The pursuit of “permanent peace and sustainable development of insurgency-free areas” under the US-Marcos regime hides a dark reality—paving the way for destructive neoliberal projects to take root. Negros Island is witness to the utterly obvious damage caused not only to the environment but most of all to its people, their livelihoods, and their homes.
Oil palm is an export crop that only caters to the needs of foreign imperialists and their puppet comprador-landlords. In the lands of Candoni, Negros Occidental, there lies an ongoing conflict of interest and plans that may affect the entire island. The widespread planting of oil palm that is bragged as the bringer of development, entails an even greater disaster of land-grabbing, loss of livelihood and environmental destruction.
Last year, the Consunji family-owned DMCI Corporation in cahoots with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) planned to convert 6,000 hectares of land in the countryside to an oil palm plantation. It is expected to last for 50 years (initially 25 years and can be extended for another 25 years). Several families have expressed their opposition to this project, due to the destruction it brings to their livelihoods and land.
Candoni LGU councilor and environment committee chairman Dember Catipunan repeatedly spouts reactionary propaganda that the families are ‘guaranteed jobs and relocation,’ and he glossed over the fact that the project will result to land-grabbing and force the evacuation of farmers and indigenous peoples.
The oil palm plantation can be the beginning of extremely dangerous land-use conversion in the countryside, land-grabbing, and conversion of the use of forestal lands that are mostly inhabited by farmers. The Oil palm industry such as the Agumil Company in Palawan and North Cotabato Oil Corporation in Mindanao has harmed farmers and indigenous peoples, because they are not allowed to engage in inter-crop farming for their consumption and they are essentially tied to a feudal and semifeudal form of exploitation.
This will create a massive influx of reactionary troops in the area. Neoliberal projects hand-in-hand with the NTF-Elcac’s Barangay Development Program sow deception to trick communities into offering their own resources to the interest of foreign businesses.
Export crop plantations, like sugarcane plantations on Negros Island, are the source of economic and humanitarian crimes. Here persists various forms of semi-feudal exploitation.
Another trait of this “agri-business venture” is the propaganda of “reforestation.” But Negros Island is a witness to this deceptive scheme, for example the DENR’s National Greening Program (NGP) that only plants trees for export like manggium, gemilina, and mahogany. Later, these areas were targeted for mining. In the case of oil palm, it is not meant for reforestation.
Oil palm plantation is a nightmare to be confronted by farmers not only in Candoni but in other parts of the island. This neoliberal project will engender severe hunger and poverty that will spark enthusiasm for revolutionary change. The struggle is not only against the oil palm plantation, it is a simultaneous anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-fascist campaign that will reverberate throughout Negros Island.
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