sychronicity: ninoy aquino’s 27th death anniversary (the filipino is worth dying for) and the hearing of the high-profile hacienda luisita case (scheme sdo) in the supreme court.

there’s good background stuff on the internet, thanks to gmanews.tv, and there’s lynda jumilla’s report on anc, salamat naman, altho sana sa free tv and mainstream media rin, ‘no?

because it’s interesting, revealing, if not really surprising, how inextricably linked the stories of ninoy and cory are with the hacienda’s masalimuot history.

read howie severino et al’s holding on: a hacienda luisita timeline from the spanish to the noynoy eras

read leloy claudio’s ninoy networked with everyone including the reds

if ninoy had lived, would he have handled the hacienda problem differently?   it would seem so, though it would have meant a major rift split rupturewith the cojuangcos, unless he could have been really creative and come up with a compromise that both cory and the farmers could live with.

now that noynoy is president, and he seems more of a cojuangco than a ninoy aquino — read carlos conde’s aquino is being shrewd about hacienda luisita — looks like the pattern could persist, which bodes ill for the farmers and the nation but bodes good for other haciendas and big landowners who continue to defy the law, what a drag.

here’s a partial list of other families owning vast tracts of land via KMP via mon ramirez:

Hacienda Zobel in Calatagan, Batangas – 12,000 hectares
Hacienda Yulo in Nasugbu, Batangas – 8,650 hectares
Hacienda Roxas also in Nasugbu – 7,813 hectares
Hacienda Yulo in Canlubang, Calamba – 7,100 hectares
Hacienda Luisita – 6,453 hectares
Hacienda Puyat also in Nasugbu, Batangas – 2,400 hectares
Hacienda Agoncillo in Laurel, Batangas – 2,014 hectares

There are more in other provinces and regions.

To get an idea of the size of each hacienda, compare them with the land areas of these four cities:

QC – 16,000 hectares
Manila – 3,955 hectares
Makati – 2,738 hectares
Marikina – 2,150 hectares