Republic Act No. 1160

Also known as: RA 1160 · The NARRA Act — the functional shorthand of land-reform literature · An Act to Further Implement the Free Distribution of Agricultural Lands of the Public Domain — the long-title opening · The 1954 resettlement statute · The statute abolishing LASEDECO

Government

Definition

Republic Act No. 1160 is the Philippine statute approved on June 18, 1954, “An Act to Further Implement the Free Distribution of Agricultural Lands of the Public Domain … as Provided for in Commonwealth Act Numbered Six Hundred and Ninety-One, as Amended” — the law that abolished the Land Settlement and Development Corporation (LASEDECO) and created in its place the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA), the resettlement agency of the Magsaysay era documented in this wiki’s entry on that administration. (LawPhil — RA 1160) The Act declared the policy of “help[ing] speed up the free distribution of agricultural lands of the public domain to landless tenants and farm workers,” vested the new administration with the land-distribution duties the Bureau of Lands had held under Commonwealth Act No. 691, and placed it under the President’s supervision through the Office of Economic Coordinator — the postwar state’s institutional answer to landlessness and the Huk rebellion alike. (LawPhil — RA 1160, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

RA 1160 is the third link in the settlement-agency lineage this wiki’s National Land Settlement Administration entry traces in four steps: Commonwealth Act No. 441 (June 3, 1939) created the NLSA of Paulino Santos; Executive Order No. 355 (October 23, 1950) dissolved the NLSA, the Rice and Corn Production Administration, and the Machinery and Equipment Department of the National Development Company into the new LASEDECO; RA 1160 (June 18, 1954) abolished LASEDECO creating NARRA; and Republic Act No. 3844 (1963), the Agricultural Land Reform Code, abolished NARRA in its Section 73, transferring its powers and property to the Land Authority. (LawPhil — CA 441, LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 3844) Historical register: the statute’s agency is defunct, but the statute remains the anchor of every account of the 1950s resettlement drive.

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article for the statute; it is documented within the Land reform in the Philippines article
Wikidata	N/A — no entity matching “Republic Act 1160” or “National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration” (search verified)
DBpedia	N/A (DBpedia unreachable this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A (LOC authorities unreachable this session)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Republic Act 1160 June 18 1954 NARRA National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration LASEDECO abolition Board of Liquidators ACCFA Magsaysay EDCOR rebel returnees Palawan Mindanao RA 3844 Land Authority
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

RA 1160
The NARRA Act — the functional shorthand of land-reform literature
An Act to Further Implement the Free Distribution of Agricultural Lands of the Public Domain — the long-title opening
The 1954 resettlement statute
The statute abolishing LASEDECO

Examples and Analogies

A statute that dissolves forward: RA 1160 prescribed the wind-down in detail — obligations to the Treasury, assets to auction, personnel to separation pay, and the successor’s organization in the same text — a statute built like a corporate merger deed with a social program attached. (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Counterinsurgency by land title: in the Magsaysay record, the President “worked for the establishment” of NARRA “to amplify and stabilize” the Economic Development Corps, which the new agency “took over from,” giving some sixty-five thousand acres to about three thousand indigent families and allocating another twenty-five thousand acres to some fifteen hundred landless families. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)
A genealogy in four names: NLSA (1939) dissolved into LASEDECO (1950) abolished into NARRA (1954) abolished into the Land Authority (1963) — each transfer carrying stock, staff, and mandate one roof forward. (LawPhil — CA 441, LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 3844)
Verified statutory data:
Creation (Sec. 2): NARRA created, performing the Bureau of Lands’ duties under CA 691, under the President through the Office of Economic Coordinator, headed by a General Manager and Assistant General Manager (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Organization (Sec. 3): three divisions at least — Settler Selection and Screening; Transportation and Supplies; Settlement Assistance and Community Work (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Board (Secs. 7–8): a chairman and five members, appointed with Commission on Appointments consent, three-year terms, up to four meetings monthly at ₱25 per diem; General Manager ₱12,000 per annum, Assistant ₱9,000 (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Powers (Secs. 4–6, 9, 12, 16): grants of public agricultural land to qualified landless citizens; acquisition of landed estates on presidential direction; reclamation of swamps and marshes; survey and subdivision into farms, townsites, roads, and parks; custodianship of reserved settlement lands, including former LASEDECO reservations (Sec. 12); patents and deeds (Sec. 16) (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Settler screening (Sec. 6): priority among actual occupants, surrendered dissidents, agriculture graduates, military trainees, and veterans; non-interest-bearing transport and subsistence loans amortized over ten years (LawPhil — RA 1160)
LASEDECO abolition (Secs. 10, 14–15): LASEDECO (created by EO 355 of October 23, 1950) abolished; its obligations, except commercial accounts, transferred to the Treasury to be amortized over fifteen years; all assets turned over to a Board of Liquidators and sold at public auction, net proceeds going to ACCFA for loans to settlers and settlers’ cooperatives; cooperatives may acquire needed buildings and equipment at appraised values; separated personnel entitled to benefits (Sec. 14); the President to provide by executive order for the liquidation (Sec. 15) (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — EO 355)
Funding (Secs. 11, 13): ₱5 million for FY 1954–1955 as the “Revolving Fund of the Colonists,” then not less than ₱8 million annually for ten years; ACCFA authorized to lend to settlers and cooperatives (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Penal provisions (Secs. 17–18): officers and employees barred from acquiring settlement lands — removal, one to five years’ imprisonment, ₱1,000–₱5,000 fines; financial interest in agency contracts likewise penalized (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Effectivity (Sec. 21): “This Act shall take effect upon its approval” — June 18, 1954 (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Abolition of NARRA: RA 3844 (1963), Sec. 73 — NARRA and the Land Tenure Administration “hereby abolished,” their powers, funds, records, equipment, and lands transferred to the Land Authority; Sec. 96 irrevocably transferring NARRA’s claims and receivables to the Land Bank after valuation (LawPhil — RA 3844)

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Settlement-Agency Lineage

Researchers fix the four-step chain through the statutes — CA 441, EO 355, RA 1160, RA 3844 — RA 1160 being the hinge that converted a twenty-five-year public corporation into a government administration aimed at speed of distribution. (LawPhil — CA 441, LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 3844)

2. Studying the Magsaysay Resettlement Drive

The statute is the legal instrument of the anti-Huk land program: NARRA “took over from the EDCOR” and was “particularly aimed at rebel returnees providing home lots and farmlands in Palawan and Mindanao” — with the drive’s acreage totals carried in the land-reform record. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

3. Analyzing Statutory Abolition Mechanics

Sections 10 and 14–15 supply a model text for winding up a public corporation — Treasury amortization of obligations, a Board of Liquidators auction, net proceeds to farm credit, separation benefits — the template its own successor abolition under RA 3844 would echo. (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — RA 3844)

4. Researching Settler-Selection Policy

Section 6’s priority ranking — actual occupants, surrendered dissidents, agriculture graduates, military trainees, veterans — is a primary text for how the 1950s state ranked claimants to the public domain, with reintegration of the “surrendered dissident” written into the statute itself. (LawPhil — RA 1160)

5. Citing the Agency Correctly

Because NLSA, LASEDECO, and NARRA succeeded one another within fifteen years, attributions migrate across them; Section 10 is the statutory proof that LASEDECO ended in 1954 and NARRA began — the correction this wiki’s Paulino Santos entry applies to the common “Santos of NARRA” anachronism. (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — EO 355)

Strategies

Speed through a dedicated administration: the Act’s premise was that free distribution was moving too slowly through the ordinary land bureaus — hence an administration built around screening, transport, and settlement-assistance divisions, with the Bureau of Lands’ CA 691 duties lifted into it. (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Civilianize the counterinsurgency settlement: pairing the EDCOR takeover with a preference for surrendered dissidents moved rebel-returnee resettlement from army administration to civil agency — pacification recast as land reform. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)
Insider-dealing guard written at creation: Sections 17 and 18 penalize the agency’s own officers for acquiring settlement lands or holding interests in its contracts — the anti-corruption design erected with the agency, not after its first scandal. (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Fund through a revolving fund plus farm credit: the Colonists’ Revolving Fund and ACCFA lending tied settlement to repayment discipline rather than pure subsidy, the fiscal strategy CA 441 had modeled in 1939. (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — CA 441)
Abolish with the personnel settled: the LASEDECO wind-up shows the legislative strategy of dissolving forward without leaving creditors or employees stranded. (LawPhil — RA 1160)

Security and Safety Measures

Resettlement as security policy: settling surrendered dissidents on their own farms in Palawan and Mindanao was the statute’s core security logic — land titles as the alternative to the hills. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)
Anti-corruption penal code: Sections 17 and 18 impose removal, imprisonment, and fines on officers who acquire settlement lands or hold interests in agency contracts — the statute policing its own administrators. (LawPhil — RA 1160)
Orderly wind-up at abolition: RA 3844’s Section 73 transfer of NARRA’s funds, records, equipment, and lands to the Land Authority, with Section 96 routing claims to the Land Bank, protected settler accounts from disappearing with the agency. (LawPhil — RA 3844)
For researchers: the statute and its agency have no standalone reference article and no linked-data identity; claims must be cited to the statutes themselves — with section numbers, since secondary summaries routinely blur the 1950 LASEDECO and 1954 NARRA eras. (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — EO 355)

Historical Context

The statute stands between two settlement programs. Behind it lay the Commonwealth’s: Paulino Santos’s NLSA, chartered by CA 441 on June 3, 1939 as a five-member-board corporation capitalized at ₱20 million from coconut-oil excise proceeds, had planted the Koronadal Valley colonies — the history this wiki’s Paulino Santos entry carries — until EO 355 of October 23, 1950 dissolved the NLSA, the Rice and Corn Production Administration, and the NDC’s Machinery and Equipment Department into LASEDECO, a public corporation chartered for twenty-five years with its main office in Manila. (LawPhil — CA 441, LawPhil — EO 355) Beside it ran the army’s EDCOR, the resettlement program for surrendered Huks of the early-1950s campaign. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

RA 1160 fused the lineages on Magsaysay’s watch: the new administration took over from EDCOR, absorbed the settlement functions LASEDECO had inherited from the NLSA, and spent the 1950s distributing land in Palawan and Mindanao. The end came in the Macapagal years: RA 3844, the Agricultural Land Reform Code of 1963, abolished NARRA and the Land Tenure Administration into the Land Authority — the agency the 1971 Code of Agrarian Reform in turn replaced with the Department of Agrarian Reform, the institutional ancestry agrarian-reform historians reconstruct from these four statutes. (LawPhil — RA 1160, LawPhil — RA 3844)

Challenges and Controversies

Corporation Abolished, Program Continued

LASEDECO had been chartered in 1950 for twenty-five years; RA 1160 ended it after fewer than four, on the judgment that a development corporation was the wrong vehicle for free land distribution — cited both as evidence of the 1950s’ impatience with corporate-style land agencies and as an early instance of abolition-as-reform. (LawPhil — EO 355, LawPhil — RA 1160)

Resettlement and Its Discontents

The statute’s projects — like the NLSA’s before them — created settler communities on lands lived in by indigenous peoples, and ranked settlers by category rather than by prior occupancy alone; the demographic consequences for Mindanao and Palawan remain contested in the region’s historiography. (LawPhil — RA 1160, Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines)

Counterinsurgency or Land Reform?

Because the stated beneficiaries were the landless while the design served the campaign against the Huks — the EDCOR takeover, the “surrendered dissident” preference — commentators divide over whether RA 1160 is a land-reform law or a pacification law; the text supports both readings. (Wikipedia — Land reform in the Philippines, LawPhil — RA 1160)

A Statute Without a Secondary Literature

RA 1160 is documented almost entirely through its own text and its neighbors in the lineage — no standalone reference article, no linked-data entity, thin administrative history. This entry reports what the verified statutes and the land-reform record carry, and flags the gap rather than filling it. (LawPhil — RA 1160)