When the police arrived, Ms. Balayo identified the gunman as Mr. Jimenez and told them where he lived, but he was not home, she says. She assumes the police are not trying to find him. “He works for the vice mayor,” she says.

As she recounts the experience, men appear on a hillside, peering down. “Those are the goons,” a villager says.

Mr. Balayo’s older brother, Welter, took up the mantle of seeking the land. On April 20, 2019, as he was working in a rice field just outside the hacienda, he, too, was shot dead.

In August, the regional office of the Department of Agrarian Reform ruled that the seven remaining farmers were no longer qualified to take over the land. The order affirmed a motion from the landowners that accused the farmers of “forcible entry.”

The order cited an investigation conducted by the department’s Sagay City office, then run by Hannah D. Jubay. In an interview, Ms. Jubay, who was recently transferred to a nearby district, says she was powerless to question a police report concluding that farmers had entered a field they did not own.

A gold etching of Jesus hangs on her wall, looking down on her desk, next to a sign that says: “Vision: A Just Safe and Equitable Society that Upholds the Rights of Tillers.”

Hadn’t this case collided with that spirit?

Ms. Jubay looks pained.

“The landowners are very resistant,” she says.

Jason Gutierrez contributed reporting.