain by vigilantes while reLabor organizers face brutal repression at the hands of U.S...
...The OSCC told the natives that the disputed land was being developed by the banana corporation and that any effort to reclaim it would be illegal and dangerous...
...We train the security and provide them with weapons," he says...
...In 1926, Del Monte established its pineapple plantation in Bukidnon under the title Philippine Packing Corporation...
...plants, paying them barely enough to survive...
...Rivers run thick with bananas...
...PANAMIN's real commitment was to strengthen the tribes' allegiance to the counterinsurgency movement and to help corporations acquire land...
...It's feeding time...
...Instead, PANAMIN took 50 per cent of the tribes' harvest and forced them to work without pay for TADECO...
...One inhales a fat, brown moth, even as the wings of its first victim still protrude from its mouth...
...During its twenty-year rebellion against the Philippine government, the NPA has staged frequent attacks on corporate plantations...
...Malnutrition is common in the "Valley of the Apes," the name given to the barrio of Kapungagan by the management of Delta Farms...
...It is complete with landscaped lawns, a golf course, and a swimming pool...
...multinational corporations have displaced the small farmers and natives of the Philippines...
...The company's "land-development branch" has plowed up farmers' cornfields, built roads across their land, cut off their access to market, and ruined their soil with chemicals...
...Apeasant woman is wrapped in the Philippine flag, and bound tightly with rope...
...It's a system that uses common Filipinos to kill each other for corporate profit...
...howitzer to flush out NPA rebels...
...The Alternate Resource Center, an organization providing progressive information to the people of Mindanao, has documented that corporations in the Philippines are intertwined in complex cliques in order to control the market and maximize profits...
...Some are given several months' work on the plantation...
...Though they work long, strenuous hours, the National Economic Development Authority estimates that Dole laborers earn only one-third the income a family of six needs to live...
...He isn't breathing because he died to protect an export economy that is killing his own people—through starvation, overwork, poisoning, or a bullet in the head...
...Its members worked with the Delta security forces, roaming the barrio...
...Tad Tad members decapitate and hack up their victims...
...Lieutenant Kintanan claims no abuses are committed by the Scout Rangers, Lapanday security, or KADRE...
...It promised relief goods and medical care...
...Tribal militias and Civilian Home Defense units were formed to discourage the communist insurgency...
...Their corpses don't fill the funeral parlors...
...Growers also toss produce into fields and streams to keep prices high...
...The conflict was over ancestral land TADECO was developing...
...A pretty girl arranges flowers on top of Edwardo Vasilico's coffin...
...This brutal pattern of labor repression occurs at other U.S...
...Four coffins line the Cosmopolitan funeral home in Davao City, filled with the bodies of security guards...
...They are just squatters...
...Soriano Corporation...
...Many companies waged a war using the military, private armies, and vigilante groups aimed at forcing inhabitants off their land...
...It can be seen through a window on top of the coffin...
...A Civilian Home Defense Force unit was formed...
...He doesn't steam up the glass because he isn't breathing...
...TADECO grows bananas for United Brands, which has the Chiquita label...
...Filipinos are denied a proper diet because they are laboring to produce export crops—food they don't eat...
...multinational corporations to distribute land under her administration's land-reform program...
...They were afraid of getting caught in the crossfire...
...Stanfilco is a subsidiary of Dole...
...You were lucky you were not shot by some of the natives...
...You have entered a war zone," says Lieutenant Panoy, commander of Alpha Company, 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion, as he sets his M-16 rifle on a table...
...Their chemicals infect the workers and poison the villagers' drinking water...
...Now that these U.S...
...Green men, smudged and distorted, walk by with automatic weapons...
...The tribal people have been forced into the unfarmable canyons...
...multinationals are "yellow"—company unions representing the interests of management...
...The Philippine government and its agency PANAMIN—ostensibly developed to protect the rights and welfare of natives—has convinced many tribes in the Paquibato district of Davao City that the NPA is after their land...
...The Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) is an umbrella organization for leftist labor unions...
...The deforestation this caused, combined with Dole's one-crop farming practices, has brought serious erosion and flooding...
...Some of the children have skinny limbs and misshapen heads, with bulging eyes too close together...
...When President Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he assured Castle and Cooke that the situation would not adversely affect the Dole plantation...
...Many farmers could not tend their plots...
...So they are suspicious of strangers...
...After Lapanday had lost millions of pesos because of the slow-down strike, the management turned to Colonel Delfin Lorenzana and his 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion...
...During the strike, many of the Lapanday workers fled to Davao City after claiming they had suffered continuous harassment from Lapanday's security forces, members of the 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion, and an anticommunist vigilante group called KADRE...
...In a Philippine magazine advertisement, Del Monte claims to be helping the people of northern Mindanao—improving their educations and living standards...
...With the rain come the lizards, crawling from unseen crevices...
...Lieutenant Kintanan, commander of Company C, says the area around Mandug used to be controlled by the New People's Army, "but we liberated it...
...Meanwhile, a recent rice shortage has driven the price of Filipinos' staple food upward...
...To acquire the most fertile land and begin their export empires, the corporations used a variety of methods—illegal land-grabbing, legal trickery, and broken promises of jobs and benefits...
...multinationals...
...Lapanday laborers reported that 700 of the 1,000 workers who did not return voluntarily to the fields were forced back under armed guard...
...The flow of evacuees into Davao increased after the military began shelling Mandug with a 105-mm...
...corporations to control the work force and suppress union activities...
...Late last year, President Corazon Aquino visited several U.S...
...Edwardo's face is purple...
...companies...
...PANAMIN came to Paquibato in 1974...
...I used to work in the rice and corn mill here," he says, "but then the big banana corporation came to our barrio and leased all the land for their crops...
...Dole, like other U.S...
...When the tribal people were pushed into the uplands, they had no choice but to start slash-and-burn farming...
...They creep towards rice and corn fields...
...President Manuel Quezon authorized the National Development Corporation to hold land for Del Monte's use...
...The KMU is one of the few organizations able to represent Filipino workers...
...The Lapanday security guards have not only harassed workers, but they have been accused of murder...
...It was not the corporations that developed the virgin land...
...If I do not control them, they will cause abuses," he says...
...foreign and Philippine domestic policy...
...In December 1988, the newly formed Lapanday Employee's Union, backed by the company's management and the military, defeated the KMU in Lapanday's union elections...
...The villagers' main diet is corn grits...
...In the Philippines, the fourteenth-largest food producer in the world, 70 to 80 per cent of the children are malnourished...
...Her arms stretch in a swirl of brown oil paint...
...The rebels operating near Lapanday warned the company's management that there would be no peace in their business area as long as they exploited the workers...
...They made us sign papers saying we would go back to work and join the KADRE...
...The victims typically owned land next to Delta farms...
...Lapanday and the military, advised by one of these cliques of corporate busiDel Monte's fields encroach on grave sites, rivers run thick with bananas, and children starve...
...The company pays them...
...You don't find company executives patrolling the banana fields...
...Del Monte continues its land acquisition...
...When Corazon Aquino came to power in 1986, PANAMIN's name was changed to the Office of Southern Cultural Communities (OSCC...
...We Scout Rangers also patrol the plantation to keep the NPA off...
...His lips are close to the glass...
...In the rush to form large plantations, U.S...
...An old woman wails as two children serve rice and chicken on a long wooden table...
...But the small farmers and tribal people of Bukidnon don't feel a foreign corporation has the right to invade their home and "improve" their lives...
...When KMU board member Danny Martinez was killed, his wife identified the assailants as members of the Lapanday Special Forces...
...He was paid by the Armed Forces of the Philippines general headquarters in Manila," Lorenzana says...
...It was peaceful in Mandug before the Scout Rangers came," a male evacuee says...
...In the following years, these forces were responsible for beatings, murders, and torture...
...On the contrary—martial law created a superior working environment for multinationals...
...The moths fly too close to their predators and get sucked into their mouths...
...Many of the workers lined up with the NPA and KMU, while the company management sided with the Philippine government and military...
...We had a brainstorm session with some other banana corporations, since they often work together when dealing with labor problems...
...Children claw their way from her grasp...
...The natives have no topsoil to farm, only fields of rocks...
...The tension and humidity build...
...The Philippine military and private armies-used throughout history to maintain the power of elite Filipinos—are now employed by U.S...
...A sign reminds customers as they leave the Cosmopolitan that All Transactions Must Be Made In Cash...
...In October 1988, OSCC intervened in a dispute between the tribes and TADECO's security forces...
...The company bulldozed houses, coconut trees, and cornfields, and then conducted a campaign of violence and harassment against the workers and villagers in an effort to acquire more land...
...multinationals, including Del Monte pineapple plantation and Firestone Tire and Rubber Company...
...Delta's operation in Kapungagan began in 1972...
...It is actually the Tagum Agricultural Development Corporation (TADECO) that they should fear...
...Mendoza shuffles into the room holding a glass of Philippine rum and watches the rain pound the dirt road...
...No limit was set on the area that could be acquired, a technical violation of the Philippine constitution...
...The farming practices of these companies deplete the soil and ravage the land...
...The management justifies its actions by claiming the plantation increases crop yield and foreign exchange, improving the lives of Filipinos...
...turning from a meeting at Diamond Farms, a grower for Stanfilco...
...They threatened to kill us if we joined the KMU...
...The scholar Ernst Utrecht found that Del Monte released laborers after two months in order to keep its work force temporary, allowing the company to pay less than the minimum wage...
...After the tribes had been placed on these reservations, the corporations and military settled onto the natives' ancestral land...
...Their subsidiary, Dole Philippines, leased land through the Philippine government's National Development Corporation...
...Most of the inhabitants work for Delta, a plantation that grows bananas under a contract with Del Monte...
...Castle and Cooke entered the Philippines in 1963 through President Diosdad Macapagal's open-door policy to foreign investment...
...They moved in after the work had been finished...
...The road out of the "Valley of the Apes" runs through another farm that grows bananas for Del Monte, the A.M...
...PANAMIN's minority settlements were established in strategic military locations...
...Now there is no land to grow rice and corn, and there is no produce for the mill...
...Below Kalsingi, the plantation workers live in what is known as Little Tondo, named after the squatter slum in Manila...
...In the cool mountains above Polomo-lok, South Cotabato, lies Kalsingi, the country-club estate that houses the American executives who work for Dole Philippines...
...The Bolo Battalion is a faction of Tad Tad, an anticommunist vigilante group composed of religious fanatics...
...Banana trees encroach on the grave sites...
...They cleared the forest and planted rice, corn, and other crops...
...So we decided to fight them...
...Many of the tribal people have been indoctrinated to believe that if the government loses the war, they will lose their land, lose everything to the communists...
...Land was not given to the settlers who lost their farms when Dole came to Polomo-lok...
...They cling to the walls, searching for prey...
...In 1973, Del Monte phased out its Hawaiian operation to concentrate in the Philippines and profit from the cheap labor...
...Many unions in U.S...
...They have been pushed into the hills and onto the least fertile land by Dole Philippines...
...Behind the oil painting and the wall it hangs on is the office of Erasto "Nonoy" Librado, secretary-general of KMU-Min-danao...
...Outside Librado's office sit several KMU members from the Lapanday farm, in the remote barrio of Mandug...
...corporations have established plantations, they hire local people to labor in the fields and packing Brad Miller, a free-lance writer in San Francisco, recently returned from the Philippines...
Vol. 53 • November 1989 • No. 11
