Dying for Land
By John Hall
Our 15-foot, outrigger boat—overloaded with 14 people—heaved in heavy seas off the coast of Batangas, Luzon, Philippines, and water poured over the gunwales. I had been kneeling for an hour, bailing water with the sole piece of “emergency equipment” on board: a plastic bottle. As the waves washed over us, my externship supervisor, noted human rights attorney Romeo Capulong, turned to me with a smile. “Are you enjoying your last semester of law school?” he asked. That day, March 9, was sad and memorable, and our eventful journey by sea was merely the prelude to what would become for me an inspiring educational mission. We were on our way to a funeral. The destination was Hacienda Looc, a coastal region about 90 kilometers south of Manila, the site of an ongoing battle between poor farm families fighting to keep their land and development forces determined to take it. Two farmers, Terry Sevilla and Roger Alla, had been ambushed and murdered the previous week, bringing to seven the number of peasants killed since 1997 who had opposed the construction of a golf resort on their land.
I had been working for several months with the people of Hacienda Looc—home to approximately 2,000 families—as an extern with the Public Interest Law Center in Manila. Our clients, who have been peacefully farming and fishing at Hacienda Looc for four generations, were granted full legal title to their lands under the agrarian land reform programs of the Marcos and Aquino governments. However, the coastal area is one of enormous natural beauty, and in the mid-1990s large development corporations focused on the unspoiled beaches and coves of Looc as an ideal location for ecotourism resorts and luxury subdivisions. Farmers in Looc were told that they no longer owned the land; that their hillsides were to be bulldozed to create four golf courses, designed, according to the developers, by Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus. The farmers’ cooperation was sought with promises of employment as golf caddies and groundskeepers. It all seemed perfectly sensible to those whose fortunes were about to be made by the development. As the mayor of the local town of Nasugbu told me, “If the farmers had just agreed to sell the land there would not have been a problem. They’re just being stubborn.” But to the farmers, the land is what mattered. In the words of one of our clients, “Land to us is life itself. If you take our land, you have killed us.”
PILC attorneys are fighting in court the legal irregularities surrounding the cancellation of land titles. Suit has been brought by PILC on behalf of the farmers against various officials accused of abuse of office. Cease and desist orders are currently in effect concerning the disputed area. My role involved traveling to Hacienda Looc to conduct interviews and document the systematic campaign of harassment aimed at opponents of the developers. I was able to witness close up the complex and often untidy business of public interest lawyering. My fact-finding work, for example, revealed to me why my colleagues at the PILC were so tenacious. They have to be. Representatives of the developers, administrative agencies, and local officials with whom I met promised documents that never materialized, described agreements that could not be verified, and generally resisted my attempts to determine how and to what extent due process had been served in dealing with the farmers.
THE FARMERS’ COOPERATION WAS SOUGHT WITH PROMISES OF EMPLOYMENT AS GOLF CADDIES AND GROUNDSKEEPERS. IT ALL SEEMED PERFECTLY SENSIBLE TO THOSE WHOSE FORTUNES WERE ABOUT TO BE MADE BY THE DEVELOPMENT. But it was in working with my clients that my education—and my motivation in pursuing a career in the law—came into sharper focus. At a protest in Manila, for example—where farmers had gathered on the steps of the development company and poured pig’s blood to represent their murdered villagers—security officers tried to silence them and drive them away. The farmers would not be cowed. One of the most vocal was Guillermo Bautista, who rebuked the security men, saying, “The developers are intruding on our property with bulldozers and guns, yet we cannot intrude on their steps?” Later, a woman, exhausted from the day’s events, sat in a makeshift shelter outside the Department of Agrarian Reform and told me, “I look forward to returning to my home in Calayo. The trees are blooming. The air is clean. I can watch my grandchildren swimming in the sea. And I can touch my land with my feet. For that I would die if I have to.”
ON MY VISITS TO HACIENDA LOOC MY UNEASY SLEEP WAS PERIODICALLY INTERRUPTED BY GUNFIRE, THE PRODUCT OF ROAMING BANDS OF THUGS APPARENTLY DISPATCHED TO INTIMIDATE THE FARMERS AND THEIR FAMILIES. On my visits to Hacienda Looc my uneasy sleep was periodically interrupted by gunfire, the product of roaming bands of thugs apparently dispatched to intimidate the farmers and their families. During the day, I saw armed men wandering the streets shooting pistols into the air with impunity. An atmosphere of fear, tension, and anxiety was pervasive. Elderly women told me how they had had guns pointed at their heads, how their husbands and sons were beaten and abused. One woman, after testifying in regional court that her father had died long before he supposedly signed an affidavit used to cancel his land title, was chased by armed local government officials who threatened to kill her. After agreeing to testify, she was harassed, her family members beaten, her house surrounded. Police officials to whom the farmers have frequently complained, have done nothing to arrest or disarm the assailants.
The most egregious incident occurred in February 1997, when, according to local residents, two leaders of the peasant support group Umalpas-Ka, Francisco Marasigan and Maximo Carpinter, were shot to death by developers’ security guards. The guards apparently had waited in Marasigan’s yard for several hours, drinking gin and abusing passersby. When the two peasant leaders arrived, the guards, without saying a word, shot them in the chest. The identities of the suspects were known. One even dropped his ID at the scene. The police, however, never charged anyone with the crimes. The families of the victims were visited by security guards and told that, if they demanded prosecution of the suspects, they would all be killed. Interviewing the friends and family members of the murder victims was particularly harrowing for me. Despite years of harassment and killing—or perhaps because of it—they are resolute. Bautista has had his crops destroyed and large boulders pushed into his rice fields by bulldozers. He has received countless death threats, has narrowly escaped ambush by armed men, has seen his brothers assaulted, and has been told by one prospective assassin that 1.5 million pesos ($37,000) has been offered to anyone who will kill him. His wife has had a nervous breakdown. His four young children live on a diet of salt and rice supplemented with handouts from supporters. He is almost $2,000 in debt, a huge amount for a small-scale farmer, but has repeatedly rejected bribes to end his opposition to the developers. Interviewing him, it was clear to me that he takes seriously the danger he faces. “But what alternative do I have?” he said. “If we lose our land, what future will my children have? Will they become the caddies for the rich people, or clean their swimming pools?”
I HAV E DRAWN INSPIRATION FROM THESE CLIENTS; WORKING WITH THEM HAS PROVIDED ME A CAPSTONE EXPERIENCE THAT HELPED GIVE SHAPE TO MY EDUCATION AT STANFORD. The human rights attorneys who represent the farmers of Looc have themselves received death threats, even in Manila. Their offices have been ransacked, their houses watched. Each time they travel to meet their clients they are risking their lives. They travel by boat because of an earlier attempt to ambush them when they drove by road. Yet not once did I hear them say they should not go. As attorney Romeo Capulong told me: “We have very brave clients. They deserve brave lawyers.”
I have drawn inspiration from these clients; working with them has provided me a capstone experience that helped give shape to my education at Stanford. A first-rate legal education, I now realize, is less about learning black-letter specifics than it is about acquiring flexible, imaginative, and creative skills. Many of us will spend our entire careers bailing out metaphorical boats. It’s reassuring to know that, if necessary, we can do it for real in a bad storm, on our knees, off the coast of Luzon, with only a plastic bottle. John Hall ‘00 has a doctorate in American history from Oxford University and was a tenured professor for ten years before deciding on a career in law. He is writing a book about the events at Hacienda Looc.