Philippine Agrarian Reform 1880 - 1965 9789814376693

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The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

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Philippine Agrarian Reform 1880-1965 The Revolution That Never Was

by

Leslie E. Bauzon

Occasional Paper No. 31 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Price:

S$4.00

Dr. Leslie Bauzon's "Philippine Agrarian Reform 1880-1965" is the th i rty -first publication in the Institute's Occasional Papers series. This series was inaugurated in 1970 and for the most part consists of discussion and other papers presented at the Institute's Occasional and In-House seminars. Let's hope that Dr. Bauzon's analysis of agrarian reform in the Philippines will be of interest to not only In the the specialist but the larger public as well. meantime, while wishing Dr. Bauzon and his study all the best, it is clearly understood that responsibil ity for facts and opin1ons expressed in the work that follows rests exclusively with Dr . Bauzon and his interpretati ons do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the Institute or its supporters. ll June 1975

Director Institute of Southeast Asian Stud i s

Philippine Agrarian Reform 1880-1965 This paper will be divided into two major sections. One section will deal with the land situation in the Philippines during the Spanish period and how the Spaniards sought to clarify the land situation that became confused as the centuries of Castillian misrule wore on; and the other will cover the agrarian question under American political tutelage as well as under Filipino national leadership after 1946, when the United States withdrew her colonial sovereignty from the Philippines, up to 1965. The period since 1965 cannot be properly evaluated yet since it is much too recent, and because changes are still taking place, the impact of which can only be assessed and judged upon by future historians and by unborn generations of Filipinos. I.

. THE

SPA;.~

ISH AGRARIAN LEGACY

It is still not clear whether or not the Spaniards really introduced the concept of private land ownership. 1 At any rate, it was under Spanish colonialism that there developed greater realization that land itself could be a source of enormous wealth and income if intensively cultivated and devoted to the large-scale agricultural production of cash crops intended for exportation. This realization that land itself could be a source of wealth, that land had economic value, dawned largely upon the Spaniards, the mestizos (persons of mixed parentage), and the upper-class Filipinos, although there is no question about the fact that land ownership for social prestige was also a factor in land acquisition . For the Filipinos, land was important as a source of food to meet their essential needs for subsistence. This was so even before the Spanish conquest. However, there was no reason to acquire land holdings beyond what was necessary to satisfy subsistence demands since Philippine prehispanic economy was non-capitalistic or non-monetized .

1

This question is briefly dealt with in my article entitled "Rural History, Land Tenure, and the Negros Hacienda Complex: Some Pre 1 iminary Notes," Philippine Soaial Science CoW'Lci l.~ Social Science Information~ I (January 1974), pp.4-7, 21, 23.

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In the case of the Spaniards, the mest iz os, and the native pr i nc i pal i a2 families, land acquisition was motivated both by the prestige factor and the desire for economic profit, particularly when the Spanish government decided to encourage export production late in the eighteenth century.3 Agrarian abuses identified with the Spanish colonization of the Philippines occurred l~rgely in two spheres of activity: (a) land acquisition, and (b) land tenure. Land acquisition took several forms. 4 One was through outright purchase or sale (venta real) wherein a person paid a certain amount of money in exchange for a piece of land. The exchange was binding

2

Upper-class Fi lipinos .

3

The establishment of the Tobacco Monopoly in the early 1780's was - a positive step in this direction. See Chapter V of my "Defi cit Government: Mexico and the i?hilippine Situado, 1606-1804", unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 19 70 .

4

The entire discussion here on the methods of land acquisition during the Spanish period was based solely on documents found in the Philippine National Archives o These documents are found in two specific sections: Protoaolos for Negros and Iloilo, and Terrenos~ also for Negros and Iloilo . The Protoaolos are notarial registers which cover virtually all forms of land transactions or arrangements in Negros and all over the country for that matter . Such transactions or arrangements range from s tr aight sales to mortgages to public auctions . The Terrenos~ on the other hand, pertain primarily to court litigations involving land . Landgrabbing cases can be found in thi s sect i on, as well as in the Protoaolos. A more detailed treatment of the various fQrms of land acquisition will be found i n my forth coming book on the beginnings and development of land tenure patterns in the Philippines, focusing specifically on the hacienda ,. complex of Negros Island, in Visayan Philippines " The book will also embody the results of the standard statistical process the writer used to organize, analyze, and int erp ret the massive raw data he gathered on hacienda hectarages, l and pri ces, rates of interest, population, wages, exports, produc tion, and 1nterna migration . The process involved use -of such standard s t a ti stical me t hods like regression-correlation analysis, variance analysis, and serial ranking .

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and absolute so .long as the transaction was fair and just , It is assumed t_hat when such a transaction occurred between individuals during the Spanish period, bot h par ti es were really in full agreement about the price and t he size of the land , However, there were cases o f land ~ales that c annot be judged as honest deals . Such cases usually occurred between an "Indio" and a Span1ard, or between a Chinese mes t izo and a Spaniar d , When a Spaniard bought from an "Indio" he usually pa1d explo it atively low prices . Sometimes he pai d in the form of an i nexpensive bracelet or n,e cklace •. This 1s in contrast to his transact i on with a fellow Span iard, whom he paid in accordance with the correct assessed value of t he property . In short, Filipino se llers were a l ways at the losing end of the deal . A se con d form of land acquisition was through the a rrangeme nt known as paeto de retrovent a (p ac to de retro for short ) or samgl an g-b iZi in the Fi l ip i no l anguage. Th i s arrangemen t was basical l y exploitative ~ It involved a l mos t always a Filipino and e i ther a Chinese mestizo or a Span i sh moneylender (prestamista) . For example, a poor fe llow, say Fulano de Tai, needs fifty pesos for the bapt1sm of his c hi l d . He does not have the money at hand , so as a mat t er of compelling economic necessity, he goes to the t own money l ender. He borrows fifty pesos from him, and agrees to pay it in one year. To get his l oan, he i s compel led to put .up his land as collateral . Ful ano further agrees that if in one year he does not pay back h1s l oan, the transaction automatically becomes a straight sale . What i s condemnable about the pacta de retro is that th e assessed va lue of the land offered as collateral was often greater than the value of the loan. Many p restam~s~ as knew this u but they deliberately en ticed or lured t he mi serably i gnorant natives into enter ing pa cta de retro arrangements with them, realizing fu lly that the "Indios" could not extricate themselves financia l ly f rom such a _deal with in the s tipulat.ed period. Or i f th e borrowers d i d make an effort to pay their loan at the stipulated time, t he money l enders would resort to the pract .ice of leaving their homes so that the in deb ~e dness coul d not be liquidated and ther~fore, the collateral coul d not be .redeemed. Under such circums t ances, the arrangement would automati c ally become a s trai gh t sale in favour of the moneylenders, with the latter acquiring abso lute titles of ownership over the lands p ut up as collateral in the prior pa cta de retro dea ls . Fil~pino farmers who owned small parcels of land freque ntly fo und th emse lves no longer owne r s of the land

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they inherited from their ancestors, or which they acquired through mere occupation and possession, ut only tenants. The moneylenders became the land owners, and the borrowers saw their status being quickly changed to that of mere landless share-croppers.S Perhaps the most detestable form of land acquisition during the Spanish period was landgrabbing (usurpacion).6 Before the nineteenth century, cases of landgrabbing documents of which this writer have seen personally, largely involved the friars, who were also the largest landowners ~ In the nineteenth century, landgrabbing was also practiced by non-Churchmen - Spaniards, Spanish or Chinese mestizos, and Filipino gobernadorciLLos (petty governors) who carne from the native princ i paLia class. Landgrabbing was effected largely through the connivance of surveyors (agrimensores) and corrupt judges and provincial execut1ves (aLcaldes). The modus operandi of landgrabbers was very simple but devastating. They took advantage of a "judicial" process known as interdicta de despojo, by which they could present false claims based on fake documents, testified to by bribed or coerced witnesses (testigos) and accepted as "valid" by judges who were likewise bribed or generously showe red 'with ' gifts. Claims were usually made on land already cleared or tilled by "Indio" farmers. When told by political authorities that they were "squatting" on land owned by somebody else (the landgrabber) , they had to move out and go to the hills where they again went through the process of clearing and tilling a piece of land. Interdicta de despojo in effect legalized landgrabb1ng. Many small Filipino farmers lost their landed possessions this way. If they did not move out to the hills and mountain-sides, they stayed on as ordinary share-crop tenants. Several spectacular landgrabbing cases can be documented not only in Central Luzon, a rice-growing 5

John L. Larkin in his book, The Pampangans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), discusses three variations of the pacto de retro deal in Pampanga . The present writer's forthcoming book on Negros will discuss twelve variations of the same deal.

6

Landgrabbing is a proolem that persists to this day. When this writer joined a summer workcamp in 197l,among the Negritos of ~~hinay, Negros Oriental, he found out that their ancestral lands were being usurped by Christian settlers.

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area, but also in Negros, a sugar-producing island, during the nineteenth century as well as in the twentieth century.? The three preceding forms of land acquisition, to me, were the most abusive and exploitative of the Filipino natives . But they should not eclipse the other manners of land acquisition, which were likewise quite common. These include land acquisition by way of a royal grant from the Crown lands (realengas). This royal grant was given as a reward for meritorious service in the colony like participation in the "pacification" of "unruly" natives . Land grants of this sort should not however be confused with the encomiendas, which were landless, and which were purely grants to Spaniards to enjoy the right to collect tribute from the natives, with the natives retaining ownership of the encomienda lands . 8 Land acquisition by way of inheritance was also frequent, but this led to the break-up of some of the great hac i endas of the nineteenth century into smaller proprietary ventures. In point of time, the oldest and the most common form of land acquisition was the process known as denuncia or desmont e . This was the process wherein a person walked into an area which he knew was uncleared, untilled, and unoccupied. He then proceeded to clear, cultivate, and occupy it. If he established his prior and effective occupation of the place, and if he rendered it productive for at least two years, he could have the land titled and legally acknowledged as his own. The problem here is that Filipinos who acquired lands through the denuncia almost always never came to hear about the "possessory proceedings" that Spanish legislation provided for, nor

7

In the possession of this writer is a xerox copy of a landgrabbing c ase involving a prominent person in the nineteenth century who ille gally usurped more than 7,000 hectares in the span of a few years. The originals c an be found in the Terrenos section of the Ph ilippine National Archives .

8

See Bauzon, "The Encomienda as a Spanish Colonial Inst i tution i n the Philippines, 1.571-1604," Silliman Journal, XIV (Second Quarter, 1967 ), pp , 197-241 . See also Frederick A. Kirkpatrick, "Land 1es s Encomiencia," Hispanic American Historical Review, XXII (November 1942), pp. 765-774 o

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11 did they comprehende ntirely what .the possessory proceedings,. entailed. The result i s that they never had legal titles of ownership . By not having l egal documents, it was easy for landgrabbers to lay claim on the lands they had already cleared and occup i ed for years .

It is thus perfectly clear that land acquis iti on Opportunitie s under Spain was not always just and fair. and existed, abuses and exploitation brutal for of advantage undue took readily persons unscrupulous s. opportunitie such With regards to land tenure, it can be stat ed that land tenure patterns like the inq ui l i na&o or rent system, the proprietary or plantation s y stem , and share tenancy or the kasama system, emerged during the Spanish period. Free-holding existed before the Spanish period , considering the sparsity of population and the plentiful characte r of the land. Under the inquilinato system, a person rented a p i ece of land paying a fixed amount , known as canon , payable at a stipulated period, usually before the beginning of the planting season , The in q uilino or lessee renewed the leasehold deal every year, despite the fact that he may have lived in the land for years already . Each renewal of the leasehold contract frequently involved an upward-revis ion of the canon, depending on the quality of the soil, the crop to be plan ted, and the population density of the place where the lan d was situated . The in qu iZino had no control o v er the rentHe had to pay the rent-rate or face expulsion from rate. In addition to the payment of the c anon, the the land. i nquilino had to satisfy such demands made by his landlords as rendering personal service, gratis . A variation of the inquilinato system was the practice of the less ee to parcel out the land to other tenants and divide the harvest It was th i s on the bas i s of a share-croppin g arrangement , ions l i ke corporat religious the which inquilinato variation Jesuit the r, Orde Augustinian the the Dominican Order, Order, and the Franciscan Order, preferred during the Spanish period since most of them were absentee landlords ~ and also because they were assured of a fixed income regardless of whether the t enants who laboured in their lands actually received their just and fair share of the harvest each year. On the basis of avai lable evidence, t he inquilin ato system arose after the emergence of the

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big landed estates, which were either owned by the religious orders or by private individuals , It must be · noted though that the earliest and the largest Zatifundia, or landed estates, were acquired by the Dominican, Augustinian and Franciscan friars, and by Jesuit priests ·before the privately owned rice and sugar haciendas of Central Luzon and sugar hacbendas of Negros Island dramatically assumed economic sig-nLflcance in Philippine agriculture late in the eighteent.h century and throughout the nineteenth centurv ~ Thus it can be said that the inquiZinato or the cash- tenancy system was born in the landed estates of the religious groups which participated in the evangelical conversion of the Philippine "Indio" population ~ The plantation or ha cien da system did not become prominent in the economic life of the colony unti l. after 1 780, when the Spanish colonial government decided to foster the production of export crops . Some scholars distinguish between a plantation and a hacbenda, saying that the plantation has more access to capital and to world markets while the hacienda is less capital1zed and less exposed to world market conditions.9 In the Philippines, it can be said that the plantation and the hacienda can be used interchangeably for the simple reason that the country's hac i enda complex, particularly the sugar hacienda complex of Negros, sat1sfied the two criteria for a plantation even as early as the nineteenth century . At any rate, the haciendas in the Philippines were sometimes cultivated under the .leasehold arrangement, that is, the inquilinato system or its variations, but more frequently than anything else, the large landholdings were worked on by agricultural labourers paid in accordance with a fixed wage system, e1.ther on a contractual basis or on the basis of outright pay at the end of the working day . The abuse here involved the starvation wages paid to the workers 1 andthe fact that so much land was concentrated in the hands of just a few powerful individuals who did not exactly acquire their big landed estates legitimately since it was easy for them to resort to bnterdicto de desp ojo.

9

Kindly refer co the article by Robert G. Keith, "En comienda, Hacienda and Co rr egimi ento in Span1sh America: A Structural Analysis," Hispanic Amer-iaan Historical Review, 11 (August 1971)' p . 438