THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST WAR PHILIPPINE

LAND REFORM: POLITICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL

EXPLANATIONS1

By David Wurfel. In Second View from the Paddy, Antonio Ledesma, Perla Q. Makil & Virginia
A. Miralao, eds., Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila, 1983

Introduction
The history of Philippine agrarian policy since independence is a sadly monotonous one for the
scholar, a bitterly disappointing one for the hopeful tenant cultivator. It is a story of repeated
initiative from the center of government that did not result in anywhere near the announced
change in the countryside. Explanations for this series of ineffectual reforms have varied from
insincerity and corruption to lack of peasant interest in getting ownership of the land. The most
convincing analysis, however, seems to relate to the political and economic interests of the top
decision makers, those initiating policy and supervising its implementations, and to the
socioeconomic characteristics of the agrarian systems being reformed. The cumulative political
consequences of agrarian policy also find both political and socioeconomic explanations.
Agrarian reform is a complex of policies designed to transform rural society in the direction of
greater equality of wealth and power among groups and classes, and greater equality of
opportunity for individuals. Where agrarian reform has followed a successful revolution it has
usually involved the uncompensated redistribution of land. A much more modest attempt at
transformation may be the creation of cooperatives in which small cultivators are given greater
opportunities than their large competitors. But the type of reform on which we will focus here is
the redistribution of tenanted land with compensation to the original owner, land for which the
beneficiary of reform must repay the government. Despite all the permutations in Philippine
policy over more than 30 years, these basic elements of land reform have remained constant:
government purchase of tenanted land and its resale to tenants.
Philippine land reform has been further restricted over the years to grain crops: rice and corn-for
domestic consumption. Export crops have consistently been exempted, the official argument
being that land reform might disrupt production and thus jeopardize foreign exchange earnings.
Perhaps a more important reason, however, was that large landowners in sugar, coconuts, and
tobacco were politically too powerful to be touched. The scope and nature of the reforms that
were implemented posed no threat to the interests of the political elite, but were, in fact,
1

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perceived as strengthening their position. The changes in the content of reform from the 1940s to
the 1970s indicated the waning influence of rice and corn landlords within that elite.

Land Reform Under Roxas and Quirino (1946-1953)

Agrarian policy initiatives had for the most part begun in the 1930s under President Quezon who
was sensitive to the peasant unrest in Central Luzon and wanted to appear to meet some of its
demands, without too seriously discomforting his landlord friends and allies. (His national
political organization depended on local leaders who were usually either landlords or their
proteges.) Components of that policy included regulation of tenancy relations, organized land
settlement in Mindanao for the landless of Luzon and Cebu, the long-standing anti-usury law,
issuance of free patents to homesteaders on cultivable public land, and a landed estates policy
which provided funds for the negotiated purchase of large holdings for resale to the tenants.1
Before World War II, the Rural Progress Administration (RPA) had purchased tenant homesites
on four estates and the agricultural land of two more; the area of the six totaled to little more than
6,000 hectares.2 The RPA had also leased the huge 27,000 hectare Buenavista Estate with future
prospect of redistribution. But disputes about tenant rights abounded and none had become
amortizing owners. The American liberation of Manila was terribly destructive of government
offices, so that landed estate records after the war were either chaotic or nonexistent.
Nevertheless, the acquisition of estates by the RPA resumed in 1947, so that by 1950 another 19
had been purchased amounting to over 10,000 hectares in addition to the vast Buenavista Estate.
Over 3/4 of this area was owned by some official or agency of the Catholic Church. Most of the
land acquired was in Central Luzon where the Huk rebellion made many villages unsafe for
landlords or their agents; much of the area was uncultivated. Some of the estates were purchased
from persons whose legal ownership was in question. Clearly the landed estates policy was not
land reform primarily designed to transform tenants into owner-cultivators, but was a social
service agency for landlords with shaky titles or poor profit ratios. Landlords who were opposed
to appropriation were usually able to stop it in the courts. In fact, it was RPA policy to discourage
tenant petitions for estate purchases by the impossible requirement that petitioners deposit an
amount equivalent to the assessed value of the land in question on the date the petition was
approved) The RPA was starved for funds, receiving no post-war appropriation; they operated
largely with borrowed funds. Even when landed estates were purchased, the cultivating tenant
was not likely to be the main beneficiary. Many of the estates had cash tenants who in turn sublet
to cultivating sharecroppers. The tenants who were allocated lots for purchase often had farms of
10 to 50 hectares, while the average size of a cultivators plot was under 3 hectares.3
Many of the cultivating tenants who were fortunate enough to acquire purchase rights could not
afford to keep them. Despite the explicit rules against transfer, such rights had become a saleable
commodity. Poor tenants deeply in debt surrendered their rights to creditors. The same processes
that resulted in concentration of land ownership in the Philippines generally operated within the
government estates. Thus, large portions of the estates under RPA administration continued to be
cultivated by share tenants with no prospect of becoming owners. The landed estates policy
had simply displaced some large landlords to create many medium sized ones. And since the
RPA, a government agency, became directly involved in the burgeoning disputes over land

rights, that traditional source of peasant anger and frustration more quickly than before produced
political unrest. Not surprisingly the Bell Mission to the Philippines appointed by President
Truman in 1950 concluded that the land problem remains the same or worse than four years
ago.
The Bell Mission Report was, in fact, expected by many to be the impetus for the next stage of
land reform. It recommended that a broad program should be inaugurated of acquiring large
estates at fair value for resale in small holdings to tillers of the soil. At the same time the report
recommended expanded programs of agricultural credit, organized land settlement on virgin
land, and the improved administration of land registration and homesteading on public land.
Each of these other recommendations, less threatening to elite interests, was backed with some
U.S. aid, but not land redistribution. The U.S. land reform advisor drew up a detailed proposal,
but it was blasted by leading Filipino congressmen, and not even supported by the U.S. aid
mission. In fact, in 1950 the Rural Progress Administration was abolished and its functions
transferred to a newly created landed Estates Division of the Bureau of Lands. No new estates
were purchased throughout the remainder of the Quirino administration, and redistribution policy
on RPA-acquired estates dropped even the pretense of preference for the tiller. The simulation of
land reform was suspended in the early 1950s.
This was the same period in which the Huk rebellion peaked and then was put down. The Liberal
Partys political elite under Quirino certainly did not view land reform as a cure for peasant
unrest, though a number of opposition figures did make the connection. Liberals were, in fact,
even less interested in land reform in 1953, when the Huks had been largely defeated, than in
1950 when the rebellion was at its height. The election of Ramon Magsaysay as president in
1953 made some difference in this regard, however.

Land Reform Under Magsaysay and Garcia (1954-61)

Magsaysay had brought his campaign directly to the peasantry in a manner unprecedented. After
he was elected, several of his advisors understood the importance of taking concrete action to
meet peasant complaints and thus reduce unrest. Since the landed estates policy remained in
the Bureau of lands, the aggressive new Undersecretary of Agriculture, Jaime Ferrer, had an
important role, as did some of the pro-tenant young officers in the Tenancy Division of the Judge
Advocate Generals Office. In two instances, in San Luis, Pampanga and San Pedro Tunasan,
Laguna, within a few months of Magsaysays assuming the presidency, the Executive Office took
initiative directly to acquire landed estates. The landed Estates Division began a number of
negotiations and expropriations, and within the estates they already administered, dramatically
increased the rate of redistribution, giving clear preference for the first time to cultivating
occupants of the land. All this activity clearly raised the expectation of tenants. During FY 1955
the Bureau of lands received 116 petitions for the expropriation of landed estates covering more
than 113,000 hectares.4
But those expectations could not be adequately met without new legislation and new
implementing agencies. The Inter-Departmental Committee on land Tenure, appointed by the
President in March 1954, worked at unusual speed and produced a draft of the land reform bill
by 6 May which was immediately introduced into the House of Representatives. At about the

same time, however, legislation to improve landlord tenant relations was introduced and this
received priority attention. No action was taken on land reform in the 1954 regular session, and it
did not even appear on the agenda of the special session of that year.
In his 1955 State of the Nation message Magsaysay did reiterate his desire for new land reform
legislation. But just as the President announced that he would take land reform seriously, so did
its opponents. At every stage of the legislative process landlord interests attacked both directly
and with subtle indirection. Magsaysay was neither so persistent nor so skillful. He never issued
a public statement in favor of any portion of the bill. His only significant effort was to call a
special session with the land tenure bill as highest priority. Nevertheless, the bill was almost
scuttled at the conference committee stage. The final legislative product was so inadequate that
Atty. Fernando Santiago, one of the authors of the first draft, sent a memo to the President
recommending that he veto it and ask for a simple appropriation instead.5 Congressman Casas of
la Union tried to amend the bills title at the last minute, so that it would read ironically but
accurately An act defining a landlord tenure policy, Republic Act 14006, signed by the
President in September, had only one improvement over preexisting legislation, a modest
appropriation and authorization of a bond issue.
The power of expropriation was more restricted than it had been under Commonwealth
legislation. It was limited to that portion of individual land holdings in excess of 300 contiguous
hectares, and corporate holdings of more than 600, though there were no such restrictions on
negotiated purchase. Petitions signed by a majority of tenants in the whole estate were required
to initiate an expropriation, or negotiations.
The Land Tenure Authority (LTA) established by the Act to implement this policy, did not begin
to actually function until January 1956; Magsaysay had named a defeated Congressman to head
it. In large part, perhaps, because of the administrative reshuffle resulting from the closing of the
Landed Estates Division in the Bureau of Lands and transfer of its personnel to LTA, the pace of
activities slowed down in early 1956: only one estate with 187 tenants was purchased. Within the
same 6 months petitions from tenants came in at a rate of one a day.7 Aspirations had clearly
been raised by the new Act, but were not being fulfilled. (Yet not all such petitions could be
regarded as indicative of pure tenant aspirations; there were many cases in which tenants were
manipulated by landlords .who wanted to sell unproductive, partially idle or improperly titled
land.)
Strangely enough, landlords sometimes seemed to favor expropriation over negotiated sale. They
had friends in court. The price set by courts in expropriation proceedings were sometimes nearly
double those of negotiated settlements, disadvantaging the tenant who had to repurchase the land
at the same price. (Landlords were paid in cash and/or negotiable bonds.)8 Rights of repurchase
remained confusing with LT A policy often failing to protect the actual cultivator.9 Only on
estates where cultivating tenants were well organized could they be assured of priority in land
redistribution, and most were not. Even when lots were allocated, and before they were fully paid
for, the transfer of rights for cash especially to non-cultivators-was rampant.10 Nor could
tenants on sugar estates expect to benefit from LT A programs in any way; there was an informal
understanding that petitions for the expropriation of sugar land would not be acted upon
favorably.11

Despite confusions in implementation, the LTA increased the pace of land acquisition several
times over in FY 1957; seven estates were purchased. The rising number of investigations in
1957 resulted in the acquisition of 18 estates in FY 1958 encompassing over 14,000 hectares
with more than 5,200 tenants. But in March 1957 President Magsaysay died, succeeded by his
Vice-President, Carlos P. Garcia. Within a year many of the officials committed to land reform
left the Administration. In the next two fiscal years only 6 estates were acquired, and corruption
in the process became more widespread.12
During the time of President Garcia there was what amounts to a stalemate between landlords
and their allies in Congress and in the executive departments, and the elements favoring land
reform.13 The hopes of accomplishment raised in 1954 had again been dashed. Though other
agrarian programs may have somewhat improved the bargaining position of the tenant vis--vis
the landlord, only an insignificant portion of the nations tenant farmers were on the way to
becoming owners. The land acquired for redistribution by the LT A in the first 5 years of its
existence amounted to less than 10 percent of the area of landed estates over ISO hectares in the
five provinces of Central Luzon alone!14
At the rate of progress maintained under Magsaysay and Garcia it would have taken
approximately 700 years to repurchase and redistribute the 1.8 million hectares of tenanted
agricultural land in the Philippines.15
The defeat of President Garcia in the 1961 election was not, therefore, a great loss to the cause of
land reform. Nor did it appear to be any particular gain. It was hardly mentioned in the
campaign, nor was it referred to at the inauguration of the victor, Diosdado Macapagal. Though a
congressman in the 1950s, Macapagal had not participated in the land reform debate in 1954 or
1955, and had not even voted on the bill that became R.A. 1400.16
But in January 1963 President Macapagal appointed a special committee on land reform, headed
by Acting Secretary of Labor Bernadino Abes, to draft what eventually came to be known as the
Agricultural Land Reform Code of 1963. It was introduced into Congress in March and adopted
by both houses in July. What had led the President to issue an emotional call in his State of the
Nation Address: We must give the tenants liberty from economic peonage, in which they have
long languished? In part it seemed to be the arguments of his top economic advisor, Sixto
Roxas, that land reform was a necessary component of a strategy for rapid economic
development, permitting, for instance, the transfer of capital in land to industry. It was also
apparent to many that Macapagal intended to create mass support among tenants, thus insuring
his reelection.17 Nor was he unresponsive to the views of American advisors.
Macapagal was not the popular leader Magsaysay was, coming into office on a wave of
proreform sentiment. But Macapagal was a much more skillful strategist, using successfully what
influence he had to gain early passage, even though the Senate was not under his partys control.
He had appointed Federation of Free Farmers leader Jeremias Montemayor and Philippines
Free Press editor Teodoro Locsin to his special committee, thus helping to provide some active
support for his legislation in the press and from tenant groups. And when the legislation had not
yet been passed by Senate at the end of the regular session, he called seven special sessions of a
few days each until it was adopted, helping to direct tactics from Malacanang.

The Land Reform Code of 1963 was the most comprehensive piece of legislation ever enacted in
the Philippines on the subject. It reorganized and strengthened land settlement, small farmer
credit, the dissemination of new agricultural technology, legal assistance to tenants and small
farmers, and created a structure for better coordination of all these functions, as well as dealing
with land reform more narrowly defined. A Land Authority was created to take over most of the
activities of the LTA and a Land Bank was established to handle the financial aspect of land
acquisition.
Though the initial bill was somewhat weakened before final passage, the emasculation was
nowhere nearly as great as in 1955. The most serious excision was the chapter on land taxation
which would have imposed a progressive tax based on assessment of potential productivity and
could have greatly improved collection. A major incentive for landlords acceptance of
government purchase and redistribution was thus lost.
The Code had several advantages over previous legislation, especially the authorization for the
Land Authority to acquire estates of more than 75 hectares, whether owned by individuals or
corporations, removing the term contiguous. However, the earlier absence of any effective
restraints on landlord evasion by transforming land use or transferring ownership to family
members remained. And while in 1955 sugar and coconut were excluded from land reform by
tacit agreement, in 1963 this exclusion was made legislatively specific, with fruits and other
crops added to the list. Furthermore, the provision that the National Land Reform Council
needed to declare all government agencies dealing with land reform fully operative in a region
before implementation could begin was, while logical from one standpoint, an additional
juncture at which landlord pressure and bureaucratic wrangling could delay any action.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy, however, was that after President Macapagal had shown
considerable political sophistication in getting the Code enacted, he was lax in pushing its
implementation. It. was a dramatic example of the politics of symbolism that has so permeated
Philippine public affairs. It was as if Macapagal, having signed an important document, found
little compulsion to act on it. The new agencies established by the code were not fully operative
until March 1964.18 As late as 1966 no agricultural land had yet been purchased under the terms
of the Code!19 Even under the provisions of previous legislation in the 2 years following
enactment of the Code only 1,610 hectares were purchased, or less than the annual average
under Magsaysay and Garcia.20 A few months before the November 1965 election Macapagal
panicked, and made vigorous efforts to implement the Code.21 But it was too late to turn the
political tide against him.
President Marcos came to office, like his immediate predecessor, without any record of interest
in land reform. The fact that machinery for implementation was established by his defeated rival
may have caused him to be even less enthused. Certainly the commitment of funds was modest.
None other than Conrado Estrella, appointed chairman of the Land Reform Council by Marcos
and later secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform, called attention in early 1972 to the
fact that in 1965 the total appropriation for all land reform agencies was PI56 million, but that
out of this amount only 20 percent was released. This trend has continued through the years.
The proportion of the amount released against appropriations ranged from 20 to 30 percent. In
1971 only 24 percent [was] released from an appropriation of PI82 million.22 As of

September 1971 land reform, had not even been proclaimed in more than 236 of the nations
1,506 cities and municipalities (varying in size from a country to a township), Agricultural land
purchase and redistribution had fallen to a low level: during the first 4 years of the Marcos
presidency approximately 2,600 hectares had been purchased by the Land Authority and another
1,500 by the Land Bank, or about 1,000 hectares per year. Though slightly above the pace of
activity in Macapagals last 2 years in office, this was only {%} of the annual average during the
Magsaysay/Garcia years.
The way in which Mr. Marcos won reelection in 1969 with charges of massive fraud, inducement
and intimidation, triggered a political reaction that had a profound impact on the national
attention to and perception of land reform. It marked the beginning of a new stage in the history
of Philippine agrarian reform.

Land Reform Since 1971

The raucous demonstrations that accompanied President Marcos second inauguration marked
the tenor of the times. Students were aroused and were making common cause with tenants and
trade unionists. The only positive response in the Presidents State of the Nation address was a
proposal to sell military camps near Manila to generate funds for land reform. Later special
committees in both chambers of Congress conducted hearings which heard representatives of
peasant groups and land reform Agencies.23 On 5 May as a consequence of those hearings,
omnibus bills were introduced to promote land reform in both the Senate and the House, but the
problems and costs which became associated with the idea of selling military land scuttled that
plan. For the first time in Philippine history legislative initiative on land reform did not come
from the President, but resulted in large part from popular clamor heeded by Congress.
The Senate bill was favored by peasant organizations since it incorporated their demands for a
lowering of the retention limit to 24 hectares and a prohibition on the creation of subdivisions or
the resumption of personal cultivation (through wage laborers) as justification for the ejection
of tenants, and thus avoidance of land reform. (Both were widespread practices since 1955.)
They were less enthusiastic about the Estrel1a-favored bill to create a Department of Agrarian
Reform. But the regular session ended without any land reform related bills being passed. The
first and second special sessions saw little progress either, and before the third special session
was called a meeting of Congressional leaders with the President agreed to strike land reform
from the agenda.24 It was decided to suspend action on land reform while a special committee
conducted an in-depth study, submitting its report to the regular session beginning in January
1971. Peasant and student groups were angry.25 Jeremias Montemayor, President of the
Federation of Free Farmers, questioned the sincerity of President Marcos for saying that land
reform would become the epicenter of all government activities.
Soon after the January regular session began sitting, debate on land reform was again suspended
to refer the matter to another subcommittee, chaired by Senator Salvador Laurel. The peasantfavored Senate Bill 478 was amended, omitting the lowered retention of 24 hectares. Despite 2
days of demonstrations at Malacaftang in May by 5,000 farmer-members of the Cooperative
League of the Philippines, demanding to see the President, the regular session ended without

land reform legislation having been certified as urgent.26 Both peasant leaders and progressive
legislators increasingly blamed the President for inaction.
With the calling of the first special session of 1971 there was launched a unique form of political
action, the live-in picket. On 1 June hundreds of small farmers, supported by students, priests,
nuns, and urban trade unions, encamped in front of the Congress building to insist on effective
reform legislation. At the beginning of the second special session, when legislative action on land
reform was still far from complete, the demonstration had already lasted for 2 months.27 Peasant
organizations, especially the Free Farmers, brought in buses and jeeps loaded with tenants from
villages as far as 200 kilometers away. During each legislative day small groups badgered
individual Congressmen demanding to know how they would vote on each article of each
pending land reform bill, and why, and explaining the importance of the reforms proposed.
Members of Congress had increasing difficulty in handling this unprecedented pressure. In the
early days of the second special session they began to question the legality of such action;
debates on land reform were even suspended, to reinforce the demand that demonstrators
abandon their round-the-clock picket.28 But the picketers only gained greater mass support.
Representatives of the Philippine Public School Teachers Federation joined the demonstration.
The 87,OOO-member Philippine Federation of Labor threatened to strike nationwide if farmer
demonstrators were evicted from the Congress building.29 Finally on 9 August House Speaker
Villareal announced that the leadership had decided to withdraw their demand for the pickets
removal and to resume debate on land reform. Said a spokesman for the Philippine Congress of
Trade Unions, this proved that democracy, if given a chance, can still work in this country. One
observant Congressman threw light on the motivation for the turnabout when he commented,
those who would evict the demonstrators would be doing exactly what the Russian aristocracy
did just before the October revolution began 30 From then on debate on land reform,
especially in the House, was more constructive. Two bills had been enacted, R.A. 6389 and R.A.
6390, when the fifth special session ended on 5 September.
Unlike every experience in the past, the final version of the first piece of 1971 land reform
legislation was in some ways more favorable to the tenant than the first. Certainly lowering the
retention limit to 24 hectares and preventing landlords from claiming personal cultivation or
subdivision as an excuse for ejectment of tenants would not have survived the legislative process
without intense peasant pressure. Furthermore, the piecemeal approach was ended and the whole
country was declared a land reform area. R.A. 6390, the funding bill, was more disappointing,
providing appropriation for on1y P50 million, no higher than the funding level in the previous
few years, and much less than the original Senate bill. It was, in fact, the Presidents intervention
which tipped the scale for the much more modest figures in the House version.31 Only the
provision in R.A. 6389 creating a Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) received consistent
Administration backing.
There are two major conclusions to be drawn from this legislative history. The more general one
was articulated by both conservative solons and radical peasant leaders: the democratic process
works, the people may peaceably assemble to redress their grievances. More specifically,
genuine progress toward land reform was possible through Congress if small farmers were
organized. Neither of these conclusions was consistent with the contentions in September and
October 1972 that only through the setting aside of Congress and presidential rule by decree

could genuine land reform be accomplished. The evidence of peasant mobilization in 1971 and
the implications it had for the future of the Philippine political system, were undoubtedly factors
that helped President Marcos decide to reduce mass participation through Martial law. (A fuller
explanation for the abrupt transition in September 1972 to authoritarian rule must be found
elsewhere, however.)

Presidential Decree No. 27

In the early years of martial law agrarian reform was given great prominence. One month after
its declaration the President issued Presidential Decree No. 27 for the emancipation of the tiller
from the bondage of the soil. And on the first anniversary of P .D. 27 he went so far as to say:
land reform is the only gauge for the success or failure of the New Society. If land reform fails,
there is no New Society. 32
In the decrees preamble President Marcos hinted at one of the motivations for this emphasis:
Inasmuch as the old concept of land ownership by a few has spawned valid and legitimate
grievances that gave rise to violent conflict and social tension, the redress of such grievances
[becomes] one of the fundamental objectives of the New SocietyThe fear of agrarian
unrest, and Communist leadership thereof, was certainly the explanation for the fact that only 2
weeks after martial law had been declared, Dr. Roy Prostermann, of the University of
Washington, author of the
1970 land reform in Vietnam (and the subsequent program in El Salvador) arrived in the
Philippines with a draft decree in his pocket. (His draft influenced but did not determine the final
document.) About the same time, Executive Secretary Alejandro Melchor was in Washington
trying to justify martial law on the grounds that it was necessary for the quick implementation of
broad social reforms. But for the President himself, land reforms most important political
function was to strike a blow at the oligarchy, those wealthy elite who had formed the core of
his political opposition. Not surprisingly the Aquino estates were among the first to be
expropriated. The subsequent pattern of implementation helped to confirm this interpretation.
The President simply lost his originally keen interest after the owners with more than 100
hectares had been dispossessed.
In sum, the political purpose of land reform and its ancillary policies was to create mass support
for the New Society and its leader, legitimize him abroad, and undermine support for alternative
leadership on both the right and the left. Since great estates in sugar, coconut and other export
crops were excluded from its coverage in any case, it is probably fair to say that in the long run
none of these goals were accomplished. In the first few years of martial law, however, agrarian
policy did help create support for Marcos in the countryside, blunted foreign criticism of his
regime, and put the landed elite on the political defensive.
In principle P.D. 27 was a great improvement over previous legislation because all rice and corn
tenants whose landlords owned more than 7 hectares were to be sold the land they tilled at a
price 2 1/2 times the average annual production; they were given 15 years to pay the land Bank
at 6 percent Interest. No tenant initiative was required. When the tenant fully paid, and only then,
he would receive a title transferable exclusively to his heirs. (Landlords were to be paid 10

percent in cash and 90 percent in Land Bank bonds.) In the meantime the eligible tenant would
receive a Certificate of Land Transfer (CLT) identifying his cultivated area and promising him
the right to purchase the land.
The number of tenants to benefit from this decree quickly became a controversial question. In the
first month the Department of Agrarian Reform (which had already been created before martial
law) announced that over I million tenants tilled 1.44 million hectares of rice and corn land. But
research in 1975 established that 57 percent of tenants farmed land owned by persons with less
than 7 hectares. Subsequently DAR announced that based on its own field identification, its
goal was to service more than 390,000 tenants on 730,000 hectares, or little more than 1/3 of all
rice and corn tenants. By 1980, DAR claimed to have issued CLTs to 90 percent of the targeted
tenants, but best estimates are that nearly half of those printed in Manila never actually reached
the hands of the cultivator.
CL T holders were still being asked to pay rent to their landlords. Not until the price of the land
was fixed and the tenant began to pay installments to the land Bank was he an amortizing
owner. Only 86,500, or 22 percent of the target, had reached that stage; and of that number only
1,667 had completed payments early and become full owners.33 Most amortizing owners were
delinquent.34
Delay in fixing the price, and delinquency in amortization resulted from the fact that instead of
setting land price on the basis of production as the decree provided, landlords were allowed to
negotiate with tenants and DAR field officials sometimes aided the landlord, already the stronger
party. On other occasions, to be sure, when DAR officials stood up for tenant rights under the
law, they were verbally threatened or judicially harassed by landlords. Many DAR officials had
court cases initiated against them for merely doing their duty.35 Landlord foot-dragging could
postpone a pricing agreement indefinitely. Thus by 1977, the average price per hectare being
paid by the tenant of nearly P7,000 was 44 percent higher than it would have been if it had been
based on the average yield as reported by the Ministry of Agriculture.36 Since land Bank bonds
could be sold for cash by landlords, at a discount to be sure, in order to make other investments,
or could be invested in approved projects at face value, the loss of land usually did not involve a
significant loss of wealth. By 1980, 5,860 landowners had been paid by the Land Bank an
average of P207,347 each.
The net result of land redistribution was to put more than 86,000 tenants on the road to
ownership (with only 2 percent completing the process); while this was less than 9 percent of a
very conservative estimate of all rice and corn tenants, it was, nevertheless, a greater
accomplishment than in any previous administration. However, since the announcement and the
early stages of implementation gave the vast majority of all tenants a feeling that they personally
were going to benefit, the consequence was that for every farmer who was grateful to the
government for having achieved a new status, and perhaps improved income, there were many
resentful that their hopes had been frustrated. Probably the thousands of tenants who first
received CLTs, and then had them recalled either because of simple bureaucratic confusion or
because of landlord intervention were most upset. Though the thousands more who were
illegally ejected from their tenant holdings in 1972-74 by foresighted landlords wishing to evade
the reform may have been at least equally frustrated.

The slow pace of implementation was due partly to a chronic bureaucratic complaint, lack of
personnel because of lack of budget. Even though there was a real increase in funds (even after
compensating for inflation) for agrarian reform between FY 1973 and FY 1977, the priority for
the Ministry of Agrarian Reform within the total national budget continued to slide, however. In
1973 it was 0.8 percent of the total, in 1977 only 0.7 percent and in 1981 down to 0.5 percent).37
More serious, however, was the delay, and even retreat, in the face of landlord pressure by top
decision makers. Nor was this the result of inattention by the President; Minister of Agrarian
Reform Conrado Estrella, who remained in office from before the declaration until after the
lifting of martial law, boasted of easy access to President Marcos to consult on problems within
the ministry. There was apparently a feeling in Malacanang that more was to be gained
politically by easing the pressure on landlords (especially those with less than 24 hectares) than
by pushing through to the full extent of the law. Foreign analysts, however, were more inclined
to conclude that half measures were worse than none at all, i.e., that incomplete reform raised
expectations and thus intensified the frustration of those who did not benefit. Revolutionary
political organization in the countryside by 1981 would seem to have justified that conclusion.
Some prime land reform areas had become bases for the Communist-led New Peoples Army
(NPA).
In any case, government spokesmen did not bother themselves with trying to explain
shortcomings; they proclaimed complete success. The government-owned Philippine News
Agency release on the eve of the 8th anniversary of P.D. 27 stated: 359,000 farmers now own
the land they till via the issuance of 501,364 certificates of land title [sic]. The figures represent
82 percent of the total target.38 The previously subtle attempt to equate CL Ts with titles had lost
its subtlety. Some foreign publications used the language of the release, thus perpetuating the
gross inaccuracy. Even AID officials in Washington bought this line, though their Philippine
specialists knew otherwise. The AID presentation to the House Foreign Affairs sub-Committee
on Asia and Pacific Affairs hearings in Washington in March 1981 reported flatly that 88
percent of eligible families had received land titles under Philippine agrarian reform.39

Conclusion
To look at the sweep of policy over more than 30 years raises the very basic question whether
conservative land reform is possible, i.e., whether the announced goals, to transform
cultivators into owners, can be accomplished by any regime dominated by men of great private
wealth. Does its achievement either require a period of foreign domination, as in Japan, or a prior
sociopolitical revolution, as in China? Or, posed another way, does the goal of peasant ownership
require rapid industrialization as the context for agrarian change, as in Japan? And is the only
alternative agrarian revolution that ultimately denies the principle of cultivator ownership
anyway, as in China? Perhaps farmer owners are a transitory breed in any case; both Japan and
Western societies that were long based on peasant ownership are seeing the rise of the corporate
farm.
These questions lead us into the broad field of comparative history, fascinating, but sometimes
speculative. The questions which are more directly related to the historical survey of Philippine
land reform policy here presented are: Why was this type of policy enacted? Why was

implementation so consistently frustrated? And what are the political consequences of such
programs?
It is abundantly clear that until 1911 peasant demands had no direct effect on policies enacted.
Thus heroic rhetoric, e.g., The evolution of the various land reform legislations since 1905 is
the story of accumulated piecemeal concessions bitterly fought for by the Filipino peasantry,
sometimes lacks historical accuracy.40 The presence of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF)
president on Macapagals special committee gave an opportunity for a peasant leader (balanced
by an influential landlord on the same committee) to present his ideas in the drafting process. But
peasant mobilization was insignificant; thus it was only the perceptions of the political elite
about possible future peasant reactions that affected policy. And those perceptions were
important to decision makers primarily as they entered into broader calculations of self interest,
i.e., how elite interests are influenced by peasant reaction.
Insofar as peasant protests were violent, and constituted a threat to system stability, they
stimulated concern within the elite, though without legislative consequence at least until the
19205.41 As early as 1933, however, the Rice Share Tenancy Act may be seen to be a kind of
response to the furious Tayug uprising of January 1931. The more extensive peasant mobilization
in Central Luzon of the late 1930s frightened President Quezon into launching the landed estates
policy, though the more short-sighted members of the National Assembly effectively hamstrang
other agrarian reform measures. Ultimately, Quezons desire simultaneously to placate both
landlords and tenants pleased neither, and in 1941 rural class conflict was more acute than
ever.42 This characterization of the 1930s aptly fits, as we shall see, the interactions in later
stages of land reform policy.
The Roxas Administration, the first after independence, was closely linked, as had been Quezon,
to the landed elite of Central Luzon. Its response to the rising Huk Rebellion was the mailed
fist, thus contributing to mobilization of the peasantry by the left. Roxas Vice-President and
successor, Elpidio Quirino, was himself from the Ilocos region and was therefore less closely
tied to the great landowners of the Philippines ricebowl. He saw some political advantage in
wooing the dissidents, called for a cease-fire, granted amnesty to the Huks and seated Taruc in
Congress. But the accumulated distrust was too great; militants on both sides sabotaged the
cease-fire and the guerrilla movement was resumed. Under U.S. prodding, Quirino did attempt,
however, to mount some agrarian reform programs except for land reform. The Hardie Report
from the U.S. aid mission, which proposed a sweeping land redistribution, was branded as
communist by vehement congressmen, undoubtedly speaking for the landed elite. Land reform
had to wait until after the election of Magsaysay.
In the Magsaysay Administration the elite composition again changed, bringing in younger, and
more middle class elements, dedicated to solve the underlying problems that caused unrest.
Magsaysay himself had aroused the expectation of reform among the masses. But Magsaysay
was, in politics, a tactical neophyte. And the landed interests in Congress were still strong. Since
he delayed more than a year in pushing land reform legislation, the threat of the Huk Rebellion
had drifted into the hazy past for most parliamentarians they lost interest in forestalling unrest.
Community development was a more comfortable concept, without implications of class
conflict; it was thus a high priority program. Garcia, who became president on Magsaysays

death, was fortunate to inherit a relatively tranquil society, which could afford an interlude of old
fashioned politics.
Macapagal had indeed grown up a poor boy, but he had been co-opted by the landed Pampanga
elite. His sudden conversion to the virtues of agrarian reform in 1963 is thus all the more
surprising. Certainly he was respectful of American advice, and like every other Filipino
politician adored the prospect of new agencies to fill with his appointees, and the Agricultural
Land Reform Code created several of them. But his reaching out for mass support on the land
reform issue was a harbinger of change in the Philippine system, a harbinger of trends that many
thought had died with Magsaysay. But Macapagal started too late in the building of a new mass
base to succeed.
With Marcos during his first term, as with Garcia, there was little interest shown in land reform.
There were no new agencies to staff and Central Luzon was comparatively quiet. The quiet was
deceptive, however, and by the end of the 19605 a new rebellion had been launched by the New
Peoples Army. The landed elite was not as influential in Congress as it once was and peasant
organizations were larger and more politically skilled than ever.43 For the first time they had the
commitment, the leadership and the allies to put direct pressure on Congress for reform..
The reaction of Marcos to the land reform debate of 1971 is curious. He was certainly not
displeased with the prospect of a new administrative structure, the Department of Agrarian
Reform, which would allow him to make new appointments. But his negative approach to other
peasant demands reflected either a serious miscalculation of the changing political realities or a
hidden agenda. One could almost imagine that there was a desire to see land reform efforts in the
Old Society frustrated, while plans for the unveiling of the New were being quietly laid
down. His discomfort with the oligarchy was already apparent, thus his posing as the
champion of land reform might have seemed appropriate. But that role was saved until after the
declaration of martial law. And when the purposes of land reform after 1972 seemed to enjoy
short-term success, the program was allowed to languish.
Tai has quite rightly pointed out that political elites initiate land reform to gain political
legitimacy, i.e., to strengthen popular support for a new political order or to safeguard an existing
regime against threatened political changes.44 The first case may fit land reform after martial
law, and the latter is typical of the earlier examples. Tai continues, Elites are sensitive to the
danger that in initiating reform they may immediately encounter the opposition of the landed
class but only slowly gain the support of the peasants. Conceivably, they may lose the loyalty of
the former before gaining that of the latter. In fact, this sensitivity is sometimes developed only
after the reform process has begun, thus inclining the same leadership which initiated it to leave
it half finished. (This seemed particularly apparent in the Philippines in the late 1970s.)
The incomplete reform is also a function of the nature of the Philippine political elite. It is in
Tais classification a conciliatory elite, 45 one in which landlord interests are strong enough that
they must be conciliated. Conciliatory elites, he says, Hare generally more committed to passing
some kind of law than to fighting for its effective implementation.46 He also recognizes that it is
in countries where land reform has made the least progress, as in the Philippines that the greatest
threats to stability persist.47

Land reform exacerbates class conflict in rural communities, especially when landlord evasion
causes suffering for peasants, e.g., eviction to make way for mechanization and wage labor,
inappropriately termed personal cultivation in Philippine parlance. If such a period of conflict
is only a brief transition to full peasant ownership it is not destabilizing to the whole political
system. But when it continues indefinitely and is exploited by sophisticated radical leadership,
the consequences can be devastating. The spread of guerrilla warfare in land reform areas in the
1980s is such a consequence.
The lack of follow through in land reform may have explanations other than the character of a
conciliatory elite. It may be the result of the rampant ritualism that characterizes so much of
Philippine politics, the belief that appearance is reality, that to make a declaration is to create a
condition. This style is so pervasive that many leaders may not even be conscious of the lack of
substance to their declarations.
The acceptance of ritual may also result from the clogging of communication channels in an
authoritarian regime, where the opportunity for bad news to reach the top is very limited. In a
centralized system of decision making, when the reality is not fully known at the center there can
be no rectification of errors. Authoritarianism does not provide efficient feedback. Yet many
authors have extolled the advantages of highly centralized regimes for implementing land
reform. Samuel Huntington has been one of these. He adds, however, that in addition to
concentration of power in an elite committed to reform there must be the mobilization of the
peasantry and their organized participation in the implementation of reform. That is an
intriguing combination, with a severe internal contradiction.
A concentration of power is not compatible with freedom of organization, which is based on the
assumption that various interests in society have a right to share in the decision-making process.
That sharing took place for the first time in 1971. When power was concentrated in 1972,
independent peasant organizations were crushed. By the late 1970s even those groups that had
been domesticated by martial law tried to bring to the President and Secretary Estrella the
complaints of small farmers, but their message fell on deaf ears. They had no legitimacy within
the decision-making process; they were powerless.
The critique of a close observer of the Philippine program, one who follows the Huntington
school of thought, reveals a similar inconsistency. He points out that land reform has been
handicapped since 1972 because the relationship between central authority and the peasantry has
been one of central dominance.49 He emphasizes the value of greater local initiative, then in the
next paragraph recommends that wider use might be made of the military in implementing land
reform! One wonders what such analysts mean by local initiative. The military constitute the
greatest single constraint on autonomous peasant political activity especially in relation to
agrarian questions.
The final point that must be made in the attempt to understand the inconclusive character of
Philippine land reform relates to the differences between central and local elites. While it is true
that in the last decade landed elements in the national political elite have declined in influence,
permitting ever stronger legislation in 1963, 1971 and 1972, changes in local elites have been
much slower. Despite the highly centralized character of Philippine public administration since

the Spanish times local political leaders expected to be able to intervene in administrative matters
to protect their own interests, and did so with impunity. Furthermore, at the provincial and
municipal level civil servants were often relatives or recommendees of local politicians. And
even though local politicians from the 1950s or 1960s had become a distinct category from the
landlords, they were usually closely linked. The habits of nearly three generations of electoral
politics died hard after 1972, so that local political leaders did not easily accept the supremacy of
the bureaucracy, continuing to manipulate into their own ends. Thus the failure to implement
land reform was often the gap between central policy and local practice, which could not be
effectively corrected from the center. A mix of both authoritarian and democratic elements
combined to frustrate the implementation of reform.
If land reform is to be fully implemented, there must be a cleansing of the bureaucracy of those
who do not support it, along with much greater autonomy for peasant organization and an
adequately funded, clearly committed central authority. It is difficult to foresee when these
conditions may prevail.

Notes
DAVID WURFEL holds a Ph.D. in government and Asian studies from the Cornell University.
He has conducted extensive research on land reform in South Vietnam. Thailand and the
Philippines, and reports his findings on the subject in various periodicals and a compilation
entitled, Government and Politics in Southeast Asia. Wurfel has, at onc time or another, served
on the faculties of the University of Missouri, University of Michigan, International Christian
University in Tokyo and the University of Singapore.