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The demonstrators also came under scrutiny. Government officials charged that from the start provocateurs in the crowd were intent on creating a violent confrontation. Several policemen were bludgeoned by protesters, and four had to be treated for bullet wounds. To back their contention further that the security forces had come under fire, the police showed reporters a riot shield punctured by a bullet hole.
If explanations for the actions of the security forces remained elusive, there were no questions about the origin of the demonstration. For the past five weeks, several thousand members of the Farmers Movement of the Philippines (k.m.p.), a leftist peasant group with links to the Communist Party, have been camping in a tent city around the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, not far from Malacanang. Their cause, as summed up by Tadeo, a K.M.P. leader who escaped unharmed from the melee: "A minimum program of agrarian reform."
The land-reform issue is one of the most troublesome problems faced by the Aquino government. Landless peasants, organized by the Communists, are pressing demands that can only be met by adopting the n.p.a.'s plans for the wholesale confiscation of land from wealthy and powerful interests. (Aquino's own family has a 16,000-acre sugar plantation in Central Luzon.) The government favors gradual land reform without dispossessing landowners. Though hampered by a shortage of funds with which to purchase land, it has so far granted plots to 6,000 farmers and plans eventually to expand the program to benefit 4 million of the country's 39 million peasants.
The day before the ill-fated demonstration Tadeo met with Agriculture Minister Heherson Alvarez at the ministry office in Quezon City to discuss K.M.P. demands once again. The conversation soon deteriorated into a shouting match, and the two men nearly came to blows. Tadeo stalked out of the meeting and later told peasants at a rally, "In light of recent developments, the possibility that Filipino peasants will finally own the land they till is quite remote."
The government's carefully nurtured talks with the National Democratic Front collapsed the same day because of anonymous threats against the lives of the negotiators. Clandestine discussions had begun as early as August and had led to a 60-day cease-fire between the military and the insurgents that is to expire Feb. 7. In announcing the breakup of the talks, Teofisto Guingona, the chief negotiator for the government, explained that "some elements are out to destabilize not only the government but also the peace process," so that the lives of those directly responsible for the talks are "imperiled." Nonetheless, he said, "lines of communication ((with the rebels)) are continuously open."