RIPH FINALS

• Land reform


  A wide variety of programs and measures usually by the government to bring about more effective control and use of land for the benefit of the community
• Land reform


  • Takeover of land by state from big land lords with compensation, and transfer it to small farmers or landless workers
  • Aimed at changing the agrarian structure to bring equity and to increase productivity
• Agrarian reform


  Along with land reform it also includes measures to modernize the agricultural practices and improving the living conditions of everyone within the entire agrarian community
• Agrarian reform measures


  • Agricultural education
  • Establishment of cooperatives
  • Development of institutions to provide agricultural credit and other inputs
  • Processing and marketing of agricultural produce
  • Establishment of ago-based industries
• The desire to obtain social justice and full development of the dignity of man within given situations of land reform has gained great importance across the years in many countries of the world especially in agricultural countries
• One of the effects of colonizing periods was the concentration of landholdings in the hands of the few, who were called landlords or "caciques"
• These landlords or "caciques" have yielded tremendous influence in the social and economic life of the nation that they had been able to dictate to their dependents (the tenants and their families) to such matters as to whom to vote for in political elections
• They have also influenced political action in various ways in order to maintain the status quo
• Main agricultural products in the Philippines

  • Rice
  • Coconuts
  • Sugar cane
  • Cotton
  • Hemp
  • Bananas
  • Oranges
  • Many species of fruits and vegetables
• Agricultural methods in the Philippines

  • Kaingin system (slash and burn)
  • Tillage
• When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, they noted that Cebu and Palawan were abundant in many agricultural foodstuffs
• Pre-Spanish Filipino social system


  • Feudal
  • Warrior class bound by fealty to a warlord
  • Warrior class lived on the labor of the serfs and slaves but protected them and exercised a ready though rough kind of justice
• Pre-Spanish Filipino social classes

  • Datus (chiefs, nobility)
  • Timawas (freemen)
  • Aliping namamahay (serfs)
  • Aliping saguiguilid (slaves)
• Freeborn


  Did not pay tributes or taxes to the datu, but were bound to follow him to war
• Serfs


  Served their master or lord, who may be a datu or someone else who is a maharlika, and tilled his land. Both master and serfs equally divided the produce of the land
• Slaves


  Served the lord or master in both his house and farm. They were allowed some share of the harvest, but they were their master's property
• In the subsistence economy of the early Filipinos, money was unknown, and rice served as the medium of exchange
• Encomiendas


  Lands divided and granted to encourage Spanish settlers or reward soldiers who served the Crown
• Encomenderos


  Granted the right to collect tribute from the indios (natives) in the amount and form determined by the royal government
• The encomienda system was originally established more for the benefit of the natives than of the encomenderos
• The encomienda system, however, degenerated into abuse of power by the encomenderos
• The encomenderos became the first group of hacenderos in the country
• Estate proprietors in the Philippines during the Spanish period

  • Religious orders (Dominican and Augustinian)
  • Spanish peninsulares
  • Criollos and mestizos
  • Native principales
• Inquilinos


  Natives and mestizos who leased lands from the Dominican friars, paying a fixed ground rent for the area they cultivated
• The inquilinos abused the policy by disposing off the lands as if they owned them, selling their interest in them or mortgaging to wealthy takers, or sub-leasing them at rents higher than what they themselves paid
• Spanish authorities were aware of these pernicious practices, but no effective measures were made in spite of two royal decrees issued in 1880 and 1184 urging landholders to secure titles
• Only a few took advantage of the offer to secure free titles, mostly of the cacique class, who claimed more lands than they actually had a right to
• As a result, the actual tillers were driven out of their land or forced to become tenants of the caciques
• Spanish land practices came to a halt with the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution when Spanish land owners started to sell off their lands as brought about by the power shift in government where Spain was on a losing side against the Filipinos who had declared their independence in 1898 and the Americans who were insisting to stay
• Immediately after the establishment of the First Republic of the Philippines on January of 1899, the government of President Emilio Aguinaldo declared its intention to confiscate large estates, especially the so-called Friar Lands
• However, as the Republic was short-lived, Aguinaldo's plan was never implemented
• Significant land-related laws during the American regime

  • Philippine Bill of 1902
  • Land Registration Act of 1902 (Act No. 496)
  • Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933 (Act No. 4054)
  • Tenancy Act of 1933 (Act No. 4113)
• At the start of the American era, some 400,000 native farmers were without titles because of the defective land system rooted in Spanish institutions, and of the farmers' ignorance of various laws
• The Torrens system of land registration introduced by the Americans did not solve the problem completely, as the majority of farmers did not avail of the government's offer
• The U.S. government could not touch the Friar Lands as these were covered by valid land titles issued during the Spanish era, and the Treaty of Paris of 1898 bound the U.S. government to protect the property interests of religious orders
• By 1919, about 69 percent of all Friar Lands had been bought and disposed of by the U.S. Civil Government of the Philippines
• By the time the Commonwealth was established under Manuel L. Quezon, the malingering problem of land tenure relationships had already given cause to armed discontent among oppressed tenants of estates
• Quezon championed the tenants' plight and faced the agrarian crisis squarely by implementing a program of social justice
• Quezon improved and strengthened existing laws on land tenure by giving more freedom to landowners and tenants to enter into tenancy contracts not contrary to laws, morals and public policy
• Quezon's administration began the expropriation of landed estates and other big landholdings