WHERE WILL THIS LAND US?

In an attempt to attract investors,  the government passed yet another neoliberal policy favoring foreign interests over Filipino welfare. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Republic Act No. 12252, “AN ACT LIBERALIZING THE LEASE OF PRIVATE LANDS BY FOREIGN INVESTORS, ESTABLISHING THE STABILITY OF LONG-TERM LEASE CONTRACTS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE REPUBLIC ACT NO. 7652, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE "INVESTORS' LEASE ACT” last August 29, 2025. The signing sparked criticism among farmers and progressive groups who fear further displacement and land grabbing.

Under the 1987 Constitution, foreigners are prohibited from owning land in the Philippines—only Filipinos or corporations with at least 60% Filipino ownership may do so. Land lease has been used by the government itself to circumvent this, which used to be 50 years with a one-time renewal option for an additional 25 years.

To start, land leases to foreigners have long been a problem for Filipino farmers and our indigenous people, as this stoked the flames for the threats of economic insecurity, land-grabbing, food insecurity, environmental destruction, and displacement. The 99-year limit on land leases adds fuel to this fire and raises the question: Whose interests does our government truly serve—the people, or profit?

With October being celebrated as National Peasant Month, farmers from across the country once again took to the streets—staging an encampment protest, or kampuhan, in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform to voice out the same struggles they have carried for generations. Their chants echoed a familiar truth: that the promise of genuine land reform remains unfulfilled.

In provinces like Tarlac and Bulacan, the families of Ayala, Aboitiz, Cojuangco, and other landlords have long drained the countryside of its lifeblood. Thousands of hectares of once-productive farmlands have been seized and converted into so-called “development projects”—industrial zones, golf courses, and commercial estates that feed the greed of the elite while starving the farmers who once cultivated them. According to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), more than 3.8 million hectares of private farmlands have been lost to land-use conversion since the 1990s.

Nowhere is this theft more visible than in Central Luzon, the nation’s rice granary, which produces nearly 20 percent of the country’s rice supply yet suffers immense land loss. History reminds us: every hectare handed to corporations is a meal stolen from a Filipino table. The government’s continued courting of foreign investors through extended land leases and neoliberal-friendly policies only deepens this injustice—tightening the grip of monopoly capital and pushing more peasants off their land to feed the profit of foreign markets. 

Despite being granted Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) in 2019, farmers in Negros Occidental continue to suffer under the iron grip of landlord monopoly. Families such as the Marañon, Yulo, Zayco, and Teves maintain control over vast tracts of land, preserving the feudal structures that genuine agrarian reform was supposed to dismantle. According to the 2022 Census on Agriculture and Fisheries, 30.3% of land ownership in Negros remains concentrated in the hands of only 1% of its population. Meanwhile, more than 163,000 farming families each till less than a hectare—barely enough to sustain their households, let alone lift themselves out of poverty.

In Candoni, Negros Occidental, the Consunji family’s Hacienda Asia Plantations Incorporated (HAPI), an oil palm plantation, plans to expand its hold from 6,652 hectares to 12,000 in the next five years. This expansion reflects a broader national pattern: the steady dispossession of farmers in favor of corporate and foreign interests. As foreign ownership gains ground, the very soil that once fed Filipino families is being fenced off for export-oriented profit. When farmers rise to resist this injustice, they are met not with reform, but with repression. From July 2022 to December 2023 alone, at least 48 farmers were killed in Negros, according to the KMP .

The story is no different in Southern Tagalog, where state fascism continues to serve as the regime’s blunt instrument for land-grabbing. The Katipunan ng Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (KASAMA-TK) has condemned the National Action Plan for Unity and Peace Development (NAP-UPD) and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) as deceptive programs, facades of “peace and progress” masking the bombings, forced surrenders, and military harassment inflicted upon farming and indigenous communities.

Just this August 1, 2025, the Armed Forces of the Philippines conducted bomb strafings in Tagkawayan, Quezon, displacing entire communities and destroying livelihoods. Consequently, the Mangyan people of Baco, Mindoro, were driven from their ancestral homes by relentless military operations, clearing the path for local and foreign landlords eager to seize their land. These state-sponsored offensives are not isolated incidents—they are part of a nationwide campaign to protect elite interests and crush peasant resistance.

All this unfolds under the enduring weight of a feudal mode of production that keeps farmers chained to poverty—forced to endure backbreaking 13-hour days for a daily wage of ₱300 to ₱450. Behind the government’s rhetoric of “peace and development” lies the same centuries-old system of exploitation: a struggle between those who till the land and those who profit from it.

Beyond the sweat of the farmers, it is also the taxes of ordinary Filipinos that fuel this machinery of corruption. Foreign investments, often heralded as “economic progress,” have instead become fertile ground for plunder. Amid rampant institutional corruption, crumbling infrastructure, and inadequate public services, the state’s obsession with attracting foreign capital exposes not only economic dependency but a deep moral decay—one that prioritizes foreign profit over national welfare.

These conditions are not isolated—they are the symptoms of a semicolonial and semifeudal society. Even beyond the countryside, the crisis bleeds into the cities, where corruption scandals erupt one after another, public outrage swells and fires up. The political climate grows tenser by the day, as the masses take to the streets to demand justice from a government that thrives on deceit.

History tells us that when the ruling class tightens its grip through state fascism to protect its wealth and power, the people inevitably fight back. It is both scientific and historical: the more the state suppresses, the fiercer the masses resist. From the haciendas to the urban centers, the struggle for genuine liberation burns on.

With all these in mind, it is no wonder that the peasant masses and indigenous peoples continue to uphold and support the armed struggle led by the CPP-NPA. To them, it is not senseless violence but an act of survival—a fight for dignity in a nation that has long turned its back on them. When the state abandons its farmers, when land remains in the hands of a few, and when dissent is met with bullets, can we still call it peace?

The real war did not begin in the mountains. It started in the fields where farmers were dispossessed, in communities bombed for demanding land, and in the silence of governments that protect landlords and corporations over their own people. What the ruling class calls “insurgency,” the masses call resistance—a resistance born out of hunger, repression, and the dream of a true democracy and equity.

Today, as fascism festers and the countryside bleeds, the people’s war endures. Because until justice is served, until land is returned, and until the cries of the oppressed are answered—not silenced—the struggle will never die. Days may pass, but the conditions for a revolution continue to mature. The call for an organized one grows louder and louder, and it is in our hands to start arousing the general public through propaganda, encourage people to join organizations, and mobilize them for the collective fight towards the fall of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism, which is the root cause of our oppression. The land grumbles, and the peasants shout for the victory of National Democracy.

Article: Caira Figues

Graphics: Jan Mike Cabangin