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Jaime “Ka Jimmy” Tadeo was the leader of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Philippine Peasang Movement -KMP) when the infamous Mendiola Massacre took place in 1987. He was at the frontline of that protest action, and until now refers to the 13 victims as his martyrs because they were part of the “composite team” that supposedly shielded him from harm, being the leader of the march. KMP was founded in 1985 and Tadeo became its first chairperson. A year after the 1986 EDSA People Power, he was one of the leaders who led the broadest coalition in the history of the peasant movement, the Congress for a People’s Agrarian Reform, which demanded for a comprehensive agrarian reform program. chairperson.

Tadeo began his epic journey as leader of the peasant movement when he quit his government job at the National Irrigation Administration in 1979 to become the manager of the Central Bulacan Area Marketing Cooperative. In December 1981, he led a huge number of farmers belonging to the Alliance of Central Luzon Farmers in a demonstration in front of the then Ministry of Agriculture in Quezon City. It was the first peasant rally since martial law was declared in 1972.

In 1986, the newly-installed President Corazon Aquino appointed Tadeo as the peasant’s representative to the constitutional commission. However, Tadeo and the KMP continued to expose the injustices being done to the farmers. One of the farmers’ protest actions he led during Aquino’s term ended is known today as the Mendiola Massacre.

In 1990, Tadeo was illegally arrested by the NBI and imprisoned on a revived estafa charge after the KMP posted a symbolic notice of closure at the entrance of the Department of Agricultural Reform, in protest of its failure to implement a meaningful agrarian reform program. He was released on parole three years later.

He left KMP in 1993 and now leads Paragos Pilipinas, a peasant group based in Central Luzon. He actively pushed for the extension and reform of the CARP law, which in 2009 was enacted into RA 9700. Ka Jimmy today also advocates for organic farming as the spokesperson of Go Organic! Philippines, a consortium of non-government organizations led by the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and the La Liga Policy Institute.

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