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Progress In The Foot of Mount Isarog (Part I)

© Eva Goyena

Never before in my travel I focused on the people as my subject. But this time, who would hesitate to delve into the lives of this community of people who are living in a multi-political system? No, we will not talk about ideologies here, but rather the actual life of people in the foot of Mount Isarog.

When you go to the province of Camarines Sur in the southern Philippines, you would certainly land on the town of Pili when you take a plane. Though Pili is not the region’s center of trade and commerce, it takes pride for having a good runway ---making it the entrance point to Naga City via airplane. It takes one hour from Manila or Cebu via airplane, but if you will try a bus route it takes you 8 hours.

Twenty to thirty years ago two haciendas (hundreds of hectares) in the town of Pili called Isarog and Caranan Farms were distinguished producers of sugarcanes and corn, making its owner the late Juan Triviño one of the country's top billionaires. These two haciendas are in the foot of Mount Isarog, one of the country's beautiful volcanos. But 16 years back these two haciendas were converted into a farmer's cooperative, not through an arm struggle, but through the initiative of the owner himself. The cooperative is named Progresibong Samahan ng mga Magsasakang Pilipino (PROSAMAPI) which when translated means progressive group of Filipino Farmers. What's noteworthy is that this change happened two years before the Philippine government developed the agrarian reform program, which ordered the hacienda owners to apportion their land to farmers. They are ahead of their time, they said.

A "pay when able" mode of payment was the agreement between the owner and the PROSAMAPI cooperative, making this easy for the farmers to own their land. However, as gratitude to the owner, the farmers themselves made a system that enables everybody to pay regularly --they allocate ten-percent of their earnings every cropping season for the payment.

The cooperative started with less than a hundred members, now they continue to grow to about a thousand member-families. Having everybody the collective owners of the former hacienda without alienating its former owner makes their system a communist; having the cooperative takes care of the health, education, and housing of everyone is practicality socialist; while when they open their doors to entrepreneurs who offer good capitals is of course capitalist; and lastly, their system of electing officers which is one-member one vote, and having the freedom to choose individually the crops to grow, makes them democratic.

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