Life once ‘sweeter’ at Hacienda Luisita

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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HACIENDA LUISITA, TARLAC CITY -- Fernando Salvador was only 12 years old when he started working at the vast sugarcane plantation then owned by the Spanish firm Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, or Tabacalera.

“Life used to be better then,” says Salvador, now 74. There was plenty of work to do.

This continued even after the Spanish owners, fearing a communist Huk uprising, sold the 6,453-hectare hacienda and a sugar mill, Central Azucarera de Tarlac, in 1958 to the Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco) of Jose Cojuangco Sr.

The acquisition of Cojuangco, whose daughter Corazon later became the Philippine president, comprised three municipalities in Tarlac province.

The purchase was made possible through loans from the Government Service Insurance System and the Manufacturer’s Trust of New York, the latter guaranteed by the Central Bank of the Philippines.

Bygone era

Norberto Masanque, 57, and Marcelina de Leon, 74, both old hands at Hacienda Luisita, share Salvador’s recollection of a bygone era.

“In those times, there were a lot of opportunities for work. There was even so much overtime work that we sometimes got fed up working,” Masanque says.

Often, he says, hacienda management would offer Sunday work but workers would refuse. Back then, Luisita workers could afford the luxury of refusing work.

Not any more.

Read the full article at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.