Ka Lita: A Symbol of Filipino Peasant Women

“I have chosen the road less traveled and hopefully the younger generation can learn from my story. I could have chosen to live an ordinary and simple life of a farmer. Instead I chose a different route – serving the Filipino masses, especially peasants, and lead them to struggle for genuine agrarian reform and freedom”, stated Estrelita “Ka Lita” Mariano, a prominent peasant women leader in the Philippines.

Estrelita “ Ka Lita” Mariano, 48, came from a poor peasant family in Nueva Ecija. Like a normal peasant family, she grew up taking care of her younger brothers and sisters, washing and ironing clothes, cleaning the house, washing the dishes, going to market, weeding and planting in the farm. Name it and she had done it, she lives up to her sector’s way of life.

Poor and landless
“We were not ashamed of being poor”, Ka Lita told us. Like the majority of farmers in the Philippines, our family is landless. Out of every 100 farmers, 21 are agricultural workers, 28 are unpaid family workers, 26 are under some form of tenancy relation and only 25 own land. In short, more than 7 out of 10 farmers do not own the land they till. On the other hand, only a few families are controlling vast tracts of lands. Sixty percent of the agricultural lands are owned by 13 % of the landowners. The biggest landlords, only 9,500 people, own more than 20 % of all agricultural land.

We are bound by feudal and semi-feudal relations of exploitation as tenants of Rafael Rueda, a landlord in our province. We still till the land like our forefathers did. We use simple tools like plow, sickle, harrow, cutlass, and carabaos. Mechanization is limited in our province and in many places in the country almost non-existent. Most farms in the country are very small, only 0.5 – 1.5 hectares on the average.

The eldest of 6 children of a poor farmer, Ka Lita started helping out the two-hectare land tilled by her father during her grade school years. Her father would usually left with only a very small portion of the harvest, the majority ending up with the landlord. Their family incurred a lot of debts making her finished high school even if she wanted to study in college. And as an eldest child in the family, she was destined to help their parents work for their livelihood.

Symbolizes peasant women
Ka Lita was organized and became a founding member of AMIHAN (National Federation of Peasant Women) and was elected as its deputy secretary general in October 1986. Before AMIHAN was formed, there was already an existing militant peasant movement led by KMP (Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas - Peasant Movement in the Philippines). AMIHAN saw that a separate peasant women's organization will make peasant women and their particular situation more visible in the broader peasants' movement, national liberation movement, and the women's movement. AMIHAN's overall goal is to work toward the empowerment of peasant women through organization and by collectively advocating for alternative development policies and strategies that will respond to their particular situation as peasants and as women.

Currently, AMIHAN has 32 provincial chapters spread across the 3 major islands of the country, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It was named AMIHAN, after the gentle southeastern wind that comes during harvest season, symbolizing the character of peasant women, gentle yet tough, tender yet tenacious.

Ka Lita can be described as AMIHAN, who can also be the powerful wind that comes with a storm, like any other peasant women: strong and capable of destroying societal structures that breeds oppression. The AMIHAN also fights for genuine agrarian reform and is now campaigning for the passage of the ‘Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill’ or House Bill 3059 at the House of Representatives.


Simple leader
When Ka Lita stays in the office of AMGL or Alliance of Farmers in Central Luzon (an affiliate of KMP), it never gets messy. Even if she has just arrived from a schedule outside their office and sees dirty plates in the kitchen she would wash them though she was not the one who used it. You can see her sweeping the floor and cleaning the comfort rooms whenever she is in their office.

Moreover, she makes sure all leaders and staff living in the office will eat cheap yet healthy food because she will always volunteer to cook. One of her favorite dish is ‘pinakbet’ (an Ilocano dish of mixed vegetables cooked in a fish sauce).

Their simple way of life has been instilled to their three children – Aljin, Mendiola and Danjun -- as well. Her husband is the famous Rafael “Ka Paeng” Mariano (KMP National Chairperson and former Representative of the Anakpawis partylist during the 13th Philippine Congress). Very few had known that Ka Lita and Ka Paeng were childhood sweetheart and got married in May 17, 1981.

Ka Lita admitted that Ka Paeng contributed a lot in her ‘political development’. When she was not yet organized, she is irritated of what Ka Paeng is doing especially when he became a fulltime peasant leader of KMP in 1985. Once Ka Paeng arrived from a meeting or any event related to his work, he will always start to share where he came from, what he do, what he learned from and keep on telling her why he is doing this historic mission. She will encourage Ka Lita to join KMP activities from discussion groups to rallies. These experiences opened her eyes to the plight of the “exploited and oppressed” peasantry and she became deeply involved in the peasant struggle. And eventually, led her to what she is now.

From 1992 to 1997 she was designated as the secretary general of AMIHAN. She helped in the formation of the AMIHAN chapter in Central Luzon and was elected as its Chairperson while she was assigned to organized peasant women in Pampanga. As a peasant women leader in Central Luzon, she led the peasant women in its struggle for land and livelihoods. Concretely, they were successful to get 2 hectares (out of the 12 hectares won by AMGL against a landlord) and make it as a communal farm directly managed by the local peasant organization called Samahan ng Magsasakang Nagkakaisa.

As a leader of the AMGL, they led to victory the strike of agricultural workers in December 2004 at Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, a more than 6,000 hectare sugar plantation owned by the family of Former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. The AMGL and AMIHAN led struggles against land-grabbing, high rent, low wages, usury, high production costs, agrochemical use, and destructive mining and dam projects in Central Luzon. From 2006 to present, she is the secretary general of AMGL and at the same time sit as a member of KMP and AMIHAN National Council.

Ka Lita is a cheerful person yet very committed with her work. She can even joke about the military’s harassment she’s been experiencing with. She said that she never imagines the military will be ‘interested’ to her. She only realized this in 2006, when the Macapagal-Arroyo government launched the Oplan Bantay Laya II (OBL II) or ‘Operation Freedom Watch, and declared a virtual “all-out war” against the communist movement and ordered annihilated within two years. From then on political killings and persecution against progressive organizations, especially peasants, in Central Luzon heightened—she was not despair. She can no longer visit her own province because the military-death squad perpetrators’ is chasing her especially during General Jovito Palparan’s stint in Central Luzon. But despite this, she is still doing her work as a peasant women leader.

As a new grandmother to Chezka, a 10-month old granddaughter to her only daughter, Mendiola (named after the infamous Mendiola Massacre in 1987), she never missed any schedule even if she had to bring her granddaughter. She had to do this to support her daughter who is finishing her last semester in college while doing a job at an NGO, serving the peasants.

Ka Lita ended by saying that, “I have chosen the road less traveled and hopefully the younger generation can learn from my story. I could have chosen to live an ordinary and simple life of a farmer. Instead I chose a different route – serving the Filipino masses, especially peasants, and lead them to struggle for genuine agrarian reform and freedom.” ###


References
1. Interview with Estrelita Mariano (February 2008), hand notes.
2. KMP Press releases (2006, 2007, and 2008).
3. AMIHAN brochure (2005)
4. AMGL brochure (2005)
5. KMP, “Peasant Situation” (October 2007)