Battle between the will to survive and the will for gold

For many impoverished farmers in the Philippines the right to own a land is the life long struggle. For generation they worked the land for the small elite of landlords. But in the 1980's after the fall of the Marcos regime land distribution reforms are the priority of Cory Aquino's new government. Yet now more than two decades later farmers are still fighting for their land. From the courthouse, to public demonstration, to shots being fired. Still the farmers are fighting for the land promised to them.

This is not how supposed to be the yellow clad figure of Cory Aquino ushered, what to be the end of the Filipino nightmare under Ferdinand Marcos regime. 1986 was the year of people power the corruption and cronyism which is the hallmark of the Marcos regime was momentarily replaced by optimism and a hope of the new future and with the promise of the fundamental change for the impoverished people of the country. But most of the population of the Philippines that optimism was short lived.

Known as the sugar bowl of the Philippines, Negros is the fourth largest of the seven thousand islands in the Philippine archipelago. Here sugar production is the life blood of the island but the peasant working on this sugarcane fields earns lower than a dollar a day which is hardly enough to feed their families

Many farming community in Negros were granted farming land rights under the comprehensive agrarian reform program (CARP) but the hacienda owners refused to comply with CARP. . Despite threats the peasant farmers continue to defend their land rights the response is often harsh and unforgiving, many are intimidated some are tortured and to frequently others are killed.

It seems that the land reform was a failure, still around 150,000 hectares are owned by the some elite rich families and the peasants are continuing straggling to own the land. Because in some point the government is still runned by this elite families. In that situation it seems there are no  political will to implement land reform program. Some of the rural areas in the Philippines are still a feudal society over shadowed by growing inequality.

In the sugarcane and mango field in the Philippine Negros island, poor farmers are fighting powerful landlords for the rights of the land. While the odds stocked piled against them most of the peasant remains defiant, clearly people loss faith in the political system. While the political system failed these peasant farmers, the court had proved themselves to be a fertile ground for the vindication of their land rights, For these farmers victory comes in a hard air.