Agrarian reform, conflict, and the use of the courts: The case of Dingle, Iloilo

Abstract

Programs such as land reform or the establishment of cooperatives among tenant farmers are likely to produce a degree of conflict among the members of a community ex­periencing these reforms. Such conflict might appear in the form of elections, petitions to government officials for redress of grievances, or group violence. Court cases is another form in which struggles may appear. Courts are one of the arenas to which persons bring their conflicts: thus an examination of disputes, in this case those related to land, is one method by which the nature of conflict may be better understood. The focus of this essay is a rural community and its court cases with the intent of setting forth some observations about the nature of con­flict in relation to the present Phil­ippine government’s agrarian reform program. The court cases examined in this essay are those filed during 1973 from the municipality of Dingle, Iloilo.