Jaime Tadeo

Jaime "Ka Jimmy" Tadeo (March 28, 1938 – March 26, 2023) was a Filipino peasant and organic farming activist.

Biography
Tadeo was born in Bocaue, Bulacan. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Agriculture from the Araneta University in 1960 and worked for different government agencies from 1962 to 1981. Tadeo was formerly one of the leaders of the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (the KMP, or Peasant Movement of the Philippines), formed amid the 1986 People Power Revolution in order to push for agrarian reform, until the peasant movement split into multiple groups in the 1990s.

Shortly after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, Tadeo was appointed to be part of the 1986 Constitutional Commission where he was the sole peasant representative.

In January 1987, Tadeo figured prominently in the demonstrations which led to the Mendiola massacre, a violent dispersal of peasants, workers, and students by state security forces which left 13 dead. According to Tadeo, most of the 13 were part of a "composite team" purposely put to protect him from gunfire.

In 1990, Tadeo was arrested and taken to the maximum security National Penitentiary at Muntinlupa, which supporters claim was due to his outspoken criticism of Corazon Aquino's executive order on agrarian reform. Asked about his views on the president, he remarked that she "[was] running the country like her own hacienda," and retorted "I asked Cory Aquino for land for the peasants and she gave me 'Muntinlupa' (in Tagalog, 'tiny piece of land')."

Tadeo led a small group of Bulakenyo and Central Luzon farmers through the organization Paragos-Pilipinas.

Scholar James Putzel took the title of his book, A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines (1992) on the history of land reform in the Philippines and the United States' role in it, from Tadeo's remark that the Philippines is a "foreign dominated economy," captive to American interests.

Tadeo supported the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill filed in Congress by Representative Rafael Mariano in 2018.

Tadeo died on March 26, 2023, two days before his 85th birthday.