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Philippines The Tenancy Problem
The limited nature of United States intervention in the
economy and the Nacionalista Party's elite dominance of the
Philippine political system ensured that the status quo in
landlord and tenant relationships would be maintained, even if
certain of its traditional aspects changed. A government attempt
to establish homesteads modeled on those of the American West in
1903 did little to alter landholding arrangements. Although
different regions of the archipelago had their own specific
arrangements and different proportions of tenants and small
proprietors, the kasama (sharecropper) system, was the
most prevalent, particularly in the rice-growing areas of Central
Luzon and the Visayan Islands.
Under this arrangement, the landowners supplied the seed and
cash necessary to tide cultivators over during the planting
season, whereas the cultivators provided tools and work animals
and were responsible for one-half the expense of crop production.
Usually, owner and sharecropper each took one-half of the
harvest, although only after the former deducted a portion for
expenses. Terms might be more liberal in frontier areas where
owners needed to attract cultivators to clear the land. Sometimes
land tenancy arrangements were three tiered. An original owner
would lease land to an inquilino, who would then sublet it
to kasamas. In the words of historian David R. Sturtevant:
"Thrice removed from their proprietario, affected
taos [peasants] received ever-diminishing shares from the
picked-over remains of harvests."
Cultivators customarily were deep in debt, for they were
dependent on advances made by the landowner or inquilino
and had to pay steep interest rates. Principal and interest
accumulated rapidly, becoming an impossible burden. It was
estimated in 1924 that the average tenant family would have to
labor uninterruptedly for 163 years to pay off debts and acquire
title to the land they worked. The kasama system created a
class of peons or serfs; children inherited the debts of their
fathers, and over the generations families were tied in bondage
to their estates. Contracts usually were unwritten, and
landowners could change conditions to their own advantage.
Two factors led to a worsening of the cultivators' position.
One was the rapid increase in the national population (from 7.6
million in 1905 to 16 million in 1939) brought about through
improvements in public health, which put added pressure on the
land, lowered the standard of living, and created a labor
surplus. Closely tied to the population increase was the erosion
of traditional patron-client ties. The landlord-tenant
relationship was becoming more impersonal. The landlord's
interest in the tenants' welfare was waning. Landlords ceased
providing important services and used profits from the sale of
cash crops to support their urban life-styles or to invest in
other kinds of enterprises. Cultivators accused landowners of
being shameless and forgetting the principle of utang na
loob, demanding services from tenants without pay and giving
nothing in return.
As the area under cultivation increased from 1.3 million
hectares in 1903 to 4 million hectares in 1935--stimulated by
United States demand for cash crops and by the growing
population--tenancy also increased. In 1918 there were roughly 2
million farms, of which 1.5 million were operated by their
owners; by 1939 these figures had declined to 1.6 million and
800,000, respectively, as individual proprietors became tenants
or migrant laborers. Disparities in the distribution of wealth
grew. By 1939 the wealthiest 10 percent of the population
received 40 percent of the islands' income. The elite and the
cultivators were separated culturally and geographically, as well
as economically; as new urban centers rose, often with an
Americanized culture, the elite left the countryside to become
absentee landlords, leaving estate management in the hands of
frequently abusive overseers. The Philippine Constabulary played
a central role in suppressing antilandlord resistance.
Data as of June 1991
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