The Development of Post-War

Philippine Land Reform: Political

and Sociological Explanations
By David Wurfel. In Second View from the Paddy, Antonio Ledesma, Perla Q.
Makil & Virginia A. Miralao, eds., Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de
Manila, 1983

Introduction
The history of Philippine agrarian policy since independence is a sadly
monotonous one for the scholar, a bitterly disappointing one for the hopeful
tenant cultivator. It is a story of repeated initiative from the center of
government that did not result in anywhere near the announced change in the
countryside. Explanations for this series of ineffectual reforms have varied
from insincerity and corruption to lack of peasant interest in getting ownership
of the land. The most convincing analysis, however, seems to relate to the
political and economic interests of the top decision makers, those initiating
policy and supervising its implementations, and to the socioeconomic
characteristics of the agrarian systems being reformed. The cumulative
political consequences of agrarian policy also find both political and
socioeconomic explanations.

Agrarian reform is a complex of policies designed to transform rural society in

the direction of greater equality of wealth and power among groups and
classes, and greater equality of opportunity for individuals. Where agrarian
reform has followed a successful revolution it has usually involved the
uncompensated redistribution of land. A much more modest attempt at
transformation may be the creation of cooperatives in which small cultivators
are given greater opportunities than their large competitors. But the type of
reform on which we will focus here is the redistribution of tenanted land with
compensation to the original owner, land for which the beneficiary of reform
must repay the government. Despite all the permutations in Philippine policy
over more than 30 years, these basic elements of land reform have remained
constant: government purchase of tenanted land and its resale to tenants.
Philippine land reform has been further restricted over the years to grain
cropsrice and corn-for domestic consumption. Export crops have consistently
been exempted, the official argument being that land reform might disrupt
production and thus jeopardize foreign exchange earnings. Perhaps a more
important reason, however, was that large landowners in sugar, coconuts, and
tobacco were politically too powerful to be touched. The scope and nature of
the reforms that were implemented posed no threat to the interests of the
political elite, but were, in fact, perceived as strengthening their position. The
changes in the content of reform from the 1940s to the 1970s indicated the
waning influence of rice and corn landlords within that elite.

Land Reform Under Roxas and Quirino (1946-

1953)
Agrarian policy initiatives had for the most part begun in the 1930s under
President Quezon who was sensitive to the peasant unrest in Central Luzon
and wanted to appear to meet some of its demands, without too seriously
discomforting his landlord friends and allies. (His national political organization
depended on local leaders who were usually either landlords or their
proteges.) Components of that policy included regulation of tenancy relations,
organized land settlement in Mindanao for the landless of Luzon and Cebu,
the long-standing anti-usury law, issuance of free patents to homesteaders on
cultivable public land, and a “landed estates policy” which provided funds for
the negotiated purchase of large holdings for resale to the tenants.1

Before World War II, the Rural Progress Administration (RPA) had purchased
tenant homesites on four estates and the agricultural land of two more; the
area of the six totaled to little more than 6,000 hectares.2 The RPA had also
leased the huge 27,000 hectare Buenavista Estate with future prospect of
redistribution. But disputes about tenant rights abounded and none had
become amortizing owners. The American “liberation” of Manila was terribly
destructive of government offices, so that landed estate records after the war
were either chaotic or nonexistent.

Nevertheless, the acquisition of estates by the RPA resumed in 1947, so that

by 1950 another 19 had been purchased amounting to over 10,000 hectares
in addition to the vast Buenavista Estate. Over 3/4 of this area was owned by
some official or agency of the Catholic Church. Most of the land acquired was
in Central Luzon where the Huk rebellion made many villages unsafe for
landlords or their agents; much of the area was uncultivated. Some of the
estates were purchased from persons whose legal ownership was in question.
Clearly the landed estates policy was not “land reform” primarily designed to
transform tenants into owner-cultivators, but was a social service agency for
landlords with shaky titles or poor profit ratios. Landlords who were opposed
to appropriation were usually able to stop it in the courts. In fact, it
was RPA policy to discourage tenant petitions for estate purchases by the
impossible requirement that petitioners deposit an amount equivalent to the
assessed value of the land in question on the date the petition was approved)
The RPA was starved for funds, receiving no post-war appropriation; they
operated largely with borrowed funds. Even when landed
estates werepurchased, the cultivating tenant was not likely to be the main
beneficiary. Many of the estates had cash tenants who in turn sublet to
cultivating sharecroppers. The tenants who were allocated lots for purchase
often had farms of 10 to 50 hectares, while the average size of a cultivator’s
plot was under 3 hectares.3

Many of the cultivating tenants who were fortunate enough to acquire

purchase rights could not afford to keep them. Despite the explicit rules
against transfer, such rights had become a saleable commodity. Poor tenants
deeply in debt surrendered their rights to creditors. The same processes that
resulted in concentration of land ownership in the Philippines generally
operated within the government estates. Thus, large portions of the estates
under RPA administration continued to be cultivated by share tenants with no
prospect of becoming owners. The “landed estates policy” had simply
displaced some large landlords to create many medium sized ones. And since
the RPA, a government agency, became directly involved in the burgeoning
disputes over land rights, that traditional source of peasant anger and
frustration more quickly than before produced political unrest. Not surprisingly
the Bell Mission to the Philippines appointed by President Truman
in 1950 concluded that “the land problem remains the same or worse than
four years ago.”

The Bell Mission Report was, in fact, expected by many to be the impetus for
the next stage of land reform. It recommended that “a broad program should
be inaugurated of acquiring large estates at fair value for resale in small
holdings to tillers of the soil.” At the same time the report recommended
expanded programs of agricultural credit, organized land settlement on virgin
land, and the improved administration of land registration and homesteading
on public land. Each of these other recommendations, less threatening to elite
interests, was backed with some U.S. aid, but not land redistribution. The U.S.
land reform advisor drew up a detailed proposal, but it was blasted by leading
Filipino congressmen, and not even supported by the U.S. aid mission. In fact,
in 1950 the Rural Progress Administration was abolished and its functions
transferred to a newly created landed Estates Division of the Bureau of Lands.
No new estates were purchased throughout the remainder of the Quirino
administration, and redistribution policy on RPA-acquired estates dropped
even the pretense of preference for the tiller. The simulation of land reform
was suspended in the early 1950s.

This was the same period in which the Huk rebellion peaked and then was put
down. The Liberal Party’s political elite under Quirino certainly did not view
land reform as a cure for peasant unrest, though a number of opposition
figures did make the connection. Liberals were, in fact, even less interested in
land reform in 1953, when the Huks had been largely defeated, than in 1950
when the rebellion was at its height. The election of Ramon Magsaysay as
president in 1953 made some difference in this regard, however.

Land Reform Under Magsaysay and Garcia

(1954-61)
Magsaysay had brought his campaign directly to the peasantry in a manner
unprecedented. After he was elected, several of his advisors understood the
importance of taking concrete action to meet peasant complaints and thus
reduce unrest. Since the “landed estates policy” remained in the Bureau of
lands, the aggressive new Undersecretary of Agriculture, Jaime Ferrer, had
an important role, as did some of the pro-tenant young officers in the Tenancy
Division of the Judge Advocate General’s Office. In two instances, in San
Luis, Pampanga and San Pedro Tunasan, Laguna, within a few months of
Magsaysay’s assuming the presidency, the Executive Office took initiative
directly to acquire landed estates. The landed Estates Division began a
number of negotiations and expropriations, and within the estates they already
administered, dramatically increased the rate of redistribution, giving clear
preference for the first time to cultivating occupants of the land. All this activity
clearly raised the expectation of tenants. During FY 1955 the Bureau of lands
received 116 petitions for the expropriation of landed estates covering more
than 113,000 hectares.4

But those expectations could not be adequately met without new legislation
and new implementing agencies. The Inter-Departmental Committee on land
Tenure, appointed by the President in March 1954, worked at unusual speed
and produced a draft of the land reform bill by 6 May which was immediately
introduced into the House of Representatives. At about the same time,
however, legislation to improve landlord tenant relations was introduced and
this received priority attention. No action was taken on land reform in the 1954
regular session, and it did not even appear on the agenda of the special
session of that year.

In his 1955 State of the Nation message Magsaysay did reiterate his desire
for new land reform legislation. But just as the President announced that he
would take land reform seriously, so did its opponents. At every stage of the
legislative process landlord interests attacked both directly and with subtle
indirection. Magsaysay was neither so persistent nor so skillful. He never
issued a public statement in favor of any portion of the bill. His only significant
effort was to call a special session with the “land tenure bill” as highest
priority. Nevertheless, the bill was almost scuttled at the conference
committee stage. The final legislative product was so inadequate that Atty.
Fernando Santiago, one of the authors of the first draft, sent a memo to the
President recommending that he veto it and ask for a simple appropriation
instead.5 Congressman Casas of la Union tried to amend the bill’s title at the
last minute, so that it would read — ironically but accurately — “An act
defining a landlord tenure policy,” Republic Act 14006, signed by the President
in September, had only one improvement over preexisting legislation, a
modest appropriation and authorization of a bond issue.

The power of expropriation was more restricted than it had been under
Commonwealth legislation. It was limited to that portion of individual land
holdings in excess of 300 contiguous hectares, and corporate holdings of
more than 600, though there were no such restrictions on negotiated
purchase. Petitions signed by a majority of tenants in the whole estate were
required to initiate an expropriation, or negotiations.

The Land Tenure Authority (LTA) established by the Act to implement this
policy, did not begin to actually function until January 1956; Magsaysay had
named a defeated Congressman to head it. In large part, perhaps, because of
the administrative reshuffle resulting from the closing of the Landed Estates
Division in the Bureau of Lands and transfer of its personnel to LTA, the pace
of activities slowed down in early 1956: only one estate with 187 tenants was
purchased. Within the same 6 months petitions from tenants came in at a rate
of one a day.7 Aspirations had clearly been raised by the new Act, but were
not being fulfilled. (Yet not all such petitions could be regarded as indicative of
pure tenant aspirations; there were many cases in which tenants were
manipulated by landlords .who wanted to sell unproductive, partially idle or
improperly titled land.)
Strangely enough, landlords sometimes seemed to favor expropriation over
negotiated sale. They had friends in court. The price set by courts in
expropriation proceedings were sometimes nearly double those of negotiated
settlements, disadvantaging the tenant who had to repurchase the land at the
same price. (Landlords were paid in cash and/or negotiable bonds.)8 Rights of
repurchase remained confusing with LT A policy often failing to protect the
actual cultivator.9 Only on estates where cultivating tenants were well
organized could they be assured of priority in land redistribution, and most
were not. Even when lots were allocated, and before they were fully paid for,
the transfer of rights for cash – especially to non-cultivators-was
rampant.10 Nor could tenants on sugar estates expect to benefit from LT A
programs in any way; there was an informal understanding that petitions for
the expropriation of sugar land would not be acted upon favorably.11

Despite confusions in implementation, the LTA increased the pace of land

acquisition several times over in FY 1957; seven estates were purchased. The
rising number of investigations in 1957 resulted in the acquisition of 18 estates
in FY 1958 encompassing over 14,000 hectares with more than 5,200
tenants. But in March 1957 President Magsaysay died, succeeded by his
Vice-President, Carlos P. Garcia. Within a year many of the officials
committed to land reform left the Administration. In the next two fiscal years
only 6 estates were acquired, and corruption in the process became more
widespread.12

During the time of President Garcia there was “what amounts to a stalemate
between landlords and their allies in Congress and in the executive
departments, and the elements favoring land reform.”13 The hopes of
accomplishment raised in 1954 had again been dashed. Though other
agrarian programs may have somewhat improved the bargaining position of
the tenant vis-à-vis the landlord, only an insignificant portion of the nation’s
tenant farmers were on the way to becoming owners. The land acquired for
redistribution by the LT A in the first 5 years of its existence amounted to less
than 10 percent of the area of landed estates over ISO hectares in the five
provinces of Central Luzon alone!14

At the rate of progress maintained under Magsaysay and Garcia it would have
taken approximately 700 years to repurchase and redistribute the 1.8 million
hectares of tenanted agricultural land in the Philippines.15

The defeat of President Garcia in the 1961 election was not, therefore, a great
loss to the cause of land reform. Nor did it appear to be any particular gain. It
was hardly mentioned in the campaign, nor was it referred to at the
inauguration of the victor, Diosdado Macapagal. Though a congressman in
the 1950’s, Macapagal had not participated in the land reform debate in 1954
or 1955, and had not even voted on the bill that became R.A. 1400.16

But in January 1963 President Macapagal appointed a special committee on

land reform, headed by Acting Secretary of Labor Bernadino Abes, to draft
what eventually came to be known as the Agricultural Land Reform Code of
1963. It was introduced into Congress in March and adopted by both houses
in July. What had led the President to issue an emotional call in his State of
the Nation Address: “We must give the tenants liberty from economic
peonage, in which they have long languished”? In part it seemed to be the
arguments of his top economic advisor, Sixto Roxas, that land reform was a
necessary component of a strategy for rapid economic development,
permitting, for instance, the transfer of capital in land to industry. It was also
apparent to many that Macapagal intended to create mass support among
tenants, thus insuring his reelection.17 Nor was he unresponsive to the views of
American advisors.

Macapagal was not the popular leader Magsaysay was, coming into office on
a wave of proreform sentiment. But Macapagal was a much more skillful
strategist, using successfully what influence he had to gain early passage,
even though the Senate was not under his party’s control. He had appointed
Federation of Free Farmers’ leader Jeremias Montemayor and Philippines
Free Press editor Teodoro Locsin to his special committee, thus helping to
provide some active support for his legislation in the press and from tenant
groups. And when the legislation had not yet been passed by Senate at the
end of the regular session, he called seven special sessions of a few days
each until it was adopted, helping to direct tactics from Malacanang.

The Land Reform Code of 1963 was the most comprehensive piece of
legislation ever enacted in the Philippines on the subject. It reorganized and
strengthened land settlement, small farmer credit, the dissemination of new
agricultural technology, legal assistance to tenants and small farmers, and
created a structure for better coordination of all these functions, as well as
dealing with land reform more narrowly defined. A Land Authority was created
to take over most of the activities of the LTA and a Land Bank was
established to handle the financial aspect of land acquisition.

Though the initial bill was somewhat weakened before final passage, the
emasculation was nowhere nearly as great as in 1955. The most serious
excision was the chapter on land taxation which would have imposed a
progressive tax based on assessment of potential productivity and could have
greatly improved collection. A major incentive for landlords’ acceptance of
government purchase and redistribution was thus lost.

The Code had several advantages over previous legislation, especially the
authorization for the Land Authority to acquire estates of more than 75
hectares, whether owned by individuals or corporations, removing the term
“contiguous.” However, the earlier absence of any effective restraints on
landlord evasion by transforming land use or transferring ownership to family
members remained. And while in 1955 sugar and coconut were excluded from
land reform by tacit agreement, in 1963 this exclusion was made legislatively
specific, with fruits and other crops added to the list. Furthermore, the
provision that the National Land Reform Council needed to declare all
government agencies dealing with land reform fully operative in a region
before implementation could begin was, while logical from one standpoint, an
additional juncture at which landlord pressure and bureaucratic wrangling
could delay any action.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy, however, was that after President Macapagal
had shown considerable political sophistication in getting the Code enacted,
he was lax in pushing its implementation. It. was a dramatic example of the
politics of symbolism that has so permeated Philippine public affairs. It was as
if Macapagal, having signed an important document, found little compulsion to
act on it. The new agencies established by the code were not fully operative
until March 1964.18 As late as 1966 no agricultural land had yet been
purchased under the terms of the Code!19 Even under the provisions of
previous legislation in the 2 years following enactment of the Code only 1,610
hectares were purchased, or less than the annual average under Magsaysay
and Garcia.20 A few months before the November 1965 election Macapagal
panicked, and made vigorous efforts to implement the Code.21 But it was too
late to turn the political tide against him.

President Marcos came to office, like his immediate predecessor, without any
record of interest in land reform. The fact that machinery for implementation
was established by his defeated rival may have caused him to be even less
enthused. Certainly the commitment of funds was modest. None other than
Conrado Estrella, appointed chairman of the Land Reform Council by Marcos
and later secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform, called attention in
early 1972 to the fact that in 1965 the total appropriation for all land reform
agencies was PI56 million, but that “out of this amount only … 20 percent was
released. This trend has continued through the years. The proportion of the
amount released against appropriations ranged from 20 to 30 percent.” “In
1971 only … 24 percent [was] released from an appropriation of PI82
million.”22 As of September 1971 land reform, had not even been “proclaimed”
in more than 236 of the nation’s 1,506 cities and municipalities (varying in size
from a country to a township), Agricultural land purchase and redistribution
had fallen to a low level: during the first 4 years of the Marcos presidency
approximately 2,600 hectares had been purchased by the Land Authority and
another 1,500 by the Land Bank, or about 1,000 hectares per year. Though
slightly above the pace of activity in Macapagal’s last 2 years in office, this
was only {%} of the annual average during the Magsaysay/Garcia years.

The way in which Mr. Marcos won reelection in 1969 with charges of massive
fraud, inducement and intimidation, triggered a political reaction that had a
profound impact on the national attention to and perception of land reform. It
marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of Philippine agrarian
reform.

Land Reform Since 1971

The raucous demonstrations that accompanied President Marcos’ second
inauguration marked the tenor of the times. Students were aroused and were
making common cause with tenants and trade unionists. The only positive
response in the President’s State of the Nation address was a proposal to sell
military camps near Manila to generate funds for land reform. Later special
committees in both chambers of Congress conducted hearings which heard
representatives of peasant groups and land reform Agencies.23 On 5 May as a
consequence of those hearings, omnibus bills were introduced to promote
land reform in both the Senate and the House, but the problems and costs
which became associated with the idea of selling military land scuttled that
plan. For the first time in Philippine history legislative initiative on land reform
did not come from the President, but resulted in large part from popular
clamor heeded by Congress.

The Senate bill was favored by peasant organizations since it incorporated

their demands for a lowering of the retention limit to 24 hectares and a
prohibition on the creation of subdivisions or the “resumption of personal
cultivation” (through wage laborers) as justification for the ejection of tenants,
and thus avoidance of land reform. (Both were widespread practices since
1955.) They were less enthusiastic about the Estrel1a-favored bill to create a
Department of Agrarian Reform. But the regular session ended without any
land reform related bills being passed. The first and second special sessions
saw little progress either, and before the third special session was called a
meeting of Congressional leaders with the President agreed to strike land
reform from the agenda.24 It was decided to suspend action on land reform
while a special committee conducted an in-depth study, submitting its report to
the regular session beginning in January 1971. Peasant and student groups
were angry.25 Jeremias Montemayor, President of the Federation of Free
Farmers, questioned the sincerity of President Marcos for saying that land
reform would become the “epicenter” of all government activities.

Soon after the January regular session began sitting, debate on land reform
was again suspended to refer the matter to another subcommittee, chaired by
Senator Salvador Laurel. The peasant-favored Senate Bill 478 was amended,
omitting the lowered retention of 24 hectares. Despite 2 days of
demonstrations at Malacaftang in May by 5,000 farmer-members of the
Cooperative League of the Philippines, demanding to see the President, the
regular session ended without land reform legislation having been certified as
urgent.26 Both peasant leaders and progressive legislators increasingly blamed
the President for inaction.

With the calling of the first special session of 1971 there was launched a
unique form of political action, the “live-in picket.” On 1 June hundreds of
small farmers, supported by students, priests, nuns, and urban trade unions,
encamped in front of the Congress building to insist on effective reform
legislation. At the beginning of the second special session, when legislative
action on land reform was still far from complete, the demonstration had
already lasted for 2 months.27 Peasant organizations, especially the Free
Farmers, brought in buses and jeeps loaded with tenants from villages as far
as 200 kilometers away. During each legislative day small groups badgered
individual Congressmen demanding to know how they would vote on each
article of each pending land reform bill, and why, and explaining the
importance of the reforms proposed. Members of Congress had increasing
difficulty in handling this unprecedented pressure. In the early days of the
second special session they began to question the legality of such action;
debates on land reform were even suspended, to reinforce the demand that
demonstrators abandon their round-the-clock picket.28 But the picketers only
gained greater mass support. Representatives of the Philippine Public School
Teachers Federation joined the demonstration. The 87,OOO-member
Philippine Federation of Labor threatened to strike nationwide if farmer
demonstrators were evicted from the Congress building.29 Finally on 9 August
House Speaker Villareal announced that the leadership had decided to
withdraw their demand for the pickets’ removal and to resume debate on land
reform. Said a spokesman for the Philippine Congress of Trade Unions, “this
proved that democracy, if given a chance, can still work in this country.” One
observant Congressman threw light on the motivation for the turnabout when
he commented, “those who would evict the demonstrators would be doing
exactly what the Russian aristocracy … did just before the October revolution
began …30 From then on debate on land reform, especially in the House, was
more constructive. Two bills had been enacted, R.A. 6389 and R.A. 6390,
when the fifth special session ended on 5 September.

Unlike every experience in the past, the final version of the first piece of 1971
land reform legislation was in some ways more favorable to the tenant than
the first. Certainly lowering the retention limit to 24 hectares and preventing
landlords from claiming “personal cultivation” or subdivision as an excuse for
ejectment of tenants would not have survived the legislative process without
intense peasant pressure. Furthermore, the piecemeal approach was ended
and the whole country was declared a land reform area. R.A. 6390, the
funding bill, was more disappointing, providing appropriation for on1y P50
million, no higher than the funding level in the previous few years, and much
less than the original Senate bill. It was, in fact, the President’s intervention
which tipped the scale for the much more modest figures in the House
version.31 Only the provision in R.A. 6389 creating a Department of Agrarian
Reform (DAR) received consistent Administration backing.

There are two major conclusions to be drawn from this legislative history. The
more general one was articulated by both conservative solons and radical
peasant leaders: the democratic process works, the people may peaceably
assemble to redress their grievances. More specifically, genuine progress
toward land reform was possible through Congress if small farmers were
organized. Neither of these conclusions was consistent with the contentions in
September and October 1972 that only through the setting aside of Congress
and presidential rule by decree could genuine land reform be accomplished.
The evidence of peasant mobilization in 1971 and the implications it had for
the future of the Philippine political system, were undoubtedly factors that
helped President Marcos decide to reduce mass participation through Martial
law. (A fuller explanation for the abrupt transition in September 1972 to
authoritarian rule must be found elsewhere, however.)

Presidential Decree No. 17

In the early years of martial law agrarian reform was given great prominence.
One month after its declaration the President issued Presidential Decree No.
27 for “the emancipation of the tiller from the bondage of the soil.” And on the
first anniversary of P .D. 27 he went so far as to say: “land reform is the only
gauge for the success or failure of the New Society. If land reform fails, there
is no New Society. “32

In the decree’s preamble President Marcos hinted at one of the motivations

for this emphasis: “Inasmuch as the old concept of land ownership by a few
has spawned valid and legitimate grievances that gave rise to violent conflict
and social tension, the redress of such … grievances … [becomes] one of the
fundamental objectives of the New Society…“The fear of agrarian unrest, and
Communist leadership thereof, was certainly the explanation for the fact that
only 2 weeks after martial law had been declared, Dr. Roy Prostermann, of
the University of Washington, author of the

1970 land reform in Vietnam (and the subsequent program in El Salvador)

arrived in the Philippines with a draft decree in his pocket. (His draft
influenced but did not determine the final document.) About the same time,
Executive Secretary Alejandro Melchor was in Washington trying to justify
martial law on the grounds that it was necessary for the quick implementation
of broad social reforms. But for the President himself, land reform’s most
important political function was to strike a blow at the “oligarchy,” those
wealthy elite who had formed the core of his political opposition. Not
surprisingly the Aquino estates were among the first to be expropriated. The
subsequent pattern of implementation helped to confirm this interpretation.
The President simply lost his originally keen interest after the owners with
more than 100 hectares had been dispossessed.

In sum, the political purpose of land reform and its ancillary policies was to
create mass support for the New Society and its leader, legitimize him abroad,
and undermine support for alternative leadership on both the right and the left.
Since great estates in sugar, coconut and other export crops were excluded
from its coverage in any case, it is probably fair to say that in the long run
none of these goals were accomplished. In the first few years of martial law,
however, agrarian policy did help create support for Marcos in the
countryside, blunted foreign criticism of his regime, and put the landed elite on
the political defensive.

In principle P.D. 27 was a great improvement over previous legislation

because all rice and corn tenants whose landlords owned more than 7
hectares were to be sold the land they tilled at a price 2 1/2 times the average
annual production; they were given 15 years to pay the land Bank at 6 percent
Interest. No tenant initiative was required. When the tenant fully paid, and only
then, he would receive a title transferable exclusively to his heirs. (Landlords
were to be paid 10 percent in cash and 90 percent in Land Bank bonds.) In
the meantime the eligible tenant would receive a “Certificate of Land Transfer”
(CLT) identifying his cultivated area and promising him the right to purchase
the land.

The number of tenants to benefit from this decree quickly became a

controversial question. In the first month the Department of Agrarian Reform
(which had already been created before martial law) announced that over I
million tenants tilled 1.44 million hectares of rice and corn land. But research
in 1975 established that 57 percent of tenants farmed land owned by persons
with less than 7 hectares. Subsequently DAR announced that based on its
own “field identification,” its goal was to service more than 390,000 tenants on
730,000 hectares, or little more than 1/3 of all rice and corn tenants. By
1980, DAR claimed to have “issued” CLTs to 90 percent of the targeted
tenants, but best estimates are that nearly half of those printed in Manila
never actually reached the hands of the cultivator.

CL T holders were still being asked to pay rent to their landlords. Not until the
price of the land was fixed and the tenant began to pay installments to the
land Bank was he an “amortizing owner.” Only 86,500, or 22 percent of the
target, had reached that stage; and of that number only 1,667 had completed
payments early and become full owners.33 Most amortizing owners were
delinquent.34

Delay in fixing the price, and delinquency in amortization resulted from the fact
that instead of setting land price on the basis of production as the decree
provided, landlords were allowed to negotiate with tenants and DAR field
officials sometimes aided the landlord, already the stronger party. On other
occasions, to be sure, when DAR officials stood up for tenant rights under the
law, they were verbally threatened or judicially harassed by landlords.
Many DAR officials had court cases initiated against them for merely doing
their duty.35 Landlord foot-dragging could postpone a pricing agreement
indefinitely. Thus by 1977, the average price per hectare being paid by the
tenant of nearly P7,000 was 44 percent higher than it would have been if it
had been based on the average yield as reported by the Ministry of
Agriculture.36 Since land Bank bonds could be sold for cash by landlords, at a
discount to be sure, in order to make other investments, or could be invested
in approved projects at face value, the loss of land usually did not involve a
significant loss of wealth. By 1980, 5,860 landowners had been paid by the
Land Bank an average of P207,347 each.

The net result of land redistribution was to put more than 86,000 tenants on
the road to ownership (with only 2 percent completing the process); while this
was less than 9 percent of a very conservative estimate of all rice and corn
tenants, it was, nevertheless, a greater accomplishment than in any previous
administration. However, since the announcement and the early stages of
implementation gave the vast majority of all tenants a feeling that they
personally were going to benefit, the consequence was that for every farmer
who was grateful to the government for having achieved a new status, and
perhaps improved income, there were many resentful that their hopes had
been frustrated. Probably the thousands of tenants who first received CLTs,
and then had them recalled — either because of simple bureaucratic
confusion or because of landlord intervention — were most upset. Though the
thousands more who were illegally ejected from their tenant holdings in 1972-
74 by foresighted landlords wishing to evade the reform may have been at
least equally frustrated.

The slow pace of implementation was due partly to a chronic bureaucratic

complaint, lack of personnel because of lack of budget. Even though there
was a real increase in funds (even after compensating for inflation) for
agrarian reform between FY 1973 and FY 1977, the priority for the Ministry of
Agrarian Reform within the total national budget continued to slide, however.
In 1973 it was 0.8 percent of the total, in 1977 only 0.7 percent and in 1981
down to 0.5 percent).37 More serious, however, was the delay, and even
retreat, in the face of landlord pressure by top decision makers. Nor was this
the result of inattention by the President; Minister of Agrarian Reform Conrado
Estrella, who remained in office from before the declaration until after the
lifting of martial law, boasted of easy access to President Marcos to consult on
problems within the ministry. There was apparently a feeling in Malacanang
that more was to be gained politically by easing the pressure on landlords
(especially those with less than 24 hectares) than by pushing through to the
full extent of the law. Foreign analysts, however, were more inclined to
conclude that half measures were worse than none at all, i.e., that incomplete
reform raised expectations and thus intensified the frustration of those who did
not benefit. Revolutionary political organization in the countryside by 1981
would seem to have justified that conclusion. Some prime land reform areas
had become bases for the Communist-led New People’s Army (NPA).

In any case, government spokesmen did not bother themselves with trying to
explain shortcomings; they proclaimed complete success. The government-
owned Philippine News Agency release on the eve of the 8th anniversary of
P.D. 27 stated: “359,000 farmers now own the land they till via the issuance
of 501,364 certificates of land title [sic]. The figures represent 82 percent of
the total target.”38 The previously subtle attempt to equate CL Ts with titles had
lost its subtlety. Some foreign publications used the language of the release,
thus perpetuating the gross inaccuracy. Even AID officials in Washington
bought this line, though their Philippine specialists knew otherwise.
The AID presentation to the House Foreign Affairs sub-Committee on Asia
and Pacific Affairs hearings in Washington in March 1981 reported flatly that
“88 percent of eligible families had received land titles” under Philippine
agrarian reform.39

Conclusion
To look at the sweep of policy over more than 30 years raises the very basic
question whether “conservative land reform” is possible, i.e., whether the
announced goals, to transform cultivators into owners, can be accomplished
by any regime dominated by men of great private wealth. Does its
achievement either require a period of foreign domination, as in Japan, or a
prior sociopolitical revolution, as in China? Or, posed another way, does the
goal of peasant ownership require rapid industrialization as the context for
agrarian change, as in Japan? And is the only alternative agrarian revolution
that ultimately denies the principle of cultivator ownership anyway, as in
China? Perhaps farmer owners are a transitory breed in any case; both Japan
and Western societies that were long based on peasant ownership are seeing
the rise of the corporate farm.

These questions lead us into the broad field of comparative history,

fascinating, but sometimes speculative. The questions which are more directly
related to the historical survey of Philippine land reform policy here presented
are: Why was this type of policy enacted? Why was implementation so
consistently frustrated? And what are the political consequences of such
programs?

It is abundantly clear that until 1911 peasant demands had no direct effect on
policies enacted. Thus heroic rhetoric, e.g., “The evolution of the various land
reform legislations since 1905 is the story of accumulated piecemeal
concessions bitterly fought for by the Filipino peasantry,” sometimes lacks
historical accuracy.40 The presence of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF)
president on Macapagal’s special committee gave an opportunity for a
peasant leader (balanced by an influential landlord on the same committee) to
present his ideas in the drafting process. But peasant mobilization was
insignificant; thus it was only the perceptions of the political elite about
possible future peasant reactions that affected policy. And those perceptions
were important to decision makers primarily as they entered into broader
calculations of self interest, i.e., how elite interests are influenced by peasant
reaction.

Insofar as peasant protests were violent, and constituted a threat to system

stability, they stimulated concern within the elite, though without legislative
consequence at least until the 19205.41 As early as 1933, however, the Rice
Share Tenancy Act may be seen to be a kind of response to the furious Tayug
uprising of January 1931. The more extensive peasant mobilization in Central
Luzon of the late 1930s frightened President Quezon into launching the
landed estates policy, though the more short-sighted members of the National
Assembly effectively hamstrang other agrarian reform measures. Ultimately,
“Quezon’s desire simultaneously to placate both landlords and tenants …
pleased neither, and in 1941 rural class conflict was more acute than
ever.”42 This characterization of the 1930s aptly fits, as we shall see, the
interactions in later stages of land reform policy.

The Roxas Administration, the first after independence, was closely linked, as
had been Quezon, to the landed elite of Central Luzon. Its response to the
rising Huk Rebellion was the “mailed fist,” thus contributing to mobilization of
the peasantry by the left. Roxas’ Vice-President and successor, Elpidio
Quirino, was himself from the Ilocos region and was therefore less closely tied
to the great landowners of the Philippines’ “ricebowl.” He saw some political
advantage in wooing the dissidents, called for a cease-fire, granted amnesty
to the Huks and seated Taruc in Congress. But the accumulated distrust was
too great; militants on both sides sabotaged the cease-fire and the guerrilla
movement was resumed. Under U.S. prodding, Quirino did attempt, however,
to mount some agrarian reform programs except for land reform. The Hardie
Report from the U.S. aid mission, which proposed a sweeping land
redistribution, was branded as “communist” by vehement congressmen,
undoubtedly speaking for the landed elite. Land reform had to wait until after
the election of Magsaysay.

In the Magsaysay Administration the elite composition again changed,

bringing in younger, and more middle class elements, dedicated to solve the
underlying problems that caused unrest. Magsaysay himself had aroused the
expectation of reform among the masses. But Magsaysay was, in politics, a
tactical neophyte. And the landed interests in Congress were still strong.
Since he delayed more than a year in pushing land reform legislation, the
threat of the Huk Rebellion had drifted into the hazy past for most
parliamentarians – they lost interest in forestalling unrest. “Community
development” was a more comfortable concept, without implications of class
conflict; it was thus a high priority program. Garcia, who became president on
Magsaysay’s death, was fortunate to inherit a relatively tranquil society, which
could afford an interlude of old fashioned politics.

Macapagal had indeed grown up a poor boy, but he had been co-opted by the
landed Pampanga elite. His sudden conversion to the virtues of agrarian
reform in 1963 is thus all the more surprising. Certainly he was respectful of
American advice, and like every other Filipino politician adored the prospect of
new agencies to fill with his appointees, and the Agricultural Land Reform
Code created several of them. But his reaching out for mass support on the
land reform issue was a harbinger of change in the Philippine system, a
harbinger of trends that many thought had died with Magsaysay. But
Macapagal started too late in the building of a new mass base to succeed.

With Marcos during his first term, as with Garcia, there was little interest
shown in land reform. There were no new agencies to staff and Central Luzon
was comparatively quiet. The quiet was deceptive, however, and by the end of
the 19605 a new rebellion had been launched by the New People’s Army. The
landed elite was not as influential in Congress as it once was and peasant
organizations were larger and more politically skilled than ever.43For the first
time they had the commitment, the leadership and the allies to put direct
pressure on Congress for reform..

The reaction of Marcos to the land reform debate of 1971 is curious. He was
certainly not displeased with the prospect of a new administrative structure,
the Department of Agrarian Reform, which would allow him to make new
appointments. But his negative approach to other peasant demands reflected
either a serious miscalculation of the changing political realities or a hidden
agenda. One could almost imagine that there was a desire to see land reform
efforts in the “Old Society” frustrated, while plans for the unveiling of the “New”
were being quietly laid down. His discomfort with the “oligarchy” was already
apparent, thus his posing as the champion of land reform might have seemed
appropriate. But that role was saved until after the declaration of martial law.
And when the purposes of land reform after 1972 seemed to enjoy short-term
success, the program was allowed to languish.

Tai has quite rightly pointed out that political elites initiate land reform “to gain
political legitimacy, i.e., to strengthen popular support for a new political order
or to safeguard an existing regime against threatened political changes.”44 The
first case may fit land reform after martial law, and the latter is typical of the
earlier examples. Tai continues, “Elites are sensitive to the danger that in
initiating reform they may immediately encounter the opposition of the landed
class but only slowly gain the support of the peasants.” Conceivably, they may
lose the loyalty of the former before gaining that of the latter. In fact, this
sensitivity is sometimes developed only after the reform process has begun,
thus inclining the same leadership which initiated it to leave it half finished.
(This seemed particularly apparent in the Philippines in the late 1970s.)

The incomplete reform is also a function of the nature of the Philippine political
elite. It is in Tai’s classification a “conciliatory elite, “45 one in which landlord
interests are strong enough that they must be conciliated. Conciliatory elites,
he says, Hare generally more committed to passing some kind of law than to
fighting for its effective implementation.”46He also recognizes that it is in
countries where land reform has made the least progress, as in the
Philippines that the greatest threats to stability persist.47

Land reform exacerbates class conflict in rural communities, especially when

landlord evasion causes suffering for peasants, e.g., eviction to make way for
mechanization and wage labor, inappropriately termed “personal cultivation” in
Philippine parlance. If such a period of conflict is only a brief transition to full
peasant ownership it is not destabilizing to the whole political system. But
when it continues indefinitely and is exploited by sophisticated radical
leadership, the consequences can be devastating. The spread of guerrilla
warfare in land reform areas in the 1980s is such a consequence.

The lack of follow through in land reform may have explanations other than
the character of a “conciliatory elite.” It may be the result of the rampant
“ritualism” that characterizes so much of Philippine politics, the belief that
appearance is reality, that to make a declaration is to create a condition. This
style is so pervasive that many leaders may not even be conscious of the lack
of substance to their declarations.

The acceptance of ritual may also result from the clogging of communication
channels in an authoritarian regime, where the opportunity for bad news to
reach the top is very limited. In a centralized system of decision making, when
the reality is not fully known at the center there can be no rectification of
errors. Authoritarianism does not provide efficient feedback. Yet many authors
have extolled the advantages of highly centralized regimes for implementing
land reform. Samuel Huntington has been one of these. He adds, however,
that in addition to concentration of power in an elite committed to reform there
must be “the mobilization of the peasantry and their organized participation in
the implementation” of reform. That is an intriguing combination, with a severe
internal contradiction.
A concentration of power is not compatible with freedom of organization,
which is based on the assumption that various interests in society have a right
to share in the decision-making process. That sharing took place for the first
time in 1971. When power was concentrated in 1972, independent peasant
organizations were crushed. By the late 1970s even those groups that had
been domesticated by martial law tried to bring to the President and Secretary
Estrella the complaints of small farmers, but their message fell on deaf ears.
They had no legitimacy within the decision-making process; they were
powerless.

The critique of a close observer of the Philippine program, one who follows
the Huntington school of thought, reveals a similar inconsistency. He points
out that land reform has been handicapped since 1972 because the
relationship between central authority and the peasantry has been one of
central dominance.49 He emphasizes the value of greater local initiative, then
in the next paragraph recommends that wider use might be made of the
military in implementing land reform! One wonders what such analysts mean
by “local initiative.” The military constitute the greatest single constraint on
autonomous peasant political activity especially in relation to agrarian
questions.

The final point that must be made in the attempt to understand the
inconclusive character of Philippine land reform relates to the differences
between central and local elites. While it is true that in the last decade landed
elements in the national political elite have declined in influence, permitting
ever stronger legislation in 1963, 1971 and 1972, changes in local elites have
been much slower. Despite the highly centralized character of Philippine
public administration since the Spanish times local political leaders expected
to be able to intervene in administrative matters to protect their own interests,
and did so with impunity. Furthermore, at the provincial and municipal level
civil servants were often relatives or recommendees of local politicians. And
even though local politicians from the 1950s or 1960s had become a distinct
category from the landlords, they were usually closely linked. The habits of
nearly three generations of electoral politics died hard after 1972, so that local
political leaders did not easily accept the supremacy of the bureaucracy,
continuing to manipulate into their own ends. Thus the failure to implement
land reform was often the gap between central policy and local practice, which
could not be effectively corrected from the center. A mix of both authoritarian
and democratic elements combined to frustrate the implementation of reform.

If land reform is to be fully implemented, there must be a cleansing of the

bureaucracy of those who do not support it, along with much greater
autonomy for peasant organization and an adequately funded, clearly
committed central authority. It is difficult to foresee when these conditions may
prevail.