ALMA Ravina is a second generation coconut farmer in Bondoc Peninsula, Quezon province. Since last year, she already owns the land their family have been toiling for years—well, at least that’s what it says on paper.
On May 15, 2015, the collective might of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) plus the Philippine National Police (PNP), and Philippine Army failed to install Luzara and other agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in Hacienda Matias in San Francisco, Bondoc Peninsula.
Hacienda Matias — whose former owners are Michael Gil Matias and Cenen F. Matias Jr — is a coconut plantation that spans an area of 1,715.983 hectares.
Of the 283 ARBs, 69 members of KMBP need to be installed, or to be physically placed on their farm lot. This is because they were driven out of their farm lots by the hired armed goons of the Matiases. Some of them live near the shore of Sibuyan Sea, while the others managed to build makeshift shelters on the mountain slopes in the margins of Hacienda Matias.
For some curious reason, both the police and army could not hurdle the main gate of Hacienda Matias and effectively install the ARBs that day.
Curious, too, that a memo order, dated May 20, 2015, of Police Director Ricardo Cornejo Marquez of the PNP Directorate for Operations to “establish PNP detachment within the hacienda, escort the DAR personnel and ARBs/farmers in installing the latter to their awarded lands, conduct regular patrol within the hacienda, and implement other appropriate interventions to ensure/maintain peace and order in the area” could not be implemented by the Quezon PNP Regional Command.
DAR Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes, had texted the request for a PNP detachment inside the hacienda because “installation is futile if the area is not guarded by PNP once installed by DAR.”
Ravina is among the 283 CLOA holders in Hacienda Matias.
This video short tells their story.