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(Benjamin Corteza Gaston)
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The Gastons were of French ancestry. They were pioneer sugar planters and millers who formed part of the leading economic and political forces in the province. Emilio Gaston established the Talisay Milling Corporation, one of the largest sugar producers in the world. In the field of politics, he was a co-founder of the Nacionalista Party and was elected governor of Negros Occidental in 1933.


Benjamin first attended school in Negros. He enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts course at the Ateneo de Manila but was not able to finish
his studies. He was called home when his father died in 1936 to take over the family responsibilities.


During the worldwide economic depression in 1933 and 1934, many workers in the sugar industry in Negros were laid off. They turned for help to Benjamin’s father, who was then provincial governor. Cooperating with President Manuel L. Quezon’s social justice program, he caused the distribution to farmers of land in the Daconcogon Valley under the Land Settlement and Development Corporation (LASEDECO) program. Before embarking on it, however, he set his son, Benjamin, to consult with Father Joseph Mulry, the elder Gaston’s friend and former professor who was also President Quezon’s adviser on social justice. “When you do give land, public land, make sure you do not give it on a silver platter,” the old priest said. “That way, a man loses his dignity.” The younger Gaston remembered that wise counsel and adopted it as a working principle.


Governor Gaston allowed the unemployed sugar workers to settle in the isolated valley, which was in the southern part of Negros Occidental, provided that they tilled the land, built a 34-kilometer access road, and established a village council form of government. They were to obtain their seeds and other agricultural needs from the private sector.

Benjamin Gaston became acting president and then vice president of the Nacionalista Party in Bacolod from 1937 to 1962, and served as its campaign manager during elections. He was elected provincial board member of Negros Occidental. He served as such from 1958 to 1962, during which time, he also assumed the post of vice governor. In the national elections in 1965, he ran as senator under the Progressive Philippine Party, whose presidential candidate was Raul Manglapus, but lost.


During the presidency of Ramon Magsaysay, Gaston was administrator of the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA) in Negros
Occidental and was one of those responsible for the further settlement of the Daconcogon Valley.


Gaston remained involved in his family’s sugar business and twice served in two trade missions to the United States to press Washington for an increase in the country’s sugar quota. He was consultant to the Elizalde Sugar Central and was vice president of the Soriano Enterprises, whose business included sugar.


Gaston was also active in the Rotary International. He was elected as its district governor for the Philippines in 1948-1949, the first to be chosen as such outside Manila.


Gaston briefly studied how cooperatives worked in Boston College and new methods of farming for a semester at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Banos.


A well-traveled man, Gaston developed his nationalistic economic philosophy from observations of the countries he had visited. Gaston believed that the Philippines should have an integrated agro-industrial economy built on the needs and products of agriculture, with the means of production being publicly owned. He employed this philosophy in the Daconcogon Valley through the establishment of cooperative projects
for the farmers who had settled there.



His deep involvement in uplifting the lives of the Daconcogon Valley settlers started in 1958. In response to their appeal for a transportation system that would enable them to sell their farm produce themselves in the provincial markets and not be forced to do so at reduced prices through Chinese middlemen or their Filipino dummies, Gaston set up Rural Transit. It was not a lucrative business, but he was more concerned with serving the people than earning profit.


In 1967, at the Diocesan Rural Congress in Bacolod, which he presided, Gaston joined forces with Bacolod Bishop Antonio Y. Fortich to form the Daconcogon Producers Cooperative Marketing Association, described as "an experiment in human and rural development". Gaston proposed that the Daconcogon farmers switch from rice and corn to sugar cane production not only because it could avail of commercial and government financing but also because he foresaw an expanding world market for sugar. In February 1968, he and Bishop Fortich helped establish the Daconcogon Cooperative Marketing
Association. Their socio-economic initiatives in behalf of the settler farmers were capped in August 1969 with the inauguration of the Daconcogon Sugar and Rice Milling Company, with Gaston as president. Fortich became president of the cooperative.


On June 3, 1971, the mill produced its first sugar. By 1973, it was processing 1500 tons of cane daily.


Gaston and Bishop Fortich followed three points in the management of the sugar mill and the cooperative: 


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No farmer would lose his land if the project failed; 
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Nothing would be asked or accepted except what was necessary to get started, and
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To become cooperative members, farmers must meet their civic obligations, like paying the
land tax which most o them had not paid before.
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In 1972, they switched positions, Gaston becoming president of the cooperative and, Fortich, of the sugar mill.


The two gave credit for the immense success of the Daconcogon project to several factors. First, the cooperation among the Church, government, and the private sector, particularly the political, financial and sugar elite. Second, the bayanihan spirit that was reinforced in Daconcogon Valley because of its isolation. Third, the trust shown by both the government, the leadership of the cooperative, and the National Investment and
Development Corporation. Lastly, the trust reposed in the ability and drive of the small farmer-planters to manage an economic enterprise toward productivity.

December 11, 1913: Benjamin C. Gaston was born in the municipality of Silay