Pest management in the Cordillera came from extensive practical and traditional knowledge developed over years of observing natural processes. Called Holok, it entails comprehensive understanding of the entire rice production system and makes use of more than 20 indigenous plants. BY MONTA?OSA RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER Northern Dispatch (Nordis) Posted by Bulatlat.com Part 1: Rice,…
Category: Regions
Lawyers Take Off-the-beaten Path
Lawyers are supposed to act with “cold neutrality,” but a group of legal practitioners in Mindanao has decided to go against this stereotype by pledging to serve poor clients and taking a stand on the current political crisis – aware that they may end up endangering their own lives. BY CHERYLL D. FIEL Bulatlat.com DAVAO…
A Town of War Refugees
A sleepy town in Samar is currently at the receiving end of intensified offensive military operations, driving more than 2,000 people, including women and children, from their homes and sources of livelihood. So alarming have the forced evacuations become that the World Council of Churches has asked the military to pull out from the region.…
Abelardo Ladera: The Hero of Luisita
Before the coffin bearing the remains of Tarlac City Councilor Abel Ladera, the ninth Hacienda Luisita martyr, was buried, it was opened for his family and barriomates one last time. It took however almost an hour before the people could finish their goodbye: young ones took pictures of him with their cellular phones; the older ones patted the coffin, with whispers of “Salamat po, salamat po” (thank you, thank you) while a woman asked with a break in her voice, “Bakit ka nila pinatay, wala na kaming kasama.” (Why did they kill you, we no longer have someone to help us.)
Tarlac Councilor Is 9th Luisita Martyr; Victim’s Kin Finger Cojuangcos, Military as Suspects
From his humble beginnings as a sugar worker, City Councilor Abelardo R. Ladera emerged as one of the few successful local political figures who openly stood against the Cojuangco-Aquino dynasty in Tarlac. Ladera was gunned down at high noon of March 3 making him Tarlac’s first local official assassinated in the post-dictator era.
For Land and Wages: Half a Century of Peasant Struggle in Hacienda Luisita
BULATLAT INVESTIGATIVE REPORT The Versolas continue to support the strike, visiting the picket line to watch documentaries on the massacre, help in the kitchen chores or just exchange views with anyone. Mang Pering says that their forefathers’ struggle to finally own the land that is rightfully theirs rages on. BY DABET CASTAÑEDA Bulatlat.com (First of…
Living on the Edge: The Sacadas of Hacienda Luisita
After several minutes of searching in the shadows, we finally find them, with lights from their gas lamps flickering through sack-covered bunkhouses. They stay by the edge of the Cojuangcos’ sprawling sugar plantation in Tarlac, far from the estate’s factories and barrios.
Massacre Shooters Go Berserk in Luisita, Claim 8th Victim
Shots shattered the evening calm as a peasant leader, Marcelino Beltran, went out of his house to greet some “visitors.” The visitors pumped bullets into his body and he died two hours later – the eighth to fall following the Nov. 16 massacre of seven farmers at Hacienda Luisita.
The Hacienda Luisita Massacre: How It Happened
The violence that marred the strike of plantation and milling workers of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16 was bound to happen and government authorities may have to account for it.
The Hacienda Luisita Massacre, Landlordism and State Terrorism
The public outrage ignited by the Luisita Massacre should also keep an eye on other potential flashpoints that could lead to similar acts of state terrorism. There are several other plantations, large estates as well as development projects and mining exploration areas in many parts of the country that have been militarized. By Bobby Tuazon…
Dagupan Poor Give Way to ‘Bangus’
Dagupan City authorities want to build a bangus (milkfish) processing plant with a production capacity of 60,000 milkfish a day. If the local officials have their way, 274 households will be dislocated from their homes and transferred to a place devoid of basic services. By JONG DELA CRUZ Bulatlat.com DAGUPAN CITY – Is bangus (milkfish)…