Photo by Ace Alegre / Bulatlat Bulatlat.com An old farmer in Kadaklan village, in the heart of Barlig, Mountain Province (about 13 hours ride north of Manila) arranges his rice harvest. He is preparing for the next planting season. The seeds he plants on his payao (rice paddy) are of the native highland variety, which…

Photo by Ace Alegre / Bulatlat Bulatlat.com Mountainous La Trinidad Valley, the Philippines’ strawberry capital some 260 kms north of Manila, last week made it to the Guinness Book of World Records by baking the biggest strawberry shortcake in the world. The cake, shown in photo taken last March 20 with its bakers, weighed 9,642…

Photo courtesy of Karapatan-Surigao del Sur / Bulatlat Bulatlat.com With simple belongings wrapped and placed atop their heads and in their backpacks, women and children refugees of war-torn Andap Valley, Surigao del Sur in southern Philippines return to their villages after spending three weeks in evacuation centers. War refugees in several towns found their villages…

Photo by Dabet Castañeda The barbed wire did not always surround this church, which is located inside the Cojuangco/Aquino-owned Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. It was erected there just before the strike staged Nov. 6 by plantation and milling workers demanding land redistribution, higher wages and benefits, more mandays, and the reinstatement of retrenched employees. The…

Photo by Jun Resureccion Bulatlat.com Dark clouds hovering above a lone tree and a dirt road with coarse grass on both sides picture a field of tranquillity. An unlikely calm, this, as a lone tricycle negotiates the road that leads to Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac (120 kms north of Manila) where last November seven striking…

Photo by Jes Aznar / Bulatlat.com The camera caught the feet of a boy atop a pile of sugarcane stalks at the Hacienda Luisita, a 6,000-hectare plantation owned by the Cojuangco and Aquino clans in Tarlac (120 kms. north of Manila). One look and we can see the contrast between the sweetness of the sugarcane…