New documentary shows how Ayala Land, colluding with the administration of the late president Noynoy Aquino, grabbed 335 hectares of agrarian reform land in Sicogon, Iloilo, displacing hundreds of small fisherfolk. Many of the affected villagers – some of whom have died of old age – are still waiting for their due.
Over half of Sicogon’s “agrarian reform beneficiaries” are now in their 70s and 80s, and at least 24 of them have died. And yet until today, Ayala has yet to give them the reparations it promised to them for the land grabbed from them. (Photo from FESIFFA)
ON THE eastern shores of Sicogon, a small island off the northern coast of Iloilo, a new hotel stands where a small fishing village used to be. Kids are splashing around in a pool. A couple is sipping cocktails by a poolside bar. Other guests are watching the sun set from the balconies of their $200-a-night rooms. They are at Huni, the resort opened here in 2018 by Ayala Land, a subsidiary of Ayala Corporation, perhaps the most admired conglomerate in the Philippines.
Just around three kilometers away is a small village. No paved roads, no running water, and no electricity. Most of the houses are humble bungalows; all but a few have missing walls, windows, or roofs. It is May 2025 and in one of these houses, women are weeping in front of a white coffin.
They are at the wake of Alvin Colongon, the latest addition to the growing list of Sicogon’s displaced farmers who have passed on while waiting for something Ayala promised to give them a decade ago, in exchange for them giving up on one of their most cherished dreams.
Fondly called “Tay Albing” by his neighbors, Colongon is one of 216 landless farmers in Sicogon legally recognized as “agrarian reform beneficiaries” (ARBs) under the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. He had just turned 83.
Tay Albing applied to become an ARB in the early 2000s, then he helped form the Federation of Sicogon Island Farmers’ and Fisherfolks’ Associations (FESIFFA), together with fellow small cultivators harboring a simple dream: to finally own just enough land that they don’t have to live in fear of going hungry every monsoon season, when the sea becomes too rough and they cannot catch fish to exchange for rice in the mainland.
In March 2010, Tay Albing and his fellow FESIFFA members thought they were about to finally realize this dream: The Department of Agrarian Reform issued an “Order of Finality” ruling that 335 hectares of Sicogon’s land should be awarded to them, giving each ARB around a hectare of land.
But instead of implementing the ruling and telling Tay Albing and other FESIFFA members to prepare to install themselves on the land, government officials under the administration of the late President Benigno Aquino III started putting pressure on them and telling them the opposite: to just forget about land reform and agree to a deal with Ayala.
Tropical Enclave
To FESIFFA members’ consternation, Ayala had apparently formed a joint venture with Sicogon’s landowners to develop the entire island into a tropical enclave — and the Aquino administration wanted to ensure that this project proceeded even if it meant setting aside the country’s land reform program.
Tay Albing and other association members — all of whom had previously refused to accept Ayala’s earlier offers of cash and housing in exchange for “voluntarily” leaving the island — continued to stand their ground and to resist.
But on November 8, 2014, in what they have since repeatedly described in so many letters and interviews as an act of “treachery” by someone they trusted, FESIFFA members were pushed by former Akbayan party-list president and then National Anti-Poverty Commission head Joel Rocamora to finally sign a deal that he insisted was “fair” but which the farmers immediately rejected as soon as they read its terms.
Under the proposed deal, Ayala was to give FESIFFA members 40 hectares of land for farming, 30 hectares of land for housing, and cash. But in exchange, the farmers were to give up the 335 hectares of land that DAR had already ruled should be theirs.
In short, they were to forget about land reform and settle for just around a fifth of a hectare of farmland each — far from enough land for them to live without fear of going hungry every typhoon season. They were to be awarded land, but Ayala effectively grabbed it from them with the help of the state.
FESIFFA later declared Rocamora “persona non grata” in Sicogon, repudiated the deal, and campaigned for the government to implement DAR’s “Order of Finality” on Sicogon’s lands. But with the government continuing to refuse to carry out said order, FESIFFA eventually decided to just demand more concessions from the corporation — all while maintaining that it is unjust and that they only abide by it under duress.
But now it has been over a decade since the deal was signed.
Most Important
Tay Albing and 24 of Sicogon’s 216 “agrarian reform beneficiaries” have died without benefiting from either agrarian reform or from the compromise deal they were forced to sign with Ayala Land. Around half or more of FESIFFA’s members are now in their 70s or 80s.
Sicogon residents affected by Ayala’s land-grabbing camped out in a public land in Sicogon in March 2014 after they were harassed by alleged “goons” from Sideco and Ayala. (Photo from FESIFFA)
Though it has given FESIFFA members a fraction of the funds and the low-cost housing units it is obliged to give them, Ayala has yet to hand them what they deem most important: the titles to the 70 hectares of land they ought to receive in exchange for the much larger piece of land Ayala effectively took away from them under their 2014 agreement.
The reason for this decade-long delay, according to FESIFFA members, is simple: Ayala is insisting on transferring the 70 hectares of land as a “donation” and on imposing all sorts of onerous conditions that, if violated, would constitute grounds for the land to be taken back by Ayala.
But FESIFFA has refused to accept this “donation,” maintaining that what Ayala must transfer is not a gift but damage compensation for the loss Ayala made them suffer. From their perspective, Ayala has done them wrong and it therefore has no right imposing any conditions on them.
This is clearly not just about land — it is about power.
Former Akbayan party-list president and NAPC chief Joel Rocamora, shown here talking to the Wash Out filmmakers, helped facilitate Ayala’s control of the land. In that interview, he stands by his support for the compromise deal that he says is fair but the beneficiaries denounce as unjust. (Photo by Herbie Docena)
Gift-Givers
By casting themselves as gift-givers, Ayala seeks to treat FESIFFA members not as the aggrieved parties that they are but as the lowly recipients of their benevolence. The goal is to make FESIFFA members behave a certain way — not as proud and resilient survivors of an injustice but as humble supplicants who should be forever grateful to them and therefore also docile before them, their supposedly generous benefactors.
A FESIFFA member I interviewed put it in plainer terms: Ayala wants “to put us on a leash and treat us like carabaos.”
This is unacceptable.
The compromise deal imposed on Sicogon’s landless farmers by Ayala with the help of the state is patently unjust in itself. A group of small people who have lived in fear of going hungry all their lives should never have been forced to surrender land to a conglomerate whose total assets is already worth more than the gross domestic product of some countries. Land reform should never have been set aside just so a corporate giant could build another exclusive tropical playground for the rich.
Much more ought to be done to correct the injustice they experienced, but at the very least Ayala should desist from treating FESIFFA members as carabaos. It should honor its obligations to them under the 2014 deal immediately by unconditionally returning at least part of the land it effectively grabbed from them — now before more of them die.
But ultimately, justice for Tay Albing and for so many other landless farmers and fisherfolk could only come when land reform — long-promised but always compromised or set aside in the face of power — is finally implemented in Sicogon and across the country.
Herbert Docena, PhD is a professorial lecturer at the Department of Sociology of UP Diliman. He spent most of 2025 living in Sicogon to produce Wash Out, a documentary on the two-decade-long struggle for land on the island. It will be shown at the UP Film Institute’s Cine Adarna on April 14, 2026, at 2 p.m.
