Ka Ric

October 25

The killings persist. Today, they killed Ricardo Ramos of Barangay Mapalacsiao, Hacienda Luisita.

Ka Ric is the President of CATLU, the sugar mill workers union at the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT). Along with Rene “Ka Boyet” Ramos of the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU), which represents thousands of farm workers inside the hacienda.

The symbolism of Ka Ric's death stuns me up to now. In the course of the two unions’ struggles, Ramos stood by the principle of the worker-peasant alliance. He steadfastly refused to be coopted by the management into accepting settlements that would only tilt the stakes in favour of the Cojuangcos and a few scabs. Ramos and CATLU resolutely upheld their side in the joint strike with the thousands-strong ULWU employed under the Hacienda Luisita Incorporated (HLI). They did so because they were aware that the struggle of the HLI’s farm workers for humane wages and land reform through the revocation of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) were not divorced from the struggles of the CAT's sugar mill workers for just salaries and benefits.

CATLU’s involvement in the strike was crucial to its success. Without the militant unity of the sugar mill workers who paralyzed the mill’s processing operations, forced the plant to grind into a halt by virtue of their work boycott, and correctly refused to get into a management-proposed settlement that would give them their benefits and wage increases provided that that CATLU sever the alliance with ULWU-the strike would probably have not persisted as strongly and as resolutely as it does up to now.

Ka Ric's unwavering faith in militant action and the collective strength of the people to resolve the land and labor dispute was seen in how he stood by his decisions. He was unfazed by the threats of death. He was unmoved by the bribe offers of millions of pesos from the hacienda. "Kahit kailan, hindi tayo matatalo sa laban. Bakit? Pagkat nagkakaisa tayo at kasama natin ang mamamayan ng Hacienda Luisita," he once said.

There were many things that Ka Ric stood against. As CATLU President, he opposed management and local elite oppression of workers and peasants. As chairperson of Brgy. Mapalacsiao, the community a few hundred meters away from the sugar mill, Ramos strongly opposed the deployment of more military troops in the hacienda after the November 16 massacre. He led many residents into rejecting false development schemes such as the gigantic inter-provincial expressway project.

Ramos know what it felt like to pay for standing up for what was right. A day before the Hacienda Luisita massacre, during the historic face-off where thousands of unarmed strikers and their families routed hundreds of police from dispersing the picket lines, Ka Ric was himself hit squarely in the head by a precisely-aimed stone while leading in the front lines. After the massacre, he appeared at the presscon with Boyet Galang of ULWU with a huge gauze bandage resting on top of his head.

This time, his enemies made sure their next hit was fatal.

On the evening of October 25, at around 9 pm, snipers armed with an M-14 armalite crouched in the darkness and aimed two, three shots at Ka Ric's head, while he and his companions were resting in a hut in the middle of the barangay. Ka Ric was sitting on a monoblock chair, preparing to listen to the opinions of some guests, when a bullet tore through the evening silence and the thin bamboo slats, instantly shattering his skull.

Stunned, Ka Ric's companions, including several bodyguards standing sentry outside and his brother, laid his body on the bench as the entire neighborhood rushed to the scene. It took the police forever to get there. But in less than 30 minutes, an armed personnel carrier (APC) and a helicopter arrived from the nearby military detachment, engulfing the whole hut and the startled residents with lights.

The next afternoon, human rights workers and party list organizations visited the scene of the crime. The cramped hut was still in a state of bloody disarray, with monoblock chairs and pirated karaoke CDs stacked everywhere. Scarlet spatters and flies all over the confines of the space spoke of how brutal the murder was.

It was a well-planned assassination that bore tell-tale signs of who the perpetrators were.
The nearest military detachment was located a few hundred meters away from the scene of the crime, accessible through numerous and secluded side paths. For the past few weeks, soldiers suspiciously bugged residents around the site of the murder to sell their pet dogs and puppies, those who barked loudly and incessantly in the night at unfamiliar faces. Soldiers were constantly roaming around the barangay at different times of the day and night, and were looking for him a few hours before his murder.

Yet, if we are to believe denials at face value, nobody is guilty for the killing. Ka Ric may as well have shot himself in a suicide.

The military under Maj. Gen. Jovito S. Palparan instantly denied any involvement in Ka Boyet's killing, in the same way that they did with the 4,000+ human rights violations against activists and civilians recorded since 2001.

The Cojuangcos, who have been doing their all to bribe, kill, and harass the unions for years, denied any involvement.

Gloria Arroyo, did not even bother to hypocritically feign condolence, as if the blatant killings of union leaders by the army to which she is Commander-in-Chief equated to something not worth dignifying. She uttered no word as to whether this was part of her calibrated political repression against “destabilizers”. No confirmation of this. But no denial, either.

All this is not surprising. A government founded on lies only persists through the practice of falsehood and cover-ups.