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The murder of Abel Ladera


Tarlac City Councilor Abel Ladera, who was murdered on March 3, 2005, was a former sugar mill worker who grew up in one of the barangays of Hacienda Luisita. He became an engineer, then a city councilor. Because of his background, Ladera was very active in issues involving human rights and labor and employment. He played a key role in negotiations between the management of Hacienda Luisita and the two unions, ULWU (United Luisita Workers’ Union) and CATLU (Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union). Ladera was also at the forefront of the fight against land conversion. On November 15, 2004, Ladera was at the picket line near the sugar mill mediating between the strikers and the Philippine National Police (PNP). On November 16, 2004, he was part of the group that went to the house of Jose “Peping" Cojuangco, Jr. in Makati for negotiations. The talks did not prosper and the bloody dispersal by the military took place that same day. The military alleged that Ladera was a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA). Rumors spread that Ladera, whose middle name happened to be Rosal, was the nephew of Gregorio “Ka Roger" Rosal, spokesman of the CPP-NPA. Ladera challenged the military to show evidence to prove this. The day before he was killed, March 2, 2005, Ladera accessed critical documents regarding Luisita’s Stock Distribution Option (SDO) and Land Use Conversion Plan from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). The documents were sealed from the public, but Ladera was able to access them because he was a government official. Ladera was also scheduled to make a presentation on March 8, 2005 to an assembly of barangay captains to disprove the claim of the Philippine National Police (PNP) that the violent dispersal on November 16, 2004 occurred because shots were fired from the ranks of the strikers. On March 3, 2005, the day Ladera was shot, his friend and driver accompanied him on various errands. At around 1:00 pm, they stopped by Lyra’s Auto Supply in Tarlac City to buy spare parts before returning to Ladera’s office at the Tarlac City Hall. The driver momentarily left Ladera’s side to smoke. Then, he heard a popping sound, like a tire bursting. He turned around and saw Ladera clutching his chest. Ladera said he’d been shot. The driver rushed Ladera to the Central Luzon Doctor’s Hospital, but Ladera was proclaimed dead on arrival. The autopsy showed that Ladera’s heart and lungs were lacerated after a Double Action (Hollow Point) bullet exploded inside him. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said this was no ordinary bullet that just anyone could access. Ladera’s sister Emily Ladera-Facunla noted that a detachment of the Northern Luzon Command (NOLCOM) of the military was located within a kilometer from where her brother was shot. Ladera’s parents, Leonardo and Rosalina Ladera, believed the management of Hacienda Luisita was involved in the killing of their son. Ladera’s mother said her son was fighting a road-widening project of the Cojuangcos. She said heated words had also been directed at her son during the meeting at the Cojuangco house in Makati on November 16, 2004, hours before the military launched the dispersal at the sugar mill. A man named Reynaldo Navarette was charged with Ladera’s murder. Navarette was also charged with the murder of Father William Tadena ten days later. (Tadena was an Aglipayan priest who mobilized his parish to regularly donate rice and groceries to the picketers at Hacienda Luisita. He was shot dead in his owner-type jeep on the provincial highway in La Paz, Tarlac on March 13, 2005.) Police blamed leftist vigilantes for the killings. Ladera’s family, however, believed Navarette was only a fall guy. Abel Ladera died at the age of 45, leaving behind a wife and two small children. (From interviews with Ladera’s relatives conducted in August 2005 by members of the International Solidarity Mission. The International Solidarity Mission was a group of 80 foreign human rights advocates that visited various areas in the Philippines, including Hacienda Luisita, in 2005 to look into human rights violations.)

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