Political Change in the Philippines: Studies of Local Politics preceding Martial Law 9780824886097

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POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE PHILIPPINES

ASIAN STUDIES AT HAWAII The Publications Committee of the Asian Studies Program will consider all manuscripts for inclusion in the series, but primary consideration will be given to the research results of graduate students and faculty at the University of Hawaii.

The

series includes monographs, occasional papers, translations with commentaries, and research aids. Orders for Asian Studies at Hawaii publications should be directed to The University Press of Hawaii, 535 Ward Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii 96814. Present standing orders will continue to be filled without special notification.

Asian Studies at Hawaii, No. 14

POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE PHILIPPINES Studies of Local Politics Preceding Martial Law

Edited by Benedict J. Kerkvliet

Asian Studies Program University of Hawaii The University Press of Hawaii 1974

The Asian Studies Program of the University of Hawaii offers multidisciplinary course work, leading to the bachelor's and master's degrees in East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian Studies. In addition, it encourages research and scholarly projects related to Asia-

Many departments of the

University of Hawaii award advanced degrees for studies dealing with Asia.

Copyright

(c) 1974 by The University Press of Hawaii

All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Political change in the Philippines. (Asian studies at Hawaii r no. 14) Based primarily on essays presented at the annual Association of Asian Studies meeting in New York, Mar. 1972 and a regional meeting of AAS, Nov., 1972. 1. Local government—Philippine Islands— Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Kerkvliet, Benedict J., ed. 11^ Series. DS3.A2A82 no. 14 ¿JS7302/ 320.9'599'04 74-79007 ISBN 0-8248-0343-4

CONTENTS Preface 1

vii

Agrarian Conditions since the Huk Rebellion: A Barrio in Central Luzon by Benedict J. Kerkvliet

2

1

Changing Patterns of Leadership Recruitment and the Emergence of the Professional Politician in Philippine Local Politics by K. G. Machado

3

77

Changing Political Alliance Patterns in the Rural Philippines:

A Case Study

from Camarines Norte by Louis Paul Benson 4

130

Economic Concentration and Political Change in the Philippines by Thomas C. Nowak and Kay A. Snyder

5

Conclusion:

Premonitions of Martial Law

by David A. Rosenberg About the Authors

153

242 259

v

PREFACE This monograph presents four case studies of political change in the Philippines, all of which are based on subnational units of analysis.

The

first case study describes political changes from one generation to the next in one village; the next two concern political changes at the provincial level; and the fourth analyzes political changes among chartered cities.

This focus on local politics

rather than on the nation-state as a whole permits, we believe, a more accurate understanding of national political trends.

The purpose of the

monograph is to add information to the existing body of literature on various sectors of Philippine society. The essays here result from two conferences of the Association of Asian Studies.

In March

1972 Professor Machado presented an early draft of his essay to the annual AAS meeting in New York City.

Afterward he organized a panel for a regional

meeting of the AAS in November 1972, this one focusing specifically on local politics in the Philippines.

At this November panel Professors

Benson, Nowak, Snyder, and I presented the original versions of our essays.

Among the panel commenta-

tors was Professor Rosenberg, who offered a convii

structive critique of the papers.

He and the other

two commentators, Daniel Scheans and Nestor Pilar, demonstrated that the findings were interrelated even though we had worked independently and had used different approaches and methods. Following the two professional conferences, we revised our papers, although we did this mainly to make editorial changes rather than to alter our arguments.

Afterward, Professor Rosenberg wrote a

conclusion to knit the four together. Although these essays, with the exception of the conclusion, were written prior to the September 1972 declaration of martial law in the Philippines, they do provide valuable insights into the situation that led to its imposition.

Professor Rosenberg's

synthesis shows why martial law was a feasible alternative for the national political elite.

He

concluded that martial law was the result of increasingly concentrated economic and political power in the hands of the elite. While doing research in the Philippines, each contributor accumulated debts to numerous individuals and institutions.

We have acknowledged some of

these in the essays themselves.

But all of us here

share a large debt of gratitude to the College of Public Administration of the University of the Philippines. viii

All of us are especially grateful to

the Local Government Center and to its director, Dr. Raul P. De Guzman (now dean of the college).

For

various periods between 1969 and 1971, we enjoyed the hospitality, assistance, services, and intellectual stimulation of the people in the college— its faculty, students, secretaries, and administrators.

And certainly we were not the only young

scholars to have found help there. us and many have followed.

Many had preceded

Consequently, we have

dedicated this publication to the college as a small token of our appreciation.

But because the college

never directed nor restrained our separate researches, neither it nor anyone associated with it can be held responsible for errors or for the interpretations found in these essays.

Benedict J. Kerkvliet December 1973

ix

1 AGRARIAN CONDITIONS SINCE THE HUK REBELLION: A BARRIO IN CENTRAL LUZON Benedict J. Kerkvliet What is interesting about the village (barrio) of San Ricardo in Talavera, Nueva Ecija, is that it has lived through a peasant rebellion that nearly toppled the national government in the Philippines after World War II.

This was the "Huk" or

HMB (Hukbonq Mapaqpalaya nq Bayan, "People's Liberation Army") rebellion.

Many of the people living

in San Ricardo today still remember the Huk movement well.

Some even participated as rebels and civilian

supporters in the underground organization.

The

Huk rebellion was strong in San Ricardo, as it was in most barrios in the municipality of Talavera and in other parts of Central Luzon. last.

But it did not

By the mid-1950s it had wasted away.

Huk

activists in Talavera barrios, for example, either had been captured or killed or had eased themselves back into their normal lives as tenant farmers, craftsmen, and small landowners. One natural question that arises is what has happened in San Ricardo since the rebellion?

Did

the long peasant struggle bring any notable improve1

ments?

Did it bring disaster?

quential?

Or was it inconse-

My conclusion, based primarily on conver-

sations with San Ricardo residents during the dry season of 1970, is that most of the people of this barrio have little to show for their efforts.

In-

deed, though they have struggled for over 40 years for agrarian reform, they find themselves in many ways even worse off than before.

In recent years

some of the agrarian reforms they advocated have become laws and even have been partially implemented.

But, ironically, these laws have worked as

much—if not more—to the peasants' disadvantage as to their advantage.

Such laws have given large

landowners added incentives to switch from employing tenants to using tractors and other machinery.

Consequently, many older tenants have been

displaced, whereas young men cannot find land to farm.

The laws have also encouraged a change from

share tenancy (kasama) to leasehold or fixed-rent tenancy (buwisan).

But there is evidence that a

buwisan tenant is no better off than his kasama neighbor. SAN RICARDO, 1900-1950s Before considering the more recent years, I should like briefly to discuss the unrest and rebellion of the 1930s and 1940s. 2

In particular, it is

necessary to explain exactly what the peasants wanted and how they tried to get it.

I am speaking

here primarily of peasants in San Ricardo, but I have argued elsewhere that San Ricardo was by no means atypical."'"

It was a microcosm of Talavera,

of the province of Nueva Ecija, and, indeed, of the Central Luzon region. The Principal Problem The majority of peasants in Central Luzon were tenant farmers whose principal desire was to reform, not abolish, the tenancy system, so that it would provide for their essential needs as it traditionally had done.

As one former peasant union activist and Huk

rebel in San Ricardo explained, "We didn't want to kill the landlords. for ourselves.

We didn1t even want their lands

We just wanted to have a fair share

of the harvest: we wanted landlords to share farming expenses; and we wanted them to treat us like men instead of like slaves or dogs."

It is true that

there was some talk about "land for the landless," but such talk was rare.

Most of it came from non-

peasant spokesmen for peasant unions. Peasants wished to reform the tenancy system so that landlord-tenant relationships would more closely approximate what they had been before.

Tradition-

ally, landlord-tenant relations in the area had been 3

The CENTRAL PLAIN of L U Z O N

rather harmonious, because each person had been fairly satisfied with what he was getting from the arrangement.

A landlord was more than a person

from whom a tenant rented land, although that, of course, was important.

A tenant's landlord was his

patron, someone upon whom he knew he could call in time of need, whether it be to ask for rice to feed his family until the next harvest, to seek assistance in dealing with government officials, or to request the landlord to be a sponsor at a wedding or baptism.

For the landlord, in turn, tenants were

more than tillers of his lands, although that was extremely important since labor-intensive agriculture was the only way for him to have his lands cleared, prepared, and then cultivated for palay (rice).

His tenants were also his clients, loyal

to him in times of need (such as fighting off bandit intruders on the hacienda or voting for his candidates during elections) and willing to donate their labor for almost anything that the landlord had in mind (such as working in his house, cutting wood for him, and building irrigation canals).

In

short, the customary landlord-tenant relationship was a patron-client relationship in which goods and services were exchanged between unequal partners. The relationship was diffuse in that the exchanges were so varied, flexible in that it was capable of 5

taking on additional dimensions of exchange, dyadic in that it was between two individuals, and personal in that it depended greatly on face-toface interactions between the landlord and each tenant.

Furthermore, and very importantly, tenants

felt they were getting just returns for what they gave.

Consequently, the landlord's demands were,

on the whole, legitimate in the eyes of the peasants.

They complied because of this, not because

they were forced or intimidated.

This is not to say

that landlords never stepped out of bounds to make illegitimate demands.

They did; and they could

back themselves with threats and even with violence.

The point, however, is that such was not

the normal character of the traditional landlordtenant relationship.

Landlords needed clients who

were loyal, not just people who were being forced to obey. Residents of San Ricardo say that landlords of earlier decades were their benefactors and protectors.

A frequent description was, "The old

hacenderos were generous and good men."

Villagers

were particularly enthusiastic about Manuel Tinio, who had been the largest landowner in the area and, hence, landlord to many of the peasants.

He is

remembered as being a kindly man who never hesitated to help his tenants. 6

Among other things, he was

lenient; readily gave loans; and, because he provided his tenants with palay rasyon (rations) when their own palay was gone, he ensured that they would not starve.

His eldest son, Manolo Tinio,

commented that Manuel Tinio had been a "paternalistic grandfather to his tenants.

He looked upon

them as members of his own family." In the 1920s and 1930s and into the following decades, the traditional landlord-tenant relationship was withering away.

Landlords ceased to live

up to the expectations peasants had of them.

They

were reluctant to give loans, some refusing altogether; they charged interest on loans, whereas before they had not; and they moved out of the barrios to live in large towns and cities.

They no

longer seemed to care about their tenants' welfare, and saw them only infrequently.

Some did not even

show up to collect rents and repayment of loans; instead they sent their overseers (katiwala).

In

short, the landlord-tenant relationship increasingly became impersonal, narrow, inflexible, and, hence, unable to provide peasants with even their minimal needs.

Yet now more than ever before peasants

needed protection and guarantees of their livelihood because land by this time had become scarce, alternative employment was pitifully limited, and peasants had no cash to buy the many things that now 7

required it.

To make matters even worse, their

claims to their tenant parcels were being threatened by a growing number of people looking for land to tenant-farm.

A landlord, of course, could turn

the tenants' predicament to his own advantage by expelling those who complained and easily replacing them with others who needed plots to tenant-farm. The changes that took place on the Tinio hacienda in Talavera are illustrative here.

When

Manuel Tinio died in 1924, he left his eldest son, Manolo, in charge of the hacienda.

During the

following years, conditions on the Tinio hacienda changed as Manolo instituted reforms of his own, his objective being to run the hacienda more "efficiently."

To do this, he discontinued making

interest-free loans, stopped giving rasyon (because that was not a "rational way to use my capital"), and enforced strict rules about what tenants could and could not do (otherwise "they would cheat 2

me").

At the same time, crop shares remained the

same and tenants were still expected to donate their labor. The landlords1 demands, therefore, became increasingly illegitimate from the peasants1 point of view.

In short, the landlord-tenant relationship 3

became a form of exploitation.

In words villagers

frequently used, "The landlords no longer had utanq 8

na loob.

They were walanq hiya."

That is, land-

lords no longer showed any gratitude toward their tenants and showed no shame for this.

Nor were they

shameful about how they treated tenants. peasants felt exploited.

The

Because of this, they

complied with their landlords' demands, not through loyalty and deference, but through fear. There are many reasons for these drastic changes in San Ricardo.

They did not occur as

simply as this brief discussion may suggest.

The

reasons have to do with the expansion of a cash economy, the swelling demand for cash crops (including palay), population growth, and the local elites' increased reliance on the central government rather than on the loyalty of clients for their power and position.

It is not germane to elaborate on these

and other reasons now.

What is important is that

the rural society did change in fundamental ways. It was in this context that the peasants first tried to reform the system and only later rebelled against it. Peasant Responses to Deteriorating Landlord-Tenant Relations Responses in San Ricardo to changing conditions took both political and nonpolitical forms.

That

is, people tried to maximize whatever few options they had in order to provide at least for their 9

minimal needs.

Nonpolitical responses included

simply enduring things as well as possible (naqtitiis lamanq, as people commonly put it), leaving San Ricardo in search of better tenancy arrangements, and trying to find casual labor to supplement their tenant-farming.

Many made special efforts to please

their landlords in every way so as to minimize any risk of being pushed off the land and replaced by others.

Some of those who left the barrio later

returned in frustration.

They had failed to do

any better elsewhere, and so they returned to San Ricardo to be closer to relatives. Political responses ranged from individual appeals to landlords that customary practices be resumed, to collective action among peasants.

Peas-

ants in the barrio gradually formed alliances along family and neighborhood lines.

Eventually the local

peasant association in San Ricardo joined with similar groups in nearby areas until all were part of province-wide peasant unions.

The strongest of

these was the KPMP (Kalipunanq Pambansa nq mqa Maqsasaka sa Pilipinas, "National Society of Peasants in the Philippines"). In 1935 several peasants from San Ricardo and nearby barrios waged their first strike, not against the Tinio hacienda but against another large landlord in that part of Talavera. 10

The strike was

followed by several others in the 1930s.

There

were also many demonstrations in the bayan (poblacion, or "town-proper") of Talavera and in Cabanatuan, the provincial capital.

Between 1930 and 1942,

Manila newspapers recorded fifteen incidents of peasant unrest in Talavera alone, and 185 in the province.

How many others went unreported will

never be known.

Elder residents in San Ricardo

still eagerly discuss the activities that occurred in and around the barrio during the 1930s and 1940s. One 60-year-old tenant farmer summarized those years this way:

"Before the Japanese occupation there

was a lot of action around here—strikes,

run-ins

with the police and Tinio's guards, and parades in Cabanatuan.

Then came the Japanese.

Many of

us in peasant unions joined the Hukbalahap guerrillas to fight the Japanese.

After the war there was

the PKM /Pambansanq Kaisahan nq mga Maqbubukid, "National Peasants Union^/.

I was in that, too; so

were most of these other fellows here," pointing to a half-dozen men, all in their fifties, who were sitting nearby.

"Then came the landlords'

civilian guards and the government soldiers, harassing, molesting, and stealing all over the place. We had no choice then; we had to fight back with guns.

That was the beginning of the HMB."

11

Specific Reform Proposals The basic theme amidst this unrest and rebellion was, as I have said, to reform the tenancy system. Within this theme, peasant activists and leaders had several, more specific proposals, which can be categorized under four headings:

larger shares of

the harvest, loans, guaranteed subsistence, and an equitable sharing of expenses. For sharing palay harvests, tenants in San Ricardo during the 1930s advocated a 55/45 split, in favor of tenants.

That would have been a 5 to

10 percent increase over typical sharing practices at that time.

During the 1940s, the common proposal

was a 60/40 split, again in favor of tenants. Tenants felt justified in asking for a greater share because they saw that landlords had profited well from the country's insatiable demand for rice. Meanwhile, tenant farmers, who actually produced the rice, saw no improvements in their own welfare. Second, peasants in San Ricardo wanted guaranteed loan privileges from their landlords, government banks, or both.

Customary practice said that

a kasama had a right to ask for loans from his landlord who, in turn, had an obligation to give if he could.

Now that landlords were violating

custom so frequently, tenants wanted guarantees 12

that loans would be available.

In addition, peas-

ants wanted protection against the usurious interest rates that had become prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s. Third, peasants insisted that they were entitled to minimal subsistence needs.

Again custom

had provided for this in the form of interest-free rasyons, which landlords had once given so that their tenants would not go hungry before the next harvest. new.

So this demand, too, was not something

It was an effort to reestablish a practice

that landlords had unilaterally stopped, or at least had resisted its continuation and had altered by charging interest on subsistence loans. The fourth type of proposal called for landlords to pay their fair share of agricultural expenses.

According to typical practices, land-

lords were supposed to pay all expenses for seeds and the transplanting of seedlings, while tenants paid expenses for cultivation.

Harvest expenses

were sometimes shared equally or sometimes were borne solely by the tenant.

Tenants and land-

owners usually shared such other expenses as irrigation (if there was any) and rental for the threshing machine. These specific demands that older residents in San Ricardo emphasized are echoed in the records of 13

the PKM, the largest and most active peasant union in the 1940s.

For example, in 1948 the PKM's

national officers sent a letter to the Congress of the Philippines, urging it to pass legislation immediately along these lines lest the rebellion, which was already growing in Central Luzon, be4

come even more bloody. PKM statements also included reform proposals that had not been articulated by peasants in San Ricardo.

The one most relevant here is the sug-

gestion to transform tenant farmers into small 5

landowners.

The proposal was ever so cautious

and in no way suggested the immediate expropriation of large landholdings.

Instead, it simply proposed

laws to allow kasama to become buwisan.

Over time,

the PKM proposal argued, buwisan tenants could save enough money (because of their improved tenancy conditions) to buy the land they farmed.

At the

time (late 1940s), proposals such as this led the government to see the PKM as a radical, even a "communistic," organization.

On these grounds the

government justified its policy of harsh repression against such peasant organizations. I met no villagers in San Ricardo or elsewhere in Nueva Ecija who mentioned this PKM proposal, although a few did say that the PKM and the Huk rebellion intended to redistribute land owned by 14

particularly oppressive landlords.

The importance

of the PKM's buwisan proposal, however, is this: it closely parallels what eventually emerged as law in 1963.

Time had vindicated the "radical" PKM.

But even so, how did the peasants benefit? SAN RICARDO TODAY Peasants in San Ricardo live on very little.

Most

of the two hundred houses in the barrio are made of inexpensive material such as sawali, bamboo, and local wood.

Roofs are usually thatch, although

some are corrugated iron.

A few homes are made of

concrete blocks, a material that is becoming more common in Central Luzon as local cement factories spring up.

The people's dress reveals that little

is spent on clothing, although what they wear is well suited to their daily work.

For most, daily

work means getting enough to eat and providing other basic necessities for their families.

Few

can think seriously about saving enough money to send children to college or buy land.

Two meals a

day is not uncommon, although most families have three.

The daily menu usually consists of steamed

rice and a vegetable.

The vegetable is whatever

happens to be in season—beans, tomatoes, camote, kanqkonq, or saluyot.

Thus, a typical meal would

be steamed white rice cooked that morning and a 15

small portion of one vegetable, accompanied by crystal salt and water.

On special occasions, the

children might be sent to one of the village sari-sari stores to buy a soft drink or a sweet, and the family has chicken or fish and meat (especially pork and chicken), but most persons cannot afford it daily. I cannot elaborate here on all aspects of life in the village, not only because of the necessity for brevity but also because I do not have the information.

But there are two economic matters

about which villagers themselves talk a great deal and which are central to the village economy. They are the problems of land shortages and the relative merits of kasama versus buwisan tenancy systems. Shortage of Tenant Farms In the 1930s and 1940s, San Ricardo was a village of tenant farmers.

Probably 70 to 75 percent of

all household heads were tenants; another 15 to 20 percent owned the lands they farmed.

The remainder

were laborers, or did agricultural and nonagricultural work for a living.

In recent years, however,

a growing problem has been a shortage of available land, even for tenant-farming.

There is much

evidence for this, and there seem to be two princi16

pal reasons: farming.

population growth and mechanized

Actually the two work together to aggra-

vate the shortage of land for tenants.

This should

be kept in mind even though the following discussion considers them separately. Population Growth Population has increased rapidly in the Philippines as a whole since the turn of the century, but in parts of Central Luzon the growth has been exceptionally high.

In 1918, San Ricardo was one of

only eight barrios in the municipality of Talavera, Nueva Ecija.

In 1960 it was one of thirty-eight.

It grew from a few hundred souls in the 1890s to over 2,500 by the early 1940s.

Several of its

sitio ("subbarrios") eventually became so large that they separated to become independent barrios in their own right.

Yet San Ricardo today still

has about 1,200 people.

One important consequence

of this expanding population has been the relatively rapid conversion of forests and grasslands into cultivated fields, mainly for palay.

For example,

in the municipality of Talavera in 1918, less than 50 percent of the total available farm area was cultivated, whereas in 1939 the comparable figure was 80 percent and in 1960 it was 95 percent.

Vil-

lagers in San Ricardo were painfully aware of the 17

declining ratio between land and people.

As one

life-long resident said, "It was getting difficult to find good land to till prior to the /second world/ war.

But not long afterward it was hard

to find any land that wasn't already being farmed by another tenant." Arithmetical calculations of population density provide one indication of land scarcity.

The

necessary figures over time are unavailable for San Ricardo itself, but there are figures for the municipality of Talavera (see table 1).

An increase

from about 120 persons per square kilometer of farmland to over 300 is substantial, especially in an area like Talavera in which almost all employment depends upon the land.

For the entire province of

Nueva Ecija, the increase was similar—from 140 people per square kilometer of farm area in 1939 to 280 in 1960. Another indication of an excessive demand for land relative to what is available for tenants is the recent practice of paying puwesto.

This is a

cash payment made to an incumbent tenant farmer by another peasant who wants to farm the land in question.

A tenant farmer does not simply give up

his plot of land if he decides to move away from the village or if he has become too old to work. Instead, he sells his rights to the land to another 18

TABLE 1 Changing Population Density in Talavera Year

Population (a)

Farm Area (b) (hectares)

Ratio (a/b) in km2

1918

8,700

7,100

122

1939

20,400

17,200

118

1960

28,600

8,100

310

Sources: Census of the Philippine Islands, 1918; Census of the Philippines, 1939; and Census of the Philippines, 1960. Note: 100 hectares equals 1 Xm 2 . The reason for the sharp reduction in farm area is that municipality boundaries were redrawn in the 1940s, resulting in a smaller land area for Talavera.

man wanting to farm it.

The practice is not unique

to this part of Central Luzon but it is relatively 7 new.

It was not done in San Ricardo before the

Japanese occupation, but started in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

The reason why puwesto was never

done earlier is summarized by one peasant's answer, "Well, there simply wasn't any need for it.

It

wasn't until this time that we were so cramped together and all land was in use."

Today puwesto

payments run about 1,000 pesos for a decent plot of land 3 hectares in size.

This is far beyond the

means of most people in the village who want land to tenant-farm, namely, the agricultural laborers. The villagers say that nowadays the practice of 19

puwesto is abandoned only when a tenant gives his rights to a close relative, usually a son, free of payment. Mechanized Farming The second reason for insufficient land for tenantfarming is that the two haciendas in the San Ricardo vicinity have increasingly relied on machinery rather than tenants to farm the land. Two brothers, Manolo and Vivencio Tinio, own the two haciendas.

Prior to World War II, Manolo was

in charge of all the Tinio land.

But in 1940 the

family divided the land between Manolo and Vivencio. Manolo's portion was 216 hectares, whereas Vivencio 1 s was much larger—over 450 hectares.

By 1970,

only 35 hectares of Manolo's land and about 300 hectares of Vivencio 1 s land were being farmed by tenants.

The rest—totalling over 330 hectares—

was being farmed with machinery operated by permanent employees.

By 1974, Manolo Tinio hopes to

have all his land under mechanized farming, and Q

will, therefore, have no tenants. Table 2 shows that the number of tenants in proportion to land being farmed has declined drastically over the last 30 years.

Stated dif-

ferently, about 330 hectares in 1970 were for mechanized farming, whereas no land in 1940 was 20

TABLE 2 Tinio Land in San Ricardo Area, Number of Tenants, and Number of Hectares Farmed, 1940 and 1970 1 9 4 0 Hacienda No. of No. of HectOwner Tenants ares Farmed

1 9 7 0 No. of No. of HectTenants ares Farmed

Manolo Tinio

70- 80

216

11

216

80-100

350

90

450

Vivencio Tinio

Totals 150-180 566 101 666 Sources: Interviews with Manolo Tinio, San Ricardo, Talavera, 21 May and 24 June 1970; interview with Vivencio Tinio, Quezon City, 15 November 1970; interviews with villagers in San Ricardo, March to June 1970. "mechanized."

Three hundred and thirty hectares

would represent enough land to support roughly ninety-five to one hundred tenant farmers and their families (or, on the basis of six persons per household, 570-600 persons).

The shift to mechan-

ized farming, therefore, has meant a significant loss of available land for tenant farming in an area where alternative employment is scarce and the population is growing. Each hacienda took a slightly different path to convert to mechanized farming.

Manolo Tinio

had to reduce the number of tenants, whereas Vivencio Tinio stopped taking on any additional tenants.

The different methods do not necessarily 21

reflect different character traits of the two hacenderos.

A more likely explanation is that

Vivencio Tinio had an option which Manolo did not have. In Manolo Tinio's case, his land was being worked to near capacity by 1940.

All 216 hectares

had been divided years before into parcels of 3 or 4 hectares, then cleared and farmed by tenants. Consequently, when Manolo Tinio decided after the Japanese occupation to use tractors and other machinery, his decision meant simply that tenants would have to leave.

He stretched this conversion

over several years because he had neither enough money nor expertise to switch immediately to mechanized farming.

The landowner who mechanized

his farm needed both expensive machinery and a knowledge of how to plant, fertilize, and otherwise care for the palay strains that are conducive to this new farming method.

Moreover, because Mano-

lo Tinio is a cautious man when it comes to investing money, he looked upon the first few years as being experimental. He reduced the number of tenants in two ways. The first was merely not to replace tenants who either had become too old to work or had left on their own accord. difficult. 22

The second method was more

He had to ask tenants to leave.

Some

tenants did so without much resistance, perhaps because they had other places to go. however, did resist.

Others,

But in the end they lost out.

Manolo Tinio explained that he only "ejected the lazy and bad tenants."

Since Tinio had to convert

contiguous pieces of land to mechanized farming in order to make efficient use of his tractors and other equipment, he had to include several adjacent parcels of land in each phase of the conversion. If a "good" tenant was in the way of his mechanization plan, Manolo Tinio tried to find another parcel elsewhere on the hacienda for that tenant to work.

Sometimes he forced a "lazy" tenant to

leave, and then gave that tenant's parcel to the "good" tenant. Vivencio Tinio had another option that was less painful both for him and the peasants.

He

owned 450 hectares of land in the San Ricardo area. As of 1946, 100 hectares of this was uncleared and was not being used except as a source of wood and wild plants for villagers.

About 50 hectares of

this was still in one large piece, whereas the other half was interspersed with cleared and cultivated lands of Vivencio's tenants.

Another 100 hectares

of land was sparcely populated with about twenty tenants and their families.

Each tenant had been

paying Tinio a fixed rent of about 60 pesos a year 23

for the land.

These tenants grew vegetables and

bananas instead of palay, but they did use all 100 hectares.

After the Japanese occupation, Vivencio

began converting his hacienda to mechanized farming by asking twenty families on that 100 hectares to leave.

Then he used bulldozers and hired workers

to clear the land of shrubs, trees, and old vegetable plots; to form long dikes to hold the water for flooded fields; and to prepare the land for planting palay.

The evicted people had to find

alternative plots of land.

Some did so by agreeing

to be kasama for Vivencio and plant palay on odd parcels of remaining uncleared hacienda land, which they subsequently cleared and prepared for themselves.

The additional 50 hectares of land that

eventually came under mechanized farming was that remaining uncleared piece mentioned above.

It was

prepared in the same way—with bulldozers and hired crews.

Naturally, Vivencio Tinio, like his brother,

could not do this all at once. The plans of both brothers were interrupted by the Huk rebellion and the generally confused situation in Central Luzon in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Not until after 1953 could they begin

in earnest to convert their lands to mechanized farming.

Indeed, it was partially because of the

Huk rebellion and the agrarian unrest preceding it 24

that these landowners decided to mechanize.

Manolo

Tinio, having much more experience with tenants than did Vivencio, was especially eager to use machines rather than men.

Over the years, from the

1920s to the 1930s, Manolo Tinio had become disgusted with tenants.

They seemed to him to become

more "lazy" and less cooperative with each passing year.

Their agitations for reforms in the tenancy

system appeared to him as attempts to "protect the bad tenants, because good tenants don't need such tenancy laws."

While he was trying to put

his haciendas on "sound economical footing" from the mid-1920s onward, he wanted his tenants to cooperate.

But the tenants would not do as he

asked, at least not willingly or without some pressure (such as strictly defined rules in written contracts with armed guards to support the hacendero and his overseer).

This experience plus his large

landholding suited for mechanized farming made Manolo eager to make the transition.

In his words,

"if you tell a machine to do something, it'll do it.

It's not that way with tenants." In another but more indirect way the Huk

rebellion gave additional incentives to landowners like the Tinios to mechanize their farming.

In

1954 and then again in 1963, the Philippine government adopted two laws governing landlord-tenant 25

relations and the implementation of certain land reforms.

Both laws—especially the one in 1954—

resulted from the national government's attempts to improve tenancy conditions sufficiently in order to avert any possible renewed agrarian unrest. In the back of many lawmakers1 minds was the Huk rebellion. Both laws, whatever their merits and demerits, did make explicit provisions for mechanized farming, even on land that was already being farmed by tenants.®

Although certain clauses do attempt to pro-

tect a tenant from simply being ejected by a landowner who wants to use machinery, the laws themselves are sufficiently broad to allow considerable interpretation in a court of law (should a case ever come to that) and certainly in the eyes of landowners.

The Tinios and other landowners

have been aware of these laws and know that the laws back them up short of any blatant violations on their part. The Tinio haciendas are not unique in the province or in the municipality of Talavera.

Nueva

Ecija has numerous large haciendas that, because of their size and flat terrain, are well suited for tractors pulling plows, cultivators, cutters, rakes, and other labor-saving implements.

Indeed,

mechanization has brought the villagers much grief 26

and anxiety, and there seems little they can do to protect themselves. Fortunately not all villagers in San Ricardo have relied entirely on Tinio lands for parcels to tenant-farm.

Even though the two Tinio haciendas

were important to the barrio—together the brothers had been the largest employers of tenants in the vicinity—many villagers were tenant farmers for other landowners with smaller holdings in the area. The impact of the change was also dispersed across three other nearby barrios where many villagers had farmed for the Tinios.

Nevertheless, the impact

on San Ricardo of mechanized farming has been noticeable and important. Effects of Population Growth and Mechanized Farming The implications of these changes for San Ricardo can be appreciated in a general way if one bears in mind that the 330 hectares farmed by machinery represent land enough for about one hundred farmers who otherwise must find, if they can, other parcels to farm or some other type of work entirely.

Not

all one hundred would live in San Ricardo, although a fourth to a third probably would. The effects can be seen in more specific ways as well.

Sixty-year-old Juan Paras"'"® used to be a

kasama for Manolo Tinio.

Several years ago he had 27

to give up the parcel that he had worked for years because the hacendero asked him to leave.

"I

couldn't find any place else to tenant-farm because all land was taken.

I suppose I could have left

San Ricardo to look for another landlord someplace else, but I was too old for that."

Now Paras tries

to support himself and his wife and to help out his son's family by leasing 1 hectare from Vivencio Tinio during the off-season for palay.

He raises

vegetables, usually tomatoes, and then sells them in Talavera or Cabanatuan or arranges for a middleman to sell them in Manila.

Depending on

weather conditions and the water supply from gravity irrigation canals fed by a nearby creek, the net return on his tomato crop provides most of his food needs.

To meet other expenditures, he must

find casual labor in and around the barrio during the year. Antonio Balbas worked as a kasama from 1918 until the mid-1960s.

He lived in San Ricardo and,

in the 1920s, in another part of the province. During that time he had several landlords.

But

in the mid-1960s, "I couldn't stay on the Tinio land.

He asked me to leave.

I left."

What could I do?

Like Paras, Balbas could find no other

landlord and ended up planting tomatoes on less than a hectare of Vivencio Tinio's land that during 28

the palay season is part of Tinio 1 s mechanized farm. Eduardo Marcos came to San Ricardo in 1943 because he and his wife had heard that San Ricardo was "safer than where we were." the Japanese occupation.

This was during

During the war, he

farmed land that had been left idle by another man who had left the area.

After the war the original

tenant came back and claimed his parcel.

Since

then, Marcos has had no saka ("plot of land") to farm as a tenant. this, he says.

There are two reasons for

"There were already too many other

people like me needing land to till. Tinios have mechanized their land."

Also, the For the last

20 years, Marcos has worked as a day laborer for Vivencio Tinio, doing odd jobs whenever Tinio's foreman sends out the word that there is work to do.

He also works on harvest crews in December

and January, and looks for whatever other work he can find in San Ricardo and nearby barrios.

In the

last year or two he has averaged about 70 pesos per month.

This, plus about eight cavans of palay

earned during the harvest, was his total income."''1 It was just about enough meagerly to feed, clothe, and house himself and his wife (who is blind). The two of them live with their daughter, son-inlaw, and two grandchildren in a small three-room 29

sawali hut.

"Life was better before, in Aliaga

/another municipality of Nueva Ecija/," Marcos reflected while preparing a wad of betel. least there I had a saka to farm.

"At

It was more

security than we have now." These three men are among the seven with whom I spoke at length who were in the 40-and-over group and who did agricultural labor as their principal means of livelihood.

Whether the per-

centage of agricultural laborers in this age group is higher now than it was 20 years ago cannot be definitively demonstrated.

But, according to

older residents in the barrio, the proportion of men without land to tenant-farm is much greater now than before.

"Twenty or 30 years before,"

said one 63-year-old tenant, "there wasn't this problem of finding a plot to tenant-farm even though /tenancy/ conditions might not have been ideal." What is particularly striking about these seven agricultural laborers is that six of them were kasama within the last 12 years.

Put another

way, six of the seven lost their plots of land. Four of these six had been tenants on Tinio land, owned either by Vivencio or Manolo.

The other two

had come to San Ricardo as grown men but had been unable to find land to tenant-farm. 30

Only one of

the seven had never tenant-farmed in his lifer he was a retired soldier (56 years old) who had been waiting 1 year for his pension to start.

Today

these men support themselves and their families in ways indicated by the three briefly described above:

they are casual laborers, looking for what-

ever kind of work they can find, which usually means agricultural work.

Two of the seven lease a

hectare each from Vivencio Tinio in the off-season for palay and plant vegetables.

Two of them are

among those in the barrio who can make first claims on any day-labor jobs that come up on Vivencio Tinio's hacienda.

And all are on the

lookout for other work in order to make a few pesos.

Their wives, too, try to supplement the

household income by doing odd jobs. San Ricardo also seems to have a large proportion of younger household heads (between the ages of 20-39) who have no plots to tenant-farm partly because of mechanized farming.

My informa-

tion on this age group is admittedly weaker than it is for the 40-and-over group (see note 6).

I

did speak, however, to several young villagers in San Ricardo and elsewhere in the municipality and received the distinct impression that finding w o r k — even casual labor on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis—is a principal problem for these men.

Their 31

common complaint was that they had no job security anywhere.

They had to do whatever work they

could find, that being mostly agricultural labor. This problem for younger villagers was also frequently cited by older peasants.

In fact, they

said it was a widespread problem in the whole municipality and not something peculiar to San Ricardo.

The barrio kapitan ("captain"), too,

spoke of this.

When asked what he thought were the

most important problems in San Ricardo, Kapitan Cruz answered, "Too little cash and too little work, especially for younger men.

Many of them have

no steady work." Among the thirteen San Ricardo men under 40 with whom I spoke at length, three were tenant farmers, two were small landowners, three did nonagricultural work (outside the barrio), and five were agricultural laborers.

None of these five,

whose ages ranged from 23 to 31, had ever been tenant farmers, but all would like to be.

Only

one, however, had any serious hopes of being a tenant someday.

As one man said, "Where can I

get a plot around here?

There aren't any.

I can't afford the puwesto."

Anyway,

All five agricultural

laborers had fathers who had been tenants in San Ricardo or in other parts of the province.

Yet

these men could not take over their fathers' plots, 32

as is traditionally done in Central Luzon.

In at

least three cases, the reason was that their fathers had no plots by the time they had died or had stopped working.

In a fourth case, the young

man's father was Eduardo Marcos, who, as mentioned above, was an agricultural laborer himself. Table 3 summarizes the household budget for Francisco Marcos and his family (wife and two children).

Francisco knows he is more fortunate

than most agricultural laborers because for the last 2 years he has had access to 1 hectare of Vivencio Tinio's land in the off season for palay. He plants tomatoes in February or March, then harvests them in May and June.

As his budget shows,

this provides a major part of the family's total income.

Francisco's wife Lita earns 120 pesos by

transplanting palay seedlings during July and August.

Francisco and Lita borrow about half of

the remaining palay needed to make ends meet (see table 3).

In 1969-1970, they borrowed six cavans

of palay, for which they had to pay back three additional cavans as interest (50 percent).

This

is a typical interest rate charged on palay by local rice dealers.

For the remaining needed palay

and cash, Francisco did odd jobs in the area, picking up a few days work at a time and earning 2 to 4 pesos a day. 33

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The economic situation for other agricultural laborers is similarly marginal.

This is true for

both age groups—under and over 40 years old. Without having at least the security that a plot of land gives a tenant farmer, these men can plan, at the most, on working only during transplanting and harvesting seasons.

Even the vast Tinio lands

farmed by machinery must be planted by hand.

And

small tenant farmers usually hire men to help harvest their palay, although mechanical reapers do it on the mechanized portions of the Tinio haciendas.

To earn the additional palay and cash

they need, these villagers must find other work wherever they can. In between transplanting and harvesting, these men can find work from time to time on Vivencio Tinio 1 s mechanized farmland.

The foreman hires men

from San Ricardo or nearby barrios on a daily basis when needed. day.

The pay is usually 2 or 3 pesos a

Occasionally there is also work between trans-

planting and harvest times on the mechanized portions of the Manolo Tinio hacienda. tunities there, however, are few.

The oppor-

As far back as

1953, Manolo Tinio began to hire men from outside the province to run the machinery and to do much of the labor. region.

Most of these are from the Bisayas

Manolo Tinio 1 s explanation for this is 35

that local people ask for too much pay; he can pay the Bisayas less and "they work harder than the people around here."

Many in San Ricardo are bitter

about this because they figure that the least Manolo Tinio can do is to employ local labor to run his machinery and do the other necessary hand labor on his farmland. Aside from agricultural labor, the landless peasants do miscellaneous work wherever they can find it in and around San Ricardo, usually on a daily basis.

Examples include making cement blocks

at a small factory in the bayan of Talavera, being a carpenter's helper, going to the distant mountains to cut wood to sell, and working as a casual laborer in Cabanatuan.

Pay for these jobs ranges between

4 and 6 pesos per day.

But competition is greater,

too. In addition to the nonlanded agricultural laborers, there are others in the village (and in the surrounding area) who need supplementary work. Many of the tenant farmers, for example, need additional work to make ends meet.

Unmarried young

men (binata) in their late teens and early twenties also look for work to contribute to their families' support.

In addition, there are some in the barrio

who have no livelihood other than nonagricultural work. 36

Some, it is true, have relatively good and

more-or-less steady jobs: for example, a young school teacher, a man who works as a bus conductor for a company in Cabanatuan, a security guard for Vivencio Tinio, and a few heavy equipment operators employed by Vivencio Tinio's construction firm doing work in distant parts of the province.

But

others are like a local 59-year-old carpenter whose trade often includes doing simple casual labor that requires no more skill than that possessed by the average person needing work.

Another

example is a long-time resident in San Ricardo who relies entirely on nonagricultural casual labor to support his wife and his three children still at home.

Each year is spent trying to piece together

enough days and weeks of work to buy rice and other minimal necessities.

His work in recent years has

included, among other jobs, driving trucks, being a security guard in Talavera, digging ditches, building houses in Cabanatuan, and weeding irrigation canals. Because so many in the barrio do need additional work, especially work that will bring in cash, there is competition for the scarce opportunities.

How serious or how vicious is this com-

petition is unclear. it is not yet fierce.

From what I have observed, Family ties, friendship

bonds, and village customs greatly temper conditions 37

that otherwise might drive people into a kind of "survival of the fittest" struggle.

Custom dictates,

for example, that those in the barrio with steady (or more-or-less steady) work have no right to work with harvest crews or do other casual labor in and around the barrio.

Similarly, others in the barrio

who are better off than m o s t — a n d this would include some tenants and most of the small landowners— can make no claims on other work opportunities unless they wish to suffer ostracism and other social pressures.

Another illustration of this "leveling"

or "sharing the poverty" effect of barrio customs is that only those who are really desperate dare go out and pulot (glean) the palay fields after harvest.

For some in the barrio—especially young

families without plots to tenant-farm—pulot is a crucial source of rice simply in order to eat. Others—those who are, in a sense, less desperate— know better than to infringe on the pulot rights of those who are worse off.

As one tenant put it,

"Without pulot those people would have nothing left to eat.

I don't have much either, but I would be

walanq hiya /'without s h a m e i f

I pulot because I

do have a plot of land and I can borrow if I need to. 11

38

Buwisan Tenancy Tenant farmers, who constitute the largest single employment group in the barrio, do have certain advantages over those peasants without land to till. In a word, they have more security. they say themselves.

That is what

It is also what most agri-

cultural laborers think a plot to tenant-farm would bring.

The tenant's greater security comes, first

of all, from the land itself.

Tenant farmers,

like the handful of small landowners in the area, know they have work waiting for them each year that, barring natural calamities (droughts, floods, and pestilence), will bring a produce and, therefore, will enable them to eat.

This is more assurance

than agricultural laborers or others without steady work can hope to have. Secondly, a tenant traditionally has had reason to feel more secure than a nonlanded peasant because he can turn to his landlord for assistance.

In

terms of degree, this is far less true today than a few decades ago, as I indicated in the first part of this chapter.

Yet, despite the narrowly defined,

rather businesslike relations tenants have with landlords today, they still have the right to ask their landlords for loans.

The agricultural worker,

whose economic situation is no better and is usually 39

worse than that of the tenant, has no landlord from whom to borrow.

He must borrow from rice

dealers or local mayaman ("wealthy people"), who also may be landlords to other peasants.

He may

pay a higher interest than that which a landlord charges his tenants.

Some in San Ricardo do, al-

though the typical interest on palay for tenants and nontenants alike is 50 percent (1 cavan of palay for every 2 borrowed).

But some tenants pay no

interest on palay borrowed from their landlords; in my sample, five out of the seventeen tenant farmers in the 40-and-over group had interest-free loans, although not one of the three in the under-40 group had such a loan. Although tenants seem to have more security than do landless peasants, they are by no means prospering.

They, too, face a continuous struggle

to provide adequately for themselves and their families.

After all, the problems already discussed

here—population pressures, mechanized farming that threatens the tenant's claim to a plot of land, and a scarcity of alternative employment—affect them also.

Many are concerned about what the future

may bring, because the past has brought them little that was beneficial.

Older tenants, in fact, think

their condition is worse now than it was 30 years ago. 40

It is in this context that tenants discuss and consider the merits and demerits of buwisan.

The

basic question for a kasama is how will buwisan tenancy affect his and his family's security. Villagers consider such a question from many different angles, although the most telling one seems to be the economic question—will leasehold tenancy, on balance, bring more food and cash into the household?

Leasehold does not seem to threaten inter-

personal relations or village customs, thus perhaps perhaps explaining the emphasis on the economic aspects. Buwisan tenancy is not new to Central Luzon. It was fairly common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when new lands were just being developed for sedentary agriculture.

What is distinctive

about buwisan today is that it is practiced in palay farming.

Previously, it represented an agree-

ment between a landowner and a tenant who farmed crops such as vegetables and fruits on land that was still not prepared to grow lowland palay. The kasama tenancy system has been the one associated with palay farming. In recent years, buwisan has revived and has done so in palay farming.

Eight of the twenty ten-

ant farmers interviewed in the 40-and-over group in San Ricardo were buwisan tenants. 12

(In one 41

case, the peasant had both—part of his land was under the buwisan system and another part under kasama.) 1963.

All eight peasants started buwisan after

Seven of these eight had been kasama prior

to that.

Among the remaining kasama, some fully

expect to switch to buwisan in the next few years. This trend is also true, as nearly as I could detect, for tenants in the under-40 age group.

San Ricardo

is not exceptional in this regard; buwisan has become more common all over the province in the last 5 years."'"3 Reasons for Buwisan One explanation for this change to buwisan tenancy is a land-reform law that encourages buwisan as a replacement for the kasama system. 3844 became law in 1963.

Republic Act

Shortly thereafter the

president of the country declared Nueva Ecija (as well as most of Central Luzon) a land-reform area. Since then, both government officials and peasant organization spokesmen have been encouraging kasama tenants to become buwisan. The main reason tenants have changed to buwisan is the hope that the larger share of the harvest to which they would be entitled would mean a more adequate income.

The law provides that a buwisan

tenant will keep all but a fixed rent to be paid to 42

the landowner.

The amount of the rent is calculated

by multiplying 25 percent times the average of the three typical harvests prior to changing to buwisan. Before the calculation, however, the tenant is allowed to subtract from the gross harvest the equivalent amount needed to cover the costs of seeds and of harvesting and threshing the grain. Once having paid this fixed rent each harvest, the buwisan tenant keeps the remainder.

Unlike a

kasama, a buwisan tenant does not share an incremental increase in the harvest with his landowner. Thus, for example, if the average normal net harvest at the time of a buwisan agreement is 100 cavans of palay, then the fixed rent is 25 cavans. That would leave 75 for the buwisan tenant.

If,

during the next harvests, the net is, for example, 105, 125, or 150, the buwisan tenant would still pay only 25 cavans and thus have even more than 75 cavans for himself.

A kasama, on the other hand,

would have to share the entire harvest; any increment would be shared with the landlord.

Because of

this, it is commonly argued, kasama tenants have little incentive to improve their yields.

Buwisan

tenants, therefore, should have more incentive than do kasama to increase their yields.

Consequently,

they should be able to eat and live better, have some left over to send children to school, and even 43

put away some savings. Mixed Blessings of Buwisan Tenants in San Ricardo have mixed feelings about buwisan.

Even those who have chosen it are not

fully convinced that they have made a wise choice. Because there is some basis for expecting larger yields in palay, buwisan does appear attractive to tenant farmers.

For one thing the irrigation system

in the area has improved in the last 15 years. Fertilizers, too, have become more common in the last 10 years.

With both irrigation and fertilizers

available, peasants can use new strains of rice, including various types of "miracle rice."

Con-

sequently, according to tenants in San Ricardo, average yields have gone up over the last decade. For example, two or three bags of fertilizer per hectare can mean 30 percent more rice per hectare than if no fertilizer were used.

(This assumes, of

course, there is sufficient water to go with it.) Under buwisan, the only time the landlord and tenant need meet is when rents are paid after harvest.

Even then a rent collector might collect

for the landlord.

According to both law and common

practice, as reported by tenants in San Ricardo, buwisan tenants are autonomous of their landowners. The tenants select the fertilizer and do all the 44

other things needed to plant, care for, and harvest the palay.

Landowners are not involved.

At first

glance, this might seem to be another point in favor of buwisan tenancy.

But none of the tenants to whom

I spoke mentioned it, and other considerations indicate that there is no reason why they should have. In the first place, even kasama take care of their plots with little, if any, advice or direction from the landowner.

The landlord pays for the seeds,

but he does not necessarily select them.

And during

other stages of the growing cycle, landlords certainly are not involved.

Most do not live near enough

to their lands for that.

So a tenant—whether

kasama or buwisan—rarely sees or hears from his landowner unless the tenant makes a point of seeking him out. Secondly, the more distant relationship between landowner and buwisan tenant is one of the major arguments against the buwisan system.

Under buwisan

the landlord no longer has any obligation to help a tenant.

As one tenant said, "A kasama can ask

his landlord to give him a loan. buwisan, you don't.

But under

A landowner does not give loans

to buwisan tenants because they are supposed to be on their own."

Even the land-reform law (RA 3844)

provides that the landowner has no obligation to give assistance to buwisan tenants.

But both law 45

and custom dictate that a kasama has a right to ask for loans from his landlord.

Part of the reason for

the unrest in Central Luzon in the 1930s and 1940s was that landlords had been refusing loans to their kasama and demanding high interest rates on those loans they did allow.

"Perhaps because of the Huk

movement," commented a 55-year-old kasama in San Ricardo, "landowners give us loans today.

Most of

course charge interest now, but even interest rates have gone down since the time of the Huk rebellion." The difficulty in obtaining loans is not the only problem with buwisan.

Most serious is that in

times of crop failure there is no one with whom to share the loss.

Barrio Kapitan Cruz, who is a

kasama on 1 hectare and a buwisan tenant on another 2 hectares, summarized the larger problem this way: "Under buwisan the landowner gives no help to the tenant.

It is better, however, to have a landlord

who will help if needed.

Look what happens if the

crop is bad, like if you have a drought.

Under

buwisan you still have to pay that fixed rent. But a kasama pays only half of the crop, whatever the harvest's size, big or small."

Cruz then

smiled and said, "We should have a tenancy system which is buwisan for the big harvests and kasama for the little ones." Fewer obligations for the landowners may ex46

plain their apparent preference for the buwisan system.

According to villagers in San Ricardo,

most landowners do not stand in the way if a kasama wants to become a buwisan tenant. true of large landowners.

This is especially

Vivencio Tinio, for ex-

ample, said, "My tenants can do it whichever way they want.

If they want buwisan, fine.

want to be kasama, that1s fine too.

If they

In fact, I

would just as soon sell the land to them.

I want

to keep the mechanized farmland, but the rest I'd 14 gladly sell at a decent price."

Vivencio Tinio's

tenants agree that he will go along with either tenancy system.

Out of the ninety tenants working

Vivencio Tinio's land, twenty are kasama and seventy are buwisan tenants. The evidence in hand indicates that tenants are not switching to buwisan as a means of escaping from the kasama system.

The kasama system is far

from satisfactory, and many people in San Ricardo still wish that it included the paternalistic relationship it used to have.

Nevertheless, from

the peasant's point of view, the buwisan system is not necessarily better than the kasama system. The main hope of those who do switch is that more grain will be left to take home after the harvest than is available under the kasama system.

Because

the change has been only recent, it is too early for 47

most buwisan to know whether their switch will be, in fact, for the better.

Those like Kapitan Cruz,

however, who have been buwisan tenants a few years longer than most, seem to be more doubtful now that they made a wise choice. Evidence on the economics of buwisan versus kasama is also inconclusive as of now.

Table 4

shows two budgets, one each for a buwisan and a kasama tenant.

I compiled the information from

interviews in San Ricardo.

The two budgets given

here are not for a particular family.

Rather,

these budgets were derived from data on income and expenses for twenty-three households in San Ricardo (each household head was a tenant farmer—fourteen kasama and nine buwisan), and from separate discussions with three different groups of peasants concerning the merits of each tenancy arrangement. In those discussions, men sat down with pencil and paper and worked out an annual household budget for each type.

The size of the harvest used in

the example (200 cavans) may be a little large, although 60-64 cavans per hectare was the median range of average yields in the last 5 years (19651970) as reported by twenty peasants in the 40-andover age group. The data in table 4 would seem to indicate that buwisan tenants are better off than are kasama. 48

In the example, the buwisan tenant has a surplus of about 25 cavans, whereas the kasama has a deficit of over 4 cavans.

In good years, this may very well

be the general picture.

But one can readily imagine

from table 4 that even a partial crop failure would hit the buwisan tenant more severely than it would the kasama.

The buwisan tenant must absorb the

total loss, but the kasama only half. Another consideration is the debts each type of tenant must assume.

Under the kasama system,

the landlord and tenant share major expenses. The landlord frequently buys the fertilizer and pays the irrigation fees, then at harvest he is reimbursed out of the gross harvest.

Buwisan

tenants, however, must borrow all or most of the large cash expenditures for irrigation, fertilizer, and upa tanim ("the cost of transplanting palay seedlings").

They do not have enough savings,

at least so far, to avoid going into debt for these farming necessities.

In the example here, the

debt would be 405 pesos for irrigation, fertilizer, and upa tanim. on these loans.

The borrower must pay the interest Typical interest rates in 1969-

1970 in Talavera were 12 and 20 percent when the loans were granted by banks, but went as high as 50 to 100 percent when the money was received from certain moneylenders in the vicinity.

Table 5 shows 49

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prewar leading families of their respective towns. Only one Batangas mayor and two Capiz mayors were placed in this category exclusively on the basis of the family backgrounds of their wives.

The differ-

ence in family backgrounds may also be shown by a comparison of the degree of involvement of the mayors' families in the politics of their respective towns.

Only 32 percent of the Batangas mayors but

nearly 90 percent of the Capiz mayors were immediate members of families that had been involved in their towns' politics to the extent that they held offices. Therefore, continuity of leadership drawn from old families of prominence and continuity in the families providing town political leadership had been broken to a much greater extent in Batangas than in Capiz. Residence while Growing Up Nearly 50 percent of the Batangas mayors but just over 10 percent of the Capiz mayors grew up in a barrio.

Wealthy and prestigious men sometimes reside in

a barrio, but the vast majority of poblacion dwellers are of very modest circumstances (see note 2 for definition of terms).

Generally, however, nearly

all barrio residents are of poor and humble backgrounds, and most of the leading families of a town do maintain their home in the poblacion, even if they also have a home on their farm.

In some towns, 87

the distinction between barrio and poblacion dwellers also implies a difference in manners.

The former

are likely to regard themselves as being poor but simple and hard-working folk and to regard many of the poblacion dwellers as being "blue-blooded" and arrogant.

The latter, on the other hand, are

likely to think of themselves as being refined and educated and of most barrio dwellers as being rough and unpolished, like poor quality rice.

Those were

clearly the kinds of economic and social distinctions that many Batanguenos had in mind when they referred to specific mayors as being "from the barrio," whether they said that with pride or with condescension. Education The mayors of both Batangas and Capiz provinces had comparatively high levels of formal education. Indicative of the differences in their origins, however, Batangas mayors as a whole had considerably less than did those of Capiz.

Over 60 percent of

the former and nearly 90 percent of the latter at least had completed high school.

In both provinces,

the bulk of those who graduated from high school went on to complete at least some college.

There

was, however, a marked difference in the kinds of colleges attended by the mayors in these two prov88

inces.

Nine of the twelve Capiz mayors who had

completed some college attended prestige institutions in Manila, such as Ateneo or Santo Tomas, or the locally prestigious San Agustin in Iloilo City. In contrast, only two of the fifteen Batangas mayors who had completed at least some college went to a prestige institution.

Most of the remainder attended

one of the commercially run schools in which Manila abounds, such as the University of the East and the Lyceum of the Philippines. The less-privileged origins of Batangas mayors is also clearly shown by the fact that nearly twothirds of those who completed some college were working students, whereas less than 20 percent of the Capiz mayors in this category had to work while attending college.

The commercially run schools

attended by many Batangas mayors are organized to meet the needs of part-time, working students; and the education they offer has opened important avenues of social mobility, including political careers, 13 for many young Filipinos of humble background. Education had served, then, primarily to confirm and maintain the socioeconomic status of Capiz mayors, whereas it had been an important vehicle of social mobility for those of Batangas.

89

Occupations The differences in socioeconomic origins and mobility between Batangas and Capiz mayors may be shown further through a comparison of their fathers' and their own occupational backgrounds.

Just over

60 percent of the fathers of Batangas mayors were engaged primarily in agriculture.

Of the remainder,

most were small businessmen, white-collar employees, or laborers, whereas two were independent professionals.

By contrast, all the fathers of Capiz may-

ors were engaged primarily in agriculture.

Mayors

were classified according to their primary occupation (other than that of town executive).

Among

Batangas mayors, almost 40 percent were engaged primarily in agriculture, but another 15 percent were engaged in agriculture as a secondary occupation. Nearly 30 percent were in business, mostly small business, and nearly 25 percent had no occupation other than town executive.

All Capiz mayors had

full-time occupations, nearly 90 percent being primarily engaged in agriculture.

Among Batangas

mayors, then, there was a greater permanent intergenerational movement away from agriculture as a primary occupation than among Capiz mayors.

Addi-

tionally, over a third of Batangas mayors had exhibited considerable occupational mobility over 90

their careers, moving out of unskilled, semiskilled, or lower white-collar positions into better jobs. Landholdinqs A separate comparison of the landholdings of the mayors fathers and of the mayors themselves reveals important differences between those engaged in farming in the two provinces.

Twenty percent of

the fathers of Batangas mayors but over 75 percent of the fathers of Capiz mayors owned more than 25 hectares of land.

Moreover, nearly 25 percent of

the fathers of Batangas mayors were either landless tenants or small owner-cultivators with no tenants, and so they were among the poorest families of the traditional agricultural sector. came from such families.

No Capiz mayors

Among Batangas mayors

engaged in farming, the majority owned less than 25 hectares; but, compared to their fathers, fewer were landless tenants or small owner-cultivators. The Capiz mayors conformed more closely to the pattern of their fathers in landholding, and, unlike the Batangas mayors, two-thirds of those farming owned more than 25 hectares. Socioeconomic Strata I employed the categories of socioeconomic strata developed by John Carroll, S.J., to classify mayors 91

and their

f a t h e r s . F a t h e r

Carroll set forth cri-

teria based on income associated with various occupations for distinguishing between upper, uppermiddle, lower-middle, and lower-class Filipinos."'""' It is safe to assume that many mayors directly and/or indirectly derived at least sufficient income from their official positions to place them in the upper-middle socioeconomic stratum, although perhaps near the bottom end in many

cases.Certainly

none could have been considered less than lowermiddle.

In classifying mayors according to socio-

economic strata, I used their primary occupation other than that of town executive.

If they had no

other occupation, I classified them according to the one in which they were engaged prior to becoming mayor.

This procedure permitted an assessment of

the extent to which mayors had improved their position in comparison with that of their fathers.

It

also provided a basis for at least a crude assessment of further mobility that might have been accounted for by assumption of office. Just over one-quarter of Batangas mayors but over three-quarters of Capiz mayors came from upper or upper-middle socioeconomic strata homes.

The

largest number of the fathers of Batangas mayors were in the lower-middle stratum, and the largest number of fathers of the Capiz mayors were in the 92

upper-middle stratum.

Nearly one-third of the

fathers of Batangas mayors but none of those of Capiz mayors came from lower-stratum homes.

Such

distinctions, although still apparent in the mayors' generation, have been levelled to some extent as a consequence of differential mobility between the two groups of mayors.

Over one-third of Batangas mayors

and just under two-thirds of Capiz mayors were in the upper or upper-middle strata.

Hie largest

number of Batangas and Capiz mayors were still in the lower-middle and upper-middle stratum, respectively.

Just over 10 percent of the Batangas mayors

remained in the lower stratum. Social Mobility The precise extent of intergenerational mobility is obscured by the comparative presentation and must be shown directly.

Over one-third of the

Batangas mayors but only one-half of that portion of Capiz mayors moved up at least one stratum from that of their fathers.

Six of the eleven upwardly

mobile Batangas mayors moved across the line dividing the lower- and upper-middle strata, whereas the other five moved from lower to lower-middle.

At the same

time, nearly 20 percent and 30 percent of Batangas and Capiz mayors, respectively, moved down at least one stratum from that of their fathers.

Three of 93

the six downwardly mobile Batangas mayors and four of the five downwardly mobile Capiz mayors dropped across the line dividing the upper- and lower-middle strata.

If office-holding is also considered, the

four Batangas mayors classified as belonging to the lower stratum may be placed in at least the lower-middle stratum with no reservations.

It may

reasonably be assumed, though not positively demonstrated, that many of the Batangas and Capiz mayors classified below the upper-middle stratum might be placed in the latter classification on the basis of their positions.

To the extent that this

is so, the rate of upward mobility, particularly among Batangas mayors, is increased. Socioeconomic Profile of Batangas Mayors Distinguished by Family Backgrounds The survey data show Capiz mayors to be a comparatively homogeneous group conforming closely to a profile that might be expected of men from the older leading families of their respective towns. The Batangas mayors, on the other hand, were a much more heterogeneous group.

Some conformed

to the profile that might be expected of men from older leading families, although a majority were clearly upwardly mobile men of humble origins. That there was, in fact, two distinct profiles among Batangas mayors may best be demonstrated 94

through examination of the association between some socioeconomic variables and the initial distinc17 tion concerning family background.

(See table 4.)

The division between Batangas mayors who were immediate members of prewar leading families and those who were not is associated with other divisions cited in the way that is expected.

Im-

mediate relatives of only 5 percent of the mayors not from prewar leading families but fully 75 percent of the mayors from prewar leading families had held elective office in their towns.

Over two-

thirds of the mayors not from prewar leading families but fully 75 percent of the mayors from prewar leading families had held elective office in their towns.

Over two-thirds of the mayors

not from prewar leading families but only one-sixth of those from such families grew up in a barrio. Ninety percent of the mayors not from leading families came from lower-middle- and lower socioeconomic-strata homes, whereas only one-third of those from prewar leading families came from lowermiddle- stratum homes.

As might be expected, there

was less difference in education between the two groups of mayors.

This is reflected in the high

degree of upward mobility among those mayors who were not from prewar leading families.

The latter

group as a whole clearly had a higher standing in 95

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socioeconomic strata than had their fathers, and, among these men, the degree of upward mobility as assessed by occupation exclusive of office-holding was nearly 50 percent.

In contrast, there was

much less upward mobility and greater downward mobility among mayors from prewar leading families. Conclusions The foregoing data show clearly that in terms of family background and socioeconomic origins the pattern of leadership recruitment in Capiz still remained largely traditional but that in Batangas it had been undergoing change.

Approximately 60

percent of the Batangas mayors were not themselves from a prewar leading family of their towns and had come from lower-middle- and lower-socioeconomicstratum homes.

Of these, roughly one-half had im-

proved their socioeconomic position when compared with that of their fathers and exclusive of the office they held.

Some experienced further mobility

by virtue of the office they held.

Even in Batangas,

mayors from old leading families and upper-middleand upper-stratum homes were overrepresented in relation to their numbers in the total population. A majority of Batangas mayors, however, came from sectors of society that traditionally had not produced the men who were to assume positions of 98

leadership.

The hypothesized relationship between

leadership origins and level of social mobilization and concentration of landownership is, thus, supported by the comparison of Batangas and Capiz mayors. This hypothesized relationship is further supported by the association between the level of social mobilization and concentration of landownership in Batangas towns and the family backgrounds of their mayors (tables 5 and 6).

For this

demonstration, literacy rate is taken as a crude in18 dicator of social mobilization in the towns. Nearly 75 percent of the Batangas towns above the provincial mean in literacy elected mayors who were not from old leading families.

Similarly, 75 per-

cent of the towns below the provincial mean in concentration of landownership elected such mayors. Batangas towns that were either above the provincial mean in literacy or below it in concentration of landownership were, then, three times as likely to elect a mayor who was not from an old leading family as they were to elect one who was from such a family in 1967. PROFESSIONALIZATION OF THE LOCAL POLITICIAN There was a close association between the changes in the pattern of leadership recruitment demonstrated 99

TABLE 5 Association between Level of Social Mobilization in Batangas Towns and the Family Backgrounds of Their Mayors 3 Relation to Provincial Mean for Literacy Towns Above Towns Below (N = 15) (N = 15) (%) (%)

Item Mayors from Prewar Leading Families

27

60

Mayors Not from Prewar Leading Families

73

40

a

0nly thirty instead of thirty-one towns are considered in this and the next table, because the thirty-first town of Batangas was created after the 1960 census and the data necessary to classify it were not available. and professionalization of the politician's role in the local arena.

Professional political leadership

is, first, a specialized political activity rather than an adjunct of a general social role (such as family member), and, second, it is a career rather than an avocation.

Changing recruitment criteria

associated with specialization were a major factor in opening leadership roles to a broader sector of the community than before.

Moreover, once they

were in a position of leadership, new men had more compelling reasons than those from old leading families to turn it into a career. The impact of national politics and political competition in a context of growing mass partici100

TABLE 6 Association between Concentration of Landownership in Batangas Towns and the Family Backgrounds of Their Mayors Relation to Provincial Mean for Concentration of Landownership Towns Below Towns Above (N = 18) (N = 12)

Item

i%l

Mayors from Prewar Leading Families

56

25

Mayors Not from Prewar Leading Families

44

75

pation stimulated professionalization of the political leader's role, and this professionalization brought about important changes in leadership criteria.

Traditionally, factions based on

leading families composed the primary competitive 19 elements in Philippine towns,

and an individual's

participation in politics was less a specialized activity than part of his role as a family member. Whether or not an individual was a member of such a family determined whether or not he would become a leader in local politics.

Moreover, the financial

rewards of local political activity and officeholding were actually very limited.

Intense com-

petition after independence increasingly created growing demands for the mobilization of large numbers of rural voters on behalf of national politicians, and a corresponding infusion of external 101

resources occurred to support such efforts.

Such

demands, in turn, created a need for political specialists in each town.

Skills and qualities

pertinent to mass political mobilization became the chief criteria for recruitment to leadership positions.

In areas of comparatively high social mobili-

zation and low concentration of landownership, the needed skills and qualities were more widely distributed among the population than were the skills and qualities useful under conditions of lower social mobilization and higher concentration of landownership.

Hence, positions of local politi-

cal leadership became increasingly open to men of humbler socioeconomic backgrounds.

The ability of

such men to take advantage of this greater openness was facilitated by the fact that in some places local political activity and office-holding had become potentially more rewarding from a financial standpoint than they had been prior to independence. In any case, the comparative consequences of changing recruitment criteria under these different sets of conditions were apparent in the presentation of data on the family and socioeconomic backgrounds of the mayors of Batangas and Capiz towns. Where levels of social mobilization were comparatively high and concentration of landownership was comparatively low, those who aspired to local 102

leadership positions needed considerable talent for organization and also personal qualities that enabled them to develop and maintain an extensive network of close personal ties.

Such personal

qualities included "good public relations," generos20 lty, being "approachable," and being "well known." They also had to be skilled in using the support of their following to bargain for outside resources that could be used to expand and maintain that following.

There were, of course, men from old

leading families as well as men from more humble circumstances who met such criteria and came to fill professionalized political roles.

Family prominence

and family connections were, no doubt, a valuable added resource for such men in many cases.

Such

factors, however, were neither necessary nor alone sufficient to insure the recruitment of these men, and this fact contributed greatly to opening up the recruitment process. Where levels of social mobilization were comparatively low and concentration of landownership was comparatively high, a talent for organization and the personal qualities cited were still valuable; such talents and qualities frequently were developed to some extent by actual or aspiring local leaders.

But under those conditions a greater

degree of political support could be built on the 103

basis of even more traditional kinds of relationships.

Family ties, for example, still could be

more important than an extensive network of personal ties.

Landlords could be relied upon to deliver the

bulk of their tenants' votes through demands of reciprocity.

Under those conditions, traditional

family-centered factions were still organizationally adequate to the task of voter mobilization.

Men

from old leading families, then, were still in a very good position to take the lead in local politics.

Political competition in a context of

growing participation frequently obliged some changes in the leadership style of men from old leading families, but it seldom resulted in their di splacement. Once recruited to a position of leadership, men from more humble backgrounds were strongly motivated to professionalize the role if they wished to maintain that position.

Political leaders

from old leading families often provided for regular succession to leadership positions from within the extended family.

This meant in many cases that men

were able to step into official positions without serving an apprenticeship.

It also meant that they

might readily step out of an official position and, the post having gone to a close relative, remain near the center of power. 104

New men, lacking

such a family background, normally had to serve a political apprenticeship and build a large personal following and/or develop party or faction support. Even then, such a following or support was not readily transferable to another.

Hence, if they achieved

an official position and aspired to stay near the center of power, they had good reason to try to make a career of office-holding.

Lacking the kind

of local resources useful in political organization that were customarily enjoyed by men from families of prestige and wealth, however, they had to depend on external resources made available by politicians in higher arenas in exchange for their support if they were to build a base of power.

The motivation

of men of modest circumstances to do this was further heightened by the potential income from such a career. An assessment of change of the extent of professionalization of political leadership roles over time on the basis of recent survey data without comparable data from earlier points in time is subject to the same limitations as assessment of change in recruitment patterns.

Detailed historical

case studies in selected towns lend support to the unspecialized/avocational model of past leadership roles against which these data are examined, however, and this lends credence to inferences of 105

change.

Examination of some aspects of the re-

cruitment and career patterns of the mayors of these two provinces reveals a substantially greater incidence of professionalism among those of Batangas than those of Capiz.

This is shown by a comparative

analysis of survey data on patterns of initial recruitment, primary sources of support, occupations, political apprenticeship, and tenure (tables 7 and 8). Initial Recruitment One indication of increasing professionalization of leadership roles was the decline in the importance of family ties in the recruitment process and the emergence of more specialized political channels of recruitment.

Family was the primary influence

in the initial recruitment to politics of just less than one-third of Batangas mayors but of nearly nearly two-thirds of Capiz mayors.

In most such

cases, the men started in politics at comparatively early ages by working in campaigns for relatives or by assisting relatives in campaigning for others. In a great many cases, it was the mayors' fathers who had the influence, and such men often described their entry into politics as "carrying on in their fathers' footsteps."

These, then, were men for whom

there was considerable continuity between life in 106

the family and becoming actively involved in politics. Over 50 percent of the Batangas mayors but less than 30 percent of Capiz mayors were recruited through the more specialized channels of party or faction.

It should be noted that, where members

of a mayor's family who were responsible for his initial recruitment to politics were also party or faction leaders, that mayor was classified as having been recruited through the influence of the former. One mayor in each province was also recruited through the influence of a person who was economically prominent but who was not primarily concerned with local politics when this "big man" put him up as a candidate to look out for his enterprises' interests.

Men in both of these categories were

also normally recruited in the context of political campaigns.

Unlike those recruited through family

ties, however, these men tended to become involved later in life.

Hence, they had broader experience

before entering politics. Primary Source of Support Another indication of professionalization of the political leadership role is the decline in dependence on family as a base of political support and the development of more specialized forms of organi107

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