3+ years.shelter.random.spark!ignore.knock.kaleidoscope.biglaan.takot.kaibigan.ngiti.fit.stuck.tsk.tsk.

pangamba.iyak.tattoo.forget.pulitika.write.bells!rain.stand together.guhit.haha

…at mahabang listahan ng mga di inaasahang salita

ako: paumanhin

The Bells – April Smith

Where I spend dusk until before midnight. Katipunan is more peaceful at night. It’s a little melancholic too.

*Kuha mula sa 14th floor.

These are never before seen photos from the times I spent in Hacienda Luisita* at the end of 2004 to the beginning of 2005.

I stayed there to live with the farm workers** at the sugar cane and workers of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac sugar factory and document their struggle for land ownership and their fight for just benefits that should be duly accorded to them.

It was an exhilarating and life-changing experience for a writer like me with only a limited exposure to grass roots issues at that time.

I had to stay there for a few months to document this historic display of impermeable strength in the union of workers and farm workers which will forever leave not only marks but trails in the history of Filipino struggle for national democracy. I had to get first-hand information and above all, be one with them, live the way they lived to have full appreciation and grasp of their struggle.

Interview with Sacadas:

Just a few meters away from the CAT sugar factory, makeshift houses were built to house Sacadas who mostly came from Negros. Sacadas are temporary farm workers who were hired to help in the sugar plantation during the harvest seasons. They will be transported back to Negros after six months. We were able to visit their makeshift houses and witness the austere living conditions.

On that fateful day of November 16, 2004, Hacienda farmworkers and the CAT Labor Union, who successfully halted sugar production by staging an all-out picket in front of the factory, were violently, brutally dispersed. The dispersal started in the afternoon until dusk. First, they were bombarded by teargas.

I remember how brutal it was. I personally experienced how it was to be thrown tear gas at on the first night they launched the picket on November 3, 2004. The picket line was installed in a vast open area between the sugarcane plantation and the sugar factory. It was a vast open space. But dispersal units threw an overwhelming number of canisters enough to replace oxygen all around us with that chemical. With a history of asthma, it was a little too much for me, I felt like dying when I inhaled massive dosage of that chemical in the air. My skin reacted so fast, I felt the harsh sting especially on my face and eyes.

It was, I thought, dreadfully inhumane. But then, November 16 was the the most atrocious, vile dispersal of all time. Dispersal units threw tear gas, maybe 10 times more. But they weren’t contented, they fired bullets instead, killing picketing farmworkers and sacadas.

The sacadas were painfully traumatized at the death of their colleagues that they wouldn’t want to leave their makeshift houses, wanting to go home to Negros.

These pictures show one of the rare occasions that Sacadas went to the picket line and submit to interviews and discussions.

*Hacienda Luisita, one of the biggest sugar cane plantations in the Philippines, is located in Tarlac, with a rough estimate measure of  6,000 hectares. Hacienda is a Spanish word referring to a large plantation owned by a family or clan. Hacienda Luisita is owned by the Cojuancos. Haciendas should be abolished and subjected to distribution to  farmers who have been cultivating the land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

**70% of the population of the Philippines are farmers.

***The farm workers succeeded in their struggle. They now plant crops and vegetables that are necessary food demands in the country.

****I will be writing a more comprehensive account of my stay in Hacienda Luisita soon.

***** This has been reposted in untold territories|unlimited.

Hacienda Luisita 2005. Where I was forced to learn how to take shots. During that time, farm workers on strike held a daily noise barrage at the picket line just right outside the Central Azucarera de Tarlac sugar factory, the same grounds where some of them were shot-dead.