Hacienda Luisita Timeline

MANILA, Philippines - June 10, 1988 – President Corazon Aquino signs Republic Act 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) law, that allows stock transfer scheme instead of land acquisition and distribution. 

Aug. 23, 1988 - Tarlac Development Co. (TADECO) forms Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) to distribute stocks to the farmers.

May 11, 1989 - TADECO, HLI and farmers sign a tri-party Memorandum of Agreement accepting the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) from TADECO as compliance of HLI with the CARP law.

Nov. 21, 1989 - 96 percent of the farmers from Hacienda Luisita sign the SDO agreement under the supervision of Agrarian Reform Secretary Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

Oct. 14, 2003 - Laborers from the HLI supervisory group file a petition before the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to revoke the SDO because they have not been receiving dividends due them.

Nov. 6, 2004 - The operations of the sugar refinery at Hacienda Luisita’s 6,000-hectare plantation are shut down after a number of its workers walked out.

Nov. 16, 2004 - A violent dispersal at Hacienda Luisita leaves at least seven people dead and 121 injured, 32 from gunshots wounds.

Nov. 25, 2005 - The Ombudsman for the military and other law enforcement offices junk the criminal cases which the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group filed against 32 policemen implicated in the deaths of seven workers during the violent Luisita dispersal.

Dec. 8, 2005 - HLI and the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) sign an MOA resolving the 13-month-old labor dispute, paving the way for the reopening of the sugar refinery.

Dec. 14, 2005 - With only one abstention, most of the 21-member Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) excom upholds the recommendation of DAR’s Task Force Luisita and PARC’s inter-agency task force for the cancellation of the SDO, which will pave the way for the compulsory inclusion of the 5,000-hectare property of the Cojuangco clan in the comprehensive agrarian reform program.

Dec. 26, 2005 - Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman activates the legal team that investigated the Hacienda Luisita case to study the consequences of Resolution 2005-32-01 of the PARC recalling the SDO scheme of the Tarlac sugar estate.

Feb. 6, 2006 - In an 88-page petition, HLI seeks a temporary restraining order against Pangandaman and the PARC from implementing a PARC resolution, dated Dec. 22, 2005, placing the more than 4,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita under mandatory coverage of CARP.

June 17, 2006 - The Cojuangco family wins a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the SC on a government plan to parcel out its 6,000-hectare sugar plantation in Tarlac to farm workers under the land reform program.

May 1, 2009 - Farmers in Hacienda Luisita ask the SC to lift its TRO on the distribution of the 6,453-hectare estate in Tarlac.

June 24, 2010 - The SC, headed by Chief Justice Renato Corona, officially reopens the case involving the long-standing labor dispute over the sugar plantation.

Aug. 6, 2010 - HLI and representatives of the Alyansa ng mga Mangagawang Bukid ng Hacienda Luisita, United Luisita Workers Union and Supervisory Group of Hacienda Luisita Inc. end their decades-long dispute by signing an agreement that will allow the farmers to own a patch of the estate or continue as stockholders of the sugar firm.

Sept. 3, 2010 - The SC creates a special panel that will mediate between the Cojuangco family and farmer beneficiaries to resolve the long-standing dispute through amicable settlement, with retired Associate Justice Alicia Austria-Martinez as chair of the panel and retired Justices Hector Hofileña and Teresita Dy-Liacco Flores of the Court of Appeals as members.

July 5, 2011 - The SC finally resolves the land dispute at Hacienda Luisita, giving the farmers the option to avail of the shares of stocks or actual land that their families have been tilling for generations.