The Discourse and Reality of Faith-Based Development in San Carlos, Philippines

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2012-10-01 Livelihood And Liberation: The Discourse And Reality Of Faith-based Development In San Carlos, Philippines

Moxham, Christopher Charles

Moxham, C. C. (2012). Livelihood And Liberation: The Discourse And Reality Of Faith-based Development In San Carlos, Philippines (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26775 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/248 doctoral thesis

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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Livelihood And Liberation: The Discourse And Reality

Of Faith-based Development in San Carlos, Philippines

Christopher C. Moxham

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2012

ABSTRACT

The smallest unit of the Philippine Catholic Church is the Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC), a group of families who come together for worship, bible study and reflection on their social circumstances. In many dioceses BECs are encouraged to move beyond mere reflection and act as agents of change, organizing cooperatively for meaningful and peaceful development. A significant corpus of literature has developed around the concept, and it emphasizes the power of small groups to affect change, and the power of a national network of BECs.

In many respects the discourse of development through BECs resembles an ideal postdevelopment scenario but, as numerous commentators have explained, postdevelopment is unachievable due to a myriad of structural pressures pushing on any group. In the Philippines the material reality of poverty and powerlessness stands in the way of most BECs that seek development.

One field season was spent in the Diocese of San Carlos, known nationally for its vigorous development thrust. Qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews, conversation and participant observation, were employed. The ideal picture framed by the literature on BECs is measured against the reality of development in the rural countryside. Conclusions demonstrate a micro-managed series of programs orchestrated at the Diocese-level, and little semblance of self- sustainable grassroots development at the BEC level.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank my supervisor, Miriam Grant, for the time and effort that she invested in this research project. With the perfect blend of guidance and freedom, as well as constructive criticism along the way, she was instrumental in the form and content of this final written presentation.

I thank Byron Miller and Conny Davidsen, members of my committee, for their support and advice over the last five years as well.

I cannot express enough gratitude for Father Edwin Laude, whose invitation to his diocese set in motion the entire project, and whose hospitality and companionship greatly eased the fieldwork experience.

Lastly, I thank my wife, Lisa, for her bottomless support over the last five years and her belief in me even when my own beliefs were lacking. We have closed another chapter … only to open a brand new one.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………... iii Table of Contents……………………………………………….. iv List of Tables…………………………………………….……… vi List of Figures…………………………………………………… vii List of Acronyms………………………………………………… viii

CHAPTER ONE – Introduction……………………………….... 1 Peripheral development….………………………………… 4 Theoretical question……………………………………….. 5 Objectives………………………………………………….. 6 Geographic contributions…………………………………... 7 Chapter layout……………………………………………… 9

CHAPTER TWO – Basic Ecclesial Communities In The Philippines: Philosophical Roots And A Place In Critical Development Studies…………………………………………..… 14 Vatican II…………………………………………………… 18 Second Plenary Council of the Philippines………………… 24 A place for BEC in the development literature…………….. 27 Challenging the mainstream………………………………… 33 Imagining postdevelopment………………………………… 35 To where, from here?...... 43 The modern state as structuring process……………………. 46

CHAPTER THREE – Republika ng Pilipinas: A Backdrop in Regional Perspective……………………………………………… 50 Regionalism……………………………………………….… 51 Marginality………………………………………………….. 59 Crisis………………………………………………………… 71

CHAPTER FOUR – Methodology, And An Introduction To Negros…………………………………………………………….. 85 Researcher positionality…………………………………….. 86 Field sites as case studies…………………………………… 91 Choosing Negros……………………………………………. 93 Methodology………………………………………………… 99 Sampling…………………………………………….. 100 Key informant interviews at the diocese level………. 101 Community interviews and focus group discussion…. 101 Infield analysis and data cleaning…………….……… 103 iv

Confidentiality………………………………………. 104 The island of Negros………………………………………… 104 Emerging relations of sugar production…………………….. 110 Contemporary Sugarland……………………………………. 116 Negros Occidental…………………………………………… 120

CHAPTER FIVE – Social Developments In The Diocese Of San Carlos……………………………………………………………… 128 Herbal medicines…………………………………………….. 135 Livelihood……………………………………………………. 143 Feeding the most vulnerable…………………………………. 150 Mary’s Well………………………………………………….. 156 Building schools……………………………………………… 161 Anti-mining campaign……………………………………….. 175 Good governance…………………………………………….. 181 Church-Military Advisory Group……………………………. 186

CHAPTER SIX – Basic Ecclesial Communities In San Carlos: Group Strength Amid Structural Restraint…………………………. 200 A tale of two parishes………………………………………… 205 Communities of families……………………………… 214 Women at the helm…………………………………… 222 Social developments………………………………….. 224 Cabagtasan……………………………………………………. 230 Cabagtasan BECs: places in the world……………………….. 246

CHAPTER SEVEN – BECs, The Diocese, The Discourse And Development: Potentials, Limits, Recommendations……………… 253 BEC: the smallest scale………………………………………. 253 Community potential…………………………………. 254 Limits to action…….…………………………………. 258 Recommendations…………………………………….. 262 The Diocese: a rung higher on the ladder to development……. 267 Diocesan strengths…………………………………….. 268 Factors limiting diocesan development……………….. 273 Recommendations for the Diocese……………………. 280 The discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities……………….. 285 Postdevelopment today………………………………………... 292

CHAPTER EIGHT – Conclusion……………………………………. 307

REFERENCES………………………………………………………. 312

APPENDIX A – Herbal Medicines………………………………….. 326

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Percent Shares of Sectors In Current Price GDP………… 70

Table 5.1: Diocesan Ranked Prioritized Problems For Communities………………………………………………………… 132

Table 5.2: Key Concepts Of Parishioners By Category…………….. 133

Table 6.1: Basic Infrastructure, Barangay Cod Cod………………… 233

Table 6.2: Land Use, Barangay Cod Cod…………………………… 234

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: What Makes Development Meaningful…………………. 6

Figure 3.1: The Philippines………………………………………….. 52

Figure 4.1: Geographic Regions…………………………………….. 94

Figure 4.2: Negros Island……………………………………………. 106

Figure 5.1: Diocese Of San Carlos…………………………………… 129

Figure 5.2: Organizational Structure Of Social Action………………. 131

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LIST OF ACRONYMS

AFP – Armed Forces of the MILF – Moro Islamic Liberation Philippines Front

AO – Area of Operation (Military) NASSA – National Secretariat of Social Action ARMM – Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao NFA – National Food Authority

BEC – Basic Ecclesial Community NGO – Non-governmental Organization BFD – Bureau of Food and Drugs NPA – New Peoples’ Army CAD – Canadian dollar OFW – Overseas Filipino Worker CARP – Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program OLMMS – Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School CBHP – Community Based Health Program OLPMS – Our Lady of Peace Mission School CMAG – Church-Military Advisory Group PCP II – Second Plenary Council of the Philippines DILG - Department of Internal and Local Government PHP – Philippine peso

EDSA – Epifanio de los Santos PMPI – Philippines Misereor Avenue Partnership Inc

GDP – Gross Domestic Product PO – Peoples Organization

GKK – Gagmay’ng Kristohanong PPC – Parish Pastoral Council Katilingban (a local Visayan translation of Basic Ecclesial RSM – Risen Savior Missions Community) SCDMC – San Carlos Diocese Multi- IGP – Income-Generating Project purpose Cooperative

IRA – Internal Revenue Allotment TESDA – Technical Education and Skills Development Authority LGU – Local Government Unit

viii

INTRODUCTION

The Philippines is a country of diversity and extremes, both in terms of geography and society. With over 7000 islands the country is the second largest archipelagic state, after

Indonesia, with islands rich in topographic and climatic variability. Added to the physical diversity are 110 ethnic groups and 170 spoken languages, as well as highly uneven economic activity, with wealth concentrated around the capital of Manila, a few adjacent regions and a handful of cities on other islands (Hill et al. 2007). Unequal wealth distribution is one of the realities of uneven economic activity, and in the Philippines there is an income Gini Ratio of 45.8 (CIA 2011a). The Philippines ranks thirty-eight among countries with the highest levels of inequality—sharing ranks with Rwanda (#36),

Malaysia (#37), Argentina (#39), Uganda (#40)1—and nearly thirty percent of Filipinos live below the poverty line (ibid.). The country registers a value of 0.638 on the Human

Development Index, ninety-seventh out of 169 countries, and this value is derived from a life expectancy at birth of 72.3 years, adult literacy rates of 93.7 percent, a combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 79.6 percent, and Gross

Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of USD 3601 (UNDP 2010).

1 For further reference: greatest inequality—Namibia (#1), South Africa (#2); Philippine neighbours— Cambodia (#46), Thailand (#50), China (#54), Vietnam (#78); greatest equality—Norway (#133), Sweden (#134). Canada and the United States rank ninety-ninth and forty-third, respectively (cf. CIA 2011a).

Public debt in the Philippines is 55.2 percent of GDP, and external debt is USD 62 billion (CIA 2011b). The accumulation of debt accelerated after World War II when the

Philippines borrowed to finance economic development projects and to rebuild after the war. In 1980 more loans for development were secured from the World Bank, but as a condition the government agreed to programs of structural adjustment—market-oriented schedules of fiscal and welfare change designed to increase economic efficiency and decrease the authority of the state. Over the last few decades, the Philippines has passed through three distinct phases of structural adjustment: from 1980 to 1983, economic reform focused upon trade liberalization; from 1983 to 1992, debt repayment became the operating principle; and since 1992, a free-market ideology and neoliberal policies have steered the country into an investment-friendly, deregulated and privatized economy

(Bello et al. 2005). It is within this jurisdiction of state-level policies that regions, municipalities and local communities must operate, and similar to the situation in many developing countries, the search for meaningful community development in the

Philippines is considered secondary by the state to national economic growth. Factors involved include the burden of international debt, foreign investment policies, and factions of the national elite that tend to serve and protect their own interests (cf. Aguilar

1998; Anderson 1998). In terms of the latter, market-oriented policies favour both foreign and domestic investors, while state bureaucracy is controlled by a limited number of landed families who have manoeuvred government to maintain their historical entitlement. In general, the Philippine situation is but one reflection of the many ways in which powerful global processes transform states, making them more easily and effectively utilized by certain interests that seek to maximize capital accumulation

(Glassman 2004). And as a typical modern state, the Philippines acts as an intermediary between the ever-monopolizing core and the laissez-fair fringes of the world-system (cf.

Wallerstein 1979), a mediator for its own bordered citizens and borderless capital. This role has profound consequences for a majority of the Philippine population who daily hack out their livelihoods on the fringes of the world-system.

In the Philippines, inequity and poverty among the masses, particularly in rural

areas, have not been ameliorated by moderate levels of national economic growth (cf.

Ringuet and Estrada 2003; Habito 2005). Because of this, locally-derived alternatives to

state development plans have mobilized through the Catholic Church at the diocese level

and among small faith-based groups referred to as Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs).

Comprised of local families who first came together to study the liturgy, many dioceses

and BECs work toward a participatory grassroots development that is more-often-than

not at loggerheads with the plans of local government, the state and international actors.

Such government and international development plans include primary resource

extraction in mining, forestry and plantation agriculture, and other capital intensive

industries where the overwhelming bulk of profits are repatriated to investors who do not

live in affected communities (cf. Bello et al. 2005). These types of development tend to

have little positive impact in terms of community welfare and long-term sustainability,

and significant negative effects for the environment in a country where many people

continue to live off the land. The central focus of this research is Basic Ecclesial

Communities that desire to work cooperatively toward social development, and the

central premise is that these BECs can offer peaceful resistance to the state and selective

subversion from the global economy as they operate at the community level, helping poor

people to help themselves. In so doing they become a site of place-based community and

identity formation, as well as a locus for engaging the practice and discourse of development. Ultimately, they are a context for understanding the myriad ways in which local groups in developing countries both contest and are shaped by the forces of globalization.

Peripheral development

This study is about peripheral development in a world of global capitalism, peripheral in

the sense of combinations of geographic, political, ideological and economic marginality.

Although the focus of this study is rural communities, the concept of peripheral

development eliminates the spatially-privileged rural-urban dyad in mainstream

development parlance. Thus, in terms of this study, rural is an intrinsic designation with

little extrinsic connection to an essentialized urban other, and data produced contributes

to a conceptual myriad of spatial instances that shed light upon systems that maintain

differential access to wealth and power. In so doing, instances of peripheral development

can be envisioned as both independent and transcendent, existing between and within

rural areas, between and within urban areas, and at the interstices of what we label rural

and urban. Once these instances of marginality are brought into focus they can be

interrogated under the rubric of critical development studies, and they can be measured

against the mainstream-economic benchmark that has informed development policy for

the better part of the last 150 years.2

2 In this study the terms ‘mainstream development’, ‘economic development’ and ‘modernization’ are used interchangeably to describe the official development policies of states and development organizations that

The concept of meaningful, local development for communities that exist on the

margins of the greater world-system has been a central concern of critical development

studies over the last few decades, and perhaps the most liberating discourse to emerge is

postdevelopment. It presents an ideal concept of endogenous development that is locally

grown, locally organized and locally cooperative in terms of production and distribution.

Postdevelopment is liberating because it tries to unshackle itself from any historical ties to the mainstream lineage or previous academic approaches to ‘developing people’.

Furthermore, postdevelopment encompasses the idea of new discourses of development, new constellations for imagining and practicing community action, and this is why it is a positive theoretical fit for the present research, as opposed to other notable development

approaches, such as dependency theory, basic-needs or rights-based development. The

BEC movement and literature does reframe local development, community and church

within a unique language and metaphorical complex, and this new discourse of

community action is shaping, and being shaped by, local development practices

throughout the Philippines.

Theoretical question

By organizing communally, yet participating in capital markets, are faith-based

communities in the Philippines able to generate meaningful development that is socially

and ecologically sustainable, helping poor people to help themselves mitigate poverty? If

so, what are the limitations?

have been predominant over the last century, culminating in neoliberalization. These policies are top-down, macro-processes based upon econometric modelling.

In order to approach this question, a visual of what constitutes meaningful development is provided in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1. What Makes Development Meaningful And Sustainable To Basic Ecclesial Communities / The Diocese?

Increases in general A sustainable livelihood Families are niche within better able to local and wider meet/exceed capital markets basic needs

There is a Social and Meaningful measurable environmental development supplement of sustainability through BECs income to labouring

Social issues Increases in related to rights/access to poverty are land somewhat Increases in alleviated community empowerment

Objectives

1. Determine how livelihood and community are being produced at the local level as BECs conceptualize and identify with their own environments.

2. Understand how development through BECs has led to the implementation of more-sustainable programs of community and environmental-resource management.

3. Analyze new systems of knowing and living development that are being constructed through the discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities.

4. Identify the connections between international capitalism, state development programs and grassroots development, adding to the literature on critical development studies.

Geographic contributions: social geography; place, territory, scale, network

This research into Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines can be categorized as social geography, which in its broadest sense is “an analysis of the spatial patterns of social life” (Johnston 1987: 5). More specifically, social geography has three main directives that come together under “the organization, regulation, control, and contestation of space”: i) understanding inequality, ii) drawing upon interdisciplinary social theory, and iii) affecting change within the scholarly community and within the communities studied (del Casino 2009: 2). In terms of the first directive, inequality, whether grounded in gender, class, race or age relations, is approached from a problem- based perspective that moves beyond a mere description of the “victims of society”

(Cater and Jones 1995: ix), acknowledging that differential access to wealth and power is structurally reproduced, spatially uneven and contested within specific places.

Furthermore this unevenness varies in regards to experiences, patterns and struggles

(Panelli 2004). But the study of inequality spills into other subunits of geographical inquiry, such as economics, politics, environment and culture, and each of these will play a part in the wider framework of research, for “the goal of the social geographer … is to

know how people live in their local milieux, milieux which they are involved in creating

and sustaining” (Johnston 1987: 13).

Social milieu implies place, and this study is ultimately about place-making and

social reproduction through community organization, pointing to the continuing saliency

of place in a globalizing world and reiterating one of geography’s greatest strengths: its

“synthesis of human action and environmental structure in order to understand the

complexity of place” (Palm 1986: 473). Place consists of three interrelated components—

locale, location and sense of place—and these correspond to the “setting in which social relations are constituted”, “the effects upon locales of social and economic processes operating at wider scales” and “the local structure of feeling”, respectively (Agnew 1993:

263). Thus place can be understood as a combination of physical setting, human activity and meanings inscribed, an arena in which the symbolic and the material co-mingle in specific ways. But places can never be understood fully as either material or symbolic, for every place is a unique combination of both (Cresswell 1996), and place-making does not occur in a vacuum. For instance, studying large-scale processes, such as, in the case of Basic Ecclesial Communities, foreign investment policies, state governance and local/national/transnational networks of religious relationships, can provide insight into local diversity, contestation and inequality as they become entrenched in wider economies and a wider territory. In terms of the present research, territory is inextricably linked with place, for places are the operative fields in which core-periphery contestations over access to resources, land-use rights and challenges to local territoriality are played out (Holt-Jensen 1999).

Remaining true to the geographic project, this research also draws upon scale and network. Scale implies the vertical differentiation of social relations (global, supranational, national, regional and local) within a capitalist world-system (Brenner

2009). Recent studies have focused upon “the social production of scale and the scalar production of the social” (Miller 2009: 52), and they address the flexibility, mutual embeddedness, interconnectivity and creativity of vertically integrated social groups within historical-material contexts. An enhanced understanding of scale is central to the present work, particularly as faith-based social action becomes organizationally complex, and as it confronts the myriad structures and actors beyond the community, the Diocese, the region and even the state. Finally, a focus on networks in geography, such as networks of commodities, governance systems, fractions of capital and communities of people, has led to analyses of the complex webs and interconnections among locations and units of social organization (Brenner 2009). Central to the task is an exploration of the power differentials among actors involved in networks, and an analysis of the varying spatial structures that emerge as networks thread together the activities of diverse places and units of organization (Nicholls 2009). As we will see, the networks of local Basic

Ecclesial Communities within the Diocese are perhaps the most important structural element for realizing development among the Catholic faithful.

Chapter layout

Chapters Two through Seven present a synthesis of important literature, historical background and new data produced on BECs. The second chapter serves to review pertinent literature. It begins with an overview of Basic Ecclesial Communities in the

Philippines, including history and central premises, and discusses some of the general ways in which families participate throughout the country. The second section of Chapter

Two elaborates upon the philosophical roots of BECs, beginning with the Second

Ecumenical Vatican Council (Vatican II):

In the mid-1960s … the Vatican promulgated a series of encyclicals which, in effect, decreed that the Church had a special mission to the poor of the Third World. In his Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963), Pope John XXIII stated the Church had to apply Christian principles to the unequal relations between First and Third Worlds … Under Pope Paul VI these once radical doctrines became the new orthodoxy. His encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) condemned ‘structural injustice’, a concept that radical priests later used to justify their attack on oppressive social institutions (McCoy 1984: 40).

Vatican II represents a push toward a Church that is much more concerned with secular matters, such as the social conditions of the faithful, and all humanity for that matter. The concept of Church set forth by Vatican II serves as foundation and inspiration for what many in the Philippine clergy hope to accomplish with BECs. The third section of

Chapter Two introduces the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII), in many ways the Philippine echo of Vatican II. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the

Philippines convened the Council in 1991, and the collected works of the Conference reiterate clerical reflection upon, critique of, and call for action to change, poverty and oppression. The fourth part of the literature review is an effort to ground the BEC movement within critical development studies, and postdevelopment is presented as the conceptual frame. It is selected because postdevelopment is a theory that goes beyond

‘correcting’ the past practices of ‘doing development’, and searches for solutions to the predicament of development in new discourses.

Chapter Three provides an overview of the Republic of the Philippines that incorporates significant historical moments and eras within the broader political

economy. The presentation of this chapter is a regional geography that emphasizes social

geography while providing a link to physical geography. Although regional geography, at

one time the core product of geographic study, has been displaced by a more focused

physical project or robust human geography, it does not necessarily follow that regional

geography has lost completely its relevance or contribution. Arguably, regional studies

offer much needed insight into more delineated terms of inquiry or local topics, providing

a wider layer of background and contextualization to the task at hand. Thus, in Chapter

Three, a thematic regional geography of the Philippines ties together social, historical and

geographical phenomena under three banners: regionalism, marginality and crisis. With

these three themes, the wider socio-historical and geographic stage upon which BECs

must act is elaborated.

Chapter Four begins with an overview of research methodology, grounding the

study in the qualitative lineage of the social sciences and inventorying methods

employed. This section is predicated on the notion that single case studies can shed

meaningful light on instances of cultural production, social interaction and community development. Furthermore, it is argued flexible qualitative methods, such as unstructured interviews, the incorporation (and celebration) of unforeseen variables, or impromptu meetings that diverge from original sampling rubrics, can lead to a much thicker description (cf. Geertz 1973) of the case at hand. Following the methods section, Chapter

Four turns to an overview of the island of Negros. The historical and present political economy of the island is presented, with a greater emphasis placed upon the province of

Negros Occidental, where primary data was produced. For two reasons, however, the other province on the island, Negros Oriental, is drawn into the discussion as well.

Firstly, the two provinces’ histories and economies transcend modern political boundaries, with landed families reigning over cash-crop production and the masses of labourers in both provinces. Secondly, the diocese in which fieldwork was conducted,

San Carlos, straddles the provincial border, with parishes in both provinces.

The fifth chapter is an inventory and analysis of the social action and community development programs directed by the Diocese of San Carlos. This is a scale of intervention beyond either individual BECs or parishes, and it involves a complex organizational business model and the concerns of upwards of one million people.

Programs include herbal medicine production and distribution, a multipurpose cooperative, nutrition and feeding for the most vulnerable, building schools, auditing government spending and an alternative-mining coalition. The strengths and weaknesses of each program are discussed, and what is revealed is a complex machine of social action with which the Diocese is able to spur its own vision of community development and local empowerment under the discursive auspices of Basic Ecclesial Communities.

Furthermore, it is revealed that the Diocese is taking (and making) great strides in its efforts to combat poverty and disempowerment as it integrates various programs in the hopes of affecting broad, systemic change within its borders.

Chapter Six scales down to focus upon BECs, in an effort to understand better the realities of local development action. The discourse speaks about the power of local communities—lying latent, just waiting to be activated—and this is measured against local experiences with social action and community empowerment in the rural parishes.

The socio-cultural cohesion of a number of groups, grounded in bible study, reflection upon common predicament, and neighbourly help, is highlighted as key to the formation

and continuance of BECs. Following this, community development and social action are

discussed, and a series of structural and cultural obstacles come to light. This leads into

the final chapter, in which the most effective scale of faith-based social action in the

Philippines is conceptualized. Chapter Seven begins with the level of BECs, and moves

onto the diocese level before addressing the discourse itself. In each of these sections, the

potentials of, and limits to, social action is elaborated, and some recommendations are

made. Chapter Seven concludes by (re)placing BECs within the literature on critical

development studies or, put another way, tweaking the theoretical premise of postdevelopment to accommodate the case of Basic Ecclesial Communities.

BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES IN THE PHILIPPINES:

PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS AND A PLACE IN CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT

STUDIES

In the Philippines the social movement grounded in Basic Ecclesial Communities is countering poverty, disempowerment and marginality, particularly among the rural poor, the majority of whom subsist on the equivalent of little more than a few dollars per day.

A BEC is a local group of Catholic families that owes its genesis to bible study, but many have branched into communal development projects and social action in defence of place:

“Poverty and their faith urge their members towards solidarity with one another, action for justice, and towards a vibrant celebration of life” (CBCP 1992: 52). BECs are present in sixty of seventy-nine dioceses in the Philippines (Picardal 2008), and can include anywhere from five to as many as 100 families. There is a growing body of literature on

BECs, and the national Church believes in the concept and actively encourages BEC formation. Indeed, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has its own social-action implementation arm, the National Secretariat on Social Action (NASSA), and it takes BEC formation as integral to social development. The concept includes three ideals: i) the socio-cultural growth of the liturgical group, ii) socio-economic development through cooperative strategies of local participation in capital markets, and iii) the political transformation of Filipino society (ibid.).

BECs can be understood as the smallest organizational levels of the Catholic

Church, or one of many family-based groups that exist inside any given parish. At present

the majority of BECs in the country are predominantly liturgical or bible-study groups,

but some have ventured into the realm of social action and community development. The

BECs that include a focus on social action stand in stark opposition to many government and international plans for economic development and financing the state, such as large- scale resource extraction and industrial agriculture. The communities challenge the local patterns of international capital accumulation and offer social alternatives to development grounded in an ecclesiastical belief in living God’s word (Nadeau 2002). Historically

Basic ‘Christian’ Communities emerged during the first half century of Spanish colonialism (1568-1896) when the Church presented itself as an ally in the struggle against the Spanish administration (Nadeau 2005). The contemporary ‘Ecclesial’ movements are inspired by the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council (convened over the years 1962-65), which mandates Christians to facilitate justice and work against

oppression, and the communities serve to increase the class consciousness of the poor

(Nadeau 2005). They support political activism in the name of poverty reduction, social justice and human rights. Because of this the BEC movement can be envisioned as a sibling of Latin American Liberation Theology—both movements have historical links with the Second Vatican Council, and both encourage the faithful to become agents of change through reflection and action.3

3 Though some commentators have outright labelled the BEC movement ‘Liberation Theology’ (cf. Nadeau 2002; Holden and Jacobson 2007b), clerical informants to this study, at the parish, diocese and national levels, were adamant that the Philippine experience was not liberation theology, which they explicitly associate with South America. ‘The situation in South America is totally different. [In the Philippines] it is liberation of man from ignorance. We do not teach the people to go against [the government], to rally. It

In many regards the class consciousness of poverty and disempowerment can be

attributed further to the social realities of life in the Philippines during the presidency of

Ferdinand Marcos (1965-86). Marcos promoted marketization and foreign investment,

and he did implement massive infrastructural projects. On the political front, however,

corruption, nepotism and the military suppression of dissent were rampant, at the expense

of the majority of Filipino communities and marginalized populations, and his presidency

can be understood as an enormous pauperization of the state, whereby state revenues

became his personal piggybank (cf. Pomeroy 1992; McCoy 2009). As Gaspar notes

(1997), the Church was the only organization to stand up to Marcos during the period of martial law (1972-81) and it began to mobilize people around ideas of justice and peace.

Ultimately BEC community-level church organization in the Philippines resists the

“development aggression” of the state (Gaspar 1997: 158) and seeks new socio ecological relationships in poor communities through the participation of local people in their own meaningful development (Nadeau 2005).

Central to the movement is i) an awakening of members to the realities of poverty and oppression, ii) proclaiming condemnation for the policies of the oppressors, and iii) mobilizing the poor in a moral way that will effect positive change (Delotavo 2006: 222

24). As Holden and Jacobson (2007a/b) have shown, local Christian communities in the

Philippines are engaged often as leaders in political opposition and protest when state initiatives begin to infringe upon local lands and groups. They describe the opposition of

will not solve the problems’ (Father Jerome). ‘The seed [of liberation theology] is South America … [though] there have been attempts [in the Philippines] associated with the left. Bishops were suspicious of some priests. But in terms of popular movements, Benedict [XVI, Pope] has warned the Philippines. BEC is about peace and charity, non-violence. Benedict has emphasized this; that the Church has to remain pillars of hope’ (Bishop Joe).

the Catholic faithful on the island of Mindanao to government-corporate efforts to expand the mining sector. Because of BEC networking and information seminars, communities are well aware of the most damaging socio-environmental consequences of large-scale mining, such as the legendary national blunder of the Marcopper tailings spill of 1996

(ibid.), and the international gaffe of the social, political and ecological fallout from the

Ok Tedi mine disaster in Papua New Guinea (cf. Jorgensen 1997; 2006). Because of this the Church has entered debates on environmental issues and natural resource management, setting up ecology desks within many social action centres.

There has been a marked shift in approach and goals as the BEC movement has evolved over time. BECs with a social development agenda emerged with a rationale of capitalist integration, hoping to “reform the capitalist system from within by encouraging their constituents to become small entrepreneurs” (Nadeau 2005: 321). This approach had a predominant emphasis on scripture, and a secondary focus upon the individual as the basic unit for affecting change—individuals who were expected to be actively evangelical, scripturally reflective and socially informed (Picardal 2005). Today the driving forces of BEC development projects are better understood from a collectivist perspective, and the practitioners are seen as seeking a new communal alternative to capitalist society whereby community members work together to meet common needs, using resources derived from their immediate environment. In terms of affecting change the basic unit of focus goes beyond the individual to the social community, offering a bottom-up approach to solving social problems through community participation (Nadeau

2005). Such participation can include organic farming, micro-credit lending, peoples’ cooperatives, herbal medicine projects and local handicraft development, and is in the

hope of founding “a new society based on ecologically sustainable modes of production in connection with new forms of political and social relationships” (Nadeau 2005: 324).

What is of further interest to the present study is the new language of development constructed by those involved in the BEC movement as they negotiate how best to practice local development. New key words and premises have been incorporated into the

Basic Ecclesial Community movement, such as ‘total human development’, ‘being

Church’, ‘living God’s Word’, and ‘the integrity of Creation’, as well as the three principles of liberation theology: seeing, judging and acting (Freire 2000). It is towards this discourse of BECs that we now turn, beginning with its philosophical roots in the

Second Vatican Council, and continuing with its incorporation as a central component within the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, which is, for all intents and purposes, the Philippine response to Vatican II.

Vatican II

The First Vatican Council (1869-70), under the leadership of Pope Pius IX, convened in order to address what the Church envisioned as problems derived from modern-European rationalism, liberalism and materialism, three social developments running counter to the teachings of the Church. It settled upon a reactionary path of biblical literalism and medieval scholastic philosophy as a means to counter these threats (cf. Kirch 1913; Hales

1958). In so doing, the Church attempted to separate its teachings and the concerns of the faithful from secular issues, and it found refuge in an insular, dogmatic constitution predicated on mystical matters and the infallibility of the Pope. The insularity continued a lineage of Catholic thought dating to the Sixteenth Century, whereby “the Church moved

through history more or less unaffected by history” (O’Malley 1983: 392). By the 1950s many in the clergy were questioning this path of the Church and wanted to find a way to make the Church more relevant to the community of faithful living in modern times; they sought a revived Church that was part of the modern world and encouraged Christians to engage with social and economic issues, such as famine, disease, vice, ignorance and exploitation (McVeigh 1974). The new concern with social issues came about as members of the clergy witnessed and began to reflect upon some of the more pernicious consequences of modernity—corollaries embedded in decolonization, industrialization and the rise of mass media—and there were clashes between “more open orientations and more conservative ones” among the clergy (Martina 1988: 3). In 1959 Pope John XXIII, a mere few months into his papacy, decided to address these social concerns and, much to the chagrin of conservatives in the Church hierarchy (cf. Wiltgen 1978), announced a

Second Vatican Council.

The intention of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was to make the Church more active in the material lives of the faithful, particularly those Catholics living under oppressive regimes or exploitative labour relations. The world over, individuals and communities were dealing with the harsh realities of late-modernity—the parasitic reach of international capital accumulation into distant lands and the proletarianization of landless populations, decolonial encounters with dictatorship, ethnic conflict and nationalist struggles, novel antagonisms between industrial capital and labour, population pressure and rampant urbanization, and modern warfare over resource frontiers. Many in the Church believed they could no longer turn a blind eye in the face of such structured

disempowerment and embedded inequity.4 They wanted the clergy, particularly at the parish level, to move beyond mere spiritual leadership and become community advocates for meaningful change: “by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God” (SEVC 1964); new relationships among the faithful will lead to new methods for tackling and solving problems of an economic, social, political or cultural character (John XXIII 1961). Concomitantly, they wanted to see a more active role for the laity, promoting their empowerment as community activists and local church leaders:

the laity have the duty of using their own initiative and taking action in this area— without waiting passively for directives and precepts from others. They must try to infuse a Christian spirit into people's mental outlook and daily behavior, into the laws and structures of the civil community (Paul VI 1967); Those who are suited or can become suited should prepare themselves for the difficult, but at the same time, the very noble art of politics … and should seek to practice this art without regard for their own interests or for material advantages (SEVC 1965b).

Ultimately, Vatican II can be read as a call to social action for the faithful, a material break from the solely-spiritual enterprise that had reigned supreme in the Roman Catholic

Church for centuries.

The spiritual aspect of the Church is not lost in Vatican II; rather, much of what is written revolves around mystical issues regarding the Church, the life and meaning of

Jesus Christ, pastoral mandates for the clergy, and being a good Christian (cf.

Kloppenburg 1974). Political matters among Christian denominations are also addressed, particularly Catholic relationships with the Eastern and Protestant churches, both of whom were allowed to send guest observers to the Council. In the shadow of these matters, the social imperatives were carefully inserted into the official publications of the

4 Interestingly, the time of Vatican II and the new era of a socially-aware and proactive Church roughly coincides with other popular movements, such as antiwar protests over the war in Vietnam, Paris 1968, and the civil-rights movement in the US.

Council, and the use at times of opaque wording and contradictory phraseology creates a sense of neutrality that leaves certain passages open to interpretation. Nevertheless there is much of an historical-material value that can be extracted from the texts, particularly in the text Gaudium et spes (SEVC 1965b), which translates into ‘joy and hope’. For instance, a general overview reveals a firm commitment to private property and private initiative, and a belief in the power of free individuals operating within a free market:

“Private property or some ownership of external goods confers on everyone a sphere wholly necessary for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as an extension of human freedom” (SEVC 1965b); “works produced by man's own talent and energy … are a sign of God's grace and the flowering of His own mysterious design” (ibid.). Although the market is presented as indispensable to our world-economic system (Paul VI 1971), it only functions under moral guidance: “In the economic and social realms, too, the dignity and complete vocation of the human person and the welfare of society as a whole are to be respected and promoted” (SEVC 1965b).

Furthermore, the moral market is one predicated on the equitable redistribution of wealth among all groups of society, a concept referred to as the “universal destination of earthly goods” (ibid.): “the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation” (Paul VI 1967).

Vatican II, as a council on secular issues, also upholds the nation-state division of the world-system. States are considered “indispensable to civil society” because of legal structures that exist in conformity with the “moral order” (John XXIII 1963), “endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect

for rights” (SEVC 1965b). Although the “Church and the political community in their own fields are autonomous and independent from each other”, the Vatican recognizes the need for “some universal public authority” (ibid.) in order “to create world conditions in which the public authorities of each nation, its citizens and intermediate groups, can carry out their tasks, fulfill their duties and claim their rights with greater security” (John XXIII

1963). Part of the reason for official recognition of nation-state organization is a belief that inequity and conflict are now rampant on a global scale and international action necessitates the coordinated action of states (Paul VI 1967):

As these mutual ties binding the men of our age one to the other grow and develop, governments will the more easily achieve a right order the more they succeed in striking a balance between the autonomous and active collaboration of individuals and groups, and the timely coordination and encouragement by the State of these private undertakings (John XXIII 1961); civil progress and economic development are the only road to peace (Paul VI 1967).

Thus independent states acting freely but in conjunction with one another are the proper

scale of development intervention in an unjust world-system. The common good, or “the

sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to

reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily” relies upon peace, sound state and

judicial power, environmental protection and a commitment to basic human rights (SEVC

1965b).

Scaling down to local people and communities, Vatican II addressed a number of

social issues, including labour relations, rights to property, the environment, the

promotion of peace and the limits to social action. In terms of labour the Church

emphasized the dignity of the worker, drawing upon images of Christ at his carpenter’s

bench, and called for the wages of labour “to be such that man may be furnished the

means to cultivate worthily his own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of

his dependents” (SEVC 1965b). It was argued that a just wage must support a natural

right to basic subsistence that takes precedence over the contract between employee and

employer. Then, as if reading a page right out of John Locke’s 1690 Second treatise

(1980), work is also deemed the source of private property, as man develops the earth and

reaps its fruits through his own labour. Private property becomes a necessary right of all

individuals, and a means to individual prosperity and financial stability. However, man must not take more than what is necessary, for private property is not an end in itself and is only ever a means to achieve the universal destination of goods (Paul VI 1967). Thus the right of private property is upheld within a framework of redistribution among small holder owners, as opposed to landownership in the hands of the few.

On the environmental front, resources are determined to be the natural right of all humanity to share: man “received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all it contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness” (SEVC 1965b). Further, the

Church is committed to ecological management and preservation for the next generation:

We are the heirs of earlier generations, and we reap benefits from the efforts of our contemporaries; we are under obligation to all men. Therefore we cannot disregard the welfare of those who will come after us to increase the human family. The reality of human solidarity brings us not only benefits but also obligations (Paul VI 1967).

In these statements defence of ecology and place become moral obligations of the

faithful, and the management of a healthy commons that is able to provide for the present

and future multitudes is encouraged.

Social action as a means to achieve a just society is the natural accompaniment to

many of the topics of Vatican II—it is the final outcome of reflection upon human affairs

in their totality (Paul VI 1967). Social action is the duty of the faithful, denouncing

injustice and violence, particularly as they affect the poor and the weak, and being

proactive in the transformation of modern societies. The political community must be

proactive regarding economic, political and social issues in order to prevent inequalities

from exacerbating or spreading (John XXIII 1963). People “will come to decisions on

their own judgment and in the light of truth, govern their activities with a sense of

responsibility, and strive after what is true and right, willing always to join with others in

cooperative effort” (SEVC 1965a). Pope John Paul II echoes this sentiment two decades

later when he states, “this love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it

inspires in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the

homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better

future” (1987). And of course, the ultimate goal of and means to social action is peace,

resulting “from that order structured into human society by its divine Founder, and

actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice” (SEVC 1965b).

Second Plenary Council of the Philippines

The Second Vatican Council produced an abundance of writing, and the preceding section was a brief overview of a few of the main points as a means to contextualize BEC social action in Roman Catholic history. The Philippine response to Vatican II can be broadly categorized as of two scales: local and national, or individual churches and the

Church. On the one hand, some local clergy schooled in the teachings of Vatican II began to organize more BECs and encourage cooperation in social development. This led to new conceptions of being a church community, and programs met with varying amounts

of success and failure as local groups experimented with their own agency amid

structural restraints. On the other hand, the official Church, under direction of the

Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, responded in 1991 when it convened

the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II), which can be roughly understood

as the Filipino answer or echo to Vatican II, but infused with many of the thoughts of

Pope John Paul II: “Before today’s forms of exploitation of the poor, the Church cannot

remain silent” (John Paul II 1985, in CBCP 1992: 50).

PCP II reiterated a number of the more mystical aspects of Vatican II, such as the

way of Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and the cult of Mary, but it goes much further than its

predecessor in focusing on material circumstances, fully grounding the social discourse

of Vatican II within the context of Philippine society:

Thus, on the economic side: The poverty and destitution of the great mass of our people are only too evident, contrasting sharply with the wealth and luxury of the relatively few families, the elite top of our social pyramid. And on the political side: Power and control are also elitist, lopsidedly concentrated on established families that tend to perpetuate themselves in political dynasties (CBCP 1992: 12).

These politico-economic realities are understood as part of the many outcomes of sin:

We can see the terrible effects of sin and sinful structures in the many uncared for and malnourished children of our unjust society, the wretchedness of the jobless and the homeless, the proliferation of crimes, the pervasiveness of graft and corruption, the lack of peace and order, or the horrors of war. Sin shows itself in suffering, in the myriad suffering faces that demonstrate the degradation of the human person and human society, and in the destruction of our environment that lays bare the evil shortsightedness of human greed (CBCP 1992: 34).

Within this framework of structured sin the Basic Ecclesial Community is presented as an agent of change and action, “emerging at the grassroots among poor farmers and workers” (CBCP 1992: 52), and offering a site of place-based social renewal. Building upon the network of BECs, diocesan, regional and national levels of Church organization

become effective agents of change as well. Evangelization takes on a role beyond basic spiritual growth, moving beyond the building of the Church, promoting “total human development, integral liberation, justice and peace” (CBCP 1992: 70). This requires i) new participatory methods by which the laity is empowered as community leaders and witnesses to the sins in society, and ii) diocesan social-action centres that “raise the social consciousness of people, deliver relief and rehabilitation in time of disasters, help the poor train and organize themselves towards economic self-reliance, form people’s consciences with regard to fundamental human rights, and defend the rights of the poor”

(CBCP 1992: 91).5

The empowerment of the people under PCP II has a number of key goals. First, development must be integral and include aspects of socio-cultural development, as opposed to only traditional economic development. It must be geared toward the whole person and the whole community. Second, private property must be adapted from its present parasitic form into a fundamental right for all. This will serve the ultimate purpose of the universal destination of goods, and correct the vast imbalances between rich and poor people and rich and poor countries alike. Third, social justice must displace dishonesty in the marketplace, unjust wages, graft and corruption. The “common good” is a justice measured against the present system of entitlement and exclusion that only brings “short term benefits for the few” and “long term disaster for the many” (CBCP

1992: 104). Fourth, peace and active non-violence are employed as the methods of change, and this directly counters both the institutionalized violence embedded in

5 It must be stressed that all of these social prerogatives rest upon a firm spiritual foundation: “Without education towards maturity in the faith, the social apostolate will become activism and will fall prey to the temptations of unchristian ideologies” (CBCP 1992: 68).

Philippine society and the force of arms for which South American liberation theology is known. Passive (and effective) resistance to unjust situations includes rallies, assemblies, marches, demonstrations and worker strikes. Fifth, the integrity of creation implies the human need to work toward environmental conservation. PCP II singles out logging, mining and over-fishing as ecologically pernicious activities that violate God’s creation, and encourages community stewardship for healthy, sustainable landscapes. And last, people power is envisioned as the quintessential source of democratic change:

In the context of our society today, where the poor and marginalized have little genuine participation, and when the brief but brilliant moments of our liberation have been made possible because of “people power,” we realize that the integral development of people will be possible only with their corresponding empowerment. Today we understand “people power” to subsume basic ideas that go beyond the mere gathering of people in support of a cause. We understand “people power” to include greater involvement in decision-making, greater equality in both political and economic matters, more democracy, more participation (CBCP 1992: 112-13).

A place for BEC in the development literature

The prospect of social development in the Philippines through Basic Ecclesial

Communities offers an insightful contribution to the development literature. For instance,

BEC-inspired local activism, grassroots organization, wealth redistribution and,

particularly, the writing of new discourses of development and community empowerment

are all directives firmly grounded within the postdevelopment literature. Yet some BECs

embrace the market and work within neoliberal formations, confounding one of the

central premises of postdevelopment theory, namely, anti-capitalism. Regardless, for the

present research postdevelopment theory is a platform from which to view the BEC

concept, as opposed to other notable theories, such as dependency theory, basic needs, or

rights-based development. The reason that postdevelopment is used is because this theory

is predicated upon locally-organized development that has its genesis in the local community. It is diametrically opposed to development being something devised by

Western academia, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, marketed through governmental and non-governmental organizations, and dropped in the lap of impoverished communities. BECs with active development programs have come about for the most part without the primary management of international organizations, instead relying upon a network internal to the movement, information about other successful projects, and the knowledge and motivations of place-based community members searching for local solutions to mitigate poverty. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, postdevelopment encompasses the idea of new and novel systems for thinking and doing development, and BEC literature on social action does reframe local development, community empowerment and belonging to church within its own unique discourse. In order to justify the selection of postdevelopment for this study, a full grasp of the concept is necessary. Such a full grasp requires brief elaboration on the history of mainstream development as discourse and practice, which we turn to now, followed by an overview of the key concepts and critiques of postdevelopment theory itself.

Since the mid-19th Century, when development came to be associated with “certain ideas of the nature of economic change” (Williams 1988: 103), development as both philosophy and practice has been highly contested. Practicing development implies action, and can be traced to one of the overarching mandates of the enlightenment: the need to interfere in human systems because knowledge and technology are a means to

‘correct’ things in the world and arrive at certain agreed-upon ends. In their history of mainstream development, Cowen and Shenton (1995) note that development came to be

considered the key to progress in the 19th Century. At home in Europe extreme poverty, social unrest and frantic urbanization had emerged as countries steamrollered through industrialization, and in the colonies the industrial project was not being replicated and economies were stagnating (Cowen and Shenton 1995: 30-31).6 The remedy was development, and a new discourse and repertoire of practices came about that were influenced by advances in the natural sciences, such as linear modeling, reduction of data to specific variables, and theories of universal stages of progress. Interestingly, and rather circularly, many of the very foundations of these advances in the natural sciences had been borrowed from the politico-economic ideology of English commerce (Livingstone

1992).7

Positivist models of progress and linear reasoning became commonsense

(hegemonic) mechanisms with which to understand and control entire societies, and the discourse of development unfolded within new structures of identification, power and perception, producing new governable subjects and increasing the gap between those who hold power and those who are powerless (Watts 1995: 50-51). This all occurred whilst

6 Hettne (1990) grounds the emergence of modern industrialism, as well as Eurocentric development, in European militarism. Security and struggles for dominance were the original impetus for industrial modernization, and similar military needs between countries meant that development followed a rather standardized path. In Hettne’s summation the mass character of military demand stimulated the rationalization of the production process and the army itself provided a model for the social organization of industrialization. 7 An example of the circularity between politico-economic ideology, scientific foundations and the progress of greater society is found in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Some of the great economic metaphors of English commerce and liberalism, such as rewards for individual achievement, fitness, selection based on merit, and the struggle over scarce resources, factor prominently in Darwin’s work. “It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labour, competition, opening-up of new markets, ‘inventions’, and the Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’” (Marx 1977: 526). Darwin’s work then takes on life of its own and informs all science, including geography (cf. Livingstone 1992), eventually claiming certain metaphors as its own. Those metaphors, now believed to have flowered naturally within the natural sciences, reconfirm the very politico-economic shoots from which they sprouted. In essence the truths of capitalism inform what become the truths of science, which in turn serve as natural rationalizations for capitalism. Gramsci’s hegemony comes to mind (1971).

maintaining a certain air of trusteeship and philanthropy in upper-class European circles.8

Within this rational framework for development it is clear that society came to be understood as something to be affected—something malleable and mouldable—and development could be achieved through purposeful manipulation based on a rational order of progress.9 Thus, Western modernization and ideology, even when the best intentions are posited, share an underlying role of maintaining a dominant order, furthering the status quo and serving the interests of an established ruling class (Leys

1996).

After the Second World War the United States became the rallying powerhouse of

Western modernization, and a central mandate was the active incorporation of more territories within the US sphere of influence (Glassman 2004), though policy was often couched in terms of spreading democracy, freedom, human rights and progress.10

Development was directed at a progression toward Western industrial capitalism, and this informed an entire lexicon of modernization, with words that came to serve as the great metaphors of progress (Porter 1995), such as nation-building, democratization, secularism, freedom, liberation, choice, equality, individual initiative and independence.

Over the last three decades of the Twentieth Century the discourse of development has

8 During the time of imperialism, empiricism blended with scientific racism and attached innate meanings and values to such opposites as primitive/modern, black/white, underdeveloped/developed. Thus science once again was making legitimate a self-fulfilling prophecy that not only placed Europeans (the owners of science) at the top of their own model, but also mandated them to interfere with and impose upon ‘others’ in an effort to rope and corral the ‘savages’ into modernity. 9 It is interesting that development assumed both universal steps toward progress and the need for some form of intervention, betraying a paradox at the core of the discourse between what is natural and what is nurtured. Conveniently those to be nurtured in the grand scheme of things were more often than not the lower classes of European society and the lower races of colonial society, two populations that could not be trusted to achieve their own passage through the universal stages of life without the guiding hand of educated superiors and benevolent masters, respectively. 10 This trend continues today. For instance, it is evident in the George W. Bush Administration’s rationalizations for meddling in Afghanistan and Iraq.

tilted further and further toward a market-oriented mandate, influencing massive reforms throughout the world. Some reforms have been voluntarily adopted, with the promises of wealth generation and the trickle-down effect of increased general welfare. Some reforms have been forced, particularly on the developing world, by wealthy patron countries and lending organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

(IMF), that insist upon neoliberal structural adjustments when lending moneys to client countries (cf. Peet 2003). In the end, mainstream development today continues an historic lineage, with the agency of local human groups and their environmental concerns taking a backseat to the forces of production and capital accumulation.

The present discourse of progress relies upon an implacable faith in the unshackled market and the ability of impoverished groups to work their way out of destitution, if only they ‘properly’ participate in the global division of labour. It also continues the rational lineage, and analyses, forecasts and prescriptions for change are based upon “a logically exact, mathematical economic science backed by quantifiable, truthful, empirical evidence” (Peet 2003: 14). Unfortunately for those communities deemed less developed, social processes have proven far too variable for positivist models and classical-economic assumptions that reduce human activity to a brief catalogue of constituent parts.11 This is evident when economists dismiss unique socio-cultural characteristics as immaterial and apply one-size-fits-all policies to places, “regardless of national circumstances, such as cultural tradition or social structure, and regardless of previous tradition in the political economy of development” (ibid.). The choice of a one

11 All too often modelling becomes an exercise in thinning out the social static. This can lead to one of the central deficiencies of mainstream economics; namely, the convenient dismissal of “awkward facts” (Heilbroner 1992: 102) that fail to fit the model chosen by the researcher.

policy framework implies that different social structures are phenomenal responses to one generic base and that they all are on one linear path to progress, as if culture is created with a cookie-cutter from an essentialized human-economic batter. This necessarily dismisses the uniqueness of culture, and the ramifications of this dismissal are legion.

Indeed a general observation of the state of development reveals one of the results of both classical and neoliberal economic rationalizations: a spatially-uneven world where former colonial powers tend to be wealthier centres of globalization, and previous colonies tend to be poorer backwaters of globalization (cf. Rahnema and Bawtree 1997).

If mainstream development is understood to be a general failure for developing countries, some of the blame also must lie with those groups, populations and organizations that benefit from an uneven international system grounded in fierce competition over access to wealth and power (cf. Chomsky 1999). Upon reflection it is difficult to refrain from being cynical about the motives of mainstream development and the continued lofty rhetoric and claims to philanthropy advanced by state representatives and policy advisors. The lofty rhetoric often turns out to be part and parcel of a hegemonic process of consensus-making, whereby “a distinct class interest” is converted into a general, practical and benevolent interest “that appears to come from theory” (Peet

2003: 18). From this perspective a critical eye may discover that places in the developing world are once again being subjected to a form of Western colonialism (cf. Wallerstein

1979; Harvey 2003; Peet 2003; Gregory 2004; McCoy 2009) with pre-approved ends

(and all-too-often discounted budgets). Within this world-system the proceeds of local/regional development often exit communities and developing countries as fast as

they are realized, and for many communities locally conceptualized and meaningful development remains but a dream.

Challenging the mainstream

Official Western post-World War II modernization policies, and the benefits forecast to

come with industrialization and ever-expanding capital markets, were placed under

increased scrutiny as time elapsed and the promises of all-inclusive development and

general betterment remained unfulfilled. By the 1970s a certain level of “dissatisfaction

with mainstream development crystallized into an alternative, people-centred approach”

(Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 346). This approach was adopted by basic-needs, rights-based

and alternative development practitioners, and at times over the years the trend became

associated with anti-capitalism, green ecology movements, feminism, democratization,

new social movements, and poststructural analysis (ibid.). These alternatives to

mainstream development emerged as more and more academics, development

practitioners and concerned parties recognized that mainstream development simply was

not working and a new approach was necessary.

The new alternative schemes that emerged from critical development studies

increasingly came to be associated with the processes of working from below, engaging

with local communities and incorporating culture, local environment and geographical

history within models and mandates. This diverged greatly from the old-school

econometric models still championed by officialdom and many in academia. Within the

new framework development practitioners tended to focus upon methods, agents and

goals, becoming “practice oriented rather than theoretically inclined”, and the “library

world” of academic knowledge was given a secondary position to a more genuine

knowledge belonging to the people (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 351). What became

apparent over time, however, was that alternative development did not present any real

alternative to mainstream development, but instead offered new insights, such as

grassroots organization and community participation in decision-making, that were

readily incorporated into the mainstream development framework12 (Hettne 1990;

Nederveen Pieterse 1998; Kiely 1999). Nederveen Pieterse notes that the explosion of

non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—“after decades of marginality” and having

now “become major channels of development co-operation”—offers an ironic example:

“Globalization under the sign of the unfettered market is denounced because it clashes with endogenous development, while the mushrooming of NGOs itself is a manifestation of the growing momentum of global civil society” (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 350-51).

Thus alternative development offered a strong criticism of, and new ideas to be incorporated into, mainstream development, but in the end these alternatives did not present a novel, inclusive and coherent approach to some alternate development framework. Nor did these alternatives appear to positively change the trajectory of development in developing countries—they had kindled the flames of change but the flames were choked-out by material circumstances and a hegemonic process of incorporation and realignment. But the quest for change pressed on, and in searching for

12 This incorporation of the new (popular) tenets of alternative development into the mainstream (hegemonic) development discourse brings to mind Gramsci’s concept of ‘passive revolution’ or ‘revolution without revolution’, whereby in order to suppress popular revolt or at least thwart general opposition to state plans, central organizing principles of the populist masses are readily taken up by the dominant group (1971: 106-20). In terms of development this allows for the continued dominance of a hegemonic discourse and set of practices while incorporating popular initiatives (often incorporating them with the singular purpose of emasculating them, perhaps best understood as tokenism or going through the motions).

a new and completely fresh concept amid the intellectual ashes of this mainstream-

alternative lineage, postdevelopment emerged.

Imagining postdevelopment

Sachs argues that development is “a ruin in the intellectual landscape”, a once-promising beacon of hope that now “shows cracks and is starting to crumble” (1992: 1). From this perspective a number of postdevelopment theories have emerged, and they present a well-argued rationale for complete abandonment of all previous development policies and discourses, rhetorically teetering on the edge of nothing less than a paradigm shift.

Escobar, arguably the leading intellectual voice of postdevelopment, states that, rather than needing more development, the developing countries of the world require “a different regime of truth and perception” (1995: 414). With a conscientious application to development of the power geographies conceptualized in Said’s Orientalism13 (1979),

Escobar demonstrates how development has been utilized as “a mechanism for the

production and management of the Third World”, producing entire bodies of knowledge

and, indeed, truths about the Third World (Escobar 1995: 413-414). It is from this

organizing premise that a robust conception of postdevelopment emerges.

Postdevelopment theorists argue that all previous approaches to development,

whether within academic or policy circles, uncritically assume development is the

13 According to Said Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.” Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient” (1979: 2-3). The discourse of Orientalism was intrinsically tied to the power relations of colonialism and western economic domination. An entire system of images and metaphors emerged around a western concept and set of policies that informed and were informed by academia, and geography played an important role, mapping, organizing and presenting Oriental data.

solution to major world problems: inequality, hunger, vice, misery and war. This assumption fails to address the fact that development is an historical object, in and of itself worthy of scrutiny. In essence previous approaches to development never came to terms with the socially constructed nature of development as discourse and praxis (Kiely

1999: 32). It is because of this incapacity to recognize the political, social and ideological threads woven through the discourse that development policies have failed so entirely as to have realized the exact opposite effects, effects that include “massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression,” and greater amounts of poverty, malnutrition and violence (Escobar 1995: 4). The contextualization of development as discourse within a greater network of social and power relations is part and parcel of a general postmodern backlash against i) the myopic knowledge base of modern science, ii) the belief in rational objectivity in the human sciences, iii) the silencing of a cacophony of marginal voices, iv) the application of universal, natural or econometric models in explaining social phenomena or setting policy, and v) the belief in value neutral systems of knowledge. Santos (2004) goes a step further when he describes a series of academic/official ‘monocultures’ that have been produced by the discourse of development, creating the convenient binary between ignorant-inferior-local unproductive societies and scientific-superior-global-productive societies. Similarly

Dirlik (2000) argues that where place-labour-tradition is set against space-capital-history, the superior-spatial side of the binary is considered the proper locus, focus and scale of economic intervention, and the inferior-places are seen as tameable wilds to be domesticated within the global system. These are but some of the organizing premises of the discourse of mainstream development, and when placed beneath the poststructuralist

scalpel the political, ideological and hegemonic processes implicated in the construction of the discourse are exposed. In the end the entire corpus of development knowledge is called into question, a body of knowledge that for a very long time has held the franchise on ‘truth production’.

The idea of truth’s production through development discourse is heavily indebted to the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his insistence that discourse, far from a reflection of reality, actually constructs reality (cf. Foucault 1972). Once we accept this basic premise, our interrogation necessitates an “insurrection of knowledges … against the centralizing power-effects that are bound up with the institutionalization and workings of any scientific discourse organized in a society such as ours” (Foucault 2003:

9). With this in mind postdevelopment theorists argue that the very concept of development establishes a unique way of understanding the world through a precise body of knowledge (Kiely 1999: 31), and this social construct and the language attached to it becomes ‘the’ vehicle with which development workers, policy writers, and even the public are able to approach and navigate the concept of development. Because of the power that the discourse wields it has acted as a “regime of government” in developing countries, a space for creating “subject peoples” (Escobar 1995: 9) who are to be domesticated within a greater colonial, imperial or economic system. In so doing the

Third World and its inhabitants have systematically been constructed and defined by the development discourse and practices that came to prominence shortly after World War II

(Escobar 1995: 4). Much in the same way that Edward Said presented the construction of the Orient and Oriental subjects through discourses negotiated by Europeans, the discourse of development is shown to have emerged from a Western standpoint, and the

vantages of this privileged position set the terms and boundaries within which we are allowed to interpret and engage the ‘Third World Other’.

According to postdevelopment theorists the construction of the Third World has served to support the objectives and goals of mainstream development, which in turn serve to solidify a hegemonic system and network of ruling classes. Some of the more obvious goals include i) an extension of power by developed countries over developing

countries, ii) the incorporation of autonomous communities within the networks of both

states and a larger international system, in terms of ideology, property and labour power,

iii) a change in society and standards of living based upon Western ideals, and iv) the

opening of resource frontiers and cultural backwaters to capital accumulation. These

goals are indicative of a meta-narrative of modernization and progress, and

postdevelopment exposes the narrative’s “arbitrary roots”, pointing towards the interests

and motivations of its very practitioners (Rapley 2004: 350). In the end development is

stripped of its rational and philanthropic rhetoric and exposed as a tool used to further

specific interests, particularly the continued dominance of the West over the ‘rest’, as

well as certain class-relative populations over others.

Once development is recognized as a product of discourse and tool of domination

postdevelopment theorists are left with the hope of realizing new discourses and new

conceptual models, derived locally and imbued with a myriad of voices—grassroots

models that emphasize community planning and participation, environmental awareness,

wealth redistribution, and mutual cooperation. The fresh concepts and models of

postdevelopment would completely abandon the discourse of mainstream development,

not so much ‘rewriting’ as simply ‘writing’ new systems of meaning into daily life and

productivity, breaking down the presuppositions of mainstream development, and leading to “the possibility of imagining a post-development era, one in which the centrality of development as an organizing principle of social life would no longer hold” (Escobar

2000: 11). In this scenario development as a human-economic category that can be abstracted and analyzed disintegrates because the development of specific groups becomes inseparable from lived culture. What we are left with are local autonomous communities whose cultural practices include planning and contributing to certain productive activities, cooperative management of resources, and wealth redistribution, to name a few.

The overarching goals and premises of postdevelopment, as ideal as they may be, have fallen victim to incredible scrutiny in academia. Critiques (often bordering on outright criticism) of postdevelopment have been legion over the past decade or so, and perhaps even greater in number than the very texts to which they offer assessment. Like previous critiques of poststructuralism and postmodernism, there is a tendency to toss the baby out with the bathwater, allowing the power of the critique to completely bury every last detail, leaving nothing of value to be salvaged. But this tendency is ineffective, for even the most material study must address poststructural issues on a conceptual level.

The alternative is regression back to reductionism in the social sciences, and econometric geography by the numbers for the sake of fixed models, instead of geography by and for the people we endeavour to study. Nevertheless the critiques offer further insight into development studies, forcing students to come to terms with both the strengths and weaknesses of postdevelopment theory.

The first criticism to be addressed regards academic homogenization, or a generalization of the experiences of empowerment and disempowerment. Because postdevelopment privileges discourse, the theory tends to construct a generalized opposite to which it is opposed: an “exaggerated conception” of mainstream development

(Storey 2000: 42), a reified opposite that stands in stark contrast to the basics of postdevelopment. Development itself is presented as a homogenous form, “irrespective of time and place” (Kiely 1999: 38). In presenting mainstream development in such a way the heterogeneity of vastly different styles, methods and degrees of development are silenced in the literature. Furthermore this reified concept of a mainstream development that is imposed on the Third World has enabled the homogenization of a Euro-American opposite, namely, the “noble South” (ibid.). Thus, in an age that boasts increased awareness of the diversity of development experiences, “post-development theory is implicitly attempting to impose a new binary divide between First and Third Worlds”

(ibid.).

The second criticism of postdevelopment, and rather connected to the ‘binary divide’, is its propensity to make essential a righteous Third World that rhetorically borders on utopia. In so doing postdevelopment glorifies local culture and knowledge, leading “if not to ethnochauvinism, to reification of both culture and locality” (Nederveen

Pieterse 1998: 366). As Kiely notes (1999: 38-43) postdevelopment includes an ahistorical populism, grounded in romantic conceptions of the past, that in the end fails to address the realities of local power complexes and systems of exploitation. This homogenous celebration of the local and the indigenous seems to have gone astray, almost wandering backward through academic time, as various institutions, policy writers

and development practitioners increasingly incorporate an understanding of local diversity and cultural uniqueness within mainstream development (Radcliffe 2005). In the end, ironically, postdevelopment presents a kind of essentialism that reinforces development discourse, reifies actors in both the First and Third Worlds, and creates a generic subaltern spread indiscriminately across the globe.

Building upon the previous two criticisms the third criticism addresses the fact that an essential postdevelopment that is at loggerheads with an essential mainstream development leaves little room for understanding those local and grassroots projects that deviate from either development framework. For instance, postdevelopment theory tends to express an aversion to capitalism that is intrinsically connected to the romantic ideals of the local and the indigenous. But this aversion is a scholarly one imposed upon developing countries by Western academics, particularly when one considers that many locally-grown, indigenous development projects welcome modernization, individual entrepreneurialism and participation in the market. By being staunchly anti-capitalist postdevelopment fails to consider “the many millions of people who have benefited [from mainstream development] and others whose legitimate aspirations for a better quality of life and more sustainable livelihoods” are tied to more mainstream ideas about development (Simon 2006: 12). Furthermore it is an error to assume that any or all peasants want to sustain their present standards of living in the name of some romantic past, and that they do not aspire to accumulate capital (Kiely 1999: 44). This error leaves local groups who indeed want to participate in modernity largely silenced in the emerging postdevelopment literature.

Other notable postdevelopment essentials that fail to consider the diversity of development include anti-authoritarianism, pro-democracy and egalitarianism—high ideals but hardly realistic as intrinsic components of every local or indigenous development project, real or imagined. Also along this thread of criticism the literature presents a greatly contextual understanding of the diversity of social movements, demonstrating that they are by no means universally anti-bureaucratic, anti-capitalist, anti-technology and anti-commodification (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 363), as postdevelopment theory might lead us to believe. Nor is the power of global capital to be trivialized as postdevelopment overestimates the efficacy of small fragmented social movements (Storey 2000).

The fourth criticism is a methodological one, directed at an epistemological approach that privileges discourse. Much in line with criticisms of poststructuralism in general, Kiely argues: “Recognizing that the ‘objects’ or ‘subjects’ of development can only be known through discourse is not the same as claiming … that they can be reduced to discourse” (1999: 43). He commends the virtues of the discursive turn, but reiterates the shortfalls of neglecting material analysis: “Instead of a politics which critically engages with material inequalities, we have a post-development era where ‘people should be nicer to each other’” (46). His humorous is not lost in argument, nor is the appropriateness of his general critique of poststructural analysis, for no matter how insightful an approach to power relations embedded in systems of knowledge and reality, and no matter what we have learned about the relativity of culture and a myriad of voices, in the end there are real people dealing with real situations and real structures, negotiating a real world beyond the intellectual confines of discourse.

The last criticism launched at postdevelopment relates to its lack of alternatives to or solutions for development as praxis (cf. Nederveen Pieterse 1998; Kiely 1999; Simon

2006). Where postdevelopment criticized earlier alternative developments for devising a number of alternatives that were readily incorporated into mainstream development, thus perpetuating an already existing conduit of power and control, committing a sin of commission (so to speak), postdevelopment commits the sin of omission by not including any workable development alternatives after discourse analysis. This approach has confounded many scholars, particularly those who envision doing development with rolled up sleeves, cultural immersion and dirty fingernails. Indeed, for the last 150 years development has tended to be an applied field of study, whereby interested parties practiced development in the field. Thus it is hardly difficult to intuit the cultural and psychological disconnect between traditional approaches and an approach predicated on discourse.

To where, from here?

Perhaps the biggest questions yet to be answered are whether or not meaningful local development can be grown and sustained within a world of complex articulations between social groups and structuring processes, as well as different scales of social organization, and whether or not the problems inherent in the relations of global capitalism can be ameliorated in any program of development. Postdevelopment fails to answer these questions because, as has been shown, it leaves scant room for synthesis between the historical-material and the essential, and the epistemology has no clear directive beyond the discursive. But then again, to theorize outside the box and imagine

postdevelopment allows for important conceptual and ideological shifts that should not

be discounted. In order to fill the gap in critical development studies that is left in the

wake of postdevelopment a number of writers have called for new directions that follow

from an engagement with postdevelopment theory but move beyond mere critique. As

Gibson-Graham has argued:

The challenge of postdevelopment is not to give up on development, nor to see all development practice—past, present and future, in wealthy and poor countries—as tainted, failed, retrograde; as though there were something necessarily problematic and destructive about deliberate attempts to increase social wellbeing through economic intervention; as though there were a space of purity beyond or outside development that we could access through renunciation. The challenge is to imagine and practice development differently (2005: 6).

Recently the praxis of ‘different’ development has become central to studies of

livelihood, development and place-making on the margins of international capitalism.

Unlike an orthodox postdevelopment stance, this emerging literature neither privileges the rural over the urban, tosses out all things capitalist, nor focuses upon local economies.

Rather it takes postdevelopment as a foundational conceptual platform and brings to the forefront the diversity of development experiences, articulations among microeconomics and macroeconomics, local and global processes, informal and formal sectors, and non- capitalist and capitalist exchange. It speaks about the ‘surplus possibilities’ of place- based livelihood in an overarching capitalist world-system (Gibson-Graham 2005;

2006b). For instance, Bebbington (2000) shows how human agency manoeuvres within structural restraint to produce both livelihood and place in the Andes among the Quichua;

Escobar (2001) draws upon multiple scales of social organization to demonstrate how black identity, territory and culture in Columbia’s rainforest has helped to produce a place-based social movement predicated upon the defence of local culture and local

conceptions of nature; Gibson-Graham (2005) write about a Filipino program that fosters place-based community enterprise, funded by remittances from overseas Filipino workers and organized in conjunction with a Hong Kong NGO; and Pretes and Gibson (2008) discuss enhanced local wellbeing and community development in Kiribati, financed by locally-generated moneys invested in international equity and fixed-income assets. In each of these we see that a surplus of counter-hegemonic possibilities exists for economic development, and that cultural resilience and creativity can present alternatives to the steamroller of international capitalism and its mainstream development paradigm.

Thus, in studies such as these we can imagine the surplus of possibilities that exist for local action as groups encounter extra-local structuring processes. For the present

study the world-system economy is integrated into analyses of smaller-scale

development, and groups of BECs are situated as participants in the economy, albeit as

rather powerless, quasi-indentured participants on the periphery of a peripheral country to

the world-system core (cf. Wallerstein 1979). But the frame within which BECs must

operate scales down one level as well, to that of the state. In many ways it is the

Philippine state itself, as mediator of international exchange, facilitator of foreign and

domestic capital accumulation, sole-legitimate authority on development, and guarantor of a ruling business and landowning elite, that is the most immediate structural force affecting livelihood for the masses and their attempts at community action. Thus it is

pertinent now to spend a few pages discussing the state as material structure, and some of

the theories that have been put forward to explain the modern nation-state. This will help

to ground the following analysis of local development within perhaps the most important

wider material process encountered along the road to community empowerment.

The modern state as structuring process

Within certain academic disciplines, and indeed within common debate, three theoretical trends in understanding the state have garnered attention over the last thirty years. These trends have led to an incredible amount of debate, and Glassman and Samatar (1997) present an excellent review from which to engage the literature. The first theoretical standpoint, and no doubt the most dominant on a global scale in terms of both popular rhetoric and policy influence, is identified with classical economics and contemporary neoliberal ideology. This theory of the state seeks to minimize government involvement in the economy, trusting in—indeed fetishizing—an unfettered market. The free market is both natural and benevolent, an entity with a life of its own, capable of generating enormous wealth that eventually will trickle throughout the entire economic system. Over the last few decades, this concept of the state has been a rallying premise of the

Washington consensus, “an array of market-oriented principles designed by the government of the United States and the international financial institutions that it largely dominates” (Chomsky 1999: 19). Concomitant with the importance of free markets is the belief in the general ineffectiveness of bureaucracy and the inability to reconcile political systems and economics. Glassman and Samatar refer to this theoretical position as liberal-pluralist, noting that the state is envisioned as a “neutral arbiter of social processes, standing above conflicts over such matters as distribution of wealth or provision of social services” (1997: 166). Its basic roles are reduced to supporting the integrity of money, and reinforcing private property rights and free markets through police, military and judiciary functions (Harvey 2007).

In contrast to the liberal-pluralist approach various stands of Marxism present an alternative reading of the modern state. In general Marxist analysis sees the state as an agent of capitalism, facilitating and maintaining entrenched patterns of exploitation within society and representing the interests of certain classes over others. Glassman and

Samatar (1997) argue that there has been an unnecessary division between Marxists who i) focus upon the manner in which capitalists manipulate the state in the quest for realizing surplus value, ii) those who emphasize the structural mechanisms that constrain the state to the advantage of capital accumulation, and iii) those who turn to class struggle as the basis for understanding the state and its dialectical roles of steward of a people and agent of an economic system. The disjuncture between these competing logics, when spelled out so clearly, is misleading and of little value—there is an element of importance in all approaches, and they appear more relevant and sociologically robust when taken together, rather than as separate lenses of inquiry. Indeed, all three approaches to Marxist scholarship are what Marx would have envisioned as one and the same thing—like a three-headed coin that can be flipped but never truly stops spinning in the air—namely, ways in which the capitalist state can be dissected and understood within a system of driving capital, structural constraint, and class antagonism.

The final trend in theorizing the state developed within neo-Weberian camps in the late 1980s (Glassman 2004), and this approach somewhat blends the state-driven economics of Keynes with the political sociology of Weber. Focusing upon state intervention, neo-Weberians present a counter to both liberal and Marxist approaches, as well as a cogent polemic to the discourse of neoliberalism. The theory emphasizes both the present instances of state direction within economies and the historical role of the

state in the very centres of neoliberalism (cf. Mann 1988; Wade 1990). Some recent examples include the determining role of the state in the economic growth of Japan and the four ‘Asian Tigers’ during the last two decades of the Twentieth Century (cf. Harvey

2007). Historical examples include protectionist measures in both the United States and

Great Britain in key industries, such as agriculture and manufacturing. With these instances in mind, neo-Weberians “refuse to privilege the explanatory power of economic forces and attempt to identify the bureaucratic rationale of state institutions,” exploring the ways in which state structuring processes create social phenomenon that cannot be strictly explained by the relations of production (Glassman and Samatar 1997: 167).

These theories of the state offer much insight into the workings of the world-system economy. Each, to a greater or lesser degree, helps to illuminate how capitalism manifests, or becomes grounded, within different sovereign territories, how those different territories interact as economic agents, and how economic and extra-economic forces (cf. Marx 1965) continue to coexist within a global system that is at least premised upon the absolute rationale of markets. These three theories of the state will be kept in mind throughout the chapters that follow, and returned to in Chapter Seven.

* * *

From a theoretical vantage we can see the extension of postdevelopment to include surplus possibilities as an integral concept injected with a dose of realism, a grounding of ideal development in the complex lives of multiple actors and structural elements, including the state and the economic world-system. In subsequent chapters Catholic

Church-based social action in the Diocese of San Carlos, Philippines, is discussed, and it

is shown to be one possibility that has emerged as part of the surplus of development alternatives. But before engaging the case study, the next chapter provides an historical- geographical overview of the Republic of the Philippines, broadly bringing us up to speed on the wider political-economy to which the Diocese belongs, and setting the stage for an understanding of community action within one state apparatus, and in the hinterlands of the international economy.

REPUBLIKA NG PILIPINAS:

A BACKDROP IN REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE

The Republic of the Philippines is a country of incredible diversity, both in terms of the land and its people. It is a place of seas, shoals and ocean trenches, mountain ranges and plains, tropical and semi-arid climatic zones, abundant natural resources, and unique human groups that speak dozens of languages and exhibit distinct cultural practices. And all this variety is contained within a single sovereign territory spread over thousands of islands. Though difficult at times to sort through, the variety is to be celebrated and can be organized into manageable categories. For instance, as introduction to this study a thematic regional perspective serves well as a broad social and geographic backdrop to the country, presenting an overview of the Philippine experience. Key themes are employed as categories to better organize the variety of natural and human phenomena, and though there are countless possible themes for the description of a country as diverse as the Philippines, three in particular are selected to produce a holistic and interconnected conception of the land and the people. The themes are ‘regionalism’, ‘marginality’ and

‘crisis’, and they come together as a regional synthesis of history, socio-geography and natural environment. This synthesis provides a state- and national-level context in which to place both Negros, the island where fieldwork was conducted, and the Diocese of San

Carlos, the case study itself.

Regionalism

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7107 islands, located in Southeast Asia and bordered by the South China, Celebes and Philippine seas (Figure 3.1). The total sovereign area approximates 1.3 million square kilometres, of which 300,000 square kilometres is land

(Wernstedt and Spencer 1967). The islands are the result of orogenic forces acting upon the Pacific Rim of Fire, a designation geologists have given to the belt of geo-tectonic activity that stretches from New Zealand, through Southeast Asia and Japan, over to

Alaska, and down the west side of the Americas. Over geologic time, the islands have formed, transformed and collapsed along the faults and fissures of the Rim of Fire.

Because of continuous, disjunctive and uneven oceanic mountain-building processes over millions of years, the islands of the Philippines exhibit a substantial degree of diversity, both physiographic and climatic.

The physiography of the Philippines shows much regional variation among islands.

Smaller islands can consist entirely of a flat stretch of arable land or a rocky peak that juts forth from the ocean. Nearly any blend of landforms is imaginable between these two extremes and can be found just across the water on an adjacent island. The larger islands demonstrate their own internal assortment of regions. For instance, Luzon is the largest island in the archipelago with 35 percent of the land surface; it is comprised of three mountain ranges that tower to 2700 metres, broad valleys, a central plain, a peninsula that is larger than all but a handful of other Philippine islands, the longest river in the country

(the Cagayan) and the largest inland lake in Southeast Asia, Laguna de Bay (cf.

Wernstedt and Spencer 1967). Mindanao, the second largest island, is irregularly shaped with deep bays and large peninsulas. It contains five mountain ranges and Mt Apo

Figure 3.1: The Philippines

(2954m), the highest peak in the country, as well as steep valleys, two large interior

lowlands, and a number of swampy plains. Other large and diverse islands include Samar,

Negros, Panay and Mindoro.

The physical characteristics of the country in many ways resemble those of

countries on the coast of mainland Asia, with similarities in geomorphology, climate,

vegetation and soils (Wernstedt and Spencer 1967). In the Philippines rainfall varies

between less than 100mm in certain regions to greater than 500mm in others, depending

upon altitude, latitude and distance from the coast. Partly as a result of this discrepancy

there is a high degree of differentiation in both vegetation and the development of soils;

local landscapes range from stunted forests and grasslands to the heaviest and wettest of

tropical forests. This physical variability coexists with regional differences along socio

cultural lines. As Wernstedt and Spencer state (1967): “basic differences in language, religion, economy, and domestic dietary result from a long period of human occupation during which patterns of life have both yielded to environmental regionalisms and exploited these regional variations in significant manner” (3). Wernstedt and Spencer

may have been writing during an academic heyday of environmental determinism, but

they do imply that culture and environment mutually articulate with one another, and this

articulation produces unique life histories and cultural complexity. It is toward this social

side of regional variation that we now turn.

The Philippines has the twelfth largest population in the world, estimated to have

surpassed 92 million in 2009 (CIA 2011b), divided between eighty provinces.14 Of the total population, nearly 90 percent are Christian, 6 percent are Muslim and less than 2

14 An additional ten to twelve million Filipinos live abroad as Overseas Filipino Workers.

percent practice Chinese religions (San Juan 2006). In general the majority of the population is considered to share the lowland peasant culture. This is made up of a series of Malay cultures differentiated by pre-Hispanic culture, geography, and unique encounters with Christianity and Islam (ibid.). Of this Malay family, there are twenty- seven major ethnolinguistic groups, and the three largest, the Tagalog, the Cebuano and the Ilocano, account for more than 50 percent of the population of the Philippines. There are also nine greater groups of Indigenous Peoples: the B’laan, Bontocs, Ibaloi, Lumad,

Mangyan, Maranao, Negrito, Tagbanua and Tausug (cf. WikiPilipinas 2011). Although

Filipino (a derivative of Tagalog) and English are the official languages of the state, indigenous languages continue to have relevance in the daily lives of Filipinos and, similar to the landscape variety, there is a pattern of cross-island, inter-island, and intra island linguistic variability.

Partly due to the ethnolinguistic variability, as well as the saliency of regional and island identities, there is little sense of a coherent national identity. Indeed, in trying to come to terms with Filipino nationalism one must accept a pluralized conception of the nation; there is not one but “many nationalisms across time and space, and with differing collective subjects/actors with changing state/civil society relationships, and differing meanings and discursive formations” (Hogan 2006: 123). Thus the average Filipino is bound by allegiances rooted in multiple scales of identity formation that stretch horizontally across the landscape, and this overwhelms any attempt at ‘inventing’ (cf.

Hobsbawm 1995) a national self-referent that is accepted by the masses. For instance, during the 1990s, President Fidel Ramos tried to strengthen Filipino unity with the invention of what he called ‘Filipinism’, a national identity grounded in the writings of

José Rizal,15 meant to unite all Filipinos through identification with the flag, the anthem

and significant events in Philippine history (Bankoff and Weekly 2002). Although it

appears that President Ramos had studied Benedict Anderson’s Imagined communities

(1991), arguably ‘the’ book about official nationalism, Ramos’s best efforts were in vain, for a general commitment by Filipinos to a national identity remains stalled (Pertierra

2002).

Distinct from official state narratives, there is some literature on the production of

Filipino identity through the popular materialization of culture. For instance, in line with

Foster’s (1991) overview of objectifying the nation through commodification and consumption, Milgram (2005) demonstrates how traditional clothing and fashion shows play a role in the production of a national imaginary, and Labrador (1999) writes about the role of contemporary Philippine art in constructing the nation. Also, Aguilar makes gambling the underlying theme of his history of the sugar economy on Negros island, and cockfighting can be interpreted as ‘the’ national pastime, one large root on a Philippine

“cultural tree with many branches, natural and grafted, that nonetheless possess internal articulation” (1998: 7). Thus the popular constructions of national identity are shown to be part of a counter-discourse to any official state narratives of nation. But yet again, whether or not they genuinely foment nationalism is questionable; identity formation in the first two cases seems reserved for the elite/upper middleclass who can afford to purchase it; and the case of cockfighting does not address, in Anderson’s (1991) sense of

15 Rizal – author, intellectual, national hero of the Philippines (b.1861). Implicated in the Philippine Revolution (1896-1898), he was executed by the Spanish military, 30 December 1896. Interestingly, Rizal was made the national hero of the Philippines by the American Governor General, William Howard Taft, in 1901, shortly after the Americans took control of the country. The move, which led to Rizal Day, a Philippine national holiday (30 December), was meant to demonstrate that the American colonizers were more pro-Filipino than the previous Spanish colonizers (cf. Anderson 2006).

imagining, the extent to which participation in the games leads individuals to identify at all with a geographically wider cohort.

Sub-nationality in Philippine governance can be understood within a regional theme as well. The country is a presidential republic with a bicameral legislature, divided into seventeen administrative regions, but historically the authority of the state has been

“diminished by difficult terrain, fragmented territory and ethnic diversity” (de Dios 2007:

158). Today, a descending scale of subsequent levels of government includes i) eighty provinces and twenty-eight independent component cities, ii) 1500 municipalities and eighty-five component cities, and iii) 41,971 barangays, which are the smallest local- government unit, similar to groups of villages or wards (Hill et al. 2007). Provinces are headed by governors, municipalities by mayors, and barangays by captains. All are elected to a three-year term and each tier is a fairly autonomous level of governance, though subject to some supervision by higher levels (ibid.). The authority vested in each of these tiers of local government increased after the election of Corazon Aquino in 1986.

She committed the Philippines to a neoliberal schedule of decentralization, shifting a fair degree of power, administrative function and responsibility away from the state and into the sub-national apparatus; her policy came with the promise that local autonomy, innovative participation in local markets and the discovery of competitive advantage would bring general development to depressed communities (Legaspi 2001). Thus the

Local Government Code of 1991 institutionalized a new, widespread set of relations between the centre and the regions, wherein previously state-controlled services, such as agriculture, health, social services, public works and environmental management, were

transferred to local government, along with shares of nationally-collected tax revenues to

cover operational costs (ibid.).

Sub-national political divisions are further exacerbated by variation in regional

economic performance. For instance, the central plain of Luzon, which is the largest

lowland area, is also the most economically important; there, agriculture is dominated by

large estates with numerous tenants and few owners, as opposed to the smallholder farms

that populate the mountain areas (Bello et al. 2005). As we will see in the next chapter,

these circumstances are repeated on the island of Negros, where a select few families

control the fertile plains of sugar production, and those who live on the mountain-margins

subsist for the most part on smallholder rice production. What is apparent throughout the

country is incredible economic discrepancy between regions of surplus production and

regions of utter deficit, and the particulars of this trend show very little divergence over

time:

there have been no major changes in Philippine economic geography over the past two decades; that is, the ranking of regions by socioeconomic indicators has changed relatively little. In fact, this has probably been the case for longer, though trends prior to the mid-1980s are less precisely measured (Hill et al. 2007: 41).

Even within regions there is much variability; commercial agriculture competes side-by

side with subsistence agriculture, non-food crops are grown alongside food crops, and modern scientific growing technologies are employed side-by-side with traditional growing practices (Wernstedt and Spencer 1967). Thus it is not uncommon to see a field worked with industrial farm equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars adjacent to a

field full of carabaos (water buffalos) pulling wooden ploughs.

The theme of regionalism in the Philippines would be incomplete if it did not

address the contrast between the republic and bordering countries. To begin with, the

historical development of the Philippines stands apart from its Southeast Asian neighbours; pre-European Filipino societies were never organized into a court culture or kingdom, unlike those of China, India, Indonesia and Thailand (Hogan 2006).

Furthermore, due to an uninterrupted series of colonial encounters (Spanish, American,

Japanese, American) and the predominance of Christianity, the Philippines can be conceptualized as “in but not of Asia” (Hogan 2006: 115). The division between the

Philippines and its neighbours persist into the present, particularly in terms of the economic successes of the latter. The Philippines is considered to be a developing country, and it stands out among many neighbours for its general levels of poverty and poor macro-economic showing over the last several decades. After WWII the Philippines appeared in a strong position to outperform other Asian economies; state institutions were in place and the government was ‘reasonably’ democratic, education standards were among the highest in the region, the island was not marred by extreme ethnic conflict, and the country had privileged access to the American economy (Balisacan and Hill

2002). Yet, over the last half-century the per-capita income of the Philippines was outpaced by South Korea and Taiwan in the 1950s, Thailand in the 1970s, Indonesia in the 1980s, and finally China in the 1990s. Indeed the Philippines nearly missed out on the

Asian explosion of the last few decades of the Twentieth Century (ibid.).

Bello et al. (2005) attribute the poor economic performance in the Philippines over the last thirty years to the business savvy of another group of regional neighbours, the

Japanese. There has been a massive discrepancy between the levels of Japanese investment in the Philippines and in other countries in the region. Between 1985 and

1993 approximately USD 51 billion of Japanese capital poured into the Asia Pacific, but

Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand each received upwards of fifteen times more than the

Philippines (ibid.). This inconsistency is argued to have resulted from Japanese business people who identified the Philippines as a weak site for growing capital markets, due in large part to the Philippine government priority of debt repayment at the expense of developing local and national markets (ibid.). Unlike other blatantly-predatory foreign economic meddling, such as the American colonization of the Philippines (cf. McCoy

2009), the Japanese sought to develop the entire Asia-Pacific region with multiple scales of internally-healthy markets. Thus the Philippines presented neither as a strong candidate for domestic growth nor as a candidate for Japanese funding. Today, two important outcomes of these processes are a globally-integrated Philippine economy shackled to foreign capital, and a stagnant domestic economy characterized by selective liberalization and underinvestment in physical infrastructure (Hill et al. 2007).

Altogether, the country is seen as a marginal entity among its more prosperous neighbours, and it is towards a more robust theme of Philippine marginality that we now turn.

Marginality

From the very first inklings of globalization into the present the Philippines can be understood as a country on the margins, with all that that implies. Indeed, if the first circumnavigation of the earth, completed by Ferdinand Magellan’s crew (1519-22), is accepted as the original act of globalization (Davies 2004), then the original act of anti- globalization just may have been carried out 27 April 1521, when the warrior chief Lapu-

Lapu killed Magellan at the Battle of Mactan, a small island off the coast of Cebu. But

that opening act of resistance was unable to halt the coming tide of global processes, of which European colonization was a significant part. The first attempt by Europeans to colonize what would become the Philippine archipelago, the Guy Gómez de Villalobos expedition (1543-45), was “an unqualified failure” by most estimates; all it accomplished was branding the inhabitants of the islands “for four centuries with the name of a 14 year-old Iberian prince” (Scott 1982: 49). The real colonial encounter began 13 February

1565, when Miguel López de Legazpi landed and established San Miguel on the island of

Cebu. Once in place, the colony fell under the administration of Mexico City between the years 1596 and 1821.16 Although originally chosen for Spanish strategic purposes of safe military ports adjacent to Asia and safe portage for goods travelling between Asia and the

Americas, it was later realized that both the native peoples and the land were resources that could serve new global markets.

The new land that de Legazpi reported to the Spanish crown was one of small scattered settlements, primarily located along coastal areas and rivers. Nothing approached the size of a modern European city or the cities of Mesoamerica and Asia, let alone a state with military and bureaucratic control (Anderson 1998). The population of the archipelago in the Sixteenth Century is estimated to have been around two million people, and the few larger settlements that had developed with Chinese and Arab trade, in the central plain of Luzon and around what would become the national capital, seldom exceeded a few thousand individuals (Newson 2006). Predominantly the indigenous islanders congregated in small political communities, or barangays, held together by ethnolinguistic and kinship ties, and separated one from another by local terrain:

16 Spanish administration was briefly interrupted by British occupation (1762-64).

barangay, a term that stemmed from the Tagalog word for “boat.” The majority of precolonial Filipino societies had a tripartite class structure, one with which early modern Europeans could easily identify and empathize: nobility, their free supporters, and serfs. Each barangay was ruled by a hereditary datu … whereas the timawa and maharlika were born free, and the alipin … were considered serfs or slaves (Irving 2010: 34).17

Each community was largely self-sufficient and group cohesion was fostered by a dense network of social bonds vis-à-vis more rigid formal structures (Hill et al. 2007). In barangay societies there was no concept of private property in land; chiefs, or datu, acted as community administrators of the lands, and individuals “participated in the community ownership of the soil and the instruments of production” (Constantino 2008: 36). Under the colonial regime the time-honoured local authority of this pre-existing population of chiefs was utilized by administrators, proved indispensable to the maintenance of both local and regional control, and the power vested in them led to the first indigenous upper- class in the colony, the principalía (de Dios 2007).

The colonization of the islands required little force and time,18 and out in the hinterlands the Church served as arbiter between the Spanish and the indigenous people.

For two centuries colonial subjects had almost no contact with secular administrators, and the friars, on a divine mission to combat heathenism across the landscape, spread across

17 Scott (1982: 129) identifies four distinct types of class-relative societies in the pre-Hispanic islands: 1) “classless societies”; 2) “warrior societies”, in which class is distinguished by prowess in battle; 3) “petty plutocracies”, in which class is determined by inheritance of real property; and 4) “principalities”, characterized by a central authority, ruling class and inherited rights to political office. Constantino (2008), however, argues that the presence of chiefs, freemen and dependent-slaves does not constitute a class-based society, and ritual and administrative hierarchies are not the substance of class relations in the pre-Hispanic islands: “There can be no real classes when there is not enough surplus to feed a parasitic ruling class” (34). Anderson (1991) argues that the very categories that Scott lifts from Spanish archives—“principales, hidalgos, pecheros, and esclavos (princes, noblemen, commoners and slaves)”—are themselves transplants from medieval Iberia projected onto the population of the Philippines as the first censuses were imagined by colonial authorities (167). 18 Scott refutes official Spanish history that insists the conquest was easy and speedy: “Spanish records regularly tabulate the tribute-paying population but ignore the existence of any other population” (1982: 22). This calls into question any formal conclusions about what percentage of the population at any given time was actually conquered.

administratively subdivided territories allocated to specific religious orders (Aguilar

1998). As intermediaries, the clergy set about learning the numerous local languages and

used these to intercede in colonial affairs as true cultural middlemen, leaving Spanish to

official discourse.19 Thus clerical acumen in local language facilitated wide-spread

conversions to Catholicism, but it also had power implications: “only their rulers had a

common archipelago-wide speech” with which to control the subjugated (Anderson 1998:

195).20 The Church’s role was more than proselytizer or servant to the crown, however, for it was given substantial moral authority over the wellbeing of the inhabitants by King

Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598); the “conscience of the aging monarch” was troubled by the “inhuman depredations of the conquistadors in the Americas” and he sought a more compassionate and moral approach to governing the indigenous people of the Philippines

(Anderson 2006: 86). Thus, in the new colony, the Spanish settled on a program of

Christianization and cultural development meant to ameliorate the more-exploitative aspects of colonization.21 For instance, educating the subjugated was a priority, and it had important socioeconomic impacts on the transformation of the islands, with the oldest universities and the first modern public education system in Asia placing Filipinos among the most educated Asian subjects (cf. Coleman 2009).

19 By the end of Spanish colonialism, no more than 5 percent of the indigenous population could speak Spanish (Anderson 1998). 20 The friars efforts can also be understood as counter-hegemonic; the “monopoly on linguistic access to the natives gave [the friars] an enormous power which no secular group shared; fully aware of this, the friars persistently opposed the spread of the Spanish language” (Anderson 2006: 87). 21 In many ways Catholicism (or any evangelical denomination) can be interpreted as the handmaiden of an emerging international capitalism, mediated through a number of colonial encounters. Yet for many indigenous Filipinos conversion was a sternly practical choice—conversion and acceptance of the Spanish authority liberated many from a tyrannical chieftain, and later the friars served to liberate further the recently liberated from their Spanish liberators (cf. Scott 1982).

The most drastic spatial reordering of the landscape under colonialism came about

through the policy of reducción, or relocation into larger centres that were built around a

church and in which the local friar and his principalía governed. This quasi-urbanization

greatly changed many indigenous social structures, and it served as an effective means to

control colonial subjects, especially in terms of dispossessing them of their primary

means of production, the land. However, reducción was plagued from the start by

indigenous resistance and was unable to fully flower into the colonial panoramic

envisioned by the Spanish (Aguilar 1998). Thus the colonized and colonizers eventually

had to reach an agreement on settlement: the poblacion-barrio-sitio system that continues

today. Poblacion-barrio-sitio is a system of scaled habitation, in which the central church

is located in a poblacion (large population centre), surrounded by subordinate barrios

(villages), which in turn are surrounded by smaller communities called sitios

(Constantino 2008).

Customary tenure all but disappeared under resettlement as communal lands were

transformed into private property, and indigenous social forms were reconfigured to

become more effectively exploited by the colonizers. By the 1850s friar lands were the

only sites of large-scale agriculture, and the “quarrelling Orders” of clergy, fighting over

parcels of land, “pioneered commercial agriculture” and laid down the roots of a hacienda system (Anderson 1998: 195), although the system was not feudal in the classic European

sense:

the set-up which emerged was an artificial one, an imposition from without, a transplantation of decaying institutions of a feudal nature from a conquering country with a growing capitalist base. Therefore, while feudalism in Europe antedated capitalism, in the Philippines feudal relations … were a consequence of capitalist incursion (Constantino 2008: 39).

Thus the Spanish brought the inhabitants of the Philippines into the European network of trade and strategic alliance through a politico-economic system centred on large land holdings and the production of cash crops, such as sugar, tobacco and copra. As a result, over a few hundred years most indigenous subsistence bases were eroded and a new class of landless peasants was added to a growing system of international capital accumulation

(Nadeau 2005). This in turn led to new class-relative structures that almost eradicated pre-Hispanic social systems.

Similar to numerous European colonial encounters, the colony was divided socio

politically along racial or ethnic lines. Peninsulars, or whites of Spanish descent born in

Spain, were the original elite, holding numerous military and colonial-administrative

positions, and owning land. Creoles, or whites of Spanish descent born in the colony,

came second and held numerous government and church positions. The mestizos were a

population of half indigenous and half Spanish or Chinese descent, and as merchants and

cultural brokers they were in third position. After significant immigrant groups, such as

Muslims and Chinese, the indio, or indigenous peoples, were the lowest class of citizens

in Spain’s Las Islas Filipinas. This hodgepodge hierarchy led to numerous skirmishes

among racially-defined groups, particularly in larger centres, such as Manila, where in

the 1860s “pride, envy, place-hunting, and caste hatred [were] the order of the day”

between peninsulars and creoles, and between the whites and the mestizos (Jagor 1965:

16). Nevertheless, by the end of the Nineteenth Century the country’s economy was

predominantly controlled by the mestizos, who had become a small class of landed elite

with a focus on export crops. As we will see next, the emergence of this propertied class

is a lesson in marginality itself.

Since the beginnings of Spanish colonialism Chinese immigrants found niches as petty merchants and craftsmen in the major centres. Over time, as the Spanish administrators continued to concentrate their efforts on the bulk shipment of goods between China and Mexico, the Chinese in the Philippines worked throughout the archipelago to build internal markets for imported goods and to facilitate the export of local products (Constantino 2008). They would eventually dominate the growing import- export economy, and as colonial society changed in response to their movements throughout the islands, there emerged the distinct mestizo ethnic group—originally the offspring of Spaniards (including friars) and indigenous women, but later the offspring of

Chinese men and local women. This was perhaps the socio-structural cornerstone for the next three centuries of social, political and economic change in the archipelago, and mestizo dominance continues today. Early after the appearance of the mestizos, Spanish law was adapted to recognize the new population, and the newcomers produced their own unique socio-cultural identity:

Christianized through their mothers, organized in their own guilds (gremios), compelled to avoid political transvestism by wearing a distinctive costume and coiffure, these children, and their in-marrying further descendents, came to form a distinct stratum of colonial society (Anderson 1998: 196).

By the 1740s the mestizos were conscious of the political value of their in-between

statuses—Spanish-indigenous, Chinese-indigenous and, as a group, Chinese-Spanish—

and they were well on their way to replacing the original colonial elite that had become

insignificant and even impoverished in the colony (Aguilar 1998). It was not until 1762,

however, during the British occupation of Manila, when events fell into place that would

usher in a new era of mestizo dominance in the Philippines.

After a brief two years of British occupation the ethnic Chinese were expelled from

the colony by the Spanish, accused of collaboration with the British occupiers.22 This act could have collapsed the import-export business. Fortunately, the mestizos were quick to fill the ensuing vacuum, and they reinvigorated the industry and controlled it until 1850, when the Spanish lifted the ban on Chinese residence.23 The ban was revoked as a means

to stimulate the lagging economy, and the business-savvy Chinese immediately began to

displace the mestizos and reconfirm their central place in the import-export trade. As a

result the mestizos, who just happened to have accumulated oodles of money over the last century, required a new niche in the colonial economy. Their business experience had shown them the value of land in an export-crop economy, and they began buying up large

estates with the intention of expanding agriculture into a full-scale commercialized

enterprise (Anderson 1998). In less than half a century mestizo wealth through

landownership culminated in an inter-island mestizo power-bloc rooted in regional

hacienda agriculture, as opposed to the capital city, and reinforced by regional linguistic

barriers (ibid.).24 This became the groundwork25 for the present Philippine system of

democracy based upon political dynasties:

By 1907, therefore, the foundations of political leadership in the Philippines had been established. These foundations consisted of the contending factions or blocs in provincial politics, which, in turn, were based on the contending alliances in the

22 This was not the first time that the Spanish had found an excuse to relieve themselves of the Chinese in the Philippines. Royal decrees of expulsion happened in 1686, 1744, 1747 and 1754, but these were never fully enforced and always eventually revoked—it seems the Spanish realized that, invariably, a major economic recession followed each expulsion. Numerous popular clashes with the Chinese effectively reduced the population as well. For example, in 1603 and 1639 respectively, an estimated 24,000 and 23,000 Chinese were massacred in civil revolt (cf. Irving 2010). 23 By 1810, in a colony of 2.5 million people, there were about 120,000 mestizos (Constantino 2008). 24 Anderson’s analysis serves as an excellent case-study accompaniment to Comaroff and Comaroff (1992), who conceptualize class-relative interfaces with ethnicity. 25 Nowhere else in the tropical colonies of Asia did an indigenous elite take root and grow from an indigenous-planter economy during colonial rule (cf. McCoy 1992).

towns. And the latter were made up of the leading families. The family invested the party with its interests, and the party escorted and ushered the family into politics (Corpuz 1965: 97).

By the end of the Twentieth Century 44 percent of all arable land in the Philippines was owned by 5.5 percent of all landowning families, and nearly all elected offices at the national level were controlled by as few as 100 families (Vatikiotis 1996).

* * *

The lure of land and labour on the margins of capitalist expansion must have been weighing heavily upon the Americans when they colonized the Philippines in 1901, and the sacrifice of 4200 American soldiers and upwards of 200,000 Filipino civilians

(McCoy 2009) must have been considered a justifiable cost, all in the name of human progress. In the words of Daniel Williams, Secretary of the Philippine Commission, speaking in 1901, we can intuit a connection between the historic discourse of development addressed in the preceding chapter and the linear path to progress and manifest destiny of the American colonizers:

A new government is being created from the ground up, piece being added to piece as the days and weeks go by. It is an interesting phenomenon, this thing of building a modern commonwealth on a foundation of medievalism—the giving to this country at one fell swoop all the innovations and discoveries which have marked centuries of Anglo-Saxon push and energy. I doubt if in the world’s history anything similar has been attempted; that is, the transplanting so rapidly of the ideas and improvements of one civilization upon another. The whole fabric is being made over (quoted in Go 2005: 1).

By 1902 the two most pressing objectives of the new American colonial administration were the further development of plantations and the expansion of the mining industry

(Pomeroy 1992). The Americans upheld the manorial system as a means for American

corporations to gain access to landownership (Nadeau 2005), and exploration geologists

began to identify enclaves of mineral potential. It was soon discovered that the archipelago’s location on the Pacific Rim of Fire translated into an immensity of resource wealth, particularly hard-rock minerals, such as copper, gold, lead, nickel, silver and zinc, and by 1941 the Philippines was the world’s fifth largest gold producer (Holden and

Jacobson 2007a).

In 1946 the Philippines was granted political independence from the United States.

However, economic interdependence persisted and, in exchange for helping to rebuild the country after WWII, the US strong-armed the new republic into accepting trade agreements that essentially made “the Philippines a supplier of cheap raw materials and human resources … and a receiving ground for U.S.-manufactured goods” (Schirmer and

Shalom 1987: 90). Over the last half century mining has poisoned naturally productive areas and displaced communities of people, renewable stocks of natural resources such as wood and fish have been decimated by international demand, and the average Filipino has seen a decrease in living standards (cf. Bello et al. 2005). Once again the Philippines can be understood as existing on the margins of someone else’s world economy, a hinterland of resources and labour that feeds a global network of trade and capital accumulation, and life today for the vast majority of Filipinos is a life of basic subsistence. Unemployment hovers just below 10 percent and at least 27 percent of the population lives below the Asia-Pacific poverty line, equivalent to USD 1.35 per day

(Dumlao 2008). Three quarters of the officially impoverished are rural poor engaged in agriculture (Balisacan and Hill 2002), indentured to the landowning mestizos that control government. Agriculture provides 20 percent of GDP and employs 50 to 60 percent of the country’s active labour force (Saturnino et al. 2007).

Sixty-five percent of Filipinos live in urban centres, and Quezon City, Caloocan and

Manila are the largest. All three fall within the metropolitan area of Manila, with an

estimated population of twenty million. When the national capital area is taken with the

adjacent regions of Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog, these three account for 55

percent of national economic output, and demographics show only 13 percent poverty as

opposed to an average of 34 percent in other regions (Hill et al. 2007). Other notable

economic centres are Davao City on Mindanao and Cebu City on the island of Cebu, with

populations in the range of one million. The majority of the urban population exists on

very few resources and has very little in common with the business and governing elite.26

Although the cities are bustling with economic activity and a high degree of prosperity, vast tracks of these urban centres are spaces of marginality. Much of the urban population lives in shantytowns and squatter settlements, and a massive informal sector supplements many impoverished households (cf. Kelly 2000). An example of this is the families that live in and around municipal garbage dumps, and who scavenge for materials that can be recycled or resold. In the end, just as rural life in the Philippines can be understood as marginal to urban life, the vast majority of both rural and urban Filipinos are marginal to an international economy.

Today the national economy is dominated by services (Table 3.1), and the most important of these include trade, and private and government services (Balisacan and Hill

2002). In terms of private services, the Philippines now ranks number one, ahead of

India, for the largest revenues from outsourced call centres (Srivastava 2010). However,

26 For instance, the USD 1.35 per day that supports more than a quarter of the Filipino population can be juxtaposed with the fortunes of the members of the 1992 Philippines Congress, where no less than 178 of the total 195 members were USD millionaires (Potter 2000).

manufacturing is the most dominant single source of revenue within the national economy, followed closely by the agricultural and livestock industries.

Table 3.1: Percent Shares Of Sectors In Current Price GDP

SECTOR YEAR 2000 ______Agriculture, Fishery & Forestry 16 Crops 10.10 Livestock 3.41 Fisheries 2.53 Forestry 0.12

Industry 31 Mining/Quarrying 0.62 Manufacturing 22.11 Construction 5.21 Utilities 2.92

Services 53 Transport, Comm & Storage 5.69 Trade 14.20 Finance 4.64 Rental & Real Estate 6.85 Private Services 11.41 Govt Services 9.80 ______(Adapted from Balisacan and Hill 2002)

Unemployment and lack of opportunity at home, as well as the benefits of having a society committed to education and skills training, has resulted in a few significant spatial trends. Firstly, there is significant migration from poorer areas to richer areas, particularly among the better educated, and this “brain drain” has been exacerbated by “the spatial patterns of employment creation in the wake of trade liberalization” (Hill et al. 2007: 26).

Secondly, many Filipinos have left their country to work overseas, and 2009 remittances from roughly eight million overseas Filipino workers contributed USD 17.35 billion (a

value approximating 10% of GDP) to the economy and helped to lift many families out

of poverty (Remo 2010). The funds can float desperate families off the brink of financial

collapse and sustain them for as long as a relative is sending money home. Furthermore,

foreign capital can be used for community infrastructure, when enough remittances are

pooled together. Interestingly, this boost of cash into local economies serves the elite who

control state finances: i) state revenues that would have been imperative for local development can be self-directed by officials with their own agendas, ii) the onus of

general welfare is deflected onto the family or local community, and iii) those families

with a relative working overseas are politically placated by their very good fortunes when

among the less-fortunate in their own communities. Thus the onerous process of

qualifying and financing a family member for work abroad, which can involve a wide-

spectrum of extended relations and a number of years, is both a pinnacle of democratic

process and rock bottom—it is cooperation at the local level for the betterment of all

(household, extended family, community), but at the same time it is an erosion of state-

democratic responsibility. In the next section on crises, the predicament of Philippine

democracy comes to the forefront, but in closing this section on marginality, for many

overseas workers, suffices to say, being Filipino is being marginal in a new land and

global system, and the islands and the people back home are a world away.

Crisis

Crises are an ongoing problem in the Philippines, with roots in both the perennial socio

political instability and the numerous seasonal natural disasters. These crises have greatly

impacted local communities, politics and government development plans. Social crises

have often served to solidify the power of the elite and international organizations over the general Filipino populace, and Bankoff (1999) goes so far as to argue that the increasing gap between rich and poor in the Philippines is possibly the result of the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters that exacerbate social inequity. Such disasters include typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis and lahars.

Location within a tropical climatic zone and along the Rim of Fire is the primary reason for these catastrophic events. The eruptions of Mayon Volcano, the most active in the archipelago, are the result of the continental Eurasian plate riding overtop of the

Philippine oceanic plate. Another large and active volcano is Mt Pinatubo, whose 1991 eruption was the second largest terrestrial volcanic event of the twentieth century (cf.

Tayag and Punongbayan 1994).

Tectonic activity in the region is responsible for earthquakes as well. Although the islands are affected daily by numerous smaller seismic events, larger earthquakes such as the one that hit Luzon in 1990 can be devastating, killing thousands and destroying villages and infrastructure. Also, the earthquakes can generate tsunamis—a wave slammed into the island of Mindoro in 1994, killing sixty-two people and demolishing

800 homes. The tropical climate of the Philippines adds its own variety of disasters. For instance, between 14 November and 4 December 2004 a succession of four tropical depressions and typhoons slammed into the eastern coast of Luzon, triggering landslides and floods that killed 1600 people (Gaillard and Liamzon 2007). In 2009 typhoon

Ketsana reeked havoc on the Capital and twenty-five provinces, causing USD 73,680,000 in infrastructural ruin, damaging 42,566 homes and killing hundreds of people (Pulhin

2010). When this climate articulates with tectonic processes one of the more dangerous

geomorphic events is lahar, a mudslide that occurs when volcanic ash that has been

deposited on a slope becomes over-saturated by rainfall or melting ice. Lahar occurrence

is prevalent during times of cyclonic activity, and it represents the most hazardous post-

eruption threat to surrounding areas (Leung et al. 2003), flowing at incredible speeds and

destroying any towns or settlements that lay in its path.

These extreme weather events have been recorded throughout the history of the

archipelago, though Bankoff (2003) argues climate change and rising sea levels have

exacerbated the situation. Regardless, each natural disaster that strikes the Philippines has

the potential for crisis, and the extremity of these events cannot be disentangled from

human-environmental practices or government reactions during times of crisis. In terms of the former, the frequency and intensity of flooding and landslides (including lahars) have been greatly increased due to deforestation, agricultural practices in highlands, and mining techniques that strip away the natural relief and alter drainage systems. As for the latter, a time of crisis can become a time when government steps in to reorganize communities to better fit state agendas, as well as a time to plan future disaster mitigation and pre-emptive policies around state development plans rather than scientific information (Leung et al. 2003).

When nature is not disrupting life the politics of corruption, mismanagement and cronyism—three realities that underlie state direction and for which the Philippines is internationally renowned—can be counted on to foment crises.27 Since (official)

independence from the United Sates, the political landscape of the Philippines is best

27 In 2009 Transparency International ranked the Philippines 139th out of 179 countries in terms of levels of corruption, where number 1 (New Zealand) is least corrupt. The Philippines received a score of 2.4 out of ten, where 10 is least corrupt and zero is absolute corruption (cf. TI 2009).

understood as cacique democracy (Anderson 1998), wherein an elite group of

generational dynasties, almost exclusively of mestizo descent, has maintained politico- economic dominance as a bloc. Within this system the landowning caciques have somehow held their bloc together whilst waging an internal war amongst themselves over government revenue and what can only be described as ‘the private enterprise of public office’. Thus much of the political landscape is one of violent factionalism and regional conflict among elected politicians, warlords and private armies, and it predates the time of independence, when the landowning oligarchy manoeuvred quickly to gain control, enlisting private armies to employ methods of terror against general social dissent and left-wing/popular leaders (ibid.). The US lent its own support, under General Douglas

MacArthur,28 solidifying the oligarchy by backing one of its own, Manuel Roxas, for first

president of the new republic (Pomeroy 1992). The years between Roxas’s election

(1946) and Marcos’s declaration of martial law (1972) were a “golden era” for the

cacique families, and by the end approximately 50 percent of total national income was in the hands of 5 percent of the Philippine population, resulting in a “massive pauperization of the unprivileged” (Anderson 1998: 209). By 1972 dissent was growing among the unprivileged, a population that included many students, wage-labourers, workers entangled in the hacienda system and community advocates. This, in combination with blatant violence in the streets among cacique families, rapid urbanization, increasing

28 General MacArthur – Military Advisor to the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines (1937-41), but recalled to US military service during WWII. He already had strong political and business ties with (i.e. vested interests in) the mestizo oligarchy before the war (cf. Pomeroy 1992; Anderson 1998).

levels of drug abuse and crime, and terror attacks, led to a crisis of legitimacy, and

Marcos responded with his own illegitimacy, martial law.29

In some ways martial law froze the cacique system in time, effectively suppressing much of the factionalism among families between the years 1972 and 1986,30 and framing one historical snapshot of the system, the rule by Marcos, his family and his cronies:

martial law in 1972 destroyed the provincial warlords. Philippine Army detachments disarmed the private armies, and special Army intelligence teams moved across the country killing the provincial gunmen personally loyal to the warlords. With a monopoly on military and political power, Marcos stripped offending provincial politicians of their offices and assets … Five years after the declaration of martial law, it became apparent that Marcos had created a new oligarchy of relatives, in- laws, cronies and allies. As $28 billion in foreign loans poured into Manila’s banks, only those deemed ‘reliable’ had access to credit (McCoy 1984: 27).

His was an authoritarian regime in every sense of the word, and it was formally backed by the United States. For instance, in 1981 US President Ronald Reagan sent Vice

President George H W Bush off to Manila in support of Marcos. Bush proclaimed, “we love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process” (quoted in

Anderson 1998: 216, n.76). Marcos’s rule was also tacitly and financially backed by numerous multinational corporations, such as Westinghouse. The company funnelled

USD 80 million under the table to the leader as part of a successful bid for building a

29 In the months leading up to martial law some twenty-six bombs exploded in the capital, and Marcos blamed the communists. Unconfirmed sources implicate Marcos himself in most of the attacks, as he set about “fomenting disorder to build public support for the ultimate guarantor of social order, authoritarian rule” (McCoy 2009: 395). The final straw was pulled 21 September 1972, when Juan Ponce Enrile, the Defence Secretary, was ambushed by “mysterious gunmen” (ibid.), and Marcos declared martial law later that day. Ponce Enrile, Senate President since 2008, would later admit that he staged the attack in order to provide Marcos with final justification for martial law (Bonner 1988). 30 Martial law was lifted 17 January 1981, much to appease global Catholicism upon the arrival of Pope John Paul II in the Philippines, one month to the day later (cf. Gabriel 1999). The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, however, lasted until 1986. As of 2011 Marcos’s family continues their legacy in Philippine politics: wife, Imelda, is a Member of the Philippine House of Representatives; son, Ferdinand Jr, is a Senator; daughter, Imee, is Governor of Ilocos Norte.

nuclear project in central Luzon (ibid.).31 But as Marcos’s tactics of control deepened

over the years and became more violent—moving from mass arrests to extrajudicial

killings, for instance, and dumping tortured bodies in public view—“citizens sensed the

failure of their Faustian bargain with dictatorship” (McCoy 2009: 398), and seams of

weakness began to show in the President’s iron rule.

The year 1986 marked a momentous shift toward democracy in the Philippines, and

the People Power or EDSA32 revolution, supported by military insurrection, culminated

25 February in the toppling of Ferdinand Marcos, who was quickly shuttled away to

Hawai‘i for exile and retirement. The promise of a more free and just society seemed on

the edge of becoming reality, but in terms of vast changes to Philippine society and

general social development for most citizens, the shift to democracy has done little more

than restore the vote; EDSA reproduced the same system of cacique government that

Marcos himself toppled in the 1970s, a government that encourages factional competition

among the elite “while allowing them to maintain a united front against any change in the

system of social and economic inequality” (Bello et al. 2005: 1). Thus the outcome of the

People Power revolt can be seen as a mere retrenchment of the pre-1972 ruling families,

and all their self-motivated collusions and conflicts.33 In terms of the vote, the choices for

the electorate tend to involve a choice among two or more candidates who are in the end

very similar in terms of social class, economic policy and ideology. Indeed, their only

differences are often the extent to which they hate each other, and the extent to which

31 Corruption and patronage continue to endorse and sustain individuals and entire families as government officials. In terms of large infrastructural developments, politicization in the Philippines is “unusually severe” (Hill et al. 2007: 30). 32 EDSA – Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, site of the historic civic uprising against Marcos. 33 For a glance at the clever ways in which political dynasties have skirted the laws of representation and maintained control over the Philippines, see Muego 2005.

they will act to solidify their hold on public office.34 Therefore, since 1986 a new crisis of representation has enabled small cliques of the ultra rich to control the direction of

development and foreign policy, strong arm citizens and achieve little for the cause of

poor people, the vast majority of the electorate. In this regard, as Quimpo (2009) argues, the present Philippine government can be understood as a textbook case of predatory state:

the behaviour of elites is cynical and opportunistic. If there are competitive elections, they become a bloody zero-sum struggle in which everything is at stake and no one can afford to lose. Ordinary people are not truly citizens but clients of powerful local bosses, who are themselves the clients of still more powerful patrons. Stark inequalities in power and status create vertical chains of dependency, secured by patronage, coercion, and demagogic electoral appeals to ethnic pride and prejudice. Public policies and programs do not really matter, since rulers have few intentions of delivering on them anyway. Officials feed on the state, and the powerful prey on the weak. The purpose of government is not to generate public goods, such as roads, schools, clinics, and sewer systems. Instead, it is to produce private goods for officials, their families, and their cronies (Diamond 2008: 42).

A fantastical example of the crisis of leadership that has transcended the presidencies of all five leaders since Marcos—C. Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo and B.

Aquino—has been the fickle attempt at agricultural land reform. In a 1988 government survey it was discovered that 60 percent of agricultural families were landless, 26 percent owned less than three hectares each, and 0.1 percent of landed families owned 25 percent of all parcels greater than 100 hectares (Diprose and McGregor 2009). The

Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was put in place to address these structural inequities, and was initially meant to redistribute 8.064 million hectares of land

34 The expression ‘small choice in rotten apples’ comes to mind when considering the Philippine election process. As does Lenin’s paraphrasing of a statement by Marx: “the oppressed were allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and repress them!” (Lenin 1932: 73). Commenting on the Philippines, Bello et al. state: “The beauty of the system is that by periodically engaging the people in an exercise to choose among different members of the elite, elections make voters active participants in legitimizing the social and economic status quo” (2005: 2).

to four million peasants, 6.6 million of which were private agricultural lands (Borras and

Franco 2005). But, since inception in 1988, the redistribution process has been marred by landholder influence on government policy, unrealistic faith in the rationalizing abilities of the market, stock options that benefit those in control, shady deals and land abstentions granted to government officials and their friends and families (Bello et al. 2005). Most notable of the latter is the famous Hacienda Luisita, a 6000-hectare sugar plantation owned by the family of past President Corazon Aquino and present President Benigno

Aquino III. The family’s political influence stems directly from ownership of the hacienda and an attached mill that purchases the greatest share of raw sugar from the surrounding countryside (de Dios 2007). This private property stretches across ten barangays, most of the inhabitants of which are employed on the plantation or in the mill.

It is hardly misleading to suggest that the most predictable source of instability and crises over the last half century is the governing oligarchy, and its infighting and ingenuity when it comes to siphoning off large percentages of all government spending are factors in the continued poverty of the Philippines. Infrastructure, basic service provision and general welfare are the victims, and this translates into some of the highest rates of poverty and lowest indices of development among Asia-Pacific countries. It has also translated into a number of anti-government movements over the years, most notably the New People’s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Although different in many ways, both of these movements offer insight into popular reactions to corruption, underdevelopment, political marginality and poverty at local and regional levels, both to some degree result from the charisma of and limits to local agency, and both, though

predicated upon a crisis of legitimacy at the level of the state, are generative of their own

crises at sub-state levels.

The New People’s Army (NPA) was created in 1969 as the military arm of the

Communist Party of the Philippines. Maoist in approach, its object is the overthrow of

government by protracted violent struggle, its replacement with Chinese-style popular

governance, and the defeat of US imperialism in the region. Founded in and around the

University of the Philippines (Manila), the NPA grew from its meagre roots to enlist

radical students35 and disenfranchised labourers throughout the country. With increasing support came increased government attention and suppressions, however, and the group took refuge in various mountain locations for topographical defence. There they found

support among the rural peasantry:

they found tribal and Christian small farmers who welcomed their arms as a counterweight to the military. Many frontier farmers face eviction at army gunpoint to make way for dams, plantations or simple landgrabbers. Beginning with 60 soldiers and 35 arms in 1969, the NPA has grown into a guerrilla force of 12,000 troops. It conducts guerrilla operations across the archipelago and can claim liberated zones in a number of remote areas (McCoy 1984: 14).

The methods of NPA insurrection include guerrilla warfare, terror attacks, murder,

assassination and coercion. Since 1969 NPA conflict has claimed more than 40,000 lives,

and the group continues to be considered the most serious internal threat to national

security (Rutten 2008). Less violent tactics over the years have included union and

worker organization, information seminars, peaceful protests and rallies, support for

suffering communities, infrastructural developments and the offer of support to

sympathetic politicians.

35 Interestingly, the global tide of radicalism, student protest and social unrest during the 1960s that helped produce Vatican II is the same tide from which the NPA drew initial student/intellectual support.

The NPA is a countermeasure to the entrenched system of cacique democracy, and it draws support by scaling down to regional and local levels, being active and visible within the places of the masses vis-à-vis the spaces of the state. In many ways it is these lower scales of disempowerment—the planes of social organization upon which the daily lives of the masses are acted—where support seems to have reached its limit. The group has controlled pockets of unrest throughout the islands, but substantial gains in urban and national contexts were never achieved. Thus, since inception, the NPA has not been representative of a wide popular protest in the classic Marxist sense: “no revolutionary situation existed in the Philippines then nor was any ever created by the New People’s

Army. This was one more historical instance of the Filipino people having their fate influenced by an outside force [China/Maoism]” (Pomeroy 1992: 292). Nevertheless the

NPA reached its greatest strength in the mid-1980s, growing to as many as 24,000 active recruits and as many as 1.7 million sympathizers (Rutten 1996). By the end of the decade, however, the NPA was already shrinking, due in large measure to i) dwindling ideological support for the group, ii) effective army counter-insurgency that was supported by the newly-elected (i.e. post-Marcos) provincial elite, and iii) a mass surrender and amnesty program (ibid.). The Twenty-first Century has seen revived efforts at eliminating the NPA once and for all. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, implicated in a series of extrajudicial killings, is targeting not just the guerrillas and their popular rural bases, but also the “legal, above ground, organizations” affiliated with the group, killing off prominent leaders (Holden 2009: 383). Concomitantly, media constructions of the communists and NPA tend to endorse the government’s efforts; by the time of fieldwork in early 2010, general perceptions of the NPA were of bandits living in the

mountains, bringing war to villages, murdering innocent farmers and enforcing illegal tax collection at gunpoint (including a tax on voting in the May general elections36). Even with all these measures taken together, however, the New People’s Army remains a counter, at least practically if no longer ideologically, to the systemic and sustained crisis of legitimacy within the Philippine government, and the armed conflict continues to disrupt communities throughout the archipelago.37

Between 1986 and 2004, 91 percent of provinces in the Philippines were sites of violent ideological conflict, and fifteen of the worst provincial hotspots were located on the island of Mindanao, involving Moro/Muslim unrest (Hill et al. 2007).38 The struggles of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) annually claim the lives of 260 combatants and eighty-five civilians, and hundreds of thousands are displaced each year (ibid.).39 The modern roots of the problem can be traced to American colonialism. Unlike the relatively unsuccessful efforts on the part of the Spanish to bring the Muslims under colonial rule

(cf. Stark 2003), the Americans set about the forced integration of the island of Mindanao and sponsored an immigration program for Christian settlers from other islands in the archipelago:

The program had several purposes: (1) to alter the demographics and consolidate U.S. control over the three major islands of the Philippines; (2) to get assistance in

36 Kindly note, this was not an attempt by the NPA to alter the outcome of the elections, which would have been understandable as an anti-government strategy; rather, it simply was meant to capitalize monetarily from the election process. 37 The NPA is recently discovered to have gone international as well, with guerrillas travelling to India to train Maoist rebels there (Labita 2010). 38 Moro and Muslim are terms used interchangeably in the southern Philippines. ‘Moro’—originally a derogatory term used by the Spanish to lump Muslims in the Philippines into the same category as their own previous ‘Moor’ masters—is now politicized, however, “a proud symbol of collective idenity” (Su 2009: 94, n. 31). 39 The struggles of the Muslims of Mindanao are not to be confused as the actions of a single population with generic goals or methods; rather, the Muslim communities are quite diverse, and the voices of thirteen distinct ethnolinguistic groups seldom unite as one (Hill et al. 2007).

harnessing the rich natural resources of the area; (3) so that the Moros and other tribal groups would benefit from the example of the technologically-advanced Christian migrants; and (4) to tie Mindanao closely to Manila and thereby act as a counterweight to the Moro link with neighboring Muslim nations (Su 2009: 95).

The relocation also served elite interests beyond Mindanao, where a surplus of landless

peasants on other islands was creating a crisis of overpopulation. A 1936 presidential

decree made all ancestral Moro land public property, and opened Mindanao’s door to a

colossus of in-migration (Stark 2003). After independence in 1946 Mindanao was

advertised as a frontier of possibility for the Filipino masses—a ‘Christian’ land of

promise (Gaspar et al. 2002)—by the governing elite. The elite (predominantly mestizo

landlords) were seeking to “forestall unrest among the landless peasants of Luzon and the

Visayan Islands” (Holden and Jacobson 2007a: 157). Then, in true Marcos fashion, the

President pushed the resettlement of Mindanao to an all-time low by enlisting the efforts

of Ilaga gangs: “The Ilaga (rats), a Christian militia, mostly comprising of settlers from

the Ilongo tribe, was set up by the military … to reverse the religious-ethnic balance”

through a program of “ethnic cleansing”, “expropriation” and “expulsion” (Stark 2003:

201). In the end, the various policies achieved their ends; some of the landless peasants from other regions were partially/temporarily placated, the percentage of Muslims on

Mindanao dropped from seventy-six to twenty over the course of the Twentieth Century, and lands owned by the Moro plummeted from a majority of the island’s land to a mere

18 percent by 1982 (Tuminez 2008).

It is with this colonial backdrop in mind that the emergence of a Moro defence of place and struggles over territory become more legible. Today, poverty rates on

Mindanao are among the highest in the country, with certain provinces (Muslim and

Christian alike) reaching rates higher than 50 percent (Holden and Jacobson 2007b).

After protracted negotiations between Muslim leaders and numerous presidential

administrations, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was established

1 August 1989. It consists of five provinces, has much autonomy vis-à-vis the central

government, and is administered by a Regional Governor and a Regional Assembly. The

establishment of the ARMM did not placate hard-line Muslim elements in the region,

however, such as the MILF. Nor did it prevent subsequent national presidential

administrations from asserting their sovereignty at times in the area over the last two

decades. Thus today the MILF continues its struggle against poverty and federal jurisdiction in Muslim-dominated regions and provinces.

* * *

The Philippines is a beautiful country of immense variety, both in its environments and its human groups. It exhibits lush tropical forests, coastal areas, mountains and arid valleys, and much climatic variation between and upon its thousands of islands. A multitude of unique human groups have developed socially and culturally in relation to these diverse habitats, and modern adaptations to globalization have also demonstrated the tenacity of regional flavour. Beauty and virulence aside, the modern socio-politics of the Philippines has exacerbated poverty and environmental degradation, and this has led some scholars to label the Philippines an ‘anti-development state’ and a ‘political economy of permanent crisis’ (Bello et al. 2005). If true this leaves much to be learnt about the prospects and pragmatics of meaningful development for the vast majority of

Filipinos. My own commitment to learn and write about the connections among local development, social structures at both provincial and national levels, global and

international processes, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church took me to Negros. It is the fourth largest island in the country, after Luzon, Mindanao and Samar, with a relative location in the Philippines of more or less dead centre, and it is the central geographical focus of the next three chapters.

METHODOLOGY,

AND AN INTRODUCTION TO NEGROS

The bridge between the preceding chapter and the three that follow is a methodological one, as a single case study is used to understand the local realities of life, livelihood and agency amid many of the structural forms and processes discussed in Chapter Three.

Thus the overall approach to the research combines an analysis of the underlying structures and processes that affect local development with an appreciation of the role of actors and organizations as agents of social production and change. Within this framework, multiple geographic scales (international, national, regional and local) must be taken into consideration, as well as the unique ways in which they co-mingle. In choosing this approach the research remains true to Geertz’s conception of thick description (1973), as opposed to a more rigorous statistical manipulation of variables.

After all, too often statistics become an exercise in thinning out the social static, and this can lead to one of the central deficiencies of mainstream economics, the convenient dismissal of “awkward facts—a use that has become known as the Ricardian vice”

(Heilbroner 1992: 102). In a letter to his father at age nineteen Karl Marx wrote, “in the practical expression of the living world of ideas in which law, the state, nature, and the whole of philosophy consist, the object itself must be studied in its own development, arbitrary divisions must not be introduced” (Marx 1977: 7). David Harvey agrees and

critiques the value of math for social theory: “We must, therefore, treat mathematical proofs for what they are: rigorous deductions on the basis of certain assumptions which may or may not capture the intricacy of social relationships” (2006b: 44). At the heart of concern is the reduction of social life to a few statistically-meaningful categories that, though tidy, leave so much hidden behind the curtain of formulaic abstraction. In The poverty of philosophy, a decade after the letter to his father, Marx reiterated with a condemnation of the very epistemology of constructing logical categories in the social sciences: “Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction … presents itself as a logical category? … If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories” (Marx 1977: 200).

Following in this vein the present research presents little of statistical value, instead relying upon broad themes and categories that emerge through dialogue with informants and participant observation. This approach is meant to allow the voices, actions and concerns of the participants—those to whom this study owes all—to tell their own story about local livelihood, community, development and being Catholic in one Diocese in the

Philippines. That being said, as the primary researcher, organizer and presenter of this story, I am keenly aware of my role in its construction, of the meaning and interpretation that I project, and the categories and logical coherence that I give to the story.

Researcher positionality

The literature review in Chapter Two included a significant section on postdevelopment, which, in a nut shell, is the application of poststructuralist concepts to the discourse of

development. Poststructuralism must also be touched upon in this chapter, however, for it has epistemological implications. Among other things, poststructuralism contributes an awareness of one’s self as researcher within the research design and presentation—no longer satisfied with reductionism, scientific rationalism or a value-neutral, omnipresent authority on the subject, many social scientists are now aware that they are facilitators of dialogue who try to make connections between two world views, and who try to comprehend and present a group or case study on its own terms. Thus case study research such as this requires a reconciliation of material analysis with a self-reflexive appreciation of my own position within the research and as a contributor to a discourse— an understanding of the myriad voices (including my own), social agency and cultural meanings that inform social science. The meanings of social phenomena are intrinsically negotiable, and ideas, beliefs and practices are open to multiple readings, including erroneous readings by the primary researcher. Interpreting any given social situation requires interpreting skills and the application of specific ways in which we (researchers) personally frame meaning; we hear what we want to hear, see what we want to see. Then when we have produced enough data we construct an interpretation that is both personally meaningful and academically presentable. And our productions, whether raw data, textual or otherwise, are inseparable from our own theoretical, methodological and personal inclinations, trotting a tortuous path throughout one’s academic life: “When we reflect upon our beliefs and the concepts we use, we often change them in the process: we notice and try to resolve inconsistencies and so we come to understand ourselves and the world in a new way or discover new ‘levels’ of meaning” (Sayer 1984: 41).

Thus knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, and research is human practice, the

researcher engaged in processes strictly human. It is from this standpoint that I approach the topic at hand, and it is through my own constructed lens of inquiry that this text has emerged—part history, part theory, part social geography, and complete artefact. By the latter I refer to the constructed nature of the work, my own theoretical inclinations, research interests and epistemological presuppositions that led to the selection of this research topic and the chapters before you. Coming to terms with texts as artefacts and research as human process has exposed the plasticity of meaning in academic texts and the ideologies that underlie them.40 This intellectual revelation can be understood as

another instance of poststructural enlightenment, whereby the processes that led to our

industrial world and the outcomes of modernity (including academic texts) are the focus

of scrutiny. Thus an analysis of the conditions under which knowledge is constructed reveals questions regarding who wrote a given text, for what reasons, under what constraints and support, and for what outcomes. Clifford (1986: 6) addresses these issues in his critique of anthropological texts, arguing that the textual product is determined in at least six ways:

(1) contextually (it draws from and creates meaningful social milieux); (2) rhetorically (it uses and is used by expressive conventions); (3) institutionally (one writes within, and against, specific traditions, disciplines, audiences); (4) generically (an ethnography is usually distinguishable from a novel or a travel account); (5) politically (the authority to represent cultural realities is unequally shared and at times contested); (6) historically (all the above conventions and constraints are changing).

40 In many regards geography must doubly deal with the meaning of texts, for places and landscapes are themselves texts, subject to interpretation and unpacking: “Like a book, the landscape is created by authors, and the end product attempts to create certain meanings. But also, like a book, the people who “read” the landscape and its places can never be forced to read it in only one way. The text is subject to multiple readings despite the fact that some readings are encouraged more than others” (Cresswell 1996: 13).

Far from neutral arbiters of facts about humans and their environments, social scientists are understood as occupying specific places within greater political economies, as well as having directive roles in the construction of representations while in the field. The constructions in this text lean toward Marxist analysis and interpretation.

The writings of Karl Marx gained importance within the study of human geography in the early 1970s, mostly due to a recognition that contemporary geography presented a limited understanding of the economic and political fetters acting on society (Cloke et al.

1991: 28). What emerged was a leftwing or politically-radical geography which attempted to apply Marx’s analytic framework and ideas of social action to the traditional areas of geography. It is difficult to ground Marxism historically within one specific academic discipline. Marx himself fell into a number of categories; sociologist, political scientist, economist and historian. Later, Marxist leanings developed in political science

(Lenin, Gramsci), history (Gunder Frank, Hobsbawm), literary criticism (Williams,

Eagleton), sociology (Sartre, Wallerstein, Althusser), anthropology (Wolf, Bourdieu), and geography (Harvey, Peet, Watts).

There are numerous Marxist approaches, but in general they address issues of inequality and power relations that are endemic to the capitalist mode of production, and the manner in which the system is built upon the conflict between opposing interests: labour/capital, tenant/owner, the value of labour power/wages, and structural forces/human agency, to name a few. In geography the processes of capital accumulation, including expansion, incorporation and crisis, have been analyzed through their spatial patterns. For instance, globalization has revealed a growing trend of economic marginality and environmental degradation, which impact a diversity of groups. Marxism

allows for a contextual and contestable reading of social phenomena, understanding the

contingency inherent in social systems and local articulations with greater capital flows.

But in choosing Marx, I have already embedded myself within the research project.

But it is not merely my own intellectual leanings that garner reflexive attention. In

the field I am a body inscribed with symbolic meaning, and the meanings attached to my

gender, age, assumed social class and skin colour have the ability to affect the people with whom I interact and the statements that they make. Being a white male of assumed upper social standing in the Philippines itself seems to grant me a fair measure of

authority, a general expert on all things, including BECs (even though I was there as the

student). Whenever I spoke to a large group, I felt an assumption of expertise on its

behalf even after explaining that I wanted to learn from group members. Furthermore, at

many times during fieldwork I felt as if I were a celebrity, because everyone seemed to

be lining up to talk to me and wanting my picture. This cult of authority and celebrity

provokes serious questions regarding the validity of data produced, particularly whether

or not informants were anticipating what I wanted to hear from them, or if I was leading

them to conclusions as a trusted guide. Fortunately, the variety of statements and

opinions, including those that ran counter to official diocese doctrine and those that

completely shocked me, provide consolation amid such uncertainty (and, ultimately, I

cannot disguise either my inner- or outer-self).

A final note regarding my affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church is necessary.

Other than being godfather to two minor children in Canada, I have no affiliation with

Catholicism. Nor am I affiliated with any other Christian denomination or world religion.

Perhaps more ‘hopeful’ than an atheist, I might categorize myself as agnostic.

Nevertheless, I have academic interest in religions in general, but much of what I know

of Roman Catholicism, and my opinions of it, come from popular sources, such as

newspapers, television and movies, as opposed to academic study. Due to a number of

circumstances over the last few decades (global in scope, presented in popular media and

including numerous scandals) I harboured significant cynicism regarding the Church.

That being said, I can state in no uncertain terms that this did not affect my research. I set

out to study socio-economic development in poor communities and, as will become apparent, my overall presentation is a positive one of hope amid misfortune in one diocese, unencumbered by preconceived ideas about the international Church.

Ultimately, poststructural reflexivity is an awareness of what I have brought to the table in terms of theoretical leanings, research design and prosecution, my selection of

region, province and diocese, and how each decision affects my overall presentation of

the island of Negros and the people who live within the Diocese of San Carlos. What

follows in the next section is reflection upon the inventory of and justification for methods employed.

Field sites as case studies

Case studies allow for a detailed analysis of specific social units that are generally contained within clear boundaries, creating a scale of place in which individuals and groups can be understood as differentiated from those who do not belong to the social unit (Payne and Payne 2004). Patton (1990: 54) notes that case studies:

become particularly useful where one needs to understand some special people, particular problem, or unique situation in great depth, and where one can identify cases rich in information—rich in the sense that a great deal can be learned from a few exemplars of the phenomenon in question.

When the phenomenon in question is studied locally yet contextualized within a wider political economy and set of sociospatial scales and networks (cf. Jessop et al. 2008) the case can offer rich and inclusive insights into the phenomenon in question. Indeed case studies gather depth and breadth when combined with secondary data sources (Patton

1990), such as information pertaining to socio-historical connections at various scales and previous research, which can contextualize wider social processes. In so doing, cases shed much light on meaningful patterns of cause and effect, and the merging of case studies informs theory, creating a link between variability and theoretical generalization

(Dickens et al. 1985).

The case approach steers clear of any pretensions regarding universal or grandiose theorization, instead finding meaning in context and particularity. Though the single case

(as example) is not necessarily indicative of a broad spectrum, it is “an example in its own right” and other researchers can take into consideration the ideas and information contained in the single case (Payne and Payne 2004: 32). This does not imply that cases are unable to offer insight into general processes and/or broad theories of social organization. Rather, it means that knowledge produced through a case study is embedded within specific patterns, structures and processes occurring locally, regionally, nationally, or at any other scale of social organization under investigation. Thus case study research and future case comparison provides an entrée into academic patterns and themes (Patton 1990).

Yin (1991) presents three types of cases: i) critical case studies that challenge theory; ii) unique case studies that are said to be of intrinsic interest; and iii) revelatory

case studies, those that present fresh insight or generate entirely new ideas about a topic or situation. Taking Yin’s categories loosely, the present research on BECs encompasses aspects of all three. BECs challenge contemporary theory in development studies (cf.

Sachs 1992, Escobar 1995); BECs are unique in and of themselves, a local, communal unit founded upon the Church’s preferential option for the poor, operating in and articulating with a world of capital markets, markets that must suffer some of the blame for general poverty in the Philippines; and BECs are revelatory insofar as they contribute fresh new ideas to the practice of development.

Choosing Negros

Before imposing myself on the research, I made a choice about where best to study the phenomenon of development through Basic Ecclesial Communities. BECs have been studied on a few islands, including Luzon (Cobrador 2000; Vergara 2000), Marinduque

(Sapunto 2004), Cebu (Nadeau 2002), and Mindanao (Holden and Jacobson 2007a). As of yet, however, there has been no in-depth study of BECs on the island of Negros.

Interestingly I learnt at the National Assembly on BECs and rural development, hosted by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (November 2008), that there is a distinct geographical discrepancy over the prevalence of BECs in the country, with the greatest number in the region of Mindanao, less in the Visayas and even fewer in the

Luzon region (Figure 4.1). Negros, an island in the Visayas, is considered to be middle- of-the-road in terms of BEC prevalence. The most important reason for the discrepancy appears to be socio-historical—on Mindanao BECs were and are an essential means for the clergy and the faithful to reaffirm Catholic identity and cohesion in an area with a

Figure 4.1: Geographic Regions

large Muslim presence (cf. Holden and Jacobson 2007b). This perceived necessity, which

led to the early development of BECs throughout the region, was absent in the Visayas

and Luzon, for the Muslim presence in those two regions is minimal. As the BEC concept

has spread northward it has taken root over time, with distance from Mindanao (an

original epicentre) being a factor. Thus the adjacent region of the Visayas has the second

most prevalent instance of BECs with the second longest duration since first inception,

and Luzon has the least number and most recent.41 Furthermore Mindanao is considered

to have some of the most progressive and vibrant BECs, with social development and

transformative programs well established, and much of Luzon is reported to be stuck in the liturgical stage of BEC development. Once again, vibrancy appears tied to tenure in a

given region, and the Visayas are considered to be middle-of-the-road.

When choosing which region to study there is one more factor. Mindanao seems

like an obvious choice for analyzing the greatest potential for development through

BECs, because of how progressive their BECs are, but the focus of this work is small-

scale, community-based development, and what can be accomplished by quasi-

autonomous groups. The problem with applying this framework to BECs on Mindanao,

as it was explained at the National Assembly, is that many of the BECs there continue to

be funded externally because they are seen still as a buffer against Islam. Church,

government and international actors (particularly Catholic organizations) play an

important part in making Mindanao’s BECs progressive and vibrant, and this complicates

an analysis of what (if anything) can be achieved by the small communities themselves.

On the other hand, and at the other geographical extreme of the archipelago, in regards to

41 This is a general statement of the region in overview perspective. Individual BECs on any island may sway from the norm.

Luzon I was told I run the risk of traveling around for three months and never finding a

BEC that is more than a Bible-study group, which could greatly complicate the development premise of the research. Thus, due to both time and proximity to Mindanao, the Visayas are a natural choice for an attempt to understand better place-based social developments through BECs. But the Visayas include a number of islands and a number of provinces, so another choice was needed. In the end I settled on a province that was, once again, middle-of-the-road in terms of basic demographics, Negros Occidental (more below). But perhaps of more importance to my choice, the same organizers of the

National Assembly in 2008 who spoke to me about Mindanao suggested studying Negros

Occidental. The priests and laity were adamant about wanting data on the province, mostly due to the good things that they were hearing about the place.

* * *

The province of Negros Occidental has a population of approximately 2.9 million (sixth largest), spread over thirteen cities, nineteen municipalities and 661 barangays. Taken together, Negros Occidental ranks forty-second in terms of poverty, out of a total of eighty provinces (NSCB 2005), a ranking that positions it in the mid-range of prevalence of poverty for the country as a whole. Furthermore, health statistics, including prevalence of disease, malnutrition, under-nutrition, life expectancy and infant death also suggest the province is average (cf. PNO 2009). Those province-wide statistics do not tell the whole story, however, for Negros Occidental itself is spatially and socially segregated, and there exist vast livelihood discrepancies between those who control the fertile plains of export crops and those who wander down from the hills and out of worker villages each day to

produce the crops. Because of this discrepancy between the producers and those who

realize profits from production, participation in BEC projects for many occurs after

labouring in the fields, when time allows.

The BECs chosen are in the Diocese of San Carlos. This Diocese was chosen after

consultation with a number of priests during the National Assembly, including one of the

assembly coordinators. It was suggested that the Diocese would be an ideal study site due

to the variety and vibrancy of the development projects. The website of the Catholic

Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines presents a positive picture of BEC activity in the

Diocese of San Carlos:

The socio-economic programs are being implemented through the Social Action Center (SAC). And most effective in improving the socio-economic climate are the small cooperatives in 12 parishes and 3 chaplaincies. The SAC is also helping feed 9,800 malnourished children and their mothers, supplementing material help with nutrition information and the introduction of herbal medicines, acupuncture, etc (CBCP 2009).

Permission to study in the area was granted by a diocesan priest, Father Edwin, who is the Director of Social Action in the Diocese. He organizes numerous BEC development projects, including organic crop production for international markets, microcredit finance for peasants, and the growing, packaging, marketing and sale of herbal medicines in impoverished communities where basic pharmacare is beyond reach for the vast majority of the population.

Though this study was originally conceived as a study confined to BEC-level development activity, the strong actions of the Diocese itself warranted study as well.

Furthermore, social developments and societal transformations are almost exclusively happening because of the efforts of the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San

Carlos. Nevertheless, BECs were visited throughout the Diocese, and information from

key informants was gathered. The BECs in three parishes, Pandanan, Pacuan and

Cabagtasan, were studied in depth, and they were selected for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the Diocese and the literature on BECs place primary importance on income-generating projects for social development. Upon arrival in the Diocese, however, it quickly became clear that very few parishes were home to BECs with income-generating projects. There were four recommendations, Pacuan, Pandanan,

Manapla and Cabagtasan, and it was feasible to visit all four, even though each visit required much travel and conversation. Pacuan is a mountain village where most families work as tenants on small farms of rice and corn production. Pandanan and Manapla are coastal parishes where some individuals work on industrial fishing boats and most work on sugarcane plantations. Part way through the research, however, a review of data saturation, specifically the absence of BEC socio-economic development projects within

Pacuan and Pandanan, with a few key informants suggested that a stay in Manapla was unnecessary. Instead I chose to concentrate the bulk of my efforts on Cabagtasan, a village of mainly small-owner rice producers. It was chosen for two reasons directly related to the potential for individual BECs to generate social development. Firstly, the village was said to benefit from the greatest number of social programs operating at the diocese level, thus theoretically giving the people there an advantage in their daily lives.

Secondly, unique property rights in the village area, stemming from its location within a

Natural Park, lends a certain amount of daily freedom to inhabitants that is not afforded to tenants or wage labourers living in worker villages. What I mean is that social conditions are suited to BEC development action beyond mere Bible study, for the families in the area have certain freedoms (ie lack of obligations stemming from wage

labour, debt servitude and landlessness) not found in other parts of the province. The combination of more time/freedom and the most number of diocese-level projects set

Cabagtasan apart from all other rural parishes in the Diocese as a pre-eminent place of

BEC social-action potential, and this perception was generated in consultation with key figures within the Diocese.

Methodology

From January to April 2010, primary data was produced through a number of qualitative methods, including in-depth, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation of community dynamics, particularly in regards to the cooperation of labour and spiritual commitments. By blending a number of useful methods data assemblages are triangulated (Patton 1990), one informing the other, and this has added layers to the data produced that might not have been revealed by the use of a single method. It is argued that the layers enhance validity because they do away with the over- application of a single method or abstract model (Downward and Mearman 2007).

The primary tool at my disposal was the open-ended question. Open-ended questioning in the social sciences is an important method for gaining access to the diverse perspectives of participants in a study, and it is predicated on the assumption “that the perspectives of others is meaningful, knowable, and able to be made explicit” (Patton

1990: 278). Central to the process is informal conversation and a set of interview questions that serve as a guideline but in no way inhibit the “spontaneous generation of questions in the natural flow” of conversation (280). Thus methods utilized allowed informants to better express their own thoughts and rationalizations, increasing the

‘thickness’ of understanding (Geertz 1973), as local culture, geography and history emerged through the medium of local actors. Conversations that fostered elaboration through narratives of local environment, life histories and vignettes proved most valuable, and questions fell into one of six categories described by Patton (1990: 290-92): i) experiences—questions aimed at a person’s life history and significant events, meant to be descriptions of experiences, actions and behaviours; ii) values—cognitive and interpretive questions regarding a participant’s thoughts, goals and intentions; iii) feelings—or “the affective dimension of human life”, teasing out emotional responses to thoughts and actions; iv) knowledge—factual information that is independent of values and feelings; v) sensory—things that are seen and heard, such as events or discussions; and vi) demographic information. In the two chapters that follow these categories of response are organized around key themes and lend credence to the overall arguments being set forth.

Sampling—Despite the fact that the rules on sample size in qualitative analysis are flexible, a researcher is often forced to choose between depth (less people) and breadth

(more people), and this choice must be made in relation to the research objectives, budget and time available (Patton 1990). A study involving fewer interviews but more time for each (depth) may prove incredibly valuable in teasing out a rich corpus of data; however, a study with more participants (breadth) may prove invaluable in exploration stages and coming to terms with diversity (184). This study takes the first path, with the hope of offering more time to less people, as they more fully elaborate on life in the Diocese of

San Carlos.

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Key informant interviews at the diocese level—This research involved discussion with nearly all key social-action and development players within the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San Carlos, twenty parish priests, and the Bishop. Sampling was unnecessary for the first group, for all social-action workers available were interviewed.

For the group of priests, twenty out of a total of twenty-five parish priests were selected.

Priests from each parish visited were interviewed, and others were solicited on Mondays in the Bishop’s house. Mondays are the only official day off for the priests, and over the course of a month they all will make their way to the Bishop’s house at least once. I argue that speaking with 80 percent of parish priests is a representative sample, because priests are rotated among parishes at least every six years, and this allows any given priest a broad perspective upon which to comment without being overly affected by their present residence in a single parish. My only concern in soliciting information was having an even sample of older priests (above forty) and younger priests, and, as will become evident in the next chapter, this proved fruitful. These sampling methods meet the objectives of producing qualitative data based upon a representative sample of the population, producing data through interviews with key organizational informants, and comparing and contrasting data between the community and organizational informants.

Community interviews and focus group discussion—Interviews with BEC members went fairly quickly, with questions based around faith, belonging, place- making, reflection or social critique, and development. Due to a number of circumstances elaborated upon in Chapter Six, approximately 80 percent of these informants were female. The questions were designed to allow the informants to describe their community and development project, and gather information pertaining to whether or not community

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members believe that the BEC is helping them with their livelihood. An absolute absence

of data on BEC social development, or a condition like saturation due to nonexistence

(also discussed in Chapter Six), led to a switch from single interviews to focus-group

discussion, proving both economical and fruitful.

Focus groups can be a move away from the more rigid structure of interviewer-

informant in regular interview sessions, and they present an opportunity to “explore

group characteristics and dynamics as relevant constitutive forces in the construction of

meaning and the practice of social life” (Kamberelis and Dimitriadis 2005: 902).

Ultimately the focus group forum provides one more layer of meaning in the overall

study, and it presents an opportunity for groups of informants to reflect together and

generate further meaning through the cooperation of voices and the reconciliation of multiple opinions. In this study, seven BECs were the focus of group discussions, and the discussions proved consistent with the initial ten solo interviews, although it was difficult to control for the two or three individuals in each group who tended to dominate and lead the discussion. Fortunately, some discrepancy among group members was made apparent during solo interviews before and after Sunday Mass, and during a few other parish-wide events, such as fiesta. These interviews tended to be impromptu discussions by interested individuals wanting to speak with me, although a few key BEC members were introduced to me by the parish priests and Father Edwin.

The low number of male informants to the BEC interviews, and the dominance of a few key speakers during group interviews, would have proved more confounding to this study if significant socio-economic development was indeed being generated at the BEC level. This would have called for more data from cross-perspectives. However, as will

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become apparent in the following chapters, with so little happening in terms of socio economic development at the BEC level, there is only marginal disagreement about the meaning, organization and dreams that come from being part of a Basic Ecclesial

Community, as well as the primary impediments to locally-grown development.

Miscellaneous other interviews/conversations were held around the Diocese. Once again, these tended to be impromptu with individuals interested in participating, or people with whom I was traveling, including a few military personnel, some business owners, my neighbours in field sites, and local-government officials. Additionally, I was able to interview a large portion of teachers who worked for the Diocese in two mission schools, as well as twenty-seven individuals standing in line to purchase herbal medicines in two parishes.

In-field analysis and data cleaning—While in the field data cleaning and preliminary analysis began immediately after each day’s interviews. Preliminary analysis involved going through notes, looking for meaningful patterns, and identifying connections that led to new questions for follow-up interviews. At this time the bulk of data was analyzed based upon themes. Themes were derived from a few sources. The first source is researcher based, and includes my own theoretical ideas and leanings.

Broad themes in this study include ‘development’, ‘poverty’ and ‘being Church’, to name a few. Other themes include social-action programs, discrepancies in opinion between older and younger priests, structural impediments to development, and the role of women as BEC leaders. Though the broad themes were established prior to entering the field, the others emerged during data analysis due to the diversity of answers given to questions and because the scope of research was widened to include diocese-level social action.

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Furthermore, certain local concepts not considered prior to fieldwork, such as general laziness and the Filipino ‘debt of gratitude’, became new themes in the research, offering unique explanations for life and livelihood in the Diocese of San Carlos.

Confidentiality—The bulk of informants to this study remain anonymous, with pseudonyms assigned for differentiation. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, the use of real names requires a participant’s signature on a piece of paper that I keep. Due to army, landlord, government and corporate abuses in the past, including land dispossession, incarceration and murder, informants expressed apprehension about putting their names on a piece of paper. From the outset, the paper was a bone of contention, and I quickly stopped bringing it to the interview process. Secondly, I believed that some informants, particularly in the clergy where official opinions can be mandatory, would be less likely to express themselves fully if they knew that future readers (peers and superiors) would be able to identify them. Thus I argue that the interview, in terms of being a comfortable, equitable sharing process, was enhanced by basic anonymity from the start.

Five of the key participants insisted on being identified: Father Edwin, my lead contact and the social-action director for the Diocese; Bishop Joe; Sisters Daisy and

Helen, who run a mission school in Cabagtasan; and Sister Milla, who operates a community centre in Cabagtasan.

The island of Negros

It is an El Niño season in the Philippines and although the roads along the northeast coast of the island of Negros are hot and thick with humidity it is explained that the island is

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drier already than usual for January. The air conditioning inside the truck is freezing cold,

but outside on the surface of the road the heat twists and turns objects until they appear

blurry and distorted. The road follows the coastal plain and short hills along the coast,

and it curves past brown beaches, rock points, stream outlets and coves as it runs north

from San Carlos City to Cadiz—the northeast coastline is rugged, the soils less fertile

than the western side of the island where a wide plain of rich alluvial soil distends from

the northern tip to below the city of Kabankalan (Figure 4.2). Five kilometres west of the

road a wall of green-topped mountains begin to rise into the centre of the island, and they

look like emerald towers in the distance through the haze, memories of the tropical forest

that once covered the plain. The stacks of a large sugar mill smoke in the midday heat, and we pass through a number of small roadside villages along the way. It is a two hour drive between the two cities. We are delivering PA equipment to the cathedral in Cadiz and extra sacks of government-discounted rice to the neighbouring parish of Pandanan.

The sides of the road are overgrown with coconut and banana trees, but beyond

these the land rolls with sugarcane, and the wealth that comes from the sugar rolls into

the pockets of a select few Negrense families.42 It is said that almost all of the land in the

Diocese of San Carlos is controlled by four families:

They own the fields, they own the mountains. Now they even own the water. The fishermen fish for the big boats, the big operators. They don’t have enough fish and rice for themselves that they are going hungry (Fr Naldo).

The fields along the road are scattered with sugar workers. Men and women, wearing

tattered clothes and rags wrapped around their heads, push through the sugar fields, one

42 Negrense – n. & adj. Demonym for the inhabitants of Negros (pl. Negrenses).

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Figure 4.2: Negros Island

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of many flatbed trucks that will transport the raw product to the mill, and still other workers tend the many stubble fires.

There is a new law against the fires—the pollution, peoples’ health—but nobody seems to be listening [pointing and laughing]. They just do what they want (Fr Edwin).

Along the road trucks over-laden with stocks of stripped sugarcane chug, and they burp black clouds of exhaust that seem to drift with hostility through villages and hover at eye level. Workers hang from the sides of the trucks and sit atop the cane piles. In one of the villages there is a sharp turn in the road, a truck lies on its side and the sugar stocks have spilled through the wall of a house on the street. The people standing inside the house look unconcerned, and it does not appear that anyone was injured. The village ends where the road crosses a shallow river that winds down from the mountains, but it is the dry season, ‘winter’ in the Philippines, and the green-yellow water is stagnant. There are men who work in holes along the banks of the river. They are scavengers, and they dig down and shake the soil through screens in search of any recyclables and lost valuables.

Some of the holes are shoulder deep and not one is braced against collapse, but the scavengers can earn an extra fifty or 100 pesos if they are lucky (one or two US dollars, approximately). Further down the bank two women wash clothes in the water and lay them out to dry on large boulders. The women tend to so many articles of clothing it can be assumed that they work for/as a smaller laundry service (a labour-intensive service with no capital investment in the mechanical instruments of production).

There are billboards that advertise construction projects—ubiquitous in the country during general election time, scheduled for Monday, 10 May 2010—and each billboard states the purpose of the project, expected time to completion, the main contractor and the

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cost, among a few other details. Governments are mandated to erect such notification but

the cost of the contract or the awarded contractor is often left blank, so Father Edwin

reports any of these discrepancies to the local ombudsman. The piece de résistance on all

of these billboards is a picture of the smiling face of the politician who is responsible for the project, as if he or she was personally financing the project with money from his or her own wallet:

That is the culture again, like I was telling you. The people are indebted to the politician now. The gratitude, the debt of the heart. They will vote for him (Fr Edwin).

A number of the billboards have a smaller picture of outgoing President Gloria

Macapagal-Arroyo in the corner of the larger picture, meant to imply the local politician’s affiliation with ‘Gloria’s Team’. Before we reach Cadiz Father Edwin stops once and takes note of an incomplete project billboard.

On the outskirts of Cadiz, there are more scavengers, and they work in one of the local dumpsites. Perhaps twenty individuals, both male and female, scour over the piles of trash. There are children playing near some of the adults, a few tethered goats, and hens with chicks and six or seven dogs roam freely. Two female students in matching blue uniforms walk a trail that leads straight through the garbage, connecting a community of homes with the main street. Cadiz is one of the smaller component cities on the island, as is San Carlos City. Though they are the largest in the Diocese, with populations over 100,000, these centres are dwarfed by Bacolod, the largest city on the island and the centre of the sugar trade, with a population of more than 500,000.

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Negros is the fourth largest island in the Philippines, with a total land area of 12,706 square kilometres43 and a total population of approximately four million between the provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental. The provincial capitals are Bacolod and Dumaguete, respectively. Two main ethnolinguistic groups makeup the bulk of inhabitants on the island, the Ilonggo44 and the Cebuano, and there are smaller pockets, particularly in the mountains, where indigenous groups continue to speak their native languages and attempt to maintain their native practices.45 The Cebuano predominantly occupy the province of Negros Oriental and the Ilonggo, for the most part, live within the province of Negros Occidental, although there are many grey areas along the provincial border and intra-island migration has allowed entire Cebuano villages to sprout-up in

Ilonggo areas, and vice versa. Furthermore the provincial border, created in 1890, is a modern politico-economic as opposed to ethnic delineation, and it left many communities cut off from their linguistic compatriots. For instance, the City of San Carlos, which lies within the province of Negros Occidental, is Cebuano speaking.46 Despite provincial and linguistic boundaries the lives of all Negros’s inhabitants have in some measure been mediated by the sugar industry. The vast plains of the coastal regions are well suited to plantation agriculture, and the historic relations of sugar production have helped to

43 Roughly twice the size of Prince Edward Island.; marginally larger than Jamaica or the island of Hawai‘i. 44 Hiligaynon is the official language designation, and Ilonggo is considered incorrect; however, in three months I failed to meet one Hiligaynon-speaking person who did not refer to his or her language as Ilonggo. 45 The Ati are the main indigenous group on the island. Their name comes from the local term for ‘dark’, referring to their “sooty-black” skin, and they are described as having “wavy to kinky hair, [a] pug nose and thick lips” (WikiPilipinas 2011). During fieldwork the Ati were described to me as racially and culturally unique as well, and the ones I met indeed had a different physical appearance. 46 The languages share many affinities, and many inhabitants of the island speak both languages. For instance, late in my field season I learnt that during any given conversation Father Edwin would be speaking Cebuano to the Bishop and the Bishop would be responding in Ilonggo, and vice versa.

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produce a unique and rigid social structure that has transferred to other mono-crop production, such as rice, bananas and coconuts.

Emerging relations of sugar production

The social history of sugar on Negros, and the political economy of plantation agriculture that continues to dominate today, actually has its beginnings on the neighbouring island of Panay (Figure 4.1). Between the mid-1750s and mid-1850s the city of Iloilo, Panay, developed into a centre of local textile production, trade and export. As we know from the preceding chapter, during this one-hundred year stretch trade was dominated by the mestizos, who had filled a business niche rendered vacant when Spain set about expelling the ethnic-Chinese from Las Islas Filipinas. As part of the trade, products made from cotton, silk and the fibres of pineapple and abaca were loaded on mestizo boats bound for

Manila, and the boats would return with foreign imports that the mestizos distributed through local markets (cf. Aguilar 1998). Thus, by controlling a booming textile industry centred in larger villages and a port city, the mestizo class began to cement its political and economic foundation in the Visayan Islands. At the same time the emergence of a wage-earning class changed the basic Panay household in textile-producing areas from a subsistence-based economy to one dependent on wage-labour; this, in conjunction with urbanization, reduced the average family plot of land to about one hectare (McCoy 1992).

The new spatial map of production seemed to be working and the textile industry was a boon for the mestizos, but in the mid-Nineteenth Century two events occurred that would reshape the colonial landscape and reshuffle the colonial social layer cake, yet again: i) the Spanish lifted the ban on Chinese residents in the Philippines, and ii) Iloilo was

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flooded with cheap textiles from Europe when its market was opened to the world in

1855.

Upon the (re)legalization of ethnic-Chinese residence in the archipelago the Chinese quickly re-established their control over general trade and the textile industry. On Panay it was no different, and within a few decades their network and connections with the

Chinese in Manila would prove catastrophic to mestizo affluence in the industry:

The Iloilo Chinese were positively advantaged by their participation in the so-called cabecilla system, an ethnically based trading network that appeared in the 1840s and lasted until the 1880s. This network enabled the Chinese to present a united front in bargaining with the European importers whenever a cargo of textiles arrived in Manila, and it assured all Chinese wholesalers, including smaller Manila dealers and those based in provincial capitals like Iloilo and Cebu, a supply of textile for sale (Aguilar 1998: 98).

Shortly after the retrenchment of ethnic Chinese in the piece-goods trade, the colonial

authorities began to experiment with trade between smaller Philippine centres and foreign

locations, as opposed to the previous system of controlling international trade through

Manila (cf. van Helvoirt and van Westen 2009). Under the open-market system an

abundance of cheap textiles from Manchester and Glasgow dealt a fatal blow to the

industry on Panay, and this had social repercussions for the population of wage-earning

households in textile production. The one-hectare plots to which peasant property had

been reduced through urbanization and proletarianization were not enough to sustain

families without women’s income from textiles (McCoy 1992).

General joblessness and a mestizo class actively searching for new investments,

such as the property they found on neighbouring Negros, was an environment of

opportunity for Nicholas Loney, Manchester’s local agent and British vice-consul. With

the demise of local textile production and a new western Visayan trade deficit, he was

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searching for cargo to fill the holds of empty ships leaving the port of Iloilo. Loney’s solution was sugarcane, and he encouraged more of the displaced mestizos to invest their fortunes in Negros property, in order to develop a sugar industry. This placated mestizo economic anomie and served to fix the quasi-urban poor problem: “Loney, a British entrepreneur who, after taking over pineapple-fibre weaving on the Island of Panay and causing much unemployment, shipped the jobless across the narrow channel to Negros, where they were exploited in the sugar-cane industry (Lord 1990: 1033). Though indeed

Loney’s original concept, it was actually the new mestizo “frontier capitalists” who organized the mass transfer of labour required to make sugar a reality (Anderson 1998:

197).

Negros at the time was under-populated and rather untapped in terms of land and resources, and the mestizos set about transforming the land from rolling frontier into a

“patchwork of thousands of commercial haciendas shaped by domestic and world markets” (Lord 1990: 1034). Mestizo efforts were of a political-organizational-coercive nature, however, and the physical transformation of the landscape was undertaken by the once-jobless migrants from Panay, now referred to in the regional economy as ‘sacadas, which means “taken from”, as in taken from Panay’ (Bishop Joe):

Migrating from the impoverished weaving villages of western Panay Island, it was peasant pioneers who cleared the first farms from the virgin tropical forests of Negros Occidental in the 1850s and 1860s. Since uncleared land was initially of little value on a labour deficit frontier, the mestizo merchants concentrated on acquisition of small peasant farms—by purchase of contiguous plots, foreclosure on usurious mortgages, and violent expropriation ratified with perjured land claims (McCoy 1992: 113).

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Over the years 1855 to 1898, as sugar evolved alongside regional planter hegemony,47 the

population of Negros Occidental climbed from 18,805 to 308,272. Negros Oriental saw

drastic growth due to sugar as well, some of which resulted from jobless peasants from

Cebu landing on the eastern side of the island (cf. van Helvoirt and van Westen 2009). In

little more than forty years Negros’s sugar output climbed from 12,000 to 2,470,400

piculs,48 processed in 821 sugar mills on the island (McCoy 1992), not one of which had

existed prior to 1857 (Anderson 1998).

An analysis of the history of sugar on Negros presents two important divergences

from the general colonial history of the Philippines. Firstly, as opposed to other places in

the colony where economic, political and social dynamics were mediated by the fixed

peninsular-creole-mestizo hierarchy, these racial and ethnic premises did not impede any

population from cashing in on the sugar windfall; mestizo, creole and peninsular all

“embarked upon the same journey with a common object ... starting from about the same

footing, as no one possessed spectacular capital such as to outshine the rest” (Aguilar

1998: 102). Thus money was both might and mobility, and sugar was open to any

investment and personal initiative. That being said, the original plantation economy did

develop a spatial logic that expressed colonial stratification, as different sugar centres on

Negros emerged that were populated predominantly by one of either peninsular, creole or

mestizo planters (Cuesta 1980). Over time, however, the mestizo spaces of sugar

47 As part of his social history of plantation agriculture on Negros (creatively and cogently organized around the theme of ‘gambling’), Aguilar (1998) demonstrates that regional planter dominance was both coercive (violent) and consensual (hegemonic). The dominant forces of the greater sugar industry, however, were European sugar brokers, bankers and merchants in Iloilo city—almost exclusively foreigners from England, Spain, Switzerland, Scotland and China—and by the end of the Nineteenth Century all Negros sugar passed through Iloilo’s river-front warehouses (McCoy 1992). 48 Picul – traditional unit of weight in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, equivalent to approximately sixty kilograms (the amount that an average man can carry).

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production became dominant and grew at the expense of the others, pushing out peninsular, creole and small indio planters, and Negros real estate became concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer (mainly mestizo) families.

The second divergence on Negros from the general Philippine colonial experience involved the social relations of production, specifically sharecropping. As elsewhere, sharecropping provided the necessary ‘ownership’ in the production process to keep labour from fleeing harsh and unfair work conditions, and it required that smallholders use their own capital resources, including farm implements, family and water buffaloes.

The split on crop profits between landlord and tenant was usually 50/50, although bookkeeping was a questionable practice reserved for landlords and had a tendency to error in their favour (Aguilar 1998). Uniquely on Negros the sharecroppers lived in worker villages on large centrally-administered haciendas, as opposed to the regular

Philippine pattern whereby individual families would live as tenants on two to four hectare plots. Arguably, this effectively re-spatialized sharecropping to be and feel more like wage-dependence than small-holder affiliation with a larger landlord. But the tenant- landlord system on Negros proved unique in one other important way, owing much to the island’s original lack of inhabitants for labour and the need to import sacadas. Negros’s low population led to “incomplete class dominance of the hacenderos, who could not beckon labor at will”, and a series of extra-economic motivators were put into place, including corporal punishment, incarceration and deportation to military camp, all meant

“to compel natives to behave like genuine proletarians” (Aguilar 1998: 127-36). The most useful tool of labour control at the hacenderos’ disposal, however, was debt, and

Negros sharecroppers became debt slaves to the landlord:

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The planters used several devices to burden their workers with debt—lending money at 100 percent interest, giving liberal credit at the plantation store, and then forcing them to sign contracts that made the worker, his wife and infant children responsible for the loan. They were no longer free farmers in control of their lives. The sugar workers of Negros had become debt slaves—barred from leaving the hacienda without a passport from the planter, bought and sold as part of its assets along with the water buffalo or standing cane, and burdened with debts so large that they passed to their children at death (McCoy 1984: 86).

Thus the ultimate coercive tool at the disposal of the landed class proved to be an

economic one, even among numerous effective extra-economic means. The patron-debtor

system that emerged fomented a cultural praxis of dependence, bearing a resemblance to

the relationships between fathers and children (with recalcitrance on both sides), and the

fathers tended to come out on top, both politically and financially. Planter access to

wealth and power quickly spread beyond the boundaries of large estates, however, as

landholding families took the reins of local and provincial governance. Furthermore,

although local antagonisms between estates persisted and often intensified into outright

warfare, the wealthiest handful of landed families periodically abandoned their disputes

long enough to act as a regional power bloc in the national theatre of government. Indeed,

since the beginning of electoral politics in the Philippines (1916), plantations have used

their labourers as “vote banks to form a perpetual, powerful sugar bloc in the national

legislature” that advocates for close ties to its main market, the United States, and blocks

labour reform legislation; thus “spatial control has provided the Negros planters with the means—land, capital and labour—to act as political mediators between capital and countryside” (McCoy 1992: 108-11). This system of regional cacique conflict-collusion and debt peonage continues today.

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Contemporary Sugarland

Negros planters are clearly delineated by their control over the island's land, capital and labour, and their key commercial crops are sugar, rice, bananas and coconut. Of an island total of 1.33 million hectares, 818,991.026 are held privately, and a full one-quarter is controlled by 486 families (Ombion and Azue 2005b). Productive lands are not contained to the vast plains either, and ownership in the hands of the few stretches up into the mountains as well.49 By 1988 this translated into a landless rate of 82 percent for rural

Negrenses, and 72.4 percent of private land was owned by 3.9 percent of landlords

(Diprose and McGregor 2009). Throughout both provinces on Negros this has enabled

the perpetuation of a “closed upper class which has passed its property onward through the generations for over a century, fostering a familial style of power so strong that planter political control … is near absolute” (McCoy 1992: 109). For instance, informants in San Carlos City stated that nearly all of the agricultural lands in the vicinity are controlled by four extended families.

The planter economy on Negros, though dominated by sugar production, is not limited to sugar; rather, and similar to agricultural production throughout the Philippines, other industrial-scale plantation crops include rice, bananas, corn and coconuts, and these tracts are interspersed with smallholder vegetable and livestock operations. The final land-intensive produce industry of note on Negros is aquaculture, particularly the farming of domestically-consumed prawns and fish, and large square shallow ponds dot the coastal landscape. Sugar is the fourth largest agricultural crop in the Philippines in terms of revenue, with 26,601,400 metric tons of raw sugarcane generating USD 509,432,000

49 The accumulation of mountain property for conversion to sugar production accelerated in 1960, when the US increased the Philippine sugar quota in response to the Cuban revolution (McCoy 1984).

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in 2008 commodities markets (FAO 2011).50 Although Philippine sugar is grown in

seventeen provinces, a full two-thirds of total cane production happens on Negros

(Diprose and McGregor 2009). Thus sugar on Negros covers more than half of the

available agricultural lowlands, and this amounts to 165,000 hectares in Negros

Occidental (Rutten 2010) and 35,000 hectares in Negros Oriental (van Helvoirt and van

Westen 2009). Plantations and sugar mills continue to be the overwhelming employers of

the Negrense masses, even though sugar work is seasonal, and the landless ‘race to the

bottom’ as they compete for the few low-paying jobs available.51

Lack of jobs today (the opposite situation of 100 years ago) has resulted from

dynamics both internal and external to the Negros sugar economy. In terms of the former,

Negros planters, as land barons, have tended to focus their accumulation strategies around rent-seeking vis-à-vis more entrepreneurial activities associated with a business class—new product development, diversified investment and secondary or tertiary endeavours, to name a few—and this has diminished the fitness of Negros sugar planters in competitive global markets (van Helvoirt and van Westen 2009). In terms of external dynamics, the internationalization of commodity markets would drop the price of sugar

below Negros production costs in 1976 and again in 1983.52 Although they were systemic

crises that rippled through the island society, planters (ie: the wealthier) were poised to

handle much better the global shocks. Once the dust had settled they downsized their

50 For reference, year 2008: rice—USD 3,382,928,000 from 16,815,500 tonnes; coconuts—USD 1,367,481,000 from 15,319,500 tonnes; bananas—USD 1,114,265,000 from 8,687,620 tonnes (FAO 2011). 51 Of thirteen central sugar centres in the Philippines, nine are located on Negros, including one in San Carlos. The Victorias Mill (Negros Occidental) is the largest in the Philippines, as well as the largest integrated mill and refinery in the world (cf. Ombion and Azue 2005a). 52 The crisis of deflated sugar happened again in 2004. This was doubly problematic for small planters whose livelihoods were already threatened by trade liberalization under recent World Trade Organization rules (del Rosario-Malonzo 2005).

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labour forces and reengineered production around capital investment in industrial farm

equipment. McCoy succinctly sums up planter rationale for mechanization at the expense

of labour: “The machines produce more, cost less, and are not inclined to disruptive

industrial action. After five years of paying for a machine, a planter has acquired a capital

asset, not a social responsibility” (1984: 71). Thus the peasant masses suffered the brunt, with layoffs, competition for limited work and eviction, and over the course of the 1980s farm mechanization would put more than two-thirds of sugar labourers out of work.53

Work for labourers in the sugar game has always been seasonal; milling tends to

take place between October and May, and the off-season of little work and little income

is June to September. Many families struggle during the off-season and only make it

through by piling up debt, debt which can remain unpaid after the next milling season.

Other families go hungry and can only afford two meals per day (del Rosario-Malonzo

2005). Some wage-labourers are able to find employment in other primary production, such as fishing, mining and rice, which are not characterized by seasonal fluctuation, but the influx of unemployed individuals seeking work drops wages and breeds hostility amongst those already employed in those alternatives. Furthermore, the simple act of leaving the plantation has social repercussions, for the hacienda is a place-based community, “marked by affective bonds and a sense of belonging … where families make a living and try to improve their livelihood” (Rutten 2010: 216). Strong social ties

53 Even after downsizing and reengineering Philippine sugar remains uncompetitive. The bulk is sold on the domestic market and protected by the national government (van Helvoirt and van Westen 2009). Furthermore, the Philippines is now a net importer of sugar, with Filipinos consuming 150,000 tons of raw sugar each month, and the beverage industry accounts for 30 percent of domestic sugar consumption (Henderson 2000). Within the next twenty years, 7.8 million Filipinos are expected to have diabetes (Wild et al. 2004). In grocery stores in the City of San Carlos during fieldwork, it was near impossible to find any food product produced in the Philippines that did not have sugar as a main ingredient, including ‘plain’ yogurt, all juices, canned goods and all sauces.

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hold individuals in place, and alternatives to hacienda life for the rural poor are limited:

“the upland frontier on the island is now fully settled, and urban (slum) living becomes increasingly expensive” (Rutten 2010: 208). Thus staying on the plantation and enduring the hardships is a trade-off for a semblance of security and access to basic community infrastructure. McCoy offers Hacienda Esperanza as a typical example:

Lying at the centre of 1,000 hectares planted largely with sugar, the hacienda compound is a self-contained community with its own school, stores, chapel, clinic, housing tract and central administration. The hacienda’s 858 residents live in two clusters of small, wooden houses, the larger group separated from the administrative compound only by the width of a narrow cane field. Although these tumble-down shacks offer only 25 square metres of floor space for families as large as ten, water, electricity and primary education are all free, courtesy of the hacienda (McCoy 1984: 54).

As a result of the social relations of cash-crop production on Negros and planter control over the ‘private enterprise of public office’, life for the many remains one of basic subsistence that seasonally dips into the red, fluctuating like a typical boom-bust cycle, but perhaps better understood as a cycle of ‘bust and almost busting’. The situation is exacerbated further by a growing population of youth with little hope of employment.

In line with greater Philippine trends the island’s population is young. In Negros Oriental

38.65 percent of individuals were classified below age fourteen in the year 2000 census

(NOH 2011). In Negros Occidental, the 2007 census showed that more than 44 percent of individuals are aged seventeen or less (PNO 2009). Thus, with this demographic trend of an expanding worker-ready base of young people, the miserable living standards can only be expected to sink further without a massive reform of the economy centred on job creation and/or land reform. It is this socio-historical overview of the island as a whole that serves as backdrop to the province of Negros Occidental.

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Negros Occidental

Negros Occidental is the ninth largest province of the Philippines in terms of area, with

792,607 hectares, 68 percent of which is privately owned, or “alienable and disposable”

(PNO 2009: 33).54 The remaining 32 percent is forested land. Though mineral extraction generates annual revenues of more than USD 30 million (2001), the province remains firmly grounded in its agricultural roots. Cash crops dominate the landscape with 165,289 hectares sugarcane, 122,940 hectares rice, 58,760 hectares corn, 34,599 hectares coconut and 9,503 hectares of banana trees. But the crops also dominate the lives of many, and a full 44 percent of the provincial population is employed in work directly connected to agriculture. With approximately 2.9 million inhabitants Negros Occidental is the sixth largest province. The people are spread throughout 661 barangays, nineteen municipalities and thirteen cities, with a density rate of 362 individuals per square kilometre, though there is much variation between urban centres, such as Bacolod City

(3,199/km²), and the rural frontiers. Between 2000 and 2007, the average growth rate was

1.44 percent, much lower than the national average of 2.3 percent (WHO 2005). There are 473,343 households, and the tenure status of the lots occupied by households for

Negros Occidental, excluding Bacolod City, is 58.84 percent rent free with the consent of the owner (typical of a planter-tenant economy); 25.65 percent either owned or mortgaged; 5.54 percent rent; and 3.2 percent squat for free without the consent of the legal owner. The vast majority of Negrenses (84.74 percent) practice Roman Catholicism,

54 The statistical information in this paragraph and the following three paragraphs, unless otherwise referenced, is taken directly from Negros Occidental social and economic trends, 2009, which is a substantial inventory of demographic statistics prepared by the government of Negros Occidental (cf. PNO 2009).

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with Aglipayan,55 Islam, United Church of Christ, and Bible Baptists accounting for most of the remaining 15.26 percent.

The average household is five individuals, and annual family income averages

73,923 pesos (USD 1607)56 or 202 pesos per day. For every 100 working individuals there are seventy-two persons dependent upon them.57 Fifty-two percent of income is derived from wages, 27 percent from entrepreneurial activities and 21 percent comes from gifts, remittances from abroad, pensions and/or workers’ compensation. Family income is quickly spent on daily living, such as food, clothing, education and transportation, and on average a mere 6.33 percent is saved. But average income can be a poor measure in a land of such inequity, and 31.4 percent of families and 42 percent of individuals live below the poverty threshold, equivalent to 13,975 pesos (USD 303) or the amount required to satisfy basic needs and nutrition per person. If we differentiate the poverty figures further, 54 percent of rural Occidental Negrenses and 27 percent of urban live below the poverty threshold (NSCB 2005).

Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of other demographic trends, and in the province of Negros Occidental its ties to health and nutrition are significant. The leading cause of death in 2009 was hypertensive vascular disorder, responsible for 1507 deaths, or fifty-nine individuals per 100,000. Other leading causes of death are pneumonia, heart disease, cancer, influenza and diarrhoea. Among infants, six of 1,000 will die during their first year of life, and the leading causes are pneumonia, septicaemia, pre-maturity and

55 Aglipayan – an offshoot of the Catholic religion, distinctly characterized by i) a rejection of the authority of the Pope and ii) clergy who are allowed to marry. 56 During fieldwork (winter-spring 2010), one Philippine peso traded for approximately forty-six United States dollars. 57 Of the seventy-two dependent average, sixty-four are young and eight are old. Recall from the figure presented earlier in the chapter, 44 percent of Occidental Negrenses are below age eighteen.

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acute respiratory distress. Of the 1,000 live births five mothers will die, most frequently from hypertension and post-partum haemorrhage, particularly uterine atony. These are grim statistics for the working poor, regardless of a provincial government that can boast of twenty government hospitals, ten private hospitals, nineteen municipal health offices, twelve city health offices and 528 barangay health centres. As in other developing countries, and their rural areas in particular, much of the data on health and morbidity in the Philippines can be correlated with access to healthcare—although the centres of care exist, access is obstructed by distance, number of beds, socio-cultural barriers, such as family commitments or gender roles, and, perhaps most importantly, basic costs. Cost for both transportation to health centres and the care received there is a determining variable in a land where there is no social safety net for emergencies. The average distance from outlying referral hospitals to one of the ten main centres is 83.5 kilometres, which can cost upwards of three days’ pay to travel.58 Once there, basic treatments can run into the thousands of pesos, more than a month’s wages for many families.

* * *

No matter how the figures are broken down, and no matter how much energy the provincial government puts into data collection and social programs, it appears that the majority of Occidental Negrenses, particularly in rural-agricultural areas, are likely to remain impoverished and marginalized without an overhaul of existing property rights.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, after more than twenty years the Comprehensive

Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), drafted under the presidency of Cory Aquino, has

58 The furthest distance from a referring hospital to a district hospital, the municipal hospital in Hinoba-an, was 199.4 km.

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met with success and failure, has been subjected to shady deals and conflict among the ruling elite, and has never redistributed the full 8.064 million hectares of land to four million landless peasants, as originally proposed. CARP was meant to stimulate rural development by removing feudal structures, thus empowering the poor through land ownership and access to new infrastructure, such as credit, cooperative and education facilities (Diprose and McGregor 2009). Over the first fifteen years of CARP (1988

2003), the program led to the transfer of 5.5 million hectares to 2.7 million recipients throughout the country, which is a success rate of 72 percent, even if the entire program was supposed to take only ten years (cf. Bello et al. 2005). The results of the 72 percent transfer have been questioned, however: “the real accomplishment level is undoubtedly lower due to the padding of official reports, the stalled installation of beneficiaries due to continuing landlord resistance, and counterfeit or “fake” redistributions” (Borras and

Franco 2005: 337). Regardless of actual rates CARP is a process, and the fickle moment of land transfer does not sufficiently describe its outcomes.

Since inception in 1988, outcomes of the redistribution process have been marred by landholder influence on government policy, unrealistic faith in the rationalizing abilities of the market, stock options that benefit those in control, and land abstentions granted to government officials and their friends and families. In terms of the latter, a ten- year deferment was granted to commercial farms and agribusiness lands. Essentially an anti-CARP manoeuvre from the outset, this concession served to benefit some of the most powerful of the landed elite, for major cash-crop operations, covering vast tracks of private lands originally slated for redistribution, were already classified (or quickly reclassified) as commercial (Borras and Franco 2005). Other schemes included a

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voluntary offer-to-sell based on higher rates of compensation for landlords as sellers, and a voluntary land transfer, wherein land is directly transferred to CARP beneficiaries under terms mutually agreed between buyer and seller with no government interference

(ibid.). Perhaps the greatest problem with mutually agreed terms is that the power differentials between parties often meant ‘agreed terms’ were skewed in the favour of the seller, and there is no record of coercion on the part of sellers and concessions on the part of buyers. In terms of international landowners, two favourite reforms utilized by multinational corporations were the lease back and contract farming. For instance, Del

Monte locked unsuspecting CARP beneficiaries into long-term lease agreements amounting to twenty-five US dollars per hectare per year (with no guarantee of employment on one’s own land!) and other companies, such as Dole, manipulated beneficiaries into multi-year contracts of production under terms greatly beneficial to capital vis-à-vis labour (ibid.). In the end, the bulk of land transferred was public, only

127,000 hectares were transferred under compulsory acquisition, and the remainder were subject to deals that favoured existing landlords (Borras and Franco 1998).59

In many regards CARP can be seen as yet another pauperization of the Philippine state by the governing elite—massive funds from the public purse were distributed throughout the landholding elite as payment for lands that continued to be controlled by

59 The World Bank became involved in the CARP debate in the 1990s. By 1999 it convinced the Philippine Department of Agrarian Reform to support a pilot project of market-led agrarian reform, eventually culminating in the Community-Managed Agrarian Reform and Poverty Reduction Program, a neoliberal plan predicated on a “willing seller-willing buyer scheme; a demand-driven approach; integrated land transfer and support services delivery; and centrality of income generation goals via farm productivity enhancement and credit financing” (Borras et al. 2007: 1564). Borras et al. provide an excellent overview of the World Bank’s program, which was based upon non-figurative, reductive macroeconomic modeling, and its unequivocal failure after seven years. Of particular interest is the manner in which wealth and power predominantly transferred in the directions “elite-to-elite, state-to-elite, foreign donor-to-elite, poor-to elite” (2007: 1573).

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the elite after their redistribution to landless peasants. In Marxist terms CARP can be envisioned as a second round of primitive accumulation (cf. Marx 1965; Luxemburg

2003); historically, many lands throughout the Philippines have been appropriated by primitive or extra-economic means (theft, violence, coercion), and now, under CARP, the lands have been re-subjected to extra-economic accumulation in the guise of state possession and redistribution (ie non-market processes).60 For others CARP has been an instrument of labour suppression—placating the working masses with the promise of land ownership has served to forestall unionization (Guadalquiver 2008). Nevertheless the need for land reform persists, and the budget for CARP expired in December 2008. Thus

President Arroyo extended the program, with modifications, under the Comprehensive

Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reform bill, signed into law 7 August 2009.

In terms of CARP success Negros Occidental is considered to be one of the worst performing regions. The province holds the greatest balance of undistributed land slated for reform; that is, 150,000 hectares of a national total of 1.3 million still await redistribution after twenty years (Guadalquiver 2008). Land owner resistance has been particularly strong: “political and legal manipulation of the CARP system, as well as landowner-directed violence, have often made it tough for peasants who risk ending up not only without land title, but also without access to land” (Diprose and McGregor 2009:

58). Furthermore, threats and acts of eviction can go far in a land of poverty and unemployment, and Rutten provides a copy of a note posted on Hacienda Bino, a 236

60 Interestingly, because the landlords and governing elite have come out even higher on top in terms of wealth and power, CARP can be understood as a case of accumulation by repossession (cf. Harvey 2006a); extra-economic means have allowed a number of landlords to gain from ‘officially’ signing away their property.

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hectare plantation in Kabankalan, where as many as seventy workers signed up as CARP beneficiaries:

To all Hacienda Employees: Please bear in mind that all those who signed in favour of CARP are expressing their desire to get out of employment on their own volition. Wherefore, beginning today, July 18, only those who did not sign for CARP will be given employment by Hda. Bino (2010: 214).

In Negros Occidental CARP has been forestalled by multiple players (state agencies, landowners, unions, farm worker movements, NGOs, and the landless poor) arguing over the terms and timelines of redistribution. Added to this is an unhealthy dose of intra-peasant/worker conflict among the poor, a ‘militant particularism’ (cf. Harvey

2001) resulting from i) state classification of recipients that ranked sugar workers, and outright excluded some residents; ii) diverse political interests within and among haciendas, often the result of specific union and/or NGO groups pushing their own concept of land reform; iii) a system of planter coercion and patronage; iv) competition among groups over community place-making strategies; and v) economic independence being eroded by some recipients who took possession only to lease the land back to the original landlord (Rutten 2010). In regards to the latter one priest stated:

CARP was not well planned. They do not understand finances. It needed seminars and organization for the recipients. Some are CARP beneficiaries, and they sold the land back to the landlord, and bought stereos and TVs and karaoke machines. So they are landless working for the landlord again (Fr Manuel).

* * *

When the historical relations of production and contemporary social conditions in Negros

Occidental are mapped out, it is difficult to imagine how any grassroots or local development scheme can make any meaningful progress—the structural impediments to

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local agency are fully entrenched and arguably insurmountable. And yet the Catholic faithful press on in their plight, searching for justice, equity and greater control over family and community livelihood. Organizing at the levels of diocese, parish and BEC, the Catholic community is able to effect positive changes for many of the rural and marginal communities living in Negros Occidental. The following two chapters recount the development aspirations and achievements happening in the Diocese of San Carlos.

Chapter Five is an overview of socio-economic programs operating at the Diocese level, and it chronicles the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the programs, as well as differing opinions on their successes and failures, and whether or not all involved believe that each program belongs within the framework of a strong diocesan church. Chapter Six scales down to the level of BECs, and it is a search for local-community development that is both endogenous to the communities and self-sustaining.

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SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE

DIOCESE OF SAN CARLOS

The Diocese of San Carlos is one of four dioceses on the island of Negros (Figure 5.1).

Three of the four dioceses, San Carlos, Kabankalan and Bacolod, are suffragans61 of the

Archdiocese of Jaro, situated on the adjacent island of Panay. One other diocese on

Panay, the Diocese of San Jose de Antique, is a fourth suffragan of the Archdiocese of

Jaro as well. San Carlos is a large suffragan that straddles the eastern third of Negros

Occidental and the northern tip of Negros Oriental, with a total land area of 32,489 hectares, and a population just below one million (Diocese of San Carlos 2010). It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the people who live within the boundaries of the

Diocese are Catholic, though there are many remote and under-serviced areas where

Catholicism remains a minority. The Diocese was officially erected with the installation of Bishop Nicholas Mondejar 10 February 1988. On 11 September 2001, Most Reverend

Jose Advincula was installed as the second bishop of the Diocese. There are twenty-five parishes, the majority of which are predominantly rural, four mission areas and approximately sixty priests. Most priests are parish priests, but there are others assigned to the Diocese, Monsignors assigned to larger centres, and those retired or on leave.

61 A suffragan diocese is one among a few dioceses affiliated with and overseen by a metropolitan diocese, or archdiocese. In the Philippines the relationship between suffragan and archdiocese is more symbolic than political in nature, whereby the archbishop is revered as the spiritual leader but tends not to interfere in the daily business of each suffragan.

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Figure 5.1: Diocese of San Carlos

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The Diocese of San Carlos argues that economic exploitation, political manipulation, cultural domination and religious ignorance are the roots of a “most dehumanizing poverty” in the Philippines, and it is committed to a vision of change:

“We, the Pilgrim Church of the Diocese of San Carlos, are committed in Faith to

Incarnate the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Justice and Love, where there are viable living conditions in freedom and participation, integrity, culture and religious maturity”

(Diocese of San Carlos 2010). This vision of change is more than a slogan and the

Diocese has set itself the task of fostering social, political and economic development for poor and marginalized people:

We are striving to build a people of God, living as a witnessing community in worship, prayer, in preaching, in service, in sharing. We follow the social teachings of the Church, monitor the current social realities. We envision the Social Action Center as an agent of change for the transformation of the present-day society (Fr Edwin).

The civil transformation of any society is by no means a simple mission, for it can require substantial resources, but the diocese has the labour power, social networks and a moderate degree of disposable income, enough to effect changes, however gradual, in local communities.

Being an agent of change in communities requires further organization, and the

Diocese accepts Basic Ecclesial Communities as the most useful organizational model for the fulfillment of its goals. Furthermore, the BEC concept maintains the liturgical goal of small communities of Christian worship. Thus the thrust of the Diocese of San Carlos is to build BECs and a strong and connected Diocesan Church, creating a network at multiple scales of organization, such as families within individual BECs, clusters of

BECs, the parish and the diocese. Fortunately BECs have existed in San Carlos for

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decades, so when the Diocese set about building BECs they were actually adding more

BECs to what was already a large pool.62 Today there are 567 BECs in San Carlos, and all parish priests report having BECs in their parishes. The fewest number of BECs reported in a parish was five, and the greatest was thirty-six, with an average number just a fraction over twenty. Likewise, individual size varied significantly, with small BECs composed of five to seven families, and others composed of sixty to eighty families.

Suffice to say, when the Diocese entered upon its path to social change it already had a strong organizational frame in which to work. In the end the Diocese came up with an organizational structure that involves multiple scales of social actors (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2: Organizational Structure Of Social Action

Bishop

Social Action Director Secretary • Financial Officer Diocesan Project Officer

Social Action Center Field Officers

Priests, Financial Officers and Project Coordinators For Each of 34 Parishes Lay Leaders, Project Coordinators and Financial Officers For Each BEC

BEC Families

62 Father Edwin referred to his work as ‘rebuilding BECs’. ‘We are always rebuilding them. They fall apart as fast you can make a new one’.

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To better understand and meet the development needs of the people the Diocese

applied to the National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA) for funds to conduct a

survey in 2004. NASSA had recently been pledged three million pesos (USD 65,217)63 over three years from the government of Spain, and a portion of this money was used to fund the survey. The survey was predicated on the idea that a meaningful, participatory development involves the voices of local people and their own conceptions of community improvement, and the Diocese settled on a program that it termed Community

Organizing Participatory Approach Research. With the help of priests and lay coordinators the Diocese went into five municipal districts that spanned the length of the

Diocese, La Libertad, Quezon, Calatrava, Toboso and Escalante. As part of the survey they asked people to prioritize problems for a proposed action plan (Table 5.1):

Table 5.1: Diocesan Ranked Prioritized Problems For Communities

PRIORITY LA LIBERTA QUEZON CALATRAVA TOBOSO ESCALANTE OF BECs

Agriculture 5 1 1 2 1 Livelihood 6 4 2 1 1 Environment 2 2 3 4 3 Health 4 3 4 3 2 Education 7 6 5 5 4 Infrastructure 9 5 6 Na 5 Governance 1 7 9 Na 6 Peace/Justice 3 9 7 Na Na Migration 8 8 8 na Na (Adapted from a report produced by San Carlos Diocese)

Land issues, including livelihood, agriculture and environmental sustainability ranked

highest on the list or priorities, and many people expressed the need for a cooperative:

63 During the first quarter of 2010, 1 USD was equivalent to 46 PHP, approximately. For the remainder of the book, this formula may be applied for conversions.

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It is an integrated program, including all objectives. We started with a survey to prioritize needs. Cooperative was the keyword of the survey [but] the concept involved giving as well as taking, trying to eliminate the dole-out mentality (Fr Edwin).

Other keywords and concerns for each category are listed in Table 5.2.

Table 5.2: Key Concerns Of Parishioners By Category

AGRICULTURE LIVELIHOOD ENVIRONMENT HEALTH

Lack of farm/fishing Dependence on loans; no Unsustainable Kaingin Absence of community facilities and jobs; lack of capital; reli- System (slash and burn); health clinics; lack of implements, use and ance on vendors and forest denudation; soil medicines in the barangay lending rates too peddlers; need to develop erosion; water pollution; clinics; poor nutrition among high; lack of irri- small business, such as poor sanitation; silt loss children; unregulated drug gation canal; lack of sari-sari store,64 buy and in rivers; quarrying in use; lack of permanent technology regard- sell store, bakery, rivers. doctors in community hos ing organic farming; consumers’ coop, pitals; poor sanitation in dependence on ferti hog/goat/poultry/ communities, improper dis lizer loans and seed cattle raising, trucking posal of solid waste; no loans; entry of com service. toilets in houses; long dis mercial fishing tances to community clinics; vessels within discriminatory delivery of prohibited distance health services. from shoreline. EDUCATION INFRASTRUCTURE GOVERNANCE PEACE / JUSTICE

Low adult literacy The need to construct Need to correct abusive End mental and physical rates; children are concrete bridges, spill- barangay officials, some harassment by the military unable to complete ways, river dikes, irri gambling on duty; break and barangay officials; stop basic primary gation facilities, sea walls, political dynasties; end land ejection, deprivation education due to public toilets, water nepotism, vote buying and human-rights violations; cost/distance; lack reservoirs, daycare centre, during elections, legal increase knowledge about of school buildings; health centre, schools; and illegal gambling; land rights; create zones of ineffective teachers; need to rehabilitate farm- solve crimes; encourage peace between the Armed lack of teachers. to-market roads; road community involvement; Forces and the New People’s maintenance. fight rampant drug Army. addiction. (Adapted from a report produced by San Carlos Diocese)

64 A sari-sari store is a small variety store where a limited number of household goods and foods are sold, such as candles, fuel, cookware, cigarettes, canned meat, snacks, soda and beer. Though typically a shack along a road and most often attached to the owner’s house, it is the equivalent of a convenience store.

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In the end (and over time) the Diocese settled on a number of programs and services through which it could make a difference. Programs include livelihood and sustainable agriculture, a consumers’ cooperative, an alternative healthcare program, a bottled water operation, the building of high schools in under-serviced areas, good-governance and anti-mining campaigns, and a partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines focused upon reconciliation and infrastructural development. Concomitant with these programs, the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San Carlos applied for and was granted NGO status. NGO status ‘gets us past the separation of Church and State, even though the Bishop is President [laughing]’ (Fr Edwin). In 2010 the Social Action Center became a registered charity.

The remainder of the chapter introduces each of the main programs carried out at the diocese level, and offers insights from key informants regarding program efficacy and outright support. From the picture presented it is clear that great efforts have produced substantial results, and it also is clear that ideas about certain directions toward community development in the Diocese are not shared by all involved. Furthermore the concept of integrated or total human development stands out, and we can see this thread woven into all the programs. ‘It is holistic. We are building people rather than building churches’ (Fr Edwin). The order in which the programs are presented is arbitrary, but because the production of herbal medicines has helped to finance other development thrusts, it seems fitting to begin with them.

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Herbal medicines

Since 2004 the Diocese of San Carlos’s Social Action Center has produced herbal medicines for people throughout the Diocese, and today they offer nineteen different products for the treatment of a variety of ailments (see Appendix 1). The Diocese identified herbal medicine as an important thrust when it critically evaluated the present

(yet stalled) Community Based Health Program (CBHP), a program implemented by the

National Church and partner NGOs during the Marcos years of martial law (1972-81). At the time of inception the CBHP was designed to deliver medical services to communities that were not serviced by government clinics, mainly due to physical distance and the absence of roads. The program consisted of training seminars on traditional medicine use and production, herbal alternatives, acupuncture and massage. Interestingly, the medicinal program was designed to be 100% traditional, and Western medicines were presented as having harmful side effects and ‘making the Western countries rich’ (Fr

June).

The CBHP was moderately successful, according to the priests I interviewed, but it also fomented a radical critique of the existing social order in the Philippines. Indeed, communities became aware of their political and economic circumstances—‘first and foremost, a lack of government services’ (Fr Edwin)—and they began to reflect upon change. This reflection was inevitable, given the necessity to explain why the Church itself had become involved in local health and development, and in time the CBHP seminars became ‘risky business because they were biased. There was indoctrination toward the left [NPA/communists]. People went to the streets to protest, they became political’ (Fr Naldo). In the end, whether due to the political dissent or the basic

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economic situation of the Philippine State, it was explained that cuts to funding over the

years have diminished the efficacy of the CBHP, and both monitoring and training have

nearly disappeared. ‘These programs are only good if there is funding. At the same time

the people have tried to sustain what they have learnt, good results, too’ (Fr Jerome).

Fr Edwin and members of the Diocese Social Action Center decided to take action

in 2004 in response to the struggling CBHP, believing that they could strengthen basic

healthcare within their own Diocese. The concept was introduced by Berna, a community

nurse who had worked within the CBHP and who had organized medical, health and nutrition missions in many mountain parishes.65 As a result she had learnt a great deal

from the locals. After an initial survey, she and Fr Edwin discovered that many of the

communities that had produced traditional medicines, either socio-historically or through

the direction of the CBHP, were still actively producing them:

It was good because people were looking after their own health, family health, to an extent. Unfortunately, this did not help communities generate income’ (Fr Edwin); ‘there was so much demand, we needed a new plan. We needed a license for sanitary conditions, standards—at first we were using a coffee grinder [laughing]. You know, to make the medicines (Berna).

At this time they discovered that users of maintenance drugs in the community, for

ailments such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma, were able to get equivalent therapeutic

results from traditional medicines as pharmaceuticals, and this increased demand on

traditional production. Fr Edwin and Berna began to envision a diocese-wide health

program based upon the mass production of herbal medicines. They believed that the

herbal medicines could be used as a vehicle for health promotion and income generation,

as well as ‘a cash foundation, a basis, for funding other development throughout the

65 Berna is a fulltime employee of the Social Action Center in charge of the herbal medicine production, as well as a number of other health-related operations.

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entirety of the Diocese. Our plans are always holistic. It is an integrated development, and the herbal medicines really are the base’ (Fr Edwin).

At the time traditional medicines were only able to be consumed locally because they did not meet the standards of the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFD). In order to put the products on the market the herbal medicine production would have to be streamlined by the Diocese, and the Diocese would have to hire a permanent pharmacist in order to meet one of the requirements for certification with the Bureau of Food and Drugs. Part and parcel of certification was the registration of a product name, Alternative Health Care

Herbal Products, and its placement within the BFD category of Food Supplement—the latter because they are not allowed to claim that their herbal medicines are drugs, per se.

What started as a series of seminars (and a dream) in 2003 had morphed into a

proper laboratory in 2005 and BFD certification by 2008. During these years the Diocese

obtained 50,000 pesos of funding from NASSA to be used for pilot projects in five

parishes. The pilot parishes were successful enough to warrant an information seminar

for all parishes on the topic of establishing a boteka sa parokya (parish pharmacy).

Botekas generally are located on Church property, often directly beside the church itself,

in already existing buildings. For pharmacy start-up the Diocese provides 5000 pesos

worth of herbal products without interest charges. It is hoped that repayment of the no-

interest product loan will begin after three months and end around eighteen months, and

that the new pharmacy will have been successful enough, both in terms of healthcare provision and income generation, that it continues to purchase products. Thus start-up involves little more than initiative, leadership, space for a retail counter and transportation for the goods. By 2008 there were sixteen botekas throughout the Diocese.

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There are a few guidelines that the Parish pharmacies must follow, however. For instance, the Parishes are not allowed to buy from outside suppliers. The reason given by the Social Action Center is that the Diocese cannot risk problems associated with mixing medicines or external tampering, for the Bishop, as head of the NGO, is accountable.

Furthermore, this policy ‘eliminates uncertified, local suppliers’ (Fr Edwin). During fieldwork I was told a story about a nun who had to be reprimanded by the Bishop because she used the product name for her own herbal medicines that she then sold in her home parish. ‘The Food and Drug people could have found out. Her local product did not have certification. And our sales were affected, because the people thought it was from the Diocese’ (Berna). The parishes are also prohibited from bringing in their own supply of western medicines for sale in the botekas. Each boteka sells a small range of

western products, such as generic forms of flu medication, ibuprofen, cough syrups and

dermatological ointments, and the Diocese controls the supply through a local supplier in

Bacolod. The strict control is justified due to the purchasing power and official

certification of the Diocese: ‘They cannot get a better deal, so we control it. And this

keeps things in check with the Bureau [of Food and Drugs]—they check up on us two times a year’ (Fr Edwin).

Ultimately, the herbal medicine production is about multiple sites of ‘income generation through health promotion’ (Fr Edwin), with the intention of using the profits

realized by the Social Action Center to fund other development within the Diocese.

Income is generated by charging two or three pesos per capsule produced,66 and though

66 For reference, over-the-counter medications and prescription pills can cost anywhere between 30 and 100 percent of the cost in Canada. During fieldwork a small bottle of cough syrup was purchased for 175 pesos, and Advil was purchased for 150 pesos. Recall, these sums are a day’s wages for many rural families.

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this is a small fee, the members of the Social Action Center say that the medicines are profitable and sustainable. ‘We can call it self-sustaining because we have the income and are paying our workers already. We got a real grinding and powdering machine

[laughing]’ (Berna). Self-sustainability may sound somewhat subjective in the above statement, but for the year ending December 31, 2009, the self-sustainability of herbal medicine production in the Diocese of San Carlos amounted to a gross profit of PHP

1,296,761 and a net income of PHP 654,999, based upon the initial purchase of 51,455 pesos worth of raw ingredients from local farmers. Furthermore, much of the difference between the gross profit and net income can be attributed to labour hired within local communities and salaries and allowances within the Social Action Center (PHP 445,500).

The Social Action Center’s herbal medicine business employs seven fulltime workers in the Bishop’s compound. Berna, the head of production, is paid 10,500 pesos per month, which ‘is low for a community nurse,67 but I gave myself to the Church’68

(Berna). In addition to her salary she is given use of a small apartment for herself and her two children, attached to the Social Action Center. A fulltime quality control officer is paid 350 pesos per day, an employee assigned to quality assurance earns 150 pesos per day, and three bottle fillers each earn around 150 pesos per day, at a rate of fifteen to twenty centavos (peso cents) per capsule. Once again, these sums, upon which families are able partly to live, are part of the operating expenses accrued before the final net- income tally of 654,999 pesos.

In terms of suppliers, communities benefit from the business as well. ‘They sell to us the raw materials that we process and this gives them additional income. We sell back

67 According to Berna a community nurse on Negros is paid approx 15,000 pesos per month. 68 On another occasion Berna explained, ‘I gave myself to the Church when my husband died’.

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to the community with a small mark-up’ (Fr Edwin). There are seven parishes with residents who produce the raw materials for mass production, and medicines for local consumption continue to be produced and consumed. Purchasing data in the Social

Action Center showed that families selling the raw ingredients earned on average around

100 pesos extra per month, and between forty-five and fifty farmers were involved as suppliers. The 100 pesos may seem small but it is an extra day’s pay each month for the collection of plants that grow naturally. ‘The farmers do not have very much labour.

Before the medicines were identified [to them] they saw them as weeds and pulled them out anyway’ (Berna). One dulaw supplier who I met showed me a wild thicket of the plant growing behind his house. His extra income amounted to 200 pesos per month:

That one grows all over, many sources. We maintain checks to prevent fertilizer and pesticides. I use it for this [rubbing his elbow and shoulder: arthritis]. I used to take [pharmaceutical] drugs but I couldn’t afford it anymore, and then I couldn’t work. I just lied in bed and watched TV. But that one [pointing at the dulaw] works just as good. I can work again.

Though the Boteka sa Parokyas are controlled and operated independently by each parish, the Diocese does operate its own boteka out of the San Carlos Borreo Cathedral, which is the central cathedral for the entire Diocese. This boteka employs three people fulltime and generates an additional 100,000 to 200,000 pesos per year for the Social

Action Center. The most successful parish boteka, in Canlaon City, posted a net income of 141,286 pesos in 2009, based upon gross sales of 473,552 pesos and the efforts of a few employees. I was told by a few priests, however, that half the botekas have met with little if any economic success: ‘They struggle to keep their shelves stocked. No profit at all’ (Fr Carlo). But the other side of boteka success, better healthcare delivery, does seem more widely distributed amongst the parishes with pharmacies.

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In an effort to learn about the efficacy and convenience of the herbal products

interviews were conducted in two parish pharmacies. The two pharmacies were chosen

from among the others based upon researcher convenience; in other words, I was in the

parish on Sunday, attended mass and spoke with each person who was in line for herbal

medicines before and after the church service. Of twenty-seven people questioned twenty-one purchased one of dulaw, kumintang or lagundi, which are described by Berna

as ‘maintenance drugs for chronic ailments’, four were buying generic pharmaceuticals

and two were buying mangagaw.69 Eleven purchased dulaw, and every single one said it was for arthritis. Seven of the eleven stated that it was very effective. For instance:

It is for my husband. He had the other [pharmaceutical] medicine for a year and could work again. But then it was too much for us, we have no money. He sat at home again, but our sons helped us, so we didn’t starve. The traditional medicine is very good. Very, very good. He’s working again, today! That’s why he’s not at church [laughing].

Four others said that the dulaw helped or was okay. Six people purchased kumintang, five

of whom said it was very effective in the treatment of diabetes, and one of whom said she

was using it to treat a urinary-tract infection. The four people who purchased lagundi stated that it was very effective in the treatment of their cough, bronchitis and asthma(x2). The average cost of herbal medicines for the twenty-one individuals who purchased for chronic ailments was eleven pesos per day, and though the people do not like to part with their pesos, they did feel it was a very good price:

Three a day. Nine pesos—that is like three, four cigarettes. The prescription medicines are much, much more (Sugar worker); Before I lived with the pain. Western medicine will cost too much, and you have to pay fifteen pesos to get to the city and fifteen pesos to get home (Sugar worker, BEC lay leader).

69 Dulaw/turmeric (Curcuma longa); Kumintang/rose periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus); Lagundi/five leaved chaste tree (Vitex negundo); Mangagaw/asthma weed (Euphorbia hirta).

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With the general lack of pharmacare in the Philippines and the price of medicines beyond the means of an average family, it is difficult to comprehend why some parishes have botekas and some do not, particularly when medicinal efficacy is widely substantiated. In terms of the start-up and viability of the botekas, there is a marked difference in statements given between those priests interviewed who are over forty-two years of age and those under. According to eight of the ten younger parish priests, key to the start-up, success and sustainability of a parish pharmacy is the initiative of the people and ongoing involvement of the Parish Pastoral Council:

It comes from them. The PPC needs to be involved from the start and involved in the monitoring, so they have the knowledge to operate the store on their own. I am not a merchant (Fr Carlo); There is a boteka in the works. They are organizing it. People are resorting to cheaper medicine (Fr Augustus); ‘No boteka, but they need to start one. They say, “Doctor, I don’t have any breakfast. How can I buy this medicine?” Maybe they will just boil the prescription [laughing] (Fr Emilio).

The older priests, however, seem to intuit a much more fundamental role for themselves as community leaders, and it shows in their thoughts on the parish pharmacies:

The key is the parish priest. Getting started and making it work. I really know our function—we are service providers. We serve the people through the parishes (Fr Edwin); You understand our culture. Our people are humble. They follow, often blindly [laughing]. That is why we end up with these leaders who take advantage. But the priest is more than the spiritual leader of the parish. He is a community leader as well. And it is his charisma that gets things done (Fr Karl); The priest gets transferred every six years, and what happens if you get a new priest who doesn’t know anything about the boteka or maybe he doesn’t even care to learn? Not all priests are the same, you know (Fr Jimmy).

Without or without the support of all priests in the Diocese the production of herbal medicines has taken off. It is employment for a number of workers, a source of income for the Social Action Center and it helps poor people who are sick to feel better.

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Furthermore, as we will see, it has become the golden goose for a number of other development-related projects hatched by the Diocese.

Livelihood

The Social Action Center provides funds from the production of herbal medicines to finance a number of livelihood initiatives within the Diocese. Some of these, such as

multipurpose cooperative stores and micro-credit lending, have become self-sustaining,70 while other projects, such as livestock and sustainable-agriculture, continue to require funds. Nevertheless, in each of these livelihood endeavours we can see new seeds of cooperation, what begin as small subtle steps toward development, blossom into a more meaningful and sustainable network of socio-economic change, particularly for poor and marginalized people who live in the Diocese.

The San Carlos Diocesan Multipurpose Cooperative (SCDMC) was established in

2004.71 By 31 December 2009 membership had grown to 520 families. The Cooperative offers four primary services to members: i) four consumer general stores, located in the cities of Calatrava, Escalante, San Carlos and Toboso; ii) a micro-credit/lending program;

iii) a group-managed swine project; and iv) a bank for regular savings deposits.

70 Self-sustainability does not translate into independence. Once again Fr Edwin’s insistence on an ‘integrated’ series of ‘development thrusts’ comes to mind. For instance, the Cooperative borrowed 50,000 pesos from the Diocese for start-up costs, repaid these, and leant 100,000 pesos of its own profits back to the Social Action Center for the establishment of a purified-water operation (see Mary’s Well below). ‘These are investments that take money, good business sense. But they are investments in community, in people. Investments for the people, the greater community.... We are connected, and we take care of one another. Not for only top dogs and head honchos’ (Fr Dundun). 71 There are a number of non-church-affiliated cooperatives in the Diocese, including four or five big ones. However, according to members of the Diocesan Cooperative with whom I spoke, for the vast majority of rural poor initial membership in other cooperatives is cost prohibitive and the other cooperatives are ‘big business … with no accommodations for us little people’, whereas the church cooperative ‘is about taking care of families, communities. Not just the profits. That is not God’s way’. All forty-seven primary cooperatives in the area, including SCDMC, are loosely affiliated through a larger organization, City Cooperative, though ‘only twenty-one are functioning [laughing]’ (Tonio).

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Membership in the Cooperative requires an initial investment of 1000 pesos, a security deposit of 500 pesos72 and a yearly membership fee of 100 pesos. ‘All members who comply with the requirements can use the services’ (Tonio).

The micro-lending service is well used, and 90 to 95 percent of member families have loans, which come in one of two peso sums, 5000 and 10,000. Since 2004 approximately 800 loans have been made. The loans accrue interest at 2 percent per year, and the rate of interest depreciates as more and more of the loan is paid back. Most loans are repaid within three to five years, though there is a 10-percent delinquency rate. ‘When they are delinquent the board of directors visit homes. And some cannot repay, they really have nothing left. But for others we figure out a new repayment plan’ (Tonio).

Most loans are for small-business investments, emergencies or schooling, though the latter ‘is discouraged because it is not income generating’ (Fr Edwin). Seventy percent of borrowers (‘more or less’) are women, and the Cooperative is happy with this because loans to women are typically ‘for the benefit of the whole family’, meant to fund something with conservative expectations, and ‘the women are better at paying back, especially when a group of them borrow together. Then they are on themselves to pay back, they are responsible to one another’ (Fr Edwin).

The four Consumer Cooperative General Stores are places where members can buy basic goods, such as rice, coffee, milk, water, corn, soap and a few other household products at reduced prices. Purchases are listed in notebooks and they become the basis for a patronage fund that is paid out annually to members. According to key informants in the Social Action Center the average annual payout to members in 2009 was between 220

72 The Cooperative offers a few different schedules for new members to finance these initial 1500 pesos.

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and 250 pesos, cash. Non-members are not permitted to purchase from the store, but they are encouraged to join the Cooperative. The incentive for membership in the Cooperative is lower prices for basic goods and ownership, a literal ownership due to membership and a figurative ownership that relates to ‘greater control of their lives’ (Tonio). In 2009 the

four stores generated PHP 733,442 income and had a net surplus of 261,880, from which

four sums of 26,188 each went to a reserve fund, an education fund, a land/building fund

and a diocese/parish share. Another 157,128 pesos were distributed to members.

The most important item sold in the stores is rice, and the bulk of the rice comes

from the National Food Authority (NFA), though the Cooperative is ‘trying to contract

local supplies, because NFA rice can be limited’ (Tonio). The Philippine government has

operated a rice program through the NFA since the time of Marcos, and this has made the

Philippines the largest importer of rice in the world, with 95 percent of stocks coming

from Vietnam (cf. WSWS 2010). The NFA imports the rice and mixes it with rice grown

in the Philippines. It then sells the rice for as little as 18.25 pesos per kilogram sack. ‘The

sack is up to twenty-five pesos less than non-subsidized rice’ (Mark).73

A number of citizens’ organizations, NGOs, local-government units and Dioceses

take part in the distribution of the cheap rice. The Diocese of San Carlos commits to the

distribution of hundreds of bags per month, ‘and we would take more if we could, if they

[NFA] had more for us’ (Tonio). The Diocese marks up the price of the rice in order to

cover the transportation cost of bringing the rice into the Diocese. This amounts to less

73 Since inception rice merchants, mill operators and organizations that import grain have been calling upon the government to privatize the rice program. President Aquino began his term of office (2010) under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to slash more funding for social programs, and his original allotment for the subsidized rice in his first budget was cut to zero, though this was reconsidered and some funding was given in the final budget (cf. WSWS 2010).

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than a peso per kilogram, and the rice that is sold to the Cooperative is typically sold for nineteen pesos per kilogram. Thus the Cooperative purchases each fifty kilogram bag for

950 pesos, and their mark-up is another 300 pesos, or six pesos per one-kilogram sack.

Each of the stores marks up the price per sack another two to three pesos in order to cover their own specific costs, and the final price for the consumer is between twenty-seven and twenty-eight pesos per kilogram sack. This represents an approximate savings of twelve to eighteen pesos per kilogram over rice sold elsewhere. In real terms, the average family of five or six individuals requires three kilograms of rice per day. Thus a family who belongs to the Cooperative is able to save thirty-six to fifty-four pesos per day on food, or

252 to 378 pesos per week. This is a substantial savings, given that key informants estimated the average daily wage of rural families to be between 100 and 200 pesos.

Furthermore, it is a substantial savings for urban families who belong to the Cooperative, even if their income is two or three times higher than their rural counterparts.

Outside of the Cooperative the Diocese’s two main livelihood projects are livestock raising and sustainable agriculture. Both of these continue to be beneficiaries of money realized through herbal-medicine production, though in many regards they are still in infancy and have yet to fully flower. Indeed, the livestock operation is brand new, beginning with six head of cattle and eleven pigs in 2009. Meanwhile the agriculture program is expanding from rice into papaya production. The six original head of cattle are now eight, thanks to two calves. The other four are pregnant, and they all are grazing on Diocese land in a neighbouring parish. The original six cows cost 15,000 pesos each and the Diocese plans to keep them for ten years, ‘with the hope of one calf each per year’ (Mark). These sixty or so prospective calves will be dispersed in smaller groups

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throughout the different parishes, given to parish pastoral councils and BECs with the

intention of those recipients repeating what the Diocese is doing with the original six.

When the dispersed herd has reached a sustainable size the groups involved can begin to

sell off cattle at a rate that will not deplete the stock, ‘either at market or to other

families—cheap’ (Mark). The cattle graze, but they do require supplemental feeding. The feed is made in house from a mix of molasses, rice bran and banana, and the recipe is an organic alternative to mass-produced ‘supplements that are full of chemicals and hormones, but we do have to use vaccines’ (Mark). The recipe for the feed came from an organic-farming seminar attended by an employee of the Social Action Center.

The piggery was brand new during fieldwork, and the eleven one-month-old piglets

were purchased for 25,000 pesos.74 They live in a pen in the far corner of the Bishop’s

compound, and the future offspring of the eleven piglets will be dispersed in groups

throughout the Diocese, similar to the cattle. The batch of pigs is fed an organic diet of

molasses, rice bran, corn bran, potato leaves, banana and the fermented juice of a local

plant, kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica). Kangkong is ubiquitous in the Diocese, grows back within three days of being chopped, and is chock-full of essential amino acids. The recipe for the pig feed was given at a NASSA seminar, and it is believed that the first eleven pigs will produce 2000 to 2500 kilograms of organic fertilizer in the first six months for

Diocese lands.

The Diocese is a significant land owner, but hardly any lands are productive in terms of agriculture or livestock. Most are parish church properties, small plots donated for rural chapels, and unproductive sections hanging off the sides or tops of mountains.

74 This is the Diocese’s second crack at pig husbandry. The first, which was non-organic, failed ‘because it was too expensive. The feed is too expensive to buy. It is unsustainable’ (Mark).

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However, the Diocese does have twenty-two hectares of farm land, some of which is

being grazed by the cattle, and two of these hectares are used to produce rice. The rice is

planted twice per year and it is sold at a low price in communities with need. A minimum

of sixty sacks of milled rice are produced each year (3000 kilograms75) and each

kilogram is sold for thirty pesos. This amount pays for seedlings, wages, fertilizer and

transportation costs.76

At the time of fieldwork the Diocese was preparing to bring one hectare of papaya into production. On 15 April 2010, the seeds, at a cost of a few thousand pesos, were scheduled to arrive, and they were to be planted in containers and grown for six weeks.

Then the seedlings would be planted in the papaya field, and it was believed that 1666 trees would grow. After nine months the field conservatively is expected to reap 2000 kilograms of fruit per week, based upon an estimate of sixty-five kilograms of fruit per

tree per year. The mature papaya tree will produce exceptionally for two years, and ‘then

the productivity of the tree starts to decrease … [until] the tree dies, three/three and a

half years. In the meantime we plant new ones in between the old dying ones, and the

dead tree will be the fertilizer’ (Mark).

The city of Bacolod has an organic market for fruit, much of which is shipped to

other larger centres, and in March of 2010 papaya was trading at eight pesos per

kilogram. Furthermore, the Diocese is in contact with a Bacolod merchant who deals with

Proctor & Gamble, and it was believed that 70 percent of the papaya produced by the

75 It seems little in the grand scheme of things, but it meets the typical family requirements for 1000 days of rice. 76 The thirty pesos are more than the nineteen pesos that the Diocese charges for NFA rice. This is due to the government subsidy on NFA rice, and not due to any profit seeking in the Diocese. The Diocese barely recovers its costs from rice production

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Social Action Center would end up in soap and bath products. Regardless of destination, the Diocese can expect to generate around 16,000 pesos per week from the fruit, and labour costs will amount to approximately 1200 pesos per week.77 Fuel for transport will be an additional cost, but the Diocese already has a truck.

The employee of the Social Action Center in charge of the cattle, pigs, rice and papaya projects earns 8000 pesos per month. He worked previously with the Department of Agriculture and brought real expertise to the Diocese. However, in regards to the papaya:

it was hard convincing the Diocese because they’ve never had an agricultural project this big before. We have so many hectares, in the mountains, but only ten percent are productive. Ten percent! If we can bring on one hectare at a time, so you don’t go beyond your means. That will be big business, and the money goes to other projects (Mark).

In the end he was able to convince the Diocese of the merits and potential of papaya production, and he is certain that the one hectare experiment with papaya will ‘grow to cover many more hectares’.

The livelihood projects within the Diocese are of various sizes, with varying effects upon many poor and marginalized people who live in the parishes. The positive outcomes of something as large as a 500-strong cooperative are easily identified, but even the smallest livelihood initiative, such as two pigs sent out to a BEC, can bring meaningful change, two animals at a time, and become the first rung on a ladder out of abject poverty. Truly, it is this first rung with which the Diocese is concerned most, a firm basis upon which the masses can stand as they work together to change their own

77 Five part-time wage earners; three short work days per week; eighty pesos per day.

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circumstances. For the poorest of the poor, however, life remains rooted in basic survival, and it is to this survival that we now turn as we explore the Diocese’s feeding program.

Feeding the most vulnerable

The Diocese is committed to basic food security in the parishes, and this has culminated in a diocese-wide feeding program for vulnerable populations. The initial impetus came from a meeting with a Manila-based NGO, Pondo ng Pinoy Community Foundation, when the Diocese was given literature that outlined nutritional guidelines for children, a small quantity of feeding materials, and information on the NGO’s own feeding program,

Hapag Asa (Table of Hope). The Social Action Center began to monitor vulnerable communities and populations in 2005 and became affiliated with a US non-profit

Catholic organization, Risen Savior Missions (RSM), through Pondo ng Pinoy. RSM receives requests for feeding programs from the Philippines (their target country) and organizes fundraisers in the United States to pay for the shipment of the food. To date,

“Risen Savior Missions has shipped enough food into the Philippines to reverse malnutrition in 62,000 children and has shipped over eight million donated children’s meals in the last thirty-six months to hundreds of different feeding sites in the

Philippines” (RSM 2010).

The food—a mixture of rice, soybeans, dried vegetables, twenty vitamins and minerals, and chicken stock—is provided by another non-profit organization, Feed My

Starving Children, that organizes fundraisers to purchase ingredients and works with volunteers to pack the food, seal it and box it for transport. I met representatives from

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both organizations when they visited the Diocese in February, and they said that much of the packaging of ingredients is done by groups of children in Minnesota:

The bulk contents, the rice, the beans, the empty bags, they get delivered to birthday parties and other kids’ events, and the children work together to fill the bags, like a party activity. It’s a game for them, but we try to make sure they learn something. And they are good, caring Christian children, and cooperative. And do you know what’s really special? They’re concerned about these kids, right here [in the Philippines] (Michael).

The feeding program in the Diocese had to wait until 2006 when the first shipment of food arrived in the Philippines and passed through customs. Unfortunately there was a delay at port due to taxes that are placed on food imports. ‘The proper documents were not in order. They held the food for months. Then they charged us 300,000 pesos! We don’t have that much money. We had to call [Risen Savior Missions] to bail us out

[laughing]’ (Fr Edwin). The next few shipments were more easily cleared by customs because the Diocese solicited the help of Children International, an NGO already operating in the Philippines. Today, due to the NGO status of the Social Action Center, the Diocese is able to clear the shipments on its own.

The support of RSM does come with guidelines, in terms of the leadership, execution and monitoring of the feeding program. The bishop is to be the overall head of the program in any given diocese, his social-action director is directly accountable for the implementation of the feeding program within the diocese, and the social-action director must have an identified assistant or liaison responsible for follow-up reports and data generated on the entire diocese. At the parish level the parish priest heads the local implementation of the program, assists in the determination of the best possible feeding sites, and coordinates local reports for submission to the diocese. Furthermore, if

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necessary, local social workers will be included to help identify recipients, implement the

program and certify the reports, as well as present data to the Regional Director of the

Department of Social Work and Development. Monthly reports from each diocese must

include a summation/narrative of all parish reports, data on weight gained by child

recipients, and four to six pictures from each feeding site.

Since 2006 five shipments have come to the Diocese, totalling 6270 boxes or

225,720 bags of food. Those bags of food translate into 1,354,320 servings, give or take.

In early 2010 there were twenty-one feeding sites for undernourished children throughout

the Diocese, and over 4000 children, hundreds of pregnant/breast-feeding mothers, and

dozens of extremely vulnerable families benefited. The feeding sites were identified

during the monitoring period in 2005 and were assessed upon numbers of people in need

within the vicinity and convenience/accessibility. Prior to first feeding a series of

seminars was held in the barangays and sitios to educate the people about the program

and other health-related issues.78 The Social Action Center

must teach the parents first. They come and get the food, and [some] mothers can be too lazy, they only cook the rice and throw out the bean … [The seminars are] not just about how to come and make the food. We are trying to educate the mothers about other things they can do, like vegetable gardens. So if the foods are not available they can still feed the kids (Fr Edwin).

Even after the seminars Sr Milla, a retired nun who works as a missionary in the village

of Cabagtasan, had to monitor the parents in her feeding sites:

I found out that if the children did not like the food, the parents were feeding it to the pigs. So we had to have another seminar for the parents on properly cooking and preparing the food (Sr Milla).

78 These quasi-mandatory seminars were well attended. Subsequent seminars were held in conjunction with the feedings and addressed such issues as proper hygiene, nutrition, signs and symptoms of illness, caring for the sick, home remedies, child education, and sustainable agriculture. During the seminars participants were given small bags of mixed seeds for individual gardens.

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The program commitment was for five meals per week, and the duration was either

sixty or 120 days, subject to the appraisal of a nutritionist from the Department of Social

Welfare:

The masses of all the children were recorded at the beginning of the program, and after sixty days the average child had gained two kilograms, more or less (Berna);79 You can see their faces like they are dying. But after a month you can see in the face the life, glowing in the eyes (Fr Dundun).

After the initial 60/120 days a follow-up study will be conducted to determine if another

regimen of feeding is necessary in the area:

Feeding is just temporary. Many children will be malnourished again. This is not our first feeding at this place. But we are trying. And it is working. There are results (Fr Jublas).

The feeding program is supposed to be temporary, and the priests fully admit that many

children will become malnourished again. But the concept for the Diocese is that this is

‘an integrated feeding program’ (Fr Manuel), whereby the ‘parents become partners and

apply what they have learnt about nutrition and sustainable agriculture and the health

botekas and everything else’ (Fr Jimmy). Within this conceptual model the feeding is the

‘head start, the jump start’ that many families need ‘just to get their feet on the ground’

(Fr Edwin).

The Diocese has interpreted the word ‘Children’ in Feed My Starving Children somewhat liberally, insisting that ‘we are all God’s children’ (Sr Milla). Because of this,

and certain that a family’s total nutrition is reflected in the nutrition of its children, the

Diocese supplies extra food bags for the families. Thus the children are sent home with

up to five more bags of food for the week. Furthermore, and consistent with a thread

79 Berna is also in charge of the feeding program.

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stitched through all policies within the Diocese, the feeding program is neither reserved for regular attendees of Sunday Mass nor those families that are strictly Catholic. ‘There are Muslim families. I know a man, he is very happy [about the feeding program]. He has eleven kids!’ (Fr Karl). When I was staying in Cabagtasan Sister Milla took bags of food to Mary, a woman with five children. Mary said that she was too shy to come to the feeding because she was not Catholic, but she accepted the food gratefully.

The greatest feeding challenge for the Diocese at this time is keeping up with demand. More and more priests have stepped forward to request a feeding site in their own parishes, and in order to accommodate this spike in demand the number of days in each feeding program has been affected. ‘So now 120 days is going to sixty. Less days, more people [shrugging]. Maybe that’s not the right approach’ (Berna). Furthermore, the

Diocese has identified additional challenges or weaknesses at the family/local community levels in regards to their feeding program. Firstly, mothers are unable to complete the feeding cycle of their children due to tardiness, conflict with work, and basic economic obstacles, such as transportation costs. Secondly, volunteers are lost due to the same reasons, as well as a lack of organization. Thirdly, support groups fall apart because of the members’ need to be continually complimented and affirmed, and the ningas cogon attitude of the people, ‘a brief burst of super, super enthusiasm that completely disappears when they start to lose interest’80 (Fr Karl). Fourthly, there is a complete lack of support from the civil authorities.

Despite these challenges the Diocese presses on, and the Social Action Center has expanded the distribution of National Food Authority rice into the parishes in an effort to

80 Literally, in Tagalog, ningas cogon means a roaring grass fire—but ignited only to watch it burn out.

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feed even more vulnerable families. At the time of fieldwork twelve parishes were

involved. The rice is brought into the parishes for nineteen pesos per kilogram,81 and there it is transferred into one kilogram sacks for distribution. I visited two parishes where priests and their pastoral councils handle local rice distribution, Pacuan and

Pandanan, and their systems are fairly similar. In both locations the rice is transferred from the fifty-kilogram bag to the one-kilogram sacks by members of the parish pastoral councils, and these same individuals sell the rice. In Pacuan the Parish sells the rice for twenty-five pesos per kilogram, and they sell to anyone who needs it. The maximum amount of rice that one family can purchase in Pacuan is five kilograms per day, and the

Parish will usually sell ten fifty-kilogram bags each month. That generates 3000 pesos profit for the Parish, and the money is used to fund other livelihood projects, seminars on health and agriculture, youth programs and the fiesta. In Pandanan the Parish distributes twenty fifty-kilogram bags each week, and a one-kilogram sack is sold for twenty pesos.

The bags are available on Saturday and Sunday, and the profit of 1000 pesos is used in much the same manner as the profits in Pacuan.

Like most of the projects and development thrusts of the Diocese, rice distribution heavily relies upon ‘the energy and enthusiasm of the [local] priest’ (Fr Naldo). This may begin to explain why a mere twelve parishes out of thirty-three have become involved in distribution. It is an effort to coordinate rice distribution, even when Father

Edwin and the Social Action Center work tirelessly to simplify the process, and roughly twenty-one parish priests have made less effort when it comes to helping the needy:

81 The same amount charged to the Cooperative (see above).

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One priest, he said to me, “No thanks, we are okay.” We are okay? [laughing] What does that mean? There are no starving people in his parish? Then he says, “Ask me next year” [laughing] (Fr Edwin).

Much of the money for the feeding program and rice distribution, such as money for transport, storage, wages, and training, is generated by the herbal medicine clinic. As mentioned earlier, Father Edwin regards the herbal medicine production as

a cash foundation, a basis, for funding other development throughout the entirety of the Diocese. Our plans are always holistic. It is an integrated development, and the herbal medicines really are the base.

Thus the feeding program and its thousands of beneficiaries are indebted to the efforts of those involved in the production of herbal medicines.

Mary’s Well

Another beneficiary or off-shoot program of both the herbal medicines and the

Cooperative is Mary’s Well, and it is now self-sustaining. In a country with many more polluted water sources than clean, Mary’s Well is a bottled water operation owned and operated by the San Carlos Social Action Center. It was established in August 2009 because many of the Parish priests were getting sick and the Diocese could not afford to have them absent or to pay for their medical bills, and bottled water is costly. It was decided that clean drinkable water was an essential service that was not going to be provided by government any time soon, and that the Diocese could

pick up some of the slack, the slack of the LGUs and the municipalities … It is wrong to think you can ask help from the government. In my personal opinion you do not have a hope, because they cannot even provide basic services (Simon).

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The idea for a bottled water operation came from a seminarian who had owned and

operated his own bottled water business before entrance into the seminary. The

seminarian presented the project to the Bishop:

Experience? I’ve got it. I had this concept. This is a Third World country, it is different. If you have some capital, why not?’82 (Simon).

The project was accepted and initially funded with the profits from herbal medicine production. It was explained that a bottled water operation should cost around 750,000 pesos to setup, but that the Diocese was able to establish theirs for around 320,000

pesos83 because they already had their own delivery trucks and a building in which to

house the purification system.

Mary’s Well takes raw municipal water from San Carlos City and purifies it

through a number of stages. The raw water first enters a fibreglass tank with a charcoal

filter. The charcoal is positively charged and it will attract chlorine, some sediment, and a

number of volatile organic compounds. After this the water enters a second fibreglass tank that contains a multimedia filter bed of bituminous coal, anthracite coal, sand and garnet. As the water passes through the bed an ion exchange occurs that reduces turbidity caused by sand, iron and oxidized sulphur. The third tank into which the water moves is a standard water softener that removes calcium and magnesium. The water then proceeds into a long chamber for reverse osmosis, where any residual particles, including microscopic organisms, are pushed out. Before bottling the water undergoes ultraviolet

82 Interestingly, the seminarian hints at the unrestrained capitalism that exists in the periphery of the world economy. Following Wallerstein (1979), if the Philippines is any indication, this laissez-faire peripheral market is indeed the compliment to the heavily-monopolized core of the world-system economy. 83 Purification machine—180,000 pesos; 600 containers—81,000 pesos; renovation to existing building— 50,000 pesos; business permit/certification—10,000 pesos.

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disinfection, ‘just in case’ (Simon). The entire water purification system is good for a

maximum capacity of 3000 gallons per day.

Mary’s Well employs fulltime a manager who earns 3000 per month and a worker

who earns 1500 per month. Both work six days a week and receive all their meals from

the Diocese. Free water is given to certain chapels, the mission schools, the Bishop’s

compound and people working on projects for the church. Because of this there is an

intrinsic satisfaction with Mary’s Well for those in the Social Action Center. ‘Water is

profitable in itself. We are using the water for our own consumption and it costs us

nothing’ (Tonio). Though the Diocese would like for everyone to enjoy the free water,

the reality is different. Parish priests and parish pastoral councils who want the water

have to pay a reduced rate based upon the bulk of delivery. It is argued that the parish’s

expenses will be recouped if the parish sells some of the water to the community at a

price below other bottled water that is already available in grocery and sari-sari stores. It also is argued that expenses are recouped indirectly when priests and church workers have less sick days as a result of water-bourn diseases.

Most of the water produced for consumption is being sold privately now and a substantial amount of income is being generated. Net profits, even with the free water consumed by the Diocese, amount to more than 15,000 pesos per month. The water is sold in four-gallon containers for twenty-five pesos each.84 In order for Mary’s Well to be

profitable, given the amount of water that is distributed for free, the Social Action Center

must sell a minimum of fifty containers per day, thus generating 1250 pesos in gross

sales. The fifty container minimum is exceeded by demand, and it appears that the only

84 For reference, a 500mL bottle of water at a store in San Carlos will sell for anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five pesos.

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obstacle to increased production is the absence of one more employee and 600 more

containers.85 Indeed the seminarian who came up with the idea for bottled water is

disappointed in the water purification being run below capacity:

We’re not competing with other water [companies]. You just have to increase to 100 jugs a day … They have to do marketing, household marketing, get out to the people, establish relationships. The more clients you have, the more you supply the water. Everyday you need to sell 100 jugs at thirty-five pesos each86—3500 per-day income, times twenty-four monthly, that’s a lot … [The workers] should make time on their own while delivering. Drop off at one house, ring the doorbell on the next house. You save gas, time, etcetera. We need to expand so that each parish becomes a distributor. Marketing strategy is for the parish to become a distributor. The bulk delivery of water (Simon).

With the success of Mary’s Well, both in terms of the product and distribution, it

was unexpected when reviewing priest interviews to find so few who had decided to

bring the water into their parishes. The diocesan priests and the priests who worked in the

parishes where there are mission schools had all the water they could drink, but the other

priests were on their own to introduce the clean water, and only six had. ‘It is quite new.

And we have our own springs, and deep well water, and tabay—that is a well dug along

the bank of a river’ (Fr Mickey). Seven priests stated that they were on some form of

municipal water and did not become ill regularly, though one priest admitted that he was

sick twice last year from the water but said that Mary’s Well water was ‘too far because

of limited number of containers’ (Fr Jerome). What he implied is that because his parish

is so remote Mary’s Well cannot afford to have too many of their containers stuck there.

The seminarian who proposed the project said that one of the reasons why certain parishes have not embraced the distribution of bottled water is that ‘priests may not be

85 Filling an extra fifty containers each day requires approximately 600 containers in circulation. 86 Evidently the seminarian thinks the water, presently priced at twenty-five pesos, is sold a tad cheap.

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business minded. They are preoccupied with pastoral work and, I don’t know, maybe they need to appoint someone’ (Simon). A number of parish priests agreed:

Some priests work harder. They see the people suffering and want change. But then others, they just want to do the spiritual work. They don’t see value in clean water—cheap! It is so easy to become a priest. Becoming a good priest is another thing. It is a community responsibility, not just the spiritual (Fr Dundun).

Of the six priests who had brought Mary’s Well water into their communities, four stated that it had been their own idea, triggered by endemic pollution and/or disease- causing organisms in the local water supply. The other two stated that it had been at the request of the local parish pastoral council. ‘I am supposed to be the shepherd, but they tell me what to do [laughing]’ (Fr Emilio). All reported feeling better or taking less sick days already, and three said that the water pays for itself. Four parishes visited during fieldwork had Mary’s Well water, though two of these were where the mission schools are located, so the purified water is a given. In the other two parishes the water was mainly used by those individuals working for the parish, though I did see some people paying to fill their own containers with Mary’s Well water.

Of all the operations carried out by the Social Action Center Mary’s Well seemed the most business focused, as opposed to community focused. Whether due to the nature of the bottled-water operation itself—mechanized production and great transportation expenses—or the panache of the young seminarian, the organization and operation of

Mary’s Well felt different. In six short months it was self-sustainable and morphing into a profit-driven enterprise. After interviews with key informants in the production of bottled water it is not difficult to understand how this particular project of the Diocese did drift from its more-communitarian roots:

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Even with such a small amount we ask for clean water, we cannot get the parishes organized. This is more difficult than the herbals [medicines]—at least the people are sick! But now we have to convince them that they need to buy water too (Fr Edwin); It is cheap, and it makes money. But we have to make profit. The Diocese is very big. Big enough to sell only to the Catholic people and make money, the Church. Not all the priests support the project. I cannot reconcile (Simon); I would like to give the water to everyone, but the reality is that it is more complicated than just doing that (Bishop Joe); Right now, we generate a small margin of income and pay the operational costs. That is it! If we [even] selected two parishes for free water, we [would] begin running into the red. Then the whole thing collapses, falls apart (Joseph).

Ultimately the distribution of water from Mary’s Well depends upon a certain

percentage of water being sold to private buyers. It also depends upon priests in the

parishes who have committed to purchase a certain amount of water on a quasi-regular

basis, so that the Diocese can invest in more containers without the fear of those

containers sitting idle around the Bishop’s compound. Though the operation has the

potential to expand, arguably exponentially, the clean-water service provided to those

working at the diocese level already is significant. Two of the largest groups of

consumers of free water are the staff and students of the two mission schools, and it is to

these two schools that we now turn in our analysis of development in the Diocese of San

Carlos.

Building schools

Bishop Joe’s central concern as community leader is education, and he has committed the

Diocese to the developmental priority of ‘educating the people out of poverty’. He argues that the central reason for poverty in the Philippines is government corruption, particularly as it affects funding for education:

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With corruption there is less [money] going to education, which, for me, is a vehicle for economic development and opportunity to be lifted out of poverty. In the Philippines there is a very strong correlation between education achieved and salary (Bishop Joe).

A primary objective for Bishop Joe has become the building of schools, in order to provide quality “education that minimizes religious ignorance among the young people in the hinterlands … produces good, committed and responsible leaders in the community

… [and] makes available to the youth venues for their development for a brighter future”

(Diocese of San Carlos 2010). Since 2002 the Diocese has built two high schools in under-serviced locations, and there is a third high school and a fully-accredited postsecondary vocational college in the works, all organized and funded by the Diocese of San Carlos.

The first school built, Our Lady of Peace Mission School (OLPMS), is located twenty minutes into the mountains from San Carlos City, in the Barangay of Prosperidad.

It is on a major road that connects San Carlos City (the east side of the island) with

Bacolod (the west). The area was selected as a possible site for a high school because there were already eight elementary schools but no secondary school nearby. After graduation from elementary school more than 50 percent of the children have “no other choice but to work in the rice fields or sugarcane plantations to earn wage to augment the family’s income” (Diocese of San Carlos 2010). Thus, in hopes of combating this plight of youth, six and one-half acres of land were donated by a family who owned a fair amount of land in the mountains of Prosperidad. Bishop Joe had spoken with one of the grown sons of the family, whilst scouting the mountains for a location. The son relayed the request for a donation of land to his mother who was living in the United States at the

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time. His mother, who now lives in Prosperidad and operates a store/kitchen on the school property, explained to me that her son

looked around and none of these children were in school and it made him sad. He said that the children needed to go to school or they would do nothing. They were just walking around on the roads. So he spoke to me about giving the land away, and then he went to see the Bishop.

The family gave the land under condition that the Diocese prioritize the project, and the Bishop committed a sum of 250,000 pesos which he borrowed from the Social Action

Center.87 The money was used to purchase bamboo and metal roofs for the original classrooms and pay for labour. Many families in the vicinity stopped at the school site to participate in the construction, both as non-denominational parents and as members of the

Catholic community. I was told that this style of impromptu community service is frequent in the Philippines, whereby an entire community recognizes the value in a certain initiative and comes together for the benefit of all. The offer of help by community members during construction of the mission school is considered ‘sweat equity’ or ‘dagyaw’ in Cebuano, ‘communitarian work without pay’ (Fr Edwin). The bamboo classrooms were only ever meant to be a temporary construction, the start of something larger and a first test of the mission-school concept. Immediately upon opening the school the Diocese set about organizing funds for a concrete building to replace the bamboo classrooms. Within a few years they had raised 5,500,000 pesos

(CAD 125,000). The vast majority of donations were initiated by residents of San Carlos who had international connections to both individuals and organizations. Added to these were four substantial donations from non-profit organizations in Spain, Switzerland,

87 i.e. – The Social Action Center borrowed money from itself to fund its own project, and unlike a typical loan this one lacks a repayment schedule.

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Japan and the US. Today there is a long, terraced concrete building and the school has twelve classrooms. Due to increased enrolment two temporary bamboo classrooms have been erected, but they are slated for future concrete replacement.

The Philippine Department of Education is, and has been since the planning stages,

in consultation with the community and Diocese, meant to maintain standards of

education set by the state, and in turn guarantee funding. In order to receive funding from

the state for the children88 the school needed at least fifty students for its inaugural year.

A campaign was launched in 2002 in order to solicit students, and one nun and two male members of the community set about canvassing the mountainside.89 Family homes were

visited and parents were encouraged to allow at least one student to enter the school,

though the Diocese understood that many families cannot make ends meet without the

daily labour of every child in the home. After the campaign enrolment was held between

28 May and 23 June 2002. On 24 June 2002, the first day of classes began at Our Lady of

Peace Mission School, with the fifty student minimum more than met.

The government funding amounts to 5000 pesos per student, and that sum does not

meet the operating costs for the Diocese. Furthermore the government only pays for the

finished product, which is the completion of the school year by the student. Thus the

Diocese is always one year behind in funding and left with the bill for students who do

not complete the school year. For the first academic year (2002-2003) the Diocese and

Social Action Center had to come up with all the money needed to school the students.

88 The Philippine government has a fund, the Fund for Assistance to Private Education. It is meant to disburse moneys to pay for private-school education. It is a perpetual trust fund that was created by Ferdinand Marcos, in collaboration with the United States government, in 1968 (cf. Salamanca 1981). 89 According to Fr Edwin the campaign, which required a significant amount of walking, hiking and visiting family homes perched on the sides of mountains, was ‘a walk in the park’ when compared to the task of reading and completing the ‘mountains of paperwork’ required by the Department of Ed.

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Once again they borrowed from themselves and were able to solicit donations from individuals willing to sponsor a child’s education. Later on the Diocese came into contact with Enfants du Mékong, a French NGO with a focus upon education in poor communities along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia and in the Philippines. A

Franciscan Sister in the Diocese who had worked with Mékong in Luzon for many years arranged a meeting between representatives of the charity and the Diocese. Father Edwin said that the people from Mékong were ‘looking for poor but deserving students’ and

‘when they saw the mission school they said, “We’ll take ten!”’90

At the time of fieldwork the tuition amounted to 500 pesos per month and there

were 428 students, 80 percent of whom were covered by the government fund. Nearly all

the rest were being sponsored, and in order to expand the school the Diocese was always

recruiting new sponsors for new children. Twenty-four of the students lived in dorms and

received three meals per day. This extra cost amounted to 400 pesos per student per

month. The Diocese/sponsor covers 300 and the parents/family of the student are

expected to contribute 100. If parents/families are unable to cover the 100 pesos, a

contribution of rice and/or vegetables is accepted in trade. Other students who live too far

to walk each day board in nearby homes for 100 pesos per month, and they are expected

to cook their own meals and follow their own curfews.91 These students would typically

begin their week on Sunday with Mass in Prosperidad, go to school from Monday to

90 Sponsorship by Mékong is slightly more complex than simply stating, “We’ll take ten!” Mékong still has to find benefactors in France to match with the pledges. Finding pledges for a remote Catholic school that offers boarding can prove difficult because of the countless scandals in the international Catholic Church and the historical abuse of children in Catholic schools. ‘The French public is worried about sponsoring, due to abuse’ (Fr Edwin). 91 Allowing students to set their own curfews was a bone of contention for all teachers and the Diocese, not to mention residents of the community who occasionally reported poor behaviour after hours.

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Friday, and walk back home Friday afternoon. ‘For the majority of these kids, Saturday is

a day of work. Farming the rice, the sugar’ (Ma’am Judy). Of the students who walked

from home each day, the average distance was 3.6 kilometres each way, though some

students reported a walk of up to ten kilometres each way.92 And still, with distance and

cost, the students with whom I spoke are eager to be in school each and every day, and in

seven academic years the school has graduated over 1000 students.

Like the other projects undertaken by the Diocese and the Social Action Center

there are economic spin-offs or linkages for the community. In this case the mission

school employs fourteen teachers and a principal. The teachers earn between 5000 and

7000 pesos per month, and as an added incentive they receive room and board in a

teachers’ dormitory.93 National school teachers on Negros typically earn between 7,000

and 12,000 pesos per month, and because of this discrepancy in pay ‘many [mission

school] teachers leave for National School jobs’ (Fr Edwin). Over the course of

fieldwork I spoke in-depth with six of the teachers at OLPMS. Two were leaving the

mission school at the end of the school year, and another teacher who had chosen to stay

at least one more year said,

I cannot afford it, my family can’t afford it. And then I am away all week long. But I do it for Father Edwin. I cannot say no to him. He is a very charismatic man. I just can’t say no (Ma’am Cindra).

By 2008 Bishop Joe was scouting for a second school site, this time further into the

mountains, and much more remote. Cabagtasan is the last stop on a dirt road for any

92 During fieldwork I was asked to teach in each of the classes at least once. My lessons can be loosely described as conversational English, and in the course of speaking with the classes I took the time to collect anonymous information on two questions: How far do you walk to attend school each day? What would you be doing right now if the Mission School had not been built? 93 A number of teachers have homes or families in other communities or in San Carlos City. These teachers stay in the dormitory over the course of the week and go home for the weekend.

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vehicle larger than a motorcycle, and is one of twelve sitios in the Barangay of Codcod.

There are six elementary schools, four in the vicinity of the new high school.94

Cabagtasan is forty-eight kilometres from San Carlos city, which translates into another hour’s drive past Prosperidad on a jagged, rain-rutted dirt road. Half the sitio, including the school site, is without electricity. Two hectares of sloping land was donated by a

Catholic woman for what would become Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School

(OLMMS). The woman donated the land on condition that she is allowed to situate a sari-sari store on the property at the side gate, where the students and teachers can purchase lunch, snacks and native coffee.95 Once the site had been confirmed the Social

Action Center put together 350,000 pesos and recruited the villagers to help with the construction (dagyaw or sweat equity, once again). Also, through a partnership with the

Armed Forces of the Philippines (more below) the military cut terraces into the slope and aided in the construction of the buildings. For one month in the spring of 2009, and six days each week, between twelve and fifteen military personnel worked with the community on the high school. At the end of construction five classrooms, a laboratory, a

94 I visited the elementary school in Cabagtasan proper and spoke with teachers there. The school had 596 students. This year enrolment was up 20 percent and many students who had dropped out in previous years had returned. The teachers credit the mission school for the increased numbers. ‘The extra almost 100 are because of the new high school. The children can see a future now, after elementary. There is something for them to achieve towards, a next step’. 95 It should be noted that the opportunity to open a sari-sari store is not believed to be an opportunity to get rich off sales. Rather, in opening a sari-sari store the owner knows that s/he will no longer have to work in the fields. One of my neighbours sat in her sari-sari store every day of the week, for the two weeks that I stayed there. She said that she earned about seventy-five pesos per day and ‘it beats working in the rice, or when you have to go to pick the cassava’. She also said that she had been sitting in her store almost every day for seven years.

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library, a counselling room and an office had been constructed from bamboo poles,

shaved and woven bamboo walls, galvanized roofs and dirt floors.96

Two Franciscan nuns, Sister Daisy and Sister Helen, came to Cabagtasan to run the

school and act as headmistresses, counsellors and teachers. For the first seven months of

the school year they slept on the floor in the home of a family who donated land for a

new church. Then they received a donation for two wood-framed beds and moved into a bedroom. They hope in the next few years to have a house of their own that is closer to

the school, ‘so he [the homeowner] can have his house back [laughing]’ (Sr Daisy). The

homeowner, despite being put out of his own house for many months, was excited about

the new school and the future church:

The school has brought new people along the road. It is active, busier now. The village is more alive, and that is good. The school has been a good thing, for the village.97

Early in 2009 an enrolment campaign was sent to scour the mountainsides and

valleys, and the school opened in June. At the time of fieldwork the school had 182

students, down sixteen from the beginning of the school year.98 The teachers estimated

that 80 percent of students come from outside the sitio proper, some walking as far as two

hours from their homes. Similar to Prosperidad, there are host families with whom many

96 Like Our Lady of Peace Mission School, the Diocese plans to replace the bamboo classrooms at Our Lady of the Mountain with concrete as soon as enough money can be mustered through donations and other income-generating activities of the Social Action Center. Due to elevation the concrete structures are necessary in Cabagtasan; it can become very cold with wind and rain, perched upon the shoulder of the mountain, and in the autumn of 2009 a typhoon blew the roof off one of the classrooms. 97 When fieldwork was concluded, Spring 2010, the new church had been built and the cement floor for the Sisters’ house had been poured. 98 Due to family commitments, particularly the family farm, it is inevitable that a certain number of students will not finish the academic year. This normally plays out in one of two ways: i) family responsibilities overwhelm a student when home on Saturdays and the decision is made to drop out; or ii) twice per year during the rice harvest a student must miss two to four weeks of classes, and s/he will not be able to get caught up on school work. ‘It is understandable. The family may starve without the extra help. But then, for their studies, it is very, very difficult to catch up again’ (Sir Thomas).

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children stay. According to the teachers more than half the students have school-aged

siblings at home but most families cannot afford to send more than one child to school,

either in terms of tuition cost or labour lost.99

Our mission is to serve the poor. But the poor owe money to the capitalists. There are even capitalists who come here. They sell them fertilizer, and often what they [the farmers] make in a month is not enough to pay back the debt. The children cannot even pay [school tuition] because the debt has taken all the family’s income. You will see them. You will pity them (Sr Helen).

The cost for tuition at OLMMS is 300 pesos per month. Because the government

fund covered only fifty of the 182 students, the Diocese had to solicit donations and

sponsors for the children. By March of 2010 they had secured funding for thirty students and believed that another ten to fifteen students would be covered for the following academic year.100 I had the opportunity to ride to Cabagtasan with a business owner from

the northern part of the Diocese who was sponsor to fifteen students. He had come from

moderate wealth, by Philippine standards, but he believed the country was being ‘run into

the ground’ by corrupt politicians, the people in rural communities were being ‘left

behind by their own government’ and that it was ‘our duty to help poor people’ (Charlie).

His teenaged daughter was interested in sponsoring a student with her allowance, and she

came with us to Cabagtasan that day. She took many pictures to show in her own high

school classes, in the hope that her peers might become sponsors as well.

In the spring of 2010 Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School employed six

teachers, one administrator, and heavily relied upon the efforts of Sister Daisy and Sister

99 There is a fairly even split between male and female students (in both mission schools), so there is no indication that mainly daughters are being sent in order to keep sons at home working the land. That being said, I did not survey the students to find out numbers and genders of siblings, which may or may not have confirmed a parental selection for schooling based upon gender. 100 Enfants du Mékong interviewed families in Barangay Codcod, for the OLMMS 2010-2011 academic year. They were committed to the sponsorship of five to ten students, dependant upon interviews.

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Helen. The local missionary, Sister Milla, was active also in the mission school, as a guest teacher and guidance counsellor. Every single teacher with whom I spoke in both mission schools agreed that teaching is a very good job:

Teaching is a very honourable job. Very well respected in the community (Ma’am Denise); It is a very good job. I would have no other job, just motherhood (Ma’am Alina); I am excited to get back to class. Everyday it is exciting to see students. I am happy to see them, and teach. And the students are excited, so that is good. Only sometimes the weather is so hot [pinching his collar]. Sitting in the hot weather, in the class, I get bored. But being a teacher is a very exciting job (Sir Julio).

The teachers at Our Lady of the Mountain are paid less than the teachers at Our

Lady of Peace, 4000 pesos per month, and the teachers recognize that this wage is very low for their profession. However, only one teacher in Cabagtasan stated that she would leave the mission school for a National School position after this year. The five other teachers, four of whom were raised in the mountain barangay, all thought that the lower wage was an acceptable trade-off for being able to live near their family homes, and serve their community:

Our standard of living is much higher here, and we have fresh water and gardens (Ma’am Alina); It is a peaceful community. We are happy, we love it here. You save money by not buying veggies or vinegar. Cities are very expensive (Ma’am Lita).

One of the male teachers explained that he worked in Dubai for four years and came back with enough money to buy farmland, animals and equipment, and that farming is his primary income:

I teach because my neighbours said I was a bad example to the children [laughing]. I had my education, I went to school, and then I came back and am only farming! So, I teach to make the neighbours happy, but I love it (Sir Sisco).

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The fifth teacher (of those who have chosen to continue their work in the mission school)

came from a small island off the coast of San Carlos City, but he said that the coastal

climate no longer agreed with him:

The best part of the community is the weather, the muddy, the cool. My health is really for here in Cabagtasan, rather than the city. And the water is so clean and cold when you take a bath in the morning. The weather and the water—the nature (Sir Julio).101

A determination of teacher satisfaction in the mission schools was much easier to

accomplish than trying to determine the fate of the students had there been no mission

schools. Nevertheless the students’ fates were important, given Bishop Joe’s beliefs about

schools as development in themselves and as vehicles for further development in the

Philippines.102 Thus, while teaching in the classrooms, I set myself the task of trying to

get an idea of how many students still would attend high school if not for the mission

schools.

Simply asking the class (with a show of hands) who would be in attendance at

another high school if the mission school had never been built proved complicated. In

twelve out of seventeen classes asked, more than 70 percent of the students answered in

the affirmative. Upon first reflection this made little sense to me: if most of the students

would be in school anyway, why did the Diocese put forth the effort to build two

schools? The students made general comments about how important education is to them

and their families, and insisted that they would be in school regardless of the mission

101 At the time of fieldwork, because of an absence of kinfolk in the area and despite a chronically sore shoulder, Sir Julio had been sleeping on a mat on the floor outside the Franciscan Sisters’ bedroom. They provided him with three meals a day, he helped around the house, and (according to him) the house dog who curled up beside him at night loved him most of all. 102 The Bishop’s convictions were echoed by the teachers: ‘Education will bring development’ (Ma’am Sophia); Education is the key to development’ (Ma’am Donna); ‘Education is important, and it can help them for development’ (Sir Julio); ‘Education is the key. Without it the people don’t even learn to write their names’ (Ma’am Lita).

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schools. There was a trend, however. In the lower grades almost all of the students

believed they would be in school, but it was apparent that less and less students shared

this belief as I went into the classrooms of the higher grades. I had failed to notice the

trend until a review of numbers a few weeks later, and at that time it began to make sense, particularly for Our Lady of the Mountain, the newer school; because the school is in its first year of operation, the younger students in the lower grades have come sooner from elementary school, whereas the older students have had longer periods without school attendance (and possibly had time to ponder a life of work on the farm after elementary school). In Our Lady of Peace, the first school built, the trend could be explained by the ages of students in the upper grades. There were a number of students in their late teens and early twenties,103 and it was not a result of the students failing grades

and being held back. Once again, these students were at an old enough age to have

experienced times when they had to work instead of go to school and/or experienced life

in a barangay without a high school. A teacher later hinted to me that I should have asked

the students how many had older siblings, and of those older siblings how many attended

or completed high school (Sir Sisco).

The trend was shaken-up somewhat in Prosperidad for another reason. In two

senior-level classes I had twenty-four of twenty-four, and twenty-six of twenty-nine,

students answer that they most definitely would be attending high school, with or without

the mission school. This yielded yet another unexpected result, a diversion from the

pattern, and I asked the teachers about the two classes. One teacher explained that those

two classes were ‘the cream of the crop, the high achievers’ (Ma’am Cindra). It was

103 Students in the Philippines typically enter high school at age thirteen or fourteen, and finish at age sixteen or seventeen.

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believed that the families of that batch of students would most likely have found a way for their children to complete high school, and that it was no accident that those students were congregated in the same two classes.

In the end the teachers’ estimates seemed the most meaningful data on the possibility of school attendance without the mission schools.104 At OLPMS the six teachers with whom I spoke estimated that most students would not have attended/finished high school without the mission school. The highest estimate of student attendance/completion without the mission school was 40 percent and the lowest was twenty:

Without the high school kids would be farming or working away from home. Maybe a few would go to another high school (Ma’am Christen); Eighty percent would not graduate. They will stay with family or go to the city to work as house servants (Ma’am Denise).

The six teachers estimated that the majority of students would not have attended/graduated from high school without the mission school, while two teachers thought that a mere 10 percent would have found their way to another school, with the highest estimate eighty students out of the 182:

Without the mission school? Most of the students would be at home, on their farms (Ma’am Alina); Mostly the students would be on farms. Ten percent, very small would go to the high school in Quezon. It is too far and costs too much to get there and room with an adoptive family—fifty pesos per month!105 (Sir Sisco).

104 Following children to their homes to speak with their families was not a realistic option, given the vast distances, nor did it fully adhere to the general guidelines of ethical clearance given to this study. 105 CAD 1.25, for reference.

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Due to the perceived success of the mission schools the Diocese is already planning

a third high school, with the tentative name Our Lady of the Lake Mission School.106

However, with the relative success of the mission schools, the new concern for the educators and the Diocese is what becomes of the graduates once they leave.

Many of the children will finish the four-year program, but many will not be able to use that education because they do not get a scholarship for post secondary. This is systemic, not just mission school (Sr Helen).

During my travels I met two young women who had graduated in the last few years from a public high school and were living back in their villages. One was farming and one was tending a sari-sari store. ‘Perhaps five percent will get to go to post-secondary. Others will go to the city, and then probably come back and get married’ (Ma’am Alina). The

Sisters expressed much concern about the fate of female students who leave Cod Cod for the city. ‘Many will go to work down in the city, to be house servants. And they are treated as slaves, you know!’ (Sr Daisy). Because of these real concerns the next stage in

Bishop Joe and Fr Edwin’s education-development plan is the construction of a technical/vocational college for graduates from the mission schools. And they have been hearing support for this from the mission-school teachers as well:

These kids need a youth organization and a vocational college (Ma’am Lita); The college is the most important next step to development (Ma’am Alina); [Students] cannot afford college. They have to move off the land (Sir Sisco); If built, 100 of 182 will go to the tech school (Ma’am Donna).

In the spring of 2010 plans for a technical college were well under way. The

Diocese had presented their plan to the Technical Education and Skills Development

Authority (TESDA), an agency of the Philippine government responsible for the

106 Any time this name for the new school was spoken, which was often at the dinner table in the Bishop’s house, the Bishop and Father Edwin laughed. I cannot be sure if this truly is the name being considered or if it is an inside joke.

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management and supervision of technical/skills education, and had received tentative

approval for four government-accredited programs that would give students official

certification in the job market. The programs are small-engine repair (300 hours),

welding (360 hours), dressmaking (280 hours), and massage (500 hours). The intention is to charge the students 5000 pesos per course, and pay the instructors 150 pesos per

hour.107 In March 2010 the Diocese was busy processing documents for TESDA and

acquiring a permit from the electric cooperative, in order to tap into the electricity grid.

The Diocese hoped to break ground in the summer, once 550,000 pesos had been raised

for two concrete rooms and another 500,000 for equipment.

The Bishop’s objective of educating the rural poor is a reality, but whether that

education becomes a steppingstone out of poverty remains to be seen. Nearly one-

hundred graduates have gone on to post-secondary training after graduation from

OLPMS, but the vast majority have not proceeded to that level, due to a lack of state

funding and family commitments that keep children near their family farms. With the

development of the technical college the Diocese hopes to reconfigure this trend.

Anti-mining campaign

The Diocese has a well-organized anti-mining campaign, recognized as an important

thrust in community development. Inspired by the principles of empowerment, ecology

and social justice, the anti-mining campaign is an example of a politico-economic

transformative program that draws upon parishes and BECs, but truly functions at the

Diocese level. Anti-mining, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps a better label for the

107 At these rates it would require nine to fifteen students per course just to balance tuition and teacher wages. It was hoped that the classes would have fifteen to twenty-five in attendance.

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campaign would be ‘actively seeking alternative mining that helps to strengthen

communities’. Indeed I attended a meeting of the group with fifteen representatives from

different parishes, and there was little to suggest the outright rejection of mining in the

area:

The people … aren’t against the mine, because of jobs and money in the area. The problem is that the benefits are not so good [when taken] with the bad. In my village there was a landslide and people got hurt. Also, the mining would be better with labour controls (Marissa).

Thus the group is organized and committed to major changes in the present mining

industry on Negros. Like many social movements in the Philippines they are inspired by

EDSA (see Chapter Three), and their campaign is predicated on the belief in the power of

the people to effect positive change. ‘We have the people power, we just have to be

organized’ (Carlito).108

The meeting was attended by seven women and eight men, all of whom held

somewhat professional occupations within their communities, such as a teacher, a local-

government nutritionist, a secretary in a cooperative organization and a self-employed

business man. All are regular church attendees, and all belong to a local BEC. The host of

the meeting was a lawyer working for the Philippines Misereor Partnership Inc (PMPI),

an organization created by Misereor, a German Catholic Bishops’ charitable organization, in order to streamline the focus and direction of Catholic NGOs and POs in the

Philippines, including ten organizations working in the four dioceses on Negros. The

PMPI’s anti-mining campaign on Negros had been active since 2006. Over the last four

108 People Power movements in the Philippines are not without their risks to participants. A number of informants new or had heard of leaders in social movements being killed, including priests. One of the men in the anti-mining group relayed a story about his son; shortly after his son signed an anti-mining petition, the son was taken into custody and interrogated for many hours by local police. Shortly there after, the son lost his college scholarship, and the family believed that it was due to his signature on the petition.

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years the two most prominent sites of struggle between civil-society groups and

government/industry have been in the regions surrounding the cities of Kabankalan and

San Carlos.109

The anti-mining campaign began in 2006 with the dissemination of leaflets in five

key parishes. The leaflets contained information on existing and future mining activities

in the area, the potential socio-environmental effects of small-scale quarrying and a few

larger magnesium and gold projects, and opportunities for community participation.

There are mining applicants from Cadiz to La Libertad, but the residents do not know. Many applicants. But the status of the application is held in the local government unit, due to negative reaction, especially of farmers (Tonio).

Given these circumstances the initial leaflet was a first attempt at community awareness,

and the Social Action Center translated the original PMPI document into Cebuano and

Illonggo. ‘This was an important first step. We need access to education about mining

acts, laws and bills in order to properly advocate for ourselves’ (Juan).

Community advocacy in the mining industry is perhaps the key objective for the

anti-mining campaign. ‘We want to see education, study and consultation with

communities’ (Carlito). ‘The Social Action Center needs to be involved in this—education

campaign and orientation, then communicate this to the community’ (Juan). As it now

stands communities in mine-affected areas are without information or representation

when mining leases are granted, and community leaders are worried about possible

109 Anti-mining groups/activities on Negros are prominent and frequent, and people who work for or are affiliated with the Diocese are more than willing to join other protest groups. ‘We joined rallies, against exploration. There was a cement factory. We have to educate the people. The people did not believe us, but then they found out the mining lease had already been given. Land was bought by big landowners. People cannot grow crops, the people have to get work in the city. We found out it was already decided. Some congressman, he somehow acquired title to CARP lands. We had to join. He was ousted in 2007, [after] thousands rallied in Dumaguete’ (Berna).

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environmental and social consequences, air pollution, waste products, loss of livelihood, landslides and skin disease. Ultimately, in a country where government and industry tend to steamroller the little guys, the campaign is meant to educate people about the social, environmental and health risks, and facilitate a forum for community input into local mining activities. The objective is a more humanized industry that consults and cooperates with local communities as a means to form ‘a bridge, a link, between economic development and the development of the people’ (Fr Jerome).

One of the concepts promoted by the campaign as an alternative to the present mining situation is small-scale mining, whereby smaller leases are granted to local companies, minimizing the environmental impact, and local people participate in the projects either as wage-earners or artisans. The belief is that the scale of mining can be kept at a level that is ecologically sound, and that this level will enable the local economy to grow and diversify without compromising other already-productive sources of livelihood or the environment left behind for future generations. Also, they argue that local ownership will be held accountable more easily than distant/foreign ownership, because a local owner must live among the people affected by the mine. ‘Because it is local, the people have more power to pressure the business, to stop the mine or pressure the mine. Because the local owner is accountable to neighbours’ (Chester). This small- scale alternative rests upon some significant assumptions, which the campaign recognizes: firstly, that the nature of the mineral deposit may or may not be suitable for a less-evasive extraction process; secondly, that the investors are willing to support an artisan-style process and invest in local communities; and thirdly, that people with little title to land beyond the small plot underneath their homes and immediate gardens can

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make claims over anything in the vicinity. Added to these concerns are some problems that they have identified with small businesses:

This allows companies to skirt the mining laws that have been set up to protect us from large-scale mining by foreign companies. Also, the owners do not have to follow labour laws (Marissa); Small scale may not use big equipment, but it is big because of how much they are doing. Yes, it is small- scale, but the cumulative effects can be just as bad as the big mine when you add them all up (Chester).

As of 2010 little progress had been made in terms of a switch within the industry to the small-scale concept. Nevertheless the campaign presses on, confident that their alternative has merit and just needs a chance to be demonstrated. As the meeting ended the group settled on a policy of continuous education and information, and regular monitoring and assessment. ‘If the people know the effect of the mining we believe they can prevent it, some of it, the bad’ (Tonio). Concomitant with this, the group will continue to promote the idea of small-scale mining for the benefit of affected communities. They also hoped for additional personnel to be added to the Social Action

Center to deal exclusively with mining.110

At the end of the day the anti-mining campaign can be proud of the progress that has been made over the last few years. Since 2006 there have been thirty-five major new mining leases under consideration within the Diocese of San Carlos. Of these the anti- mining campaign has become involved in sixteen, with various results. Most anti-mining activity consisted of seminars in villages affected, letters of opposition and protest marches. Once again, little was accomplished in terms of overhauling the industry, but community concessions have been granted in a number of disputes, mostly meant to

110 One of the employees of the Social Action Center later explained to me that funds for extra personnel are non-existent. ‘We are completely stretched out!’ (Tonio).

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ameliorate socio-environmental problems and labour antagonisms. The greatest achievement of the anti-mining campaign thus far, however, is the outright stoppage of two corporations, Asturias Chemical Industrial and Negros Oriental-Western Mining.

Between the two corporations a total of nine applications for gold, silver and copper were on the table, with the potential to affect 166,576 hectares of land. ‘These were big. That is

People Power’ (Carlito). One other smaller operation was completely stopped as well.

Only five priests with whom I spoke were stationed in mine-affected areas, and all support the anti-mining campaign.

I am for the protection of the environment. Advocacy is more than the environment. It is about the whole person—integral solution. We [the clergy] have shifted from the spirit to the whole person (Fr Jerome); The Church has a great role. It is almost a year since the petition [by a lobby of mining companies] to grant prospecting rights almost the length of the Diocese, from Umpala to Canlaon, that whole corridor. So, especially here, where our people are so dependent on the land they till, we see that one as important. Many people would starve to death (Fr Mickey).

That being said, two of the priests, ages thirty-one and thirty-three, did not claim to be

actively involved in the campaign as community leaders:

A bishop once said, “Sustaining the people is the work of a social worker, but the priest’s work is a spiritual aspect.” Good people will become good community members, and the people will find leaders. If the priest is too into the social activities he cannot give the proper spiritual support to the people, because his responsibilities are divided (Fr Carlo).

With or without the support of the local clergy the anti-mining campaign is active in

a number of parishes and well-organized at the Diocese level. The group’s ability to

effect change in rural communities enables transformations in society that empower

people and lead to a new-found awareness of community, as well as its defence. For the

most part transformations are limited, but there have been some greater concessions

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granted over the last four years and the campaign has grown and spread. It is networked

now with other anti-mining groups that operate on the island.

Good governance

In the Philippines there are uncountable numbers of citizens’ and volunteers’ groups who have set themselves the task of monitoring government spending, bids, awards and project compliance with regulations. The primary focus of many of these groups is the

Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), a mandate of the Department of Internal and Local

Government. The IRA is a legislated sum within each barangay, municipality and city, equivalent to 20 percent of total local government funding. It amounts to 80,000 pesos per 100 individuals. That sum is legally-mandated to be spent on local development and infrastructure, and ‘this has to be watched because government will abuse this. The other eighty percent already goes to government salaries and expenses’ (Fr Edwin). Any group involved in the IRA watch has to be a legal entity, such as an NGO or PO, and as we know the Diocese qualifies as the former. Any legal entity that desires to monitor local- government spending must apply for accreditation from the local office of the ombudsman.

The Diocese is involved in the monitoring of government spending through its

Good Governance program.

The government must be held responsible, accountable for their actions. They take so much already from the people. Twenty percent of [funds for] all projects are going to the politicians. How can the people develop with so much taken from the beginning, before it has even started? Before the project has even started? (Fr Naldo).

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Three of the Social Action Center employees help to coordinate the program, and there are two part-time field staff, forty-seven active volunteers, and a lawyer and an engineer who volunteer their services as well. In 2010 the Good Governance program was in its second year, with monitors in twenty-nine barangays, three cities and two municipalities.

The volunteers have a regular meeting every two months, and the program coordinator in the Social Action Center conducts weekly follow-up meetings with any new barangays as they come on board. Also, during the first year of operation, the Good Governance program facilitated two ombudsman forums for local-government and city officials, in

San Carlos and Cadiz, attended by 190 and more than 200 officials, respectively.

Because the IRA watch is sanctioned by the Philippine state the local volunteers are acknowledged as legitimate representatives of the ombudsman by barangay officials.111

When volunteers are in the neighbourhood the local barangay captain is notified, and the volunteers wear uniforms with identification badges that are signed by the ombudsman.

The basic work of the volunteers is to audit local-government spending, and much of what is discovered to be unlawful is blatant. For instance, there are ‘many projects discussed in the annual investment plan that were not started. Still, the allocation is claimed to be there for the next year’ (Tonio). Numerous times a barangay captain refuses even to provide documents for inspection, however. When this occurs the Social

Action Center will first make a formal request to the captain, and if this request is ignored the ombudsman is notified. ‘Very few comply, but the ombudsman or the DILG

111 ‘Officials are friendly right now because they are afraid of the reporting. They are afraid of the ombudsman … [however] there is some danger to volunteers because some barangay officials are connected to the big politicians. We advise volunteers to not work in a destructive way. Work smoothly’ (Tonio).

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[Department of Internal and Local Government] will inform the captain to give up the document’ (Tonio).

The penalties for non-compliance with the Internal Revenue Allotment are fines, suspensions and dismissal. Four times in the past two years a barangay captain has been suspended, and once a city mayor was suspended for ninety days because he had diverted public money to purchase a personal vehicle—‘he still has the vehicle, however

[laughing]’ (Tonio). Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the audit of local spending, however, is the check that local officials now feel compelled to keep upon spending in their respective governments. ‘They know they are being watched. And they are correcting their poor behaviours’ (Fr Augustus). The Good Governance program has spurred many barangay officials to hold semi-annual assemblies, ‘which they are supposed to hold anyway because that is the time to explain projects to the people’

(Tonio).

A local business owner who belongs to a BEC gives an elaborate explanation for the need to monitor government officials, while he argues three main reasons for poverty in the Philippines:

Graft. The number one reason is the politics and the greed. Secondly, it is our culture. It is part of what we are. We are a people who are to be dominated. The entire history of the Philippines, since Spanish colony times, we are the people who allow ourselves to accept things the way we are told they are. There is no fight, look at the politics. We all go out and vote back in the same bad politician … The third reason that I would say is the utang na loob, a debt of—how would you say?—a debt of gratitude, from the heart. Culturally, when someone does something for you, you owe that person for a very long time. You cannot let it go. And that person does not let you forget it. “Come on, I give you this or I do this for you. Now you owe me.” And there are those in the culture who have learnt to take advantage of this. They become politicians and take advantage of their office (Anthony).

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A priest later echoed the business owner’s sentiment:

We have this belief that the rich man is better than us, naturally better. Even if he got all his money stealing from the community, he is better. So we look up to him and think he is better. And then if he becomes a politician we vote for him because he is more honourable than us. And if he gives the community a little money back we will bow our heads and say thank-you, sir, and re-elect him—even if the money he gives back is taken from our own pockets. This is how the people think. They really do (Fr Robert).

All the priests stated that the Good Governance program is important and that they have seen positive results. For instance:

Good government is very important. We have the best laws in the land but they are not being implemented. We are trying to work in the middle ground (Fr Jerome).

Even a few priests who said the Church must remain out of politics support the Good

Governance program:

No, the Church must remain neutral. We are spiritual help, and some economic, but not political. Good governance … is about basic rights. It is not political to insist upon recognizing basic Filipino rights. Or checking up on politicians to make sure they are obeying their own laws. That is a civic duty, task. Not duty—task (Fr Manuel).

The year 2010 was an election year and during fieldwork most Dioceses in the

Philippines became involved in the election, providing seminars on the new automated balloting system introduced by the Philippine Commission on Elections.112 The seminars were intended to inform community leaders about the new system, new voting procedures and potential threats to the ballot process. Furthermore, the seminars were intended to solicit volunteers as monitors in the coming election. In the Diocese of San

Carlos priests and lay leaders met in the Bishop’s compound to learn about the automated

112 The Commission on Elections is one of three constitutional commissions in the Philippines, independent of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The central mandate of the Commission is the enforcement of elections, recalls and referendums (cf. Comelec 2010).

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election, with the intention of taking what was learnt back to their own local communities and parishes. The priests and lay leaders saw themselves as official monitors of the election.

Personally, I think that is one of the duties of the priests. The people look up to us, so we are already the right people. We have a very grave responsibility to do something about this election, to achieve our dream to have an honest election. And we are campaigning against vote buying. It is a cancer. You heard my homily at Mass, the dignity of the vote. It is something sacred. We should simply not let it be bought. Money talks, money puts the person on the pedestal. We call that one [the homily] “Voter Education.” Although we remain non-partisan. We have a guideline: pro-God, pro-poor, pro- Constitution, pro-environment. Cardinal Sin113 said, “No one is obliged to fulfill an evil contract.” So people do not have to vote for who they were paid to vote for (Fr Mickey).

I asked a group of priests after the elections seminar if perfect voting conditions will bring change to the structure of Filipino society. The answer was overwhelmingly no. ‘I haven’t voted since EDSA [1986]. It was a time for change, but nothing has

changed. So I don’t vote anymore. It is the same people, the same group. Even since

Marcos’ (Fr Johnny). Bishop Joe explains that there is

no democracy in the voting process because of massive vote buying and cheating and patronage. So the manner in which we elect our people? I really question it because the people are not so free. So, whoever has the three Gs— goons, guns and gold [laughing]—they rule. No vote? Ebot! (Vote or your home will be pulled out of the ground).

Despite such negative sentiment about meaningful change in society the importance

of empowering the people through the vote is not diminished.

The politicians need to know that they are being watched, that they are responsible to the people, ultimately. I believe the people can make a difference, and very much at the lower levels of government, the Barangay,

113 Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila (1974-2003). As the spiritual leader of the entire population of Filipino Catholics he became disgruntled over government corruption and outright murder, involved himself in political issues and played a significant role in the People Power Revolution that toppled Marcos (cf. McCoy 2009).

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the province. Because those politicians do have to answer. But the ten, fifteen families or so at the top, the national politicians who run the country? They do what they want (Fr Amado); It is a sickness, and watching the government has helped. There has always been those who try to have everybody else working for them. The government has their own culture, trying to keep everyone poorer than themselves (Fr Johnny).

Church-Military Advisory Group

I attended a meeting of the Church-Military Advisory Group (CMAG) while on Negros.

CMAG is an attempt to reconcile long-standing tensions between the Church and Armed

Forces of the Philippines through cooperative action in local communities. It is a project that was started in 2007, and as of April 2010 only exists on the Island of Negros.114 The

Group includes military representatives from each of the seven military Areas of

Operation (AO) on the island and church representatives from the four dioceses.115 They

meet every two to three months to discuss infrastructural development, local grievances

with the army, New People’s Army activity, community service by the military, church-

military social events, and basic community needs.

CMAG also represents a new approach by the army to deal with both the NPA on

Negros and a long history of bad publicity for the AFP; in essence, a positive army

presence in rural communities, endorsed by local church leaders, generates support for

the army at the expense of the communist cause. For those who have worked with the

army or seen their efforts firsthand the approach sounds as if it is working:

114 The most often given explanation of why CMAG is only on Negros is that it is a pilot project for the army, and Negros was chosen as a test zone because it is one of three New People’s Army hotspots in the Philippines. ‘The military is trying to win the hearts and minds of the people … and defeat the rebels’ (Fr Edwin). 115 I learned that one Bishop does not send his social-action center priest to the meetings. ‘He says that he has regular meetings with the army all the time and he can call them whenever he needs to. So it is a waste of time to attend the meeting’ (Fr Edwin). There are lay representatives present from that Bishop’s Diocese, however.

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For most of my life I was against the military. I was brainwashed to think all they did was the corruption and violence. I was on the other side, the left side. But now I can see that the army is trying to do better things. It is trying to win the hearts of the people by going into communities, working in communities with the people. This is a big step, but it is worth taking (Fr Edwin).

Winning over the public has become a priority for the AFP, and peace and development

have become buzzwords within a new concept of cooperation and dialogue. Thus one of

the central civil mandates of the Armed Forces of the Philippines on the island of Negros

is service delivery, particularly in rural communities, and cooperation with the church

through CMAG provides a positive and respectful entrée into communities. A major in

the army said,

It is a new way of dialoguing, the conferential type. We already know that it produces convergence and divergences of ideas and opinions. The conference type of dialogue will lead us to know and understand each other more, rather than just engage in fault finding (Major).

Ultimately it is hoped that CMAG will be the cornerstone in an era of cooperation between Church and State as both institutions seek to improve life in rural communities.

The CMAG meeting was a formal event, complete with chairperson, secretary, panels and PowerPoint reports from all military areas of operation. There were over twenty military personnel, including three colonels and four lieutenant colonels,116 three representatives from the Philippine National Police, four priests, the lay coordinator of

Pax Christi-Negros, and an attorney as legal advisor. The meeting began with a discussion of local grievances that citizens had expressed with the army. Church representatives voiced the concerns of which they had become aware since the last

CMAG meeting, and army officers responded with clarifications, rebuttals and/or

116 The ranks of Colonel are second only to the ranks of General in the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

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promises to investigate. Afterward the army officers expressed their concerns over certain local churches being infiltrated by the communists:

Those churches or church affiliated organizations are not communist organizations but are infiltrated by the communists and are being utilized or exploited by the communists. The approach to this situation is not to antagonize these churches or organizations affiliated with the church, but to reach out to them and let them understand (Lt Colonel).

At this early time in the meeting, and with the subject matter of grievance, the sense of camaraderie between church and state was striking, as if all parties were fully committed to the concept of peace and development. And as the meeting transitioned into reports from the different army AOs it became apparent that CMAG and the civilian- development mandates of the army were genuine prerogatives with some successful results.

If we take one military report by an infantry battalion of CMAG activities in one

AO over a two-month period we have an illustration of the work of CMAG in local communities. Between early November 2009 and early January 2010 the infantry battalion participated in Holy Mass in seven different barangays, and provided security assistance at seventeen different festivals/celebrations.

The security is helpful. It is needed assistance. The Masses go a long way, to show the people that we are the people as well. We are not the enemy, the enemy is bandits living in the mountains. Disorganized bandits, nothing more (Lt Colonel); Mass is the most sacred time of the week, and it is good to see them [army] here. The children love the military. They want to be soldiers too. They [soldiers] are big and strong. They are role models and the people feel safe. They come and it is peaceful (Fr Frank).

During the two-month period the battalion provided assistance eight times by lending multi-media projectors and operators, and squad tents for various events, including church, college, and Barangay functions. In one Barangay the army went so far as to set

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up and operate a firing range for an annual festival. Also, transportation assistance was provided for a post-secondary inter-campus athletics competition, as well as for the delivery of milk to a six-day rural feeding program.

The battalion also carried out sixteen civic-action visits in communities within the

AO. Civic action is a blanket term for a number of programs, including community development projects, medical missions, environmental awareness and protection, peace- convergence efforts among parties, public information seminars, involvement in national and historical events, and the facilitation of dialogue between government, church, NGOs and citizens’ groups. Some specific civic actions in which the army participated for the two-month period include a six-day milk-feeding program at ten elementary schools

(more than 4000 child beneficiaries), the planting of 1000 seedlings of narra

(Pterocarpus indicus—the national tree of the Philippines), mahogany and acacia along the banks of a river, and a medical/dental mission to an isolated village (217 beneficiaries). The battalion also donated 3000 board-feet of confiscated lumber for renovations in four schools and, in conjunction with a local government unit and the

Philippine Red Cross, organized the donation of enough blood for 300 recipients.

This breakdown of civic activities carried out by the Army over the two-month period is but one report among seven presented at the CMAG meeting, and each of the six other AOs presented similar reports in regards to their own activities on the island.

The meeting continued with discussion of a few larger projects on the table. These included CMAG’s organization of repairs to a school, construction of a community/multi-purpose center, and the paving of one kilometre of a heavily-sloped road in Cabagtasan, the latter so that those who live down slope can get their wares to the

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Thursday market, even in the rain. From these reports a positive picture of Church-Army cooperation emerged, and informants’ statements in the villages were fairly positive as well.

In the village of Cabagtasan individuals from the community predominantly were positive about the army presence. During informal interviews with farmers, sari-sari store owners, students of age, members of the clergy, and my neighbours, there was a general belief that the army was a positive presence in the area, and that the NPA was no longer widely supported. Every person interviewed said that their reason for supporting the army had to do with the help given during the construction of the mission school, though no one could recall the last time that the army stopped in for infrastructural development. All had heard stories about Army abuses of civilians, but only one man and one woman told me about being witness to such an event: i) the beating and three-week confinement of a farmer suspected of NPA ties, and ii) the slapping of a student who had argued with a soldier, respectively.

All six teachers at the mission school thought it perfectly normal that army and church would be working together in its construction, though some were cynical about army work ethic: ‘The army are more on laziness. They work for three hours and rest for the afternoon [laughing]’ (Ma’am Alina); ‘They sat around a lot. But we got our school’

(Sir Sisco). Priests, on the other hand, were divided yet again, and the split between younger and older was much the same as with other topics, following a definite trend.

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Eight of ten younger parish priests believed that CMAG was a positive step toward cooperation.117

We have a good relationship. You have heard of CMAG? They [officers] try to patch up military abuse. They try to discipline their soldiers (Fr Rox); The military is very positive. They helped build the chapel in Pacuan (Fr Eduardo); This is a new development, a good one. Not so much partnership as cooperation, maybe respect. We have the leftists. They are headquartered in my Parish. People have been shot, two years ago a man was shot by the RPA. We are asking the help of the army men. People come to us, asking for help from us, and we have to attend to them. Negros is especially bad, because the NPA has split, and there is the RPA, and the two fight each other in our villages and on our roads (Fr Mickey).

Of the older group of parish priests six do not support cooperation between the Church and Armed Forces.

I do not believe in any Church-Military partnership. What, working together on infrastructure? Is this happening, throughout the country? I don’t know, I don’t know about that. That makes us part of the system, and the system is broken (Fr Naldo); I am not happy about CMAG. The military is still trying to assert power, but we are a civilian government. CMAG seems like the Church is being co-opted, and then we have to wait for a [CMAG] meeting to address an issue that is already happening? (Fr Jimmy).

Only one of the older priests thinks the CMAG partnership is positive, two seem to avoid talking about it, and one flip-flops over whether the cons of collaboration with the army are outweighed by the ability to voice concerns within the CMAG forum:

No, the army and the Church cannot be working together, like in line with one another on the same task. The Church, the parish priest, is the middle, the middle ground. He is responsible to his parish, the people. He is in the middle, and he communicates between the government and the people. So, if the CMAG is a place of communication, then that is a good thing, because the people do need to know what is going on and they do need to know if concerns, like abuses for example, that they are being addressed. If there has been violence or something stolen from someone’s house, then this needs to be addressed with the army. So, the council is a good thing, because it allows the

117 Two of the younger priests had not heard of CMAG.

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priest to act as a middleman between the people and the government (Fr Amado).

For many communities on the island of Negros the Armed Forces of the Philippines are the people who shoot up villages during battles with the NPA, torture innocent civilians suspected of ties to the communists, and ‘salvage’118 local leaders (including priests) who voice opposition to the government and army. This image of destruction, torture and death does not foment wide civilian support for the NPA, however, for the

NPA is guilty of its own list of crimes against the people. The vast majority of my informants are in agreement that the NPA has lost steam and the new army presence is a welcome one.

The anti-government people119 used to be here, but they are not in these mountains anymore. They are still in other parts of the Diocese. Their power, their size is getting smaller, and that is good. You cannot develop the people without peace. How can you expect the people to prosper if they do not even have their own safety? (Sr Milla).

This was the general sentiment, though one lay minister states:

We have a good constitution but only the poor are told to follow it. Not the rich. That is why we have the people in the mountains, the rebels. They want the government to follow the constitution. That is all. Just follow their own constitution.

Interestingly the older priests who were less tolerant of CMAG were also the ones to have a less-negative perception of the New People’s Army.120

For as long as the government is doing their bad things, I believe this group will continue, and flourish. Especially those victimized by the army. Very

118 A Philippine term for extra-judicial killing. 119 I found throughout my travels that people do not like to refer to the NPA by name or acronym, choosing instead to refer to the group as ‘bandits’, ‘the anti-government people’, ‘the other side’, or ‘the left’. 120 One evening two priests and I were watching a news story about an Armed Forces raid on a medical conference in which 43 healthcare workers were detained by the AFP. One priest said, ‘They suspect the doctors of being rebels. They suspect everyone, even farmers, simple farmers.’ The second priest said to me, ‘You know about the NPA, the communists, here on Negros? But they are not bad people. They are good people’.

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negative with the presence of military. Before they thought I was working with them [NPA], but I said, “I am working for the people.” Today, those who join come from poor families.121 Some join for adventure, but they do not stay for long (Fr Jimmy); The left used to be identified with the priests. We were all left in the eyes of many. We perhaps shared the same basic cause, helping the poor. But the NPA has fallen out of favour in almost all of the public eye. They are petty, peasants, like the rest of us. They are not—. Many who join are good people. They are people like you and I, looking for a change, some change. But change has not come, and their ways of change are no longer seen as the right way (Fr Naldo); [The NPA is] talking about the way the politicians run the government, and the poor, and equal distribution of the land. But they are using violence. For me, I respect their ideology. We have the same sentiment for the people, but different means. We do not repay evil with evil (Fr Robert).

Even Bishop Joe expresses an understanding of the continued prevalence of the NPA on

Negros:

The left is very strong in Negros. They really flourish because of the social problem here, not the mountains [for hiding]. Land problem, social problem. They really have to react this way [with insurrection] because of the situation. The social problem is a reality, so very evident. They thought it [communism] was a means of transforming the situation here. It is not, but it is at least understandable.

Although one of the mission school teachers has a much more cynical (and arguably practical) impression of the AFP-NPA encounter:

The people don’t agree with the communists, with violent revolution. Anyway, the whole thing is business. If the army wanted to capture all the bandits they could. But instead they just chase them from this town, over to that town [pointing across the mountain]. And it is business. The army captures them, takes their guns, then sells their guns back to them later. And, you know, it is distraction, having the bandits in the hills and the army in pursuit. There you go! There is your government at work. And the army takes credit for no more bandits, but do you know the true reason why the NPA is no longer around

121 Fr Edwin gave an interesting statement in regards to the disconnect between the ‘communists’ feared by the army and the ‘actual peasants’ who join the NPA: ‘If you ask an NPA if he is a Marxist, he will not know [laughing]. He does not know who Marx is. If you say, “You are a communist” or “You are a capitalist,” he will not know because he does not know the difference. The only ones who know are the old guys, in charge. The old generals from the 60s. The young guys are not the ideologists. They are just poor and looking to change—just something—their situation. These are young people with nothing. When you have nothing you are often looking for something’.

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Cabagtasan? Because of the [cellular] networks. The reception for Smart [Mobile] doesn’t work down here, and Global [Mobile] won’t work over there. And that is how they communicate (Sir Sisco).

CMAG is a forum where the military and civilians are able to come to together and

address mutual grievances, and the Church can be understood as an intermediary in the

process. Part and parcel of this new cooperation is a new army presence in the lives of

rural people, through feeding programs, community aid and attendance at Mass, to name

as few. It is also the beginning of a partnership in infrastructural development, whereby

local projects (however small or large) are identified, planned and prosecuted. ‘This is a

new way of government working for the people—your government at work! [laughing].

No, but really, you can see, out there, we are trying to help the people’ (Major). In so

doing the military also is attempting to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’, as

Father Edwin says, as a means to choke-out the last vestiges of popular support for the

New People’s Army.

* * *

Each day the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San Carlos takes modest strides toward the goal of Total Human Development for the people of the Philippines. Many priests, nuns and lay leaders daily walk this path, and in concert their efforts help to produce local, meaningful development within the Diocese. Total human development is a social, spiritual and politico-economic development, and through economic cooperation, feeding programs, low-cost medicinal supplements, the construction of schools, alternative-mining campaigns and cooperation with government the Diocese has met with moderate success in its effort to develop the people.

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Success is relative, among researcher and those who inform a study, and among individual informants. That being said, the overwhelming opinion from informants is that the Diocese has made and continues to make great strides in its battle against poverty and economic exploitation. What is apparent also is that the Diocese is attacking social problems at an appropriate scale. Building schools and organizing anti-mining campaigns against large conglomerates is hardly the work of small communities, let alone individual

BECs. Nor is a partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the distribution of enormous quantities of rice or the provision of thousands of meals to needy families.

These are appropriate at the diocese level because they require resources, both human and pecuniary, that are not available at smaller scales of social organization in the

Philippines.

Much of the development success within the Diocese is attributable to a handful of key actors who have framed a unique picture of development and set themselves the task of its realization. Indeed most development/livelihood accomplishments are attributable to the tireless efforts of these key leaders within the Church. This, however, draws attention to those leaders whose lack of effort arguably makes them less tired on a daily basis. As has been shown, all clergy (though ‘Of the Cloth’) are not cut from the same cloth, and the efforts of some far outweigh the efforts of others. For instance, in the priesthood, the present analysis brings to the surface a stark division between priests ordained prior to the mid-1990s and priests ordained later. After initial interviews I spoke again with some key informants, and they are aware of the discrepancies as well. The younger priests

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are not so socially aware. It is the seminary formation. They are not exposed, up to date on issues. Too engrossed in liturgical studies. They are not really socially aware about what’s going on. Not only the Diocese, the whole country and globally (Fr Jimmy).

The Bishop confirms this sentiment:

Seminary teaching has changed and this is why younger priests are not as aware of the social problem. It has to do with exposure to Marx and social conditions. Those educated and ordained after 1990—there was a lot going on … the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the USSR. Pope John Paul [II] was a conservative pope. The seminary changed, over the last fifteen or so years.

It was explained that over the last two decades the greater-Catholic Seminary had changed into a much more socially conservative one, focused upon liturgical studies, and at times outright opposed to any organized protest against secular powers. Part of the reason for this official reaction by the Catholic Church was Pope John Paul II’s condemnation of South American Liberation Theology.

Liberation Theology is … is thought to be connected to the communists. And it is also militant. I have seen a poster of Jesus with a big gun [laughing] (Fr Dundun); We do not teach the people to go against [the government], to rally. It will not solve the problems (Fr Jerome); The seed [of liberation theology] is South America … [though] there have been attempts [in the Philippines] associated with the left. Bishops were suspicious of some priests. But in terms of popular movements, Benedict [XVI, Pope] has warned the Philippines. BEC is about peace and charity, non-violence. Benedict has emphasized this; that the Church has to remain pillars of hope (Bishop Joe).

Added to the general lack of awareness in regards to social issues is a lingering apathy that the older clergy finds troubling:

Different priests have different mindsets. Some are looking for greener pastures outside. Actually, the first part is often economic survival. But if a priest is very active, maybe good things will materialize. What gives me grief—and encouragement!—is that I am working with people with different attitudes and different mindsets, and it will take a long time to change attitudes and mindsets. The world doesn’t stop. If you concentrate on grief you will be paralyzed. In the words, “it takes a long time for change to come,” there is the truth that change will come, eventually (Fr Edwin).

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The Bishop is disappointed in some of the parish priests as well:

They like [social action] but they won’t lift a finger. They want the Social Action Center to do it all. Even when they hear about human-rights abuses, they want the Diocese to handle it. Though I don’t push it, because they are hardworking.

With or without the support of all church leaders the Social Action Center of the

Diocese of San Carlos is a development machine that relies upon the sacrifices of a number of people outside of the clergy as well. And perhaps this is the cornerstone in the concept of communal organization. For instance, five of six teachers in the mountain mission school readily accepted a low wage in return for helping the community of which they are a part. Likewise, two of the employees in the Social Action Center admitted that they had given themselves to the Church in hopes of helping other less-fortunate people, and in so doing had chosen a lower wage for work performed as part of their service to the greater community.122

A final point to be made concerns the place of non-Catholics within the Diocese’s framework of development, particularly since the present thesis is predicated on the idea that Catholic groups are able to generate their own meaningful development. Not one program administered by the Diocese was intended solely for the benefit of Catholics, nor was the primary intention of any program to solicit converts to Catholicism. Conversion

‘used to matter, we used to care about that, but now we just don’t care. Suffering is non

122 Though one informant explained that the employees of the Social Action Center ‘are sitting around just waiting for a raise’ (Simon), only one employee of the Social Action Center complained about his wage and, similar to one of the mission-school teachers mentioned earlier, he explained that he only continued to work because of Father Edwin. ‘I do it for Edwin. He works too hard. He is killing himself, and he is my friend. Did you know he was sick last year? In the hospital? He cannot continue at this pace. He is worn out, and the Bishop does not see this. So I will work, but only for him’ (Joseph).

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denominational’ (Fr Edwin). Sister Milla said that only 20 percent of Cabagtasan, where the second mission school was built, is Catholic,

because the [Catholic] Church is fairly new here. We did not have a priest here till recently. The people are coming back to the Church, however. But the other churches were here first, and the people needed a place to worship. I like them [other churches] though. They are my friends. Mormon, Adventist, we are all God’s children (Sr Milla); This is not proselytizing, that’s more pressure [and] the object is to transfer people to your religion. We are not pushing like that. All the social-action activities, schools for instance. Preaching is when one does God’s work. So, indirectly, preaching through action is God’s work. There is no push [for converts], though it is inevitable. We are not naïve about that one (Bishop Joe).

Ultimately the Diocese of San Carlos is committed to the economic and social

development of all the people who live within its borders. It is a church that recognizes

the ties that bind spiritual and secular prerogatives, and a church that understands that the

development of God’s People is coterminous with the development of the individual

families and communities who live within the Diocese:

It is integrated. In all our actions we touch on deeper causes, not just the poverty itself. We cannot be neutral. The direction, the organizing, goes as far as being an activist in a certain sense. It is radical, from the Latin radicalis, going to the roots. We cannot do away with it. The direction goes as far as changing government, changing the system (Fr Edwin).

Through its secular arm, the Social Action Center, the Diocese is able to bring

meaningful development to both rural and urban communities, developments that effect

positive change for poor and marginalized groups. In so doing the Diocese acts as a

political and economic agent of reform, and it serves to realize a number of development

mandates championed in the literature on Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines.

As we will see in the following chapter, however, the final goal of self-sustainable

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development for the masses, the final vision of locally-grown prosperity through BECs, remains stalled, if not an outright dream.

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BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES IN SAN CARLOS:

GROUP STRENGTH AMID STRUCTURAL RESTRAINT

The concept of ‘being Church’ through Basic Ecclesial Communities has been part of the organizational vision of the Diocese of San Carlos for more than twenty years:

Generally, the history of BECs on Negros starts in 1988, but some parishes predate this. People were organized to address the current problems affecting the life of the people. I said that BEC is based on the faith of the people. It is just a way of being church, the community. The transformation of the life of the people should not be limited to the economic. Social, cultural as well, and political life. It is precisely why we have these programs in organizing an apostolate, especially concern for the youth (Fr Jimmy).123

Since 1988 the number of Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Diocese of San Carlos has been on the rise, due to the efforts of both priests and lay leaders. As mentioned at the outset of the previous chapter all parishes have multiple BECs, ranging in number from five to thirty-six, with highly variable numbers of families involved in each individual community.

The basic premise of BECs in San Carlos is twofold: 1) any group can be strengthened by its commitment to a local church, Christian values and the members’ commitment to support one another; and 2) the wider Catholic Church only can be strengthened by the solidarity of the many small groups that are its foundation. Both of

123 Fr Jimmy is described as a pioneer of the BEC concept in the Diocese. According to other priests he is one of the most highly regarded members of the clergy in the Diocese and he is the ‘resident authority’ on BECs.

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these underlying assumptions stress the essential element of the people as the Church, although the latter, strengthening the greater Church, can be seen as passive or a responding variable to the first:

The people have asked, “Where is the Church?” They are the Church! Why are they asking me? My role is how to strengthen the unity of these people living in a community. It is evangelization. Talking about the Kingdom of God, where all are united and equal. So we have to work on this journey to getting there. And building BECs is strengthening the political will of the people, to Christianize our politics and avoid the BEC being politicized by any one group. Also, when Church and State are at odds, where will he or she [the person] side. This helps guide people (Fr Jimmy).

Thus, beyond the essential liturgical aspect of unity through the study of Christ, the focus of BECs in San Carlos is a realization of, and reflection upon, social circumstances, and an organization of action meant to address social concerns that is predicated on ‘Christian values’.

Although the number of BECs is on the rise in the Diocese this neither implies their longevity nor the permanence of families that make up their membership; rather, it results from a general path walked by the faithful, usefully understood as two steps forward and one step back:

I do not think of it as building BECs, because they fall apart so quickly. We are rebuilding BECs. Constantly rebuilding them! (Fr Edwin); When I arrived [in the parish] very few people were coming. I tried to reorganize. Now there are twenty-one BECs situated in four barangays. The past parish priest was not very good about forming BECs, but I have a group of seven—my disciples [laughing]—who come along and they help to organize (Fr Jimmy).

All parish priests are key actors in the germination of BECs within their own territories, either personally or through appointed lay leaders, but in many ways the flowering of community is left to the people themselves. When asked about who initiated the formation of the greatest number of BECs in individual parishes the majority of priests

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stated either that they were approached by the small communities themselves—many of

whom had already constructed a chapel and desired its blessing—or that the previous

parish priest had been the lead actor.124 That being said, all priests stated that they were

proactive in the formation of new BECs within their parishes.

The formation of Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Diocese of San Carlos begins

with the liturgical community, a group of Catholic faithful who come together outside of

their daily lives to read scripture, celebrate Jesus Christ’s life, and share stories, food, struggles and hardships. It is this basic group—rooted in culture, united in neighbourly strength and Catholic faith—that must be established before any semblance of socio political reflection, let alone group action, can occur:

The building of the community is integral. Otherwise, when something goes wrong, it just disintegrates. So, first the spiritual community, then we try for something more (Fr Edwin); You understand the base, the root. The people require a foundation upon which to grow, and the spiritual aspect is the foundation. It is what unites them, and they need this unity before action (Bishop Joe).

But even the task of spiritual organization can be difficult in a place of landlessness and

labour hardship among the masses:

We are trying to organize them spiritually, then maybe developmentally. But it is very hard, difficult. Most work the sugar. They are dependent on the hacienderos. Their daily lives are difficult. They do not have the time (Fr Johnny).

The focus of this chapter is Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Diocese of San

Carlos, with data from three parishes. The BECs in the parishes serve as cases through which to understand i) BECs as communities of families and sites of place-making, ii) the

role of women in the communities, and iii) socio-economic development through BECs.

124 Parish priests are rotated at least every six years. Thus, since 1988 when BECs became integral to the Diocese, any BEC older than six years will be partially indebted to a previous parish priest.

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As a contribution to critical development studies the development aspect is the organizational premise for the present work. However, we return to the theoretical question from Chapter One: by organizing communally, yet participating in capital markets, are faith-based communities in the Philippines able to generate meaningful development, helping poor people to help themselves mitigate poverty, and if so, what are the limitations? Furthermore, it is the discourse of BECs—small communities of worship that create places and organize communally to achieve local social developments and transform the greater structures of Philippine society—that frames the small communities themselves as the appropriate scale of development intervention. As shown in the previous chapter, much development is taking place at the scale of the diocese, and as will be shown in this chapter, parishes in San Carlos are chock-full of BECs that are meaningful places of community and solidarity. But after an entire field season the search for a BEC where truly endogenous, autonomous and sustainable small-community development has taken root—development that is able to support or substantially supplement BEC families—remains elusive.

Development is a loose term for a number of markers and instances of social change, and through the efforts of the Diocese individual BECs are beneficiaries of important developments. But development strictly within the context of individual BECs is a tougher measure, and the present work relies upon the Diocese’s very own measure: income generation. Income-generating projects (IGPs, in the local lingo) are argued to be the cornerstones of community development, and in an ideal world the BECs in the

Philippines would all have discovered their niche within the economy, pooling labour, talent and resources for meaningful change that is both liberating and self-satisfying.

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Thus based upon the Diocese’s own interpretation of development at the BEC level, I visited sites throughout the Diocese, and the data quickly became saturated. In a nut shell, the communities all want economic self-reliance and a small measure of autonomy, but they have no money. And their dreams of generating income are far from extravagant, instead focused upon the most rudimentary building blocks of independence, such as a group swine project, land for community gardens, or a few communal carabaos for tilling a donated section of steep terrain, to name a few. Another layer of complexity affecting income generation is the structural reality of families who are locked in the daily struggle to place just enough food on the table. Hunger is compelling, especially in the eyes and voices of dependents, and abandoning quasi-secure wages in the hope of realizing something without guarantee is a near-impossible choice to make. Ultimately, as we will see, merely having the will (and a strong, determined, multi-actor will at that) does not imply making your own way under systemic hardship.

The remainder of the chapter is divided into two main sections. The first section is an exploration of BECs in two rural parishes, Pandanan and Pacuan, geographically located at two ends of the Diocese. The former is a place where the rural poor live in scattered villages and tend to subsist as wage labourers in the sugar and fishing industry.

The latter is a place where tenant families on small parcels produce rice and corn. In each parish members from a number of BECs were interviewed in order to better understand place-making, impacts from diocese-level development and local socio-economic development. The section begins with an overview of the two parishes and data is organized around themes common to both, as opposed to an individual chronicle of the parishes. Due to an absence of data across the board regarding place-making and

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development through BECs, this method is economical as opposed to redundant, and hopefully more interesting. Furthermore, it allows inclusion of supportive data and opinions drawn from other parishes during my stay in the Diocese. The second section of the chapter hones in on a final field site, the parish of Cabagtasan, a rural and remote mountain parish where people live off small-holder rice and corn farming. Cabagtasan was chosen because of the Diocese’s overarching support of the concept of ‘total human development’, the belief that all of the Diocese’s programs are integrated and only will work as a single totality: “Once multiple programs are in place the entire community will be able to grow and develop on its own” (Fr Jublas). The rural mountain parish of

Cabagtasan benefits from the most social programs offered by the Diocese. The Diocese delivers a feeding program, herbal medicines distribution, successful petitions for infrastructural developments, such as road construction and a fresh waterline, sponsorship of a number of family projects, and construction (with the help of the Armed Forces) of a second mission school for secondary students. But before getting to Cabagtasan we first turn to the parishes of Pacuan and Pandanan.

A tale of two parishes

The parish of Pandanan is located at the northern end of the island, along a stretch of coast slightly east of Cadiz. Although a mere narrow strip of cropland hemmed in by mountain and sea, the area is prime sugarcane property and most families in the scattered villages have at least one member employed in the industry. Others work on fishing boats or in aquaculture, and the men who have secured employment on fishing boats are gone for one to two months at a time, earning 2000 pesos per month. The large boats can be

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seen from the beach behind the parish church, as they enter and exit the Cadiz harbour ten kilometres away. Just offshore single fishermen in small craft paddle between buoys as they check their lines. Along the beach extended families and/or neighbours of five to ten adults and their children wade out from the sandbar. The groups walk fish nets as large as fifty metres out into the surf, at first linearly and parallel to the coast, then slowly bringing the two ends together into a wide corral as the tide recedes. The process can take more than one hour, and some groups will walk away with a mere few fish for their efforts.

Labouring for small rewards is a reality for the masses, whether it be fishing for food or chopping cane for landowners. Father Manuel explains that the minimum wage is

100 pesos per day for labourers, which is just enough money for an individual but not enough for a family. He argues that it needs to be raised by at least 50 percent, which does not seem much to ask for ten hours of work. But Father Manuel is a young priest,

Pandanan his first parish, and minimum wage is explained better by two veteran priests, one assigned in the vicinity of Pandanan and one from south of San Carlos City:

The man does not get minimum wage because he will sign a blank piece of paper. One day the paper will say he accepts working for less than the minimum. If they don’t sign, there is plenty supply of workers. So the man earns fifty to sixty pesos, rather than 100. And the average family can earn between 200, maybe 225 pesos per day. The whole family! (Fr Jerome); The people in my parish predominantly work in the sugar fields. The family income is less than 200 pesos per day. Men earn sixty to eighty; women, less than sixty; children, forty pesos for working in the sugar (Fr Mickey).

Whether earning wages in sugar, another mono-crop or in the service sector, the vast majority of rural people in Pandanan are poor, and families subsist on no more than 200 pesos per day. Basic wages are quickly spent on daily food, transportation to and from

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work, clothing, cigarettes and some form of entertainment, be it karaoke, drink or gambling. A slim minority make more money from more stable sources of income, such as business ownership, teaching, and local government/municipal employment. These occupations offer wages in the 10,000 to 20,000 peso per month range, far greater than the median wage for the parish. In terms of the latter, the coveted local-government positions such as barangay captain, allow for a ‘private enterprise of public office’ at the most local level, and official income tends to be topped up (and often eclipsed) by unofficial sources of income.

As discussed in Chapter Four, debt is a reality on Negros, and almost everyone with whom I spoke owed some money. The two most common debtors were the landlord and extended family, but some owed money to neighbours, local money lenders and businessmen who sell fertilizer in the market. Debt can be best understood in Pandanan as seasonal, coinciding with the times when sugar requires little labour, and it can amount to many weeks worth of family income. Like the crops upon which Negros’s economy is based, debt is cyclical, perennial and structured into the social relations of largeholder mono-crop production. There were stories of neighbours and friends who had been repaying debt to landlords for many years, and others who were repaying decades-old debt accumulated by their parents. Perhaps the one silver lining of employee debt is that it tends to guarantee one’s employment in a land of mass unemployment.

Back in the villages the unofficial unemployment rate is fifty percent and groups of youth walk the streets and visit in yards much of the day. Cards and gambling are a favourite pastime, and the smoke from Camel and Marlborough cigarettes lingers in the

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air.125 In one yard five teens exchange peso coins, betting over whether or not a small

monkey, missing a leg from the knee down and tethered to a tree, will eat certain fruits

placed in its hand. It is explained that the animal would have died in the wild with only

one leg, and it is happy enough. (Later is it explained that the animal lost its leg in the

owner’s trap.) Among the youth a post-secondary education or training program is a

priority, and most are actively trying to muster, through wages and borrowing, enough cash to enter a program. A number of colleges and vocational schools are physically accessible to the parish, but access for many remains illusive. Interestingly, post secondary education is seen unequivocally as a guarantee of employment, regardless of systemic unemployment in the country.

The people of Pandanan live in a number of villages scattered throughout the parish. A larger village will typically have an elementary school, town hall, daycares, a number of water wells, bars, places of worship and sari-sari stores, and a densely packed series of single-family homes that twist along impromptu streets. Smaller villages are much the same without schools or town hall, and they tend to have only one or two churches. In small and large village alike, music blares from home stereos and smoke from cooking fires hangs thick in the narrow streets. Traditional houses are constructed from palm fronds, cogon grass and bamboo. Other people have made use of things scavenged when constructing a home, such as large billboards, sheet metal and packaging materials. A select few homes of the wealthier residents are concrete with metal roofs, glass windows, gates and flower gardens. As for the smaller homes belonging to poorer residents, although houses and contents are privately owned by each family, the ground

125 An affordable vice in the Philippines, cigarettes sell for two pesos each, or about twenty-five pesos per pack (USD 0.04 and 0.50, approximately).

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underneath is not titled to the family. Thus houses and entire villages can be subjected to removal and relocation, although this is rare. Many homes have multiple rooms, televisions and DVD players. Sewers are a luxury seldom seen, but sewage is kept in check by the efforts of the entire community. Sewage is carried into the forest, buried under outhouses or occasionally contained by rudimentary septic systems. As elsewhere in the Philippines garbage is ubiquitous in Pandanan, collecting along pathways and on the edges of the forest on the outskirts of the villages.

Employment, unemployment, debt and land tenure adds up to a bleak outlook for the bulk of inhabitants of Pandanan. Six in ten people interviewed report times of family hunger, and these times are once again clearly associated with the off-season of sugar production. Even when not hungry, wages are barely enough to maintain the basic family unit; livestock and vegetables are traded for cash and cheap dry fish from the market, and more and more families are switching from the preferred rice staple to corn, which is less expensive. Only three families among more than thirty reported income from relatives working overseas, which is less than expected given that nearly one in ten Filipinos is living outside of the Philippines.126

There are thirty-three Basic Ecclesial Communities in Pandanan, comprised of

twenty to thirty families each, some self-organized by the laity and others organized by

the previous parish priests. Each new BEC has approached the parish priest, Father

Manuel, and he has appointed the lay ministers himself. By having a lay minister, the

126 Throughout my travels, very few rural families reported overseas members sending remittances. Beyond the scope of this study, other research into this trend may shed light upon discrepancies between rural and urban families with overseas members, and it may simply come down to proximity/access to major transportation hubs, overseas employment firms operating in major centres, or a better ability on the part of the individual to save from slightly better wages paid in urban centres.

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small BEC is able to have a local Mass each week in its own chapel without making the trek to the parish church, which can be costly and take time. BECs that have yet to construct a chapel perform an outdoor Mass around a small shrine or altar. The only difference between these small Masses and the priestly Mass is that the lay minister cannot draw the Holy Spirit into the wafer and wine for communion. Because of this

Father Manuel makes an effort to visit each BEC chapel at least once per month, so that the faithful can have an official Mass with communion. This means that Father Manuel travels to say Mass in two or three different locations almost every day of the week, with

Saturdays reserved for special occasions such as weddings, festivals, funerals and confirmations, and Mondays being his only day off.

In terms of income generation, the Diocese’s own benchmark of development, the parish of Pandanan makes some money selling the discounted National Food Authority rice (see Chapter Five). More importantly, two women on the parish team are earning a lot from manufacturing candles that are sold at Mass and during other religious events.

Dozens of wicks are strung around a stick, dipped in hot wax and allowed to dry. By the time the last stick of wicks has been dipped, the first is dry and ready to be dipped again.

After a series of dips the candles are ready, and they are roughly the size of a large felt marker. Hundreds of candles are made each day, and at five pesos each and with low overhead costs for string and wax, the two women generate tens of thousands of pesos each month. The income generated has yet to be used to fund other social developments in the parish, however. Rather, the money is spent sprucing up the parish church grounds.

For instance, the parish team spent more than 25,000 pesos on a concrete grotto with a statue of Mary inside.

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* * *

The parish of Pacuan is an isolated area located in the southern end of the Diocese, a valley surrounded by lush green mountains and natural springs that was once a hotspot of

New Peoples’ Army activity. An hour inland from La Libertad, it is accessed only by a severe and tortuous gravel road of some twenty kilometres, interspersed with short strips of broken pavement. At times the road seems to hang off the mountainside by a thread.

Along the way the hills are dotted with small wood-frame homes and the land is carved up for agricultural production. A small child stands on the side of the road, holding a leash attached to the nose ring of a pink carabao (water buffalo), and she waves as we pass. She wears no shoes, her long shirt tied around her waist with a pink belt, and it is explained that her family is most likely in charge of raising another family’s carabao. The profits from its sale in one or two years will be split between the two families. Pacuan is a farming community—a central business centre in the bottom of a valley with a few hundred homes packed together, surrounded by sloping hills that are divided into small holder farms. Most of the people subsist on corn, rice, vegetable gardens and livestock, and all the land is rented from a few landlords who do not live in the area. Income for farmers is equated at one-third of crop yield, with the other two-thirds going to the landlord, but families also have gardens and animals around their immediate homes. The gardens are especially helpful during two off-seasons when corn and rice fields do not

require labour. Vegetables and livestock are sold, and proceeds are used to purchase corn,

rice and cheap dried fish, trucked in on market day. Father Carlo, the parish priest,

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estimates that 10 percent of families are impoverished enough to experience periodic hunger.

“One-hundred pesos” is the standard answer when people are asked how much they earn, and this per day figure begins to sound rehearsed, as if anything below 100 for an adult man is still stated to be 100 (as if the workers are either embarrassed to admit to working for less among neighbours or have simply repeated the 100 figure over and over to the point that it is no longer evaluated). Furthermore 100 pesos per day worked does not clearly describe the amount upon which people subsist monthly or yearly. Off- seasons and half-days of work are a reality with which families must deal, and twenty- five working days per month can equate to less than 2000 pesos, let alone weeks and weeks of off-season unemployment. As in Pandanan, income is much higher for business owners, teachers and government workers. General unemployment is high in Pacuan as well, and sentiment among the youth is similar to that in Pandanan; most aspire to higher education with the prospect of securing a good-paying job. Those that receive a scholarship or have family members with whom to live in the cities whilst attending post secondary are grateful for the opportunity.

Pacuan has a village centre with health clinic, schools, barangay town hall, churches and central business area consisting of sari-sari stores, bars, food stores, rice and corn mills, and a small engine shop. The weekly market is held on the central business strip, and hundreds of locals make the trek into town to buy and sell household items, produce and packaged food. On market day the open spaces behind the main strip are filled with parked motor scooters and tethered horses and carabao, the animals standing in about eight inches of garbage. The banks of the river that winds through town are also a

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favourite dumping ground for garbage—mainly plastic packaging for items brought up from the city, be they chips, chocolate bars or karaoke machines. Such a remote location struggles to rid itself of the waste trucked in each week:

It all just rolls down into the valley, and then it hits the river—splash [laughing]. No, but really, we have no money for that. The infrastructure does not exist. You saw the road. The men, they have trucks, they bring it in but we can’t get it out (Pacuan barangay official).

There are thirty-six BECs in Pacuan. Over the years they have been organized by a strong parish team that predates Father Carlo’s tenure in the area. As a younger priest

(age 31) he is grateful for the efforts of the parish team who have accepted much of the responsibility for building and maintaining BECs in Pacuan. Father Carlo has allowed the team to continue to manage their basic operations since arriving in the parish and, in terms of bringing on board new BECs, he does follow-up visits once the ball is rolling.

About half of the BECs have built a small community chapel that is blessed by the priest and visited at least one time each month for official Mass. Just as in Pandanan, weekly

Mass (sans communion with the Holy Spirit) is performed by a lay minister appointed by

Father Carlo. And once again similarly to Pandanan, income generation in Pacuan has remained rather elusive. NFA rice produces some extra cash, and the only other significant venture fell apart when the lead man, the previous parish priest, was transferred:

No funds for livelihood. There was once one. It relied on the charisms of the priest. It was part of social action, lending 10,000 pesos to BEC members. We purchased a sari-sari store, owned cooperatively. When he left, it collapsed (William).

* * *

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Communities of families—Basic Ecclesial Communities in Pandanan and Pacuan are

family based. Organized by key founding families, most have grown to include dozens of

families over the years. They are communities of neighbours who come together to share

their faith and reflect upon their lives and hardships. It was often the people themselves,

questioning their faith and the sacraments, who came to the priest for answers, and his answer was a small community for reflection:

We went to him [the priest]. We had these questions. What would God say about this? What does the Church say about that? We were not getting answers in the Mass, the Sunday Mass. We were not even allowed to ask the questions! So he said we needed to talk about these things, and he said he would talk about them with us, too (Manny).

Later, as the BEC concept spread, it was other small groups who had heard about it and approached parish priests, asking for help in making their groups official BECs.

Eventually, as part and parcel of the evangelizing mission, local leaders were selected for each community, either by the community itself or by a scouting team of parish lay leaders, and parish-level seminars were given to potential candidates. A few BECs date to the late 1980s, but for the most part the number of BECs, as in other parishes in the

Diocese of San Carlos, has exploded over the last ten years.

First and foremost, the most important aspect of community during the initial formation of a BEC is coming together to share the liturgy:

The Bible sharing makes us closer to God (Rachel); We are helping each other, and ourselves, better understand the meaning and how to act as good Christians must act. How to be good to ourselves and neighbours (Juan).

The group members report a new sense of purpose and place as Christians. For many this

has helped to replace longstanding feelings of anomie vis-à-vis the Catholic Church:

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I went to Mass, I prayed, I sang—I’m a great singer, you know! But then we just walk out and no more church till the Sunday again. Now, we are a church, everyday. Our own church and our own chapel (Enrile).

Bible study is weekly, if not twice weekly, and Sunday prayer is performed in the community chapel, led by a lay minister. Thus the small communities are a means to a proactive Christianity, as opposed to a top-down Christianity officiated by the central

Church, whereby members read and interpret the scriptures and apply them to their own daily lives. This style of hands-on worship and reflection gives place-based meaning to being a ‘good Christian’, and Bible study can be understood as a pedagogy of moral, just, altruistic and self-reflective daily living for members of a particular community.

An important marker of identity on the BEC social landscape is the community chapel. Chapels are very important places for the people in both parishes. More than ten chapels were visited during fieldwork in the two parishes, and the community owners of the buildings expressed incredible pride in the structures:

This is the centre of BEC, where we come together, for worship, and we are a family, you know, every one of us, together. We spent two years to finish the chapel, and it’s not finished still. But it is nice and we pray to God here, for blessings (Melanie); With money we would finish the church, the chapel. It is not finished. Father Manuel got us some money, but as you see the wall needs completion, and the benches are being built. Maybe 600 more pesos, a few months maybe (Jon); Most important, right now, is the BEC chapel, for we do not have one. You need one. Then the parish priest will come and give us the communion in our own chapel. It is very important to have that here. Often the men are not able to leave the work, the haciendero will take the job and give it to someone else. So they do not take communion for sometimes months. I believe it is upsetting to Father Manuel (Gale).

The chapels are rudimentary structures, often incomplete and usually pieced together with local materials, such as cogon grass and bamboo, although some make use of concrete blocks and sheet metal. A complete chapel is a preoccupation for those BECs

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without one, as if the structure itself is the pre-eminent group marker, and this seems to

reiterate the liturgical foundation of the groups—without the spiritual cohesion of the

groups, embodied in the chapel structure, all other community-making strategies might

dissolve as symbolically placeless. Ultimately the structure itself is the site of group

organization, refuge and meeting, a place with a purpose, and this helps to explain (and justify) why the poor will give what few pesos they have left at the end of the week to constructing the monument. The chapel is a cultural possession on the landscape (present or future, accomplishment or goal), a concrete and symbolic place in which community bonds are produced and negotiated through practicing local Catholicism.

In contradistinction to the local chapel, the parish Church to which people trekked weekly was historically the location of an imagined community—a site where the

Catholic faithful congregated for a few hours but did not truly share in the production of church community. This passive worship did not always promote attendance. Small

BECs have changed this, and they are now a place-made community wherein the members fully participate in the making (and breaking) of church:

My husband never came [to Sunday Mass]. Only Christmas and maybe Holy Week. With GKK [BEC] he’s part of the church again, and he comes to the parish for Mass as well. Father Manuel is happy [laughing] (Clara).127

Like Clara’s husband, many have discovered that their Basic Ecclesial Community is a vehicle for active participation in the greater Church as well, a means to become much more than a mere vessel filled each week by an all-powerful priestly class. Perhaps the most empowering event is when an individual BEC sponsors the Sunday Mass in the parish church, and this is a place-making event for BECs at the parish level of social

127 GKK – Gagmay’ng Kristohanong Katilingban, a Visayan translation of Basic Ecclesial Community. There are many local translations of BEC, and GKK is not exclusive to the Visayan Islands.

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organization that has enabled all the small groups to be much more than a passive

imagined community. BECs in the parishes take turns with sponsorship, which entails

arriving early to clean the church grounds and tend to the flower and vegetable gardens, helping in the set-up and take-down of the Mass, presenting a formal offering of rice and

vegetables, preparing a lunch to be eaten with the clergy and any guests, and organizing

an after-Mass event, such as a basketball game. The final important parish-level events in

which BECs participate are the fiestas, including celebrations during Christmas and Holy

Week, and the annual parish fiesta, considered by most as the premier event of the year.

Fiesta is a time when BECs come together to plan, organize and deliver these yearly

celebrations. These acts of giving to the greater community are a form of production, a

socio-cultural praxis in which the sense of belonging and unity inherent in any BEC, as well as the network of BECs, is communicated. On numerous Sunday morning occasions dozens of members of the lead BEC for the week were seen working cooperatively to prepare the parish church grounds for services, and they were honoured to be performing such an important task:

This is our gift to the church, our offering, I guess. It is important to have the place look nice. And we like to do it. It is an honour to work for the priest. But it is our place as well (Connie).

Sense of belonging is fomented in other ways not directly tied to worship and liturgy, as well. The spirit of living by Christ’s example encourages camaraderie, and

BEC families work together to help one another, particularly in times of need. Families donate small amounts each week to an emergency fund for vulnerable members.128

Although the amount donated is neither set nor mandatory, over the course of the year

128 Only the newest BECs do not have this simple safety net established.

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donations are believed to balance out among members: “Sometimes a family will go months without giving the tithes. But they can make it up. Eventually. We are poor”

(Crystal). When necessary the fund is tapped to carry a needy family through desperate

times, and gifts of rice, vegetables and market fish are given. Goods are not the only

things given to needy families, and BECs will organize labour collectively to help as

well. Beyond times of desperation BEC families lend labour regularly, working in each

others’ gardens, caring for children and preparing meals for the elderly or infirm.

Through these acts of cooperation and compassion the community of faithful are ‘being

church’ and creating further their own places.

True to the BEC concept BEC families in Pandanan and Pacuan take time each

week to reflect upon their social circumstances. Once again, by focusing on their own

poverty and injustices in their own villages, members are able to evaluate critically place-

relative conditions in contrast to previous social critiques that were handed down by the

Church and civil organizations. In making a place-based analysis of the status quo BECs

create a discourse inflected with scripture, Christian morals, local wisdom and even

concepts taken from the social sciences:

Sin is in the society itself. It is structured, part of the reality. But it is man’s sin, not God’s punishment. No equality, and the graft—that is the root of this poverty. We have a very corrupt system here; the politics, the economics, the hacienderos. And the people are kept very poor by it. It is not part of His original plan. That is man against God’s will. But we are hopeful. We pray for change and we know it comes … It’s our struggle, our dignity that gives us hope. We are the meek of the Bible, the poorest. We know that one, but we shall inherit. That is a prophecy, you know, but then we take the words and make them action. Father Marcus—another priest, before Father Manuel’s time—he says it’s about the transformation of a broken system, transforming it from within. That guy is a very smart priest, like Father Edwin. I miss him (Melanie).

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The social critique serves as a this-worldly accompaniment to the mysticism of the

scriptures, giving real-life and timely substance to the ancient gospel. Bible stories are

selected for their contemporary significance and provide an entrée into social analysis as

members come to terms with both the strengths and weaknesses of their own lives as

social agents. The Book of Job, which chronicles one man’s unyielding faith in God amid

great personal suffering, is a favourite starting point for BEC critique, and although much

reflection is negative, “we always see the good things around us, even taken with the

poverty” (Bobby).

Poverty is indeed one of the more reflected upon aspects of Philippine society

during BEC meetings, for it is systemic and local, structured and lived daily. Poverty is

both social injustice and scriptural abhorrence, and the number one reason contemplated

for poverty in the Philippines is corruption:

It has to be the corruption. What is Japan, Taiwan? We have the copper, the manganese, the sugar. We have all of this, and yet we are so poor. Twenty percent minimum goes to the corruption. But I know of one-hundred percent. The government forces the engineer to sign a contract for a project that doesn’t exist. Sign or resign [laughing]. My friend, Antonio. Imelda Marcos forced him to sign for a contract, and two weeks later the job [project] does not exist (Henry).

Many members of the clergy agree with the corruption explanation, and add a few other factors into the social brew, such as landlessness and unemployment:

Number one: corruption! Because the Philippines is very rich in natural resources. That is why we are called “Pearl of the Orient”, but who has the pearls? [laughing] Secondly, distribution of wealth (Fr Jimmy); People are not given a chance to own the land, or even to have jobs. In most countries, there is a job for you. That’s why we have so many OFWs, the overseas workers, mainly young girls. We don’t have work, and then the corruption of the bureaucracy. No opportunity. 70% are impoverished in this parish, but at least the people have food and salted fish (Fr Jerome); The rich are few. They

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control everything. They own the land and they control congress, the senate … Look at Noy-Noy [President Aquino, as of May 2010], The family land [Hacienda Luisita] is still in the courts, but nothing will come of it. He calls it his “ancestral home” as if he has natural rights. As if the history of slavery that built it did not happen. This is the problem with the Philippines. This must change. But it is hard to convince a rich man to stop being rich, to give up. And the rich are driven by competition between themselves. So, who will be first to step forward and stop it, change it? (Fr Naldo).

The effect of mass landlessness on continuing systemic poverty in the Philippines is also reiterated by BEC members:

I don’t know. The rich landlords. They have to give up some of their riches. They have to give up the land. In that village [we visited in the morning], the barb wire is there—I showed you. The land is in the courts. Those villagers, the people were given the land by the government, but another man wants to develop it, into a beach resort I think, so he bought the land even though it was not for sale. He paid the politicians. He is the brother-in-law of a congressman. So the people are suing, but the lawyers they have can be bribed, too. It is all corruption. I don’t understand why these men need so much. They have so much and they want to have this piece of land. It is two hectares, many families (Jon); The number one reason for poverty in Pilipinas? Unequal distribution of wealth. The only way to begin to fix the Philippines is to have the rich people give something up. Until then, this [pointing at men working on rice terraces] is the Philippines. Land ownership has to be changed, like CARP. But CARP has not gone as far as it needs to (Helena).

A third common explanation for the continued prevalence of poverty in the country relates back to the concept of debt of gratitude, addressed in the preceding chapter. A number of informants spoke in general terms about the Filipino propensity to feel obligation toward landlords and hacienderos. This feeling results from the knowledge that the richer person has given you land to work, for instance, without critically evaluating the abuse and exploitation that often comes with the land. The feelings become impediments to any social action that might peg worker against patron:

For example, you know the people who work for the landlord? The landlord gives you the tiny piece of land to cultivate, and even though he makes you

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pay him with your rice and vegetables you feel debt for his gratitude. Or he does something for your child, buys your child something. You are unable to ever stop feeling this debt, this indebtedness to him (Christian).

But through reflection, poverty is not just assumed to be the consequence of top-down

circumstances, and BEC reflection also situates human indiscretions within the debate.

The two most common improprieties are laziness and gambling:

Because, I think—depends—laziness versus hard working. The lazy are comfortable with needs. In hard working there is rich (Roxie); Some of the Filipinos are lazy. If they have the food for one day, they don’t work till the next day (Crystal); For example: if they have three sacks of rice they are contented with what they have, and when it runs out they go back to work (Denny); I cannot say, but for my own idea, because of the laziness. Some of the people have, mostly in the mountains, they like to stay in their homes, rather than to work on their farm. And some of them like playing cards, behind the market. They are more on standby than wanting to work. Others are hard working and I am happy for them. In the morning they work and then relax only after five o’clock. I don’t blame the government. The poverty depends on the person (Richard); Gambling. Others, they are lazy. They only work for today without considering the future (Bobby); Tongit (the cards). The Filipino man makes 100 pesos per day and he bets thirty (Crystal).129

BEC members report feeling a new sense of belonging that did not exist before the groups formed. Group cohesion through empathy, camaraderie and support has helped to

cement families together in ways that did not previously exist, and the meanings of

neighbour and community have changed:

Before we only worked for ourselves. We were divided. You did your work and I did mine. But now we are a community, and we work together. We are ‘being church’ and being is the active. This is much better. This is the way God said so—not for people to be divided against each other. The spirit is definitely cooperation. We help each other. And together we are stronger by doing that (Charles).

129 Crystal is from Pandanan, the only coastal parish visited during fieldwork that has an industrial-scale fishing port nearby. Contrary to her statement, Pandanan was the only parish visited where I was told that it is the women who have the gambling problems. The husbands work on boats for four to eight weeks at a time, and the bored wives, left at home, gather to gamble away last month’s wages. In no other location were women singled out as the primary gamblers in the community.

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Belonging has also led to new feelings of group empowerment and ideas about BECs acting as agents of change, vehicles for community betterment predicated upon organizing collective action. This does not imply landslide changes in the general order of things; rather, collective action is thought to be a basis for subtle changes in the local social fabric:

We are very strong. Very, very. We question injustice in Pilipinas, here in Negros. The graft, the exploitation … But we have hopes and dreams, too. Next year we build a piggery. All the families—maybe two years [laughing] (Bobby).

As if humbly aware of the capabilities of such a small group, altering the entrenched system on Negros entails small acts of BEC resistance—a piggery here, a communal garden there, participation in infrastructural development around the corner. Thus, although greatly empowering, the power of the basic group itself to effect change is understood in realistic terms, and dreams are kept in check by the daily demands of making a living and maintaining a family’s self-sustenance.

Women at the helm—Just as women can be envisioned as the pre-eminent champions of family in Negrense society (see Chapter Four), BECs are communities of families in which women take a leadership role. Any given group meeting during fieldwork was comprised almost exclusively of women and their young children. Indeed the only man was often the chosen lay minister. The exception to this rule was when the

BEC was organizing something more than Bible study or when the BEC was participating in something larger than a local-level project, such as the anti-mining campaign. In terms of the former, when a BEC had a community project—a feeding program, waterline installation, daycare repair or mission school construction, to name a

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few—the men were in attendance. The tangible result of having given one’s energy and produced a beneficial change in the community was articulated by the men as they spoke about the desire to help with development; perhaps more importantly, they could point at the physical manifestations of their efforts. On the other hand the men demonstrated an aversion to prayer meetings and a belief in their futility, stating that they were too tired at the end of the day or needed to tend to their own gardens in the evenings.

Because of the overwhelming prevalence of women at meetings and in key roles it would be easy to mistake the BEC movement for a women’s movement. This would cloud deeper social issues, however, and it would project an exogenous sociological category onto the communities. Women in the groups categorically reject the idea that

BECs are about women’s empowerment and women’s rights, choosing to argue instead for an understanding of BECs as sites of family and community advocacy. The women are not blind to the gender differentials at meetings and events, however, and there was what seemed to be a general sense of embarrassment when asked where all the men were hiding. Standard replies were that the men either were working or busy helping someone else:

My husband does not come to the weekly meetings, the Bible prayer. He thinks it’s a waste of time. He does go to the parish Mass. But for BEC, he only participates when we do something. He built some of the benches here. My son, too. But they are so tired after working in the fields, they skip the weekly parts. I think they would like to come more often, maybe (Clarissa).

Priests also intuit that the daily demands of livelihood and survival are too much for many families and, although disappointed, understand fully the reasons why working men cannot commit to weekly BEC functions. Furthermore, the clergy does not view

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gender as significant (beyond the only division of labour available to BECs on an island where male bodies tend to be fully appropriated through land tenancy and wage earning):

It could be confused as a women’s movement, if you do not look inside. But the substance, the core, that is not sex or gender important. The communities are family-based. The object is the family. The men are not there because they must work sixty or seventy hours each week. They are too tired to read the Bible. Attendance? Can you blame them? I don’t think so. The mother’s are essential. They may be leading, but it is not a women’s movement. No, BEC is about social class. These are the people standing at the bottom of a very steep mountain (Fr Jimmy).

Social developments—Thus, if Basic Ecclesial Communities partly are about social class in a highly class-stratified society, we must turn our attention now to any social developments on the horizon emanating from the ranks of the poor—have groups moved past their critiques and into the realm of development action? Recall the three pillars of group solidarity in an ideal world of BECs: liturgy, endogenous social development, structural transformation. We have seen transformations in the previous chapter, under the direction of a strong diocesan church, and we have caught a glimpse of the prevalence, strength and bonds of the liturgical groups in this chapter. What remains to be seen is if any of the liturgical groups are able to generate meaningful, sustainable socio-economic changes in their communities. Unfortunately, after visiting with a number of BECs in Pandanan and Pacuan, and speaking with individuals from BECs throughout the Diocese, the unequivocal answer appears to be ‘No’.

During group meetings all BEC members express a desire to work cooperatively on a livelihood project, and most BECs have discussed the idea already. Ideas for cooperative livelihood include animal husbandry, opening a general store, accumulating crop land or starting a local farmers’ cooperative. The dreams of economic self-reliance

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are far from grandiose, and with each of these ideas BEC members stay true to their

small-scale, local roots and maintain a realistic outlook on what can be achieved, at least

initially.130 Realistic or not, the basic problem with getting anything off the ground is a lack of pesos. Other than choice of words, informant answers were almost without

variation, and they were curt and to the point: the groups have no money. Even such humble projects require an initial investment in the range of tens of thousands of pesos.

Divided among upwards of thirty families, that translates into a commitment of 300 pesos

per family (or more if some families choose not to participate, for any number of

reasons). The basic 300 pesos, equivalent to approximately six or seven dollars, remains

out of reach for the vast majority of households as they struggle to keep the family fed and pay off debts.

Another stated reason why cooperative production within BECs is stalled is that women are tied up with child rearing and maintaining the household economy:

We are too busy. We cook, we clean. The house will fall over [laughing], caput, and the children will starve. The men will starve! No, now honestly, they have to get to school each day, you see. There are so many tasks yet to do—ai yai yai. I need a vacation (Helena).

The daily tasks of just getting by include cleaning the house and doing laundry, procuring and preparing food for meals, tending to dependent children and elders, helping neighbours with their own dependents and gardens, ensuring any school-going children make it to school, and caring for sick family members. On daily, weekly and monthly schedules, these basic tasks of maintaining the Filipino family find a place and require substantial time commitments. When all is said and done, “Where is the time? Money is

130 Worthy of note, the women agreed that almost all of the husbands who did not participate regularly in BEC activities would be much more involved if the BECs had their own economic projects.

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just part of the problem” (Clarissa). Furthermore, the very idea of pooling much needed money at the expense of a family’s daily standard of living is difficult to reconcile:

So, say I save the money, but this comes with a price. We need the money to spend today. Putting it aside, I cannot. Otherwise we borrow again at the end of the week. Or we go hungry. So what is the point in that? It doesn’t make any sense, really (Clara).

Finally, the natural leaders of socio-economic development among BEC members can be the least interested in entering into a cooperative economic project.131 By natural leader I refer to those members who have higher educations and/or business and managerial experience. Though the vast majority of BEC families are poor wage earners, all BECs had one or a few members with higher skills/training and better paying jobs, in government or industry. It is these individuals who can offer both expertise and confidence in business matters—development, planning, organization, prosecution—but it is also these individuals who tend to be tied up by their present occupations or positions. Furthermore, these individuals have more to sacrifice, including comfortable lifestyles, by committing to the group’s dream of cooperative production. For instance, a female BEC member who is the principal of a rural elementary school and is married to a barangay captain (official family income of approximately PHP 20,000/month) had little interest in participating in a cooperative project, though she thought it a worthy strategy for the rest of her group:

Pigs, cow fattening. Livestock seems like a good idea, but the cow is 14,000 pesos and chickens cost too much because you need electricity to keep them. It doesn’t matter—no money, no time. The most important right now is the chapel. We don’t even have a door! Maybe later, when the chapel is complete, something can be organized (Karen).

131 This detail came out during a few personal interviews. During group interviews, however, everyone seemed keen on working cooperatively.

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The clergy are fairly sympathetic to the basic plight of their parishioners, although

some of the clergy have expressed frustration with their parishioners’ efforts, financial-

management skills and vices, suggesting that a little more sweat, organization and self-

control could make for great change:

There is very little money. We are building communities of faith. Economic communities just haven’t happened. The BECs are poor. The Parish is poor. The Diocese is poor! [laughing] The Church of the Philippines is poor, too. There is no money (Fr Naldo); The people do not have the money to pool together. And we try to help them, but it is not successful. These are very poor people, but they are also tired. They have no time at the end of the day. They work Sundays. They say, “Sorry Father, I cannot attend the Mass today. I have to put food on the table.” They need every 150, 200 pesos, everyday. But they are not good with finances, with organizing the money. And the extra money is spent gambling (Fr Manuel); When people get the money they spend it, it is gone. They buy something they need or want that day. There is no ability to save, maybe no way to save. This is why I always say, we are not building BECs, we are rebuilding BECs (Fr Edwin); We have training seminars, but it doesn’t always work. We showed them about gardening for their own consumption, gave them seeds, but they don’t grow their own garden. Instead, they knock on the priest’s door and want his vegetables (Fr Jimmy).

Other priests recognize that some BEC member families, and a segment of

Philippine families in general, do not always share the clergy’s sense of abject community poverty. Thus the poverty over which a given priest struggles in his own community, and about which he often laments in the weekly sermon, can be a projection not shared by the entire community of faithful. This can impact efforts toward organizing community development:

In spite of the poverty I see the joy, the contentment. I see these problems but the people say, “This is your problem, Father. Not ours. We are fine.” They are content. They do not see the poverty. Or is it total helplessness? Sometimes Karl Marx is right: religion is the opium of the masses. Because they come to church and look up and see a big apple in the sky [laughing]. We

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say blessed are the poor, but how can they be blessed when they are so poor? (Fr Jerome). 132

This sentiment of general contentment among the masses is reiterated by a lay minister in

Pacuan, although he is very supportive of church-based development in the parish:

We have this saying: Bisan pamahaw saging, paniudto saging, panihapon saging, basta kanunay lang loving. It means, “Banana for breakfast, banana for lunch, banana for dinner, but the people are still loving.” If your lifestyle is so simple, then you are happy with what you have (William).

Therefore any attempts on the part of the clergy at mobilizing local movements of

economic resistance and transformation in any given parish can be hampered by a

segment of locals who do not believe there is a need for sweeping changes. Furthermore,

any given BEC can have individual members who are less supportive of efforts to effect

local change, and less keen about working toward cooperative livelihood. At minimum

this can amount to a priest and his chosen parish council running around trying to

develop the locals, without always first checking what the parishioners themselves think

about local development, if anything.

Ultimately, in the parishes of Pacuan and Pandanan, social development through the

vehicle of BECs is hampered by pecuniary circumstances, time constraints and an

unwillingness to see the need for change on the part of some for whom development is

targeted. For now, at the parish level of social development, the priests concentrate on the programs offered by the Diocese. For instance, Pacuan makes use of the discounted rice from the National Food Authority, participates in the anti-mining program, and the parish

organizes seminars on health, sustainable agriculture, good governance and the youth.

132 The comment about Marx is an interesting statement for a priest to make. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people” (Marx 1977: 64).

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One seminar on organic agriculture, meant to benefit the environment and reduce debt, resulted in more than fifty families changing to a new fertilizer derived by fermenting a mix of rice, sugar and molasses, and a new pesticide derived from chilly peppers, tobacco and a local weed. Farmers soon realized the efficacy of the concoctions, and they appreciated not having to spend their money on commercial products: ‘You spend only effort, because you can see these [ingredients] anywhere’ (William). Likewise, in

Pandanan NFA rice is distributed, herbal medicines are grown and brought in from the

Social Action Center, and two women continue to generate large sums of money making candles. Priests in both locations stated that they had consulted with Father Edwin in hopes of incorporating their own parishes into the Diocese’s feeding program for vulnerable families.

Throughout my travels, from Cadiz in the north to La Libertad in the south, stories of development through Basic Ecclesial Communities were similar: there are no income- generating projects at the community level that have affected sweeping changes in the lives and livelihoods of BEC families. Operating under this basic premise I inquired into the whereabouts of any optimal social conditions in the Diocese for communities to prosper on their own. Based upon land rights, access to clean water and a forest full of the products of basic subsistence, and a place with the most extensive list of diocese-level programs, Cabagtasan was recommended, and it is this sitio to which we now turn in our search for BEC-level development.

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Cabagtasan

The road to the sitio of Cabagtasan winds up from San Carlos City along narrow mountain valleys and severe cliffs that are lush and as green as emeralds. For fifteen kilometres the road gains altitude and the vista is cane fields on a coastal plain, ocean tankers slicing through still waters, and the island of Cebu in the distance. After climbing

1000 metres from sea level the thick wet air has been replaced by a more arid and thin mountain breeze. Along the road there are huts pieced together with local forest products and things scavenged, such as four-by-eight billboards advertising Tide laundry detergent or Tanduay Rum. Many of the homes are cantilevered over the steep hillside, and they incorporate the road’s guardrail into the front wall, a seemingly secure anchor against gravity, wind and rain. Other homes are built on terraces carved out of the red clay soil and some, though small, have all the characteristics of a modern home—paint, doors, windows, veranda, flower boxes—save for the bamboo stilts upon which they are mounted.

Every few miles a number of houses appear in a line along both sides of the road, an impromptu village of perhaps twenty families. In these villages there are three or four houses that have open-faced walls onto the road, some side-by-side, and people sit behind counters and sell chips, candies, soda-pop, local pastries, beer and rum to any neighbours or travellers who happen to stop. There is also a bar in each small village, usually with enormous speakers on the roof, video-karaoke screens inside and a pool table out front beneath a plastic tarp. Goats and carabao are tethered to trees, chickens and dogs run free, and children wash clothes and collect water at natural springs that bubble forth from the side of the mountain. Some of the villages along the road have their own chapel, little

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more than an open-air room with a tin roof and a cross above the doorway (which may or may not have a door hanging in it). In many ways the communities have developed with the road, and they owe their very existence to the needs of travellers. Father Edwin mentions that shop owners are the people who have saved enough money to open a little store, and now they are able to generate a little more income than when they worked the land. With each shop a little village has sprung up on the shoulder of the road, a micro- economic community of merchants, labourers, children, livestock and (often) a chapel.

The road is active—dogs, chickens and ducks share the path with workers walking to and from the fields and terraces, men shouldering fifty-kilogram sacks of produce or fertilizer along the way. For amusement children push bicycle tires with long sticks that have a y-shaped fork at the end, balancing the tire with the fork as they hurry up and down the road. At times one side of the road is closed for a few hundred metres because farmers have raked out long patches of rice to dry on the hot concrete. The patches of rice take up the entire width of one lane, and any one patch can stretch for as much as one- hundred metres. This obstacle causes little concern for the motorists, because the unofficial rule of the road in a land with few functioning traffic lights is simple and absolute: yield to the larger vehicle. Another prominent obstacle on the island roads is the check-stop, set up by local police forces, army and/or the Philippine National Police.

Barricades stop the flow of traffic and the cars are sent through one at a time by police officers in camouflage who possess machine guns of various sizes. We pass through a checkpoint, and a police officer smiles and greets me as “Sir” before he checks the glove box and backseat for guns. My two duffle bags in the bed of the truck are ignored. The national elections will be held in four months and multiple levels of government are

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working to minimize the number of guns in public. Previous elections in the Philippines

have been wrought with bloodshed as families and factions compete for the lucrative

private enterprise of public office. One of my companions explains that the bags were left

unchecked because a foreigner is not under suspicion of firearm possession. Furthermore,

it is bad publicity to have an encounter between the police and ‘an American’.133

Twenty kilometres outside of the city the highway veers right and continues to

Bacolod. At this point the road to Cabagtasan is a turn to the left, and the paved road ends around a few more corners and the truck drops off a two-inch lip of broken concrete. We continue on hard-packed mud that is pocked with water-filled potholes, the rutted road barely more than a goat trail through the mountainside for the next twenty-eight kilometres, and there are family farms scattered all along the way. Halfway to

Cabagtasan there is an elementary school that sits on a raised plot in the middle of a sugar field, and it is full of children even though there are only a few homes in plain site. At this point we are in the Barangay of Cod Cod, which is made up of twelve sitios and

11,462 people (2004). In consideration of the large population of Cod Cod basic infrastructural amenities may seem to be lacking, but there have been modest steps toward development taken by government and local organizations (Table 6.1).

133 Almost every ‘white’ foreigner who speaks English is referred to as an American, and when greeted on the street, the greeting is more often than not, ‘Hi Joe’. This is an inside joke belonging to the Philippine people and dating back to the original American occupation of the Philippines, when they said that soldiers were always named Joe. Now the Filipinos say that any American is always named Joe.

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Table 6.1: Basic Infrastructure, Barangay Cod Cod

INFRASTRUCTURE NO. OF UNITS STATUS/REMARKS

Health Centre 2 Functional Daycare Centre 5 Functional Barangay Site 1 Functional Barangay Hall 2 1 Under Repair Elementary Schools 6 Functional Secondary Schools 1 Functional Markets 6 Functional Rice/Corn Mill 8 2 On Standby Spring-water Developmen 8 7 Sitios, 1 Cod Cod Proper Electricity Lines 2 Functional Generator 8 7 Functional Farm to Market Roads 38km 50% Gravel (Adapted from a report produced by San Carlos Diocese)

The total land area of the Barangay is 12,637 hectares, and the greatest single land-

use activity, which covers 5510 hectares, is agriculture (Table 6.2). Fields of crops are contoured into the rolling hills and flow sinuously around natural barriers, such as streams and volcanic rocks the size of houses. Just before reaching the village, the road straddles the top of a tortuous west-facing bench overlooking a valley, and eleven terraces of rice descend into the valley floor below. The view from the road is spectacular in all directions, with walls steeped in terrace as far as the eye can see and small homes on stilts that overlook the rice. The valley itself opens into a much wider and longer expanse, eventually reaching a series of high mountain peaks that stretch perpendicular across the western horizon. Across the valley the concrete road to Bacolod looks like a stitch in the distant forest, a slight fissure at the base of a green mountain.

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Table 6.2: Land Use, Barangay Cod Cod

LAND USE/STATUS HECTARES

Mount Kanloan Natural Park 8574 Agriculture (Total) 5510 Rice 1651 Corn 2107 Integrated Vegetables 705 Ginger 150 Sugarcane 300 Various Spices 598 Idle Land 3068 Forest 4081 (Adapted from a report produced by San Carlos Diocese)

Cabagtasan is situated in the north end of Mount Kanlaon Natural Park, a 245 square kilometre area around the Kanlaon Volcano (2435m).134 Mount Kanlaon is a large strato-volcano, and part of a chain of volcanic mountains that run like a spine down the centre of the island. It is one of the six most active volcanoes in the country, and the land around it is made up of intercalated lava flows, an argillic composition of base sediment, and a scattered assortment of large boulders and other ejected debris (Negrense

Mountaineer 2011). Residents in the area claim that the black topsoil from the volcano is the best in the country, and most of it has washed down the southern slope of the mountain. ‘Canlaon City is much more prosperous than the rest of the mountain parishes. They got all the best soil’ (Fr Augustus). The Natural Park makes up part of the

Western Visayas Bio-geographic Zone, which is one of fifteen official bio-geographic zones in the Philippines. The Zone is protected for its natural beauty, biological

134 For anyone who has never slept in a house on stilts on the edge of a Volcano, and worn earplugs to bed because dogs and chickens compete for sleeping space underneath the floor, it is difficult to appreciate fully the shock and fear of waking in the middle of the night to an earth tremor. Earplugs already leave one with a sense of vulnerability, particularly in a foreign place, and jolting awake in eerie silence to a house that feels as if it is about to topple off the side of a mountain, for a moment, was the most frightening experience of my life.

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significance and tourism potential. The area boasts a spectacular topography of lush forested mountaintops, broad valleys, waterfalls and natural springs, as well as hiking trails and climbing opportunities. It is a birdwatcher’s paradise—the Negros bleeding- heart, the spotted imperial pigeon, the Philippines cockatoo, the blue-crowned racquet- tailed parrot, the Rufous-lored kingfisher and Visayan tarictic hornbill all nest in the area, to name a few—and notable and threatened ground fauna include the Visayan warty pig,

Philippine spotted deer and the wild cat (ibid.).

Upon entering the sitio of Cabagtasan there is a public elementary school and a number of sari-sari stores. The homes in the village proper are concentrated along a two kilometre stretch of the road, and they are of a variety of sizes, from one room to four and five rooms. Most homes are pieced together from a number of light materials. Natural materials include bamboo for the walls and floors, and cogon grass and coconut leaves for the roof. Scavenged materials include scraps of plywood, advertisement billboards, sheets of metal, and fertilizer sacks (curtains). Six of the large homes along the road are built partially or entirely of concrete, save for the sheet-metal roofs. The space between homes becomes less and less until one reaches the densely packed market area, where approximately thirty extended/nuclear households are packed together, and many share common walls and roof materials. The market is separated from the church by a basketball court, and the local priest lives in three small rooms attached to the side of the church; bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/study/greeting room. The total space of his convent amounts to less than 300 square feet.

Continuing away from the market the road bends around and dips over a series of hillocks before it withers into a clay trail. Along the way goats, pigs and carabao are

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tethered to trees, and small garden plots can be found down footpaths that branch off of the main road. There is a daycare with more than thirty children on an average day and

two uniformed staff. A little further down the road, beside the last electricity pole, is

Sister Milla’s mission house. The Paglaum Mission (hope mission) is the last structure on

the road to draw power from the electrical grid, and it is another three-hundred metres to

Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School. The homes further from the market are spread

out again with definable yards, and four are quite large with multiple rooms and second

stories. Other homes are scattered around the countryside, spread over adjacent hills, and

separated by terraces and natural fissures. Because the families who live in the hills make

use of the network of rice terraces for transportation, there are no distinctly human paths

that lead to and from the distant homes, and they look much more isolated than they truly

are.

Cabagtasan is comprised of approximately 200 households, which amounts to a

total population of 1000 to 1200 people. Twenty-five percent of residents live along the

road within the sitio proper and the other seventy-five percent live in homes that are

either on side roads or scattered across the countryside.135 The average nuclear household

consists of two parents and three to five children, though it is not uncommon for one or

two elderly parents to live in the home of a son or daughter.136 Farmsteads often extend

beyond the nuclear family with elderly parents, adult siblings and their families

135 Land for a home along a main road usually costs 5000 pesos, and amounts to ten square metres. The land is purchased from a deeded owner. 136 In Cabagtasan there is little incidence of fathers living away from families or marital separation. This circumstance is partially due to Christendom’s condemnation of divorce, and it may also be due to cooperative and equitable land rights in the area that provide much opportunity to work and live in the sitio, which also tend to give people a sense of ownership and sense of community (more below). If the latter is a partial assessment it may help to explain also why very few families in the area have relatives living in foreign countries as Overseas Filipino Workers.

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occupying larger homes or a series of homes in one large yard. The predominant income

in the area comes from farming, and approximately half of the farmers rent small parcels

that belong to one of their immediate neighbours and the rest are owner-cultivators. The

modal size of land that is cultivated by one nuclear family is 1.5 hectares, though some of

the owner-cultivators will cultivate up to five hectares, and this requires the seasonal

employment of neighbours as wage-labourers. To better serve those in the agricultural industry Cod Cod has three cooperative organizations—the Cod Cod Multipurpose

Cooperative, the Cod Cod United Farmers Association, and the Agrarian Beneficiaries of

Cod Cod—but initial membership fees in these organizations are cost prohibitive and therefore unavailable to many rural farmers.

The owner-cultivators are not rich landlords; rather, they claim that they are just as poor as their tenants. If true, part of the reason for a general level of economic even handedness in Cabagtasan is due to unique land rights in the area that do not facilitate the large-scale ownership of land by one or a few very rich families, such as occurs in most other parts of Negros, or the Philippines for that matter. The unique land rights stem from the fact that the area is within the Kanlaon Natural Park, and property relations in the

Park are based upon state ownership with customary tenure. Under this system use rights to plots of land are alienable, the plots are bought and sold among the villagers, and a certificate of size and ownership is produced. Though customary tenure works well in

Cabagtasan and stimulates the micro-economy, there is little outsider interest because use rights are not nearly as lucrative an investment as actual property rights; the latter can allow profits from mineral development, returns from investment in the real-estate market, and increased rent from ownership-economies of scale. Thus state title to land in

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the shadow of Mount Kanlaon seems to have kept mass-possession by property magnates at bay, and control has remained in the hands of smallholders. As a result there is less economic differentiation between families who have customary use rights to more than one plot and those families who rent from them, for in the end they are all farm families that daily must hack-out their own livelihoods.137

General economic uniformity and a near absence of competition among neighbours can only boost the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation that I witnessed in the sitio. This spirit of ‘being in the same boat’, so to speak, is illustrated well by public access to natural springs that bubble-up in the village, more often than not in someone’s private yard. Springs are few and far between in Cabagtasan proper, but the water that does find the village is cold, rock-filtered and one-hundred percent potable.138 The water originally falls as rain on the mountaintops, then percolates through the rocks and springs to the surface, very clean. When the water finds the surface in a person’s yard access remains public. As a neighbour and member of the greater community an individual would not consider the good luck of a natural spring on his/her property an advantage to be held over others. Thus residents of Cabagtasan freely enter the few neighbours’ yards that have springs in order to bathe, wash clothes and draw water for cooking. Twice per day, once after breakfast and once before dinner, there can be a queue of up to ten people

137 The largest land-holding family with whom I spoke owned thirty hectares, farmed by elderly parents and the families of eight sons and one daughter. Even this family considered themselves to be poor; only one of six school-aged grandchildren attended school because the thirty hectares required the labour of the children, and one of the daughters-in-law was recently granted a visa to work in Dubai. She was leaving for four years, and her husband and daughter were staying behind. Her daughter will be eight years old when she returns. The woman said, ‘I can make a lot of money to send home, and when I return my family, my husband and daughter, everyone here, will have a better life’. 138 Not one person interviewed in Cabagtasan could recall someone becoming sick from the spring water at its source. It was explained that even the springs located downhill from rice terraces were uncontaminated by the chemicals on the crops. ‘This [spring] water is way under the ground. It [fertilizer] will not touch it’.

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waiting for the water—a time to visit and catch up on the day’s events, and if anyone is

impatient it is well disguised. Some adjacent neighbours purchase one-inch hoses, divert

water from the main spring and bring the water directly into their own houses. And even

with all the users in the sitio, constant rain replenishes the springs.139 ‘We are very blessed here. Where there is water there is life, for rice and vegetables and the animals.

And it is a good life in the mountains’ (Sir Julio).

The ‘good life’ in the mountains for most revolves around the family farm, and cash crops include rice, corn and sugarcane, as well as vegetables. In interviews I asked what percent of families in Cabagtasan farmed, and the standard answers were around ‘ninety percent’ or ‘everybody’. Thus the workday for most of the residents of the sitio is general and predictable. Individual roosters and dogs practice their solos intermittently throughout the night, but the real concert begins around 04:45 when every animal within earshot seems to wake from sleep at the exact same moment. This is followed shortly- there-after by the chatter of voices. For many families, both men and women work the fields, and the children have duties as well.140 A strong native coffee made from beans

indigenous to the mountains is knocked back before work begins at 07:00, and at 09:00

the farmers return home for breakfast and more coffee. They also will take lunch (and

more coffee)141 and an afternoon snack before the work day ends, between 16:00 and

139 My fieldwork coincided with an El Niño winter season. According to informants the frequency and intensity of El Niños have increased over the last twenty years. During my stay the entire country, including the sugar industry on Negros, suffered record agriculture losses to the tune of billions of pesos, and the marine fishing industry was rocked by the warm nutrient-poor waters that flowed through the archipelago. In January, 2010, I arrived on a lush green tropical island. Three short months later I left behind an island that the Bishop said he had never seen so ‘brown and baked’. 140 As discussed in the previous chapter, planting and harvest greatly interfere with school work for those children who attend school. 141 Anywhere I went in Cabagtasan, and almost anytime of day, people were drinking, and I was offered, ‘the native coffee’.

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20:00 (most are home before it gets dark at 18:00). Breakfast, lunch and dinner, which

almost invariably include rice, are cooked over charcoal stoves and thick smoke billows

from kitchen windows and trickles along rooflines.142

Another source of family income and food is livestock, including pigs, goats,

chickens, cows and ducks.143 Much of the livestock is consumed locally by the villagers,

but in times of need, when rice production is low, animals are sold in the local market,

which is held on Thursday each week. Also during times of rice shortage the people will

go into the forest and collect cassava and serve it with an inexpensive salted fish

purchased in the market. Cassava grows in the forest like a weed and, though people say

that it tastes terrible, it remains a suitable (and free) substitute for rice. Another forest

food group that is never in shortage is fruits and vegetables. Bananas, mangos and papaya

grow wild and most families have gardens where they grow bisol (a root crop), potatoes, corn, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, chillies, umpala (a bitter leaf), red and green onions, carrots, string beans, cabbage, radishes and celery. Many gardens are located far away from the owner’s home, and I asked one of the mission school teachers if anyone ever takes produce from his garden:

No! Never! For example, if I saw someone taking from my garden I would make sure that he had enough, because if he needs to take vegetables he must be very hungry. And I would show him my radishes and I would say, “Take that one”, because that one is very, very delicious (Sir Julio).144

142 A handful of families have gas stoves that were purchased in one of the cities. 143 Interestingly, though there is a significant organic-vegetable market in the Philippines, there is little market for organic meat. An obvious reason for this is that most families, rural and urban alike, maintain their own livestock around their houses. Though land for fresh vegetables can be limited, a stump or a post is all that is needed to keep a pig and chickens. 144 He went on to explain how to prepare radish soup.

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Rice fields do not require daily maintenance, and a system of balanced reciprocity

enhances the village’s cooperative feel. The farmers stagger planting to help one another, work together on household projects, and buy and trade labour amongst themselves. The going rate for labour is seventy-five pesos per day, with lunch and snack provided. Added to this are a number of elaborate schemes of cooperative income generation, such as cow fattening, whereby an individual pays approximately 8000 pesos for a young cow and a neighbour’s child is given responsibility for its care. Roughly two years later the cow is sold for perhaps 16,000 pesos and the owner and the caregiver split the profit. This also occurs with pigs and goats, though with smaller animals caretaking often involves breeding, and the owner and the caregiver split the offspring (if there is only one offspring in a litter, the caregiver receives it).145

Farmers average 100 pesos per day, although this average is derived from sporadic

weekly fluctuations and seasonal disruptions when income can disappear for many weeks

at a time.146 Thus household budgeting, vegetable gardens and livestock help to carry

farm families through leaner times. Furthermore, times of income scarcity do not relieve

farmers of their debts. Almost every farmer is indebted to the businessmen in the market

who sell fertilizer, to the tune of hundreds of pesos. Those farmers without debt have

more often than not just recently repaid their debts—a brief respite before the next round

of planting. Some farmers are indebted to neighbours, with debts often repaid in labour,

and renters can fall behind on paying rent. Nevertheless, the people of Cabagtasan report

145 Schemes of reciprocity involve agricultural production and livestock. Enough schemes, it seems, to keep a future anthropologist busy for months writing the balanced-reciprocity section of an ethnography of Cabagtasan. 146 As in Pandanan and Pacuan, ‘100 pesos’ sounds rehearsed, and I wonder if that sum is closer to an average of daily family income from all sources, as opposed to what an individual farmer earns.

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being very happy and, fortunately, unemployment is lower there than in the other two parishes. Many young people with whom I spoke were certain that they would stay in the sitio and live as farmers. It seems that in-migration is low, and as the younger generation reaches maturity there is an older generation transitioning into some form of retirement.

Thus much of the cropland is passed along, usually to one’s own children. In other cases, where children have left the village for work in cities, older farmers will rent out or sell parcels of land to which they have customary title. Renting land from a neighbour is considered to be a good life for young people who wish to stay in the area, and renting is almost certain to become owning over the years.

There are a few work opportunities in the sitio outside of farming, and some families are able to supplement their farm income. There are dozens of owner-operated sari-sari stores and vegetable stands, and at least a dozen bars. Schools employ teachers, the daycare has a small staff, there is a massage parlour, and security is hired for

Thursday’s market. Also, when not farming, some residents can work a limited number of short-term jobs for the Local Government Unit, when they become available. For example, during fieldwork nine men were employed to dig (by hand and shovel) the new spring-water pipeline from Cabagtasan proper to the neighbouring village of Napaturan, a distance of nearly ten kilometres. They were paid seventy-five pesos per day, and they worked extra hard to complete the project, because it was ‘another election promise. That is why they rush to get it done, because the funds will disappear in May [after the general election]. Vanish [laughing]’ (Sir Sisco). The implication was that as soon as the incumbent for the area is re-elected his campaign projects would suffer a terminal shortfall in funds, and the abandoned water project would never reach family and friends

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in Napaturan. The Church also employs residents periodically on a short-term basis.

During my stay twenty-two men gathered for ten days to build the new chapel, and they were paid 200 pesos per day for eight of the days and worked the other two days for free

(dagyaw, sweat equity).

A final source of income, or income loss depending on the luck of the day, is to be found in the numerous gambling opportunities available in the sitio. As discussed in

Chapter Three gambling is endemic in the Philippines, bordering on ‘the’ national pastime, and it is prevalent in Cabagtasan as well. Particularly on market day, thousands of pesos change hands in games of dice, cards, billiards and rock tossing. In addition to these activities there is often a cockfight to be found down one of the alleys behind the market.147 Apart from the economic side of gambling, it is a social and cultural activity where men and women in Cabagtasan come together to ‘purchase’ an afternoon’s entertainment. This entertainment, however, is a bone of contention for the Church and many spouses. As one woman said, ‘My man bets all. I hide the money—and we need all the pesos—but he can find it. Sometimes, almost one-hundred pesos, he bets’ (Gloria).148

A lay minister suggested that part of the blame for poverty ‘is because of the people.

147 I attended one Sunday afternoon cockfighting event in an enormous cockfighting arena in San Carlos City. Two things of cultural significance struck me. Firstly, the quantities of money that exchanged hands over bird fights (that could last as little as thirty seconds) is enormous, and the participants did not appear to be people who could afford to lose their money. I was told that the gambling is in the blood, and dated back to pre-Hispanic times. ‘The old friars were always after the people, but we could never be stopped’ (Fr Robert). Secondly, a good bird borders on a pet. I witnessed injured birds being stroked and kissed by owners, and defeated cocks that do not die immediately are nursed back to life, often over a period of more than one year. Outside of the arena a group of men gathered around a table of rudimentary medical supplies to clean, bandage and suture animals that I had written off as dead. 148 The gambling events that I witnessed behind the market in Cabagtasan and at the arena in San Carlos were attended predominantly by men, but I would estimate one in four gamblers present at either event to be women.

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They gamble—the cockfighting, the cards, the betting. They throw the money away.

Filipinos are not good with money’ (Denny).

A less-costly and perhaps equally-uplifting socio-cultural event for residents of the sitio is church. Cabagtasan is home to at least five Christian denominations—Mormon,

Seventh-Day Adventists, Church of Christ, Iglesia ni Christo, and Roman Catholic—and smaller or less-organized denominations are likely to exist as well.149 Only about twenty percent of the sitio is Catholic:

Because the [Catholic] Church is fairly new here. We did not have a priest here till recently. The people are coming back to the Church, however. But the other churches were here first, and the people needed a place to worship (Sr Milla).

Churches are much more than places to worship, and in many respects they are ‘the’ cultural and social places of the rural masses. For many, church is the only weekly social outing beyond visits with immediate neighbours and family. It is a time to participate in something removed, both socially and spatially, from the daily tasks of farming. It is a time when a community gathers for lunch, when relatives separated by distance come together, when a local project, such as the construction of a communal vegetable garden or repairs to a multipurpose centre, is planned and executed, and it is a time worthy of one’s best clothes. For BEC members it also is a time to offer one’s labour to the Church by helping to clean and maintain either the BEC or Parish chapel.

Churches may be the most important places of weekly community gathering, but by far the most anticipated weekly event is the Thursday market. Vendors begin to arrive in the market area at 05:00, a series of storefronts and tarps are strung together, and the

149 The other churches do not have an equivalent to BECs, though they do have bible-study groups and social events for families.

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market continues until 14:00. A good estimate for market attendance is 1000 people,

congregated along a five-hundred metre stretch of the road in the centre of the sitio.150

Trucks arrive from the cities with perishables, consumer goods, electronics, fish, feed, fertilizer, candy and alcohol, and the trucks leave filled with local produce.151 Other than

bulk cereal crops, locals sell vegetables, baked goods, fruits, veggies and drinks. A small

number of locals purchase produce from neighbours that they then transport to the cities,

particularly certified organic vegetables such as rice, papaya, carrots, tomatoes and

squash. For instance, each week a woman and her daughter took on credit sixty kilograms

of produce (4000 pesos) from local growers. She then rode ‘the slow bus’ to Bacolod at a cost of fifty-seven pesos and sold the produce for 7000 pesos. ‘Very good profit, for three or four days’. From this profit, she owed the original sellers in the market 4000 pesos plus 400 more in interest. There are other stories like hers, but success requires organization, hard work and, most importantly, capital. Thus the stories are few and far between.152 The more-likely scenario for a rural villager is to watch his crops and

produce leave at the lowest price on the back of an outsider’s truck.

150 Most of the students at the mission school wander down to the market at lunch. ‘They find it very, very hard to get back to class [laughing]. But we go collect them, and then they cry, “Please, Sister!”’ (Sr Daisy). 151 When the truck is full the operator leaves. Tomorrow those same trucks will be found in another scheduled market (six days per week). The produce that leaves the rural markets is marked-up 200-500 percent. ‘You see, the most important business quality of the businessman is a truck. It is not smarts or being clever or even entrepreneurial. It is owning a truck! That is what sets him apart, and the people here stay poor’ (Fr Carlo). 152 Unfortunately, at the time of fieldwork the woman and her family were out of work temporarily, until they could afford to purchase the new national organic certification (5000 pesos, renewable every two years). Before this setback, her business was the central source of income for an extended household of two parents and five children, including two married daughters and their families. (One younger daughter attends Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School.)

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Cabagtasan BECs: places in the world

Alongside the daily tasks of running a farm and the weekly activities of the sitio, many

families come together for worship and community. Cabagtasan is the central parish for

twelve Basic Ecclesial Communities which, as in Pacuan and Pandanan, operate as small

satellites to the parish. ‘I think of the Church as a large pie, and GKK [BEC] is the

smallest slice’ (Fr Jublas). Father Jublas, the parish priest, is brand new to the area, and

he is the first priest assigned to Cabagtasan proper. Before his tenure, Cabagtasan itself was a satellite of another parish, visited weekly by that parish’s resident priest. Seven of the BECs predate Father Jublas’s time, and he admits to not spending much time organizing new BECs. He does take it upon himself to appoint the lay ministers of each

BEC, however:

I do not force it. They come to me, if they are ready, and I will bless their small churches and give them Holy Communion … I appoint him [the lay minister]. He must be someone of trust, a trustworthy man. His role is to represent the priest, and do a good job. And part of his duty is regular presence at [the parish] Mass. The lay minister must attend Mass. This is a rule. Also, if he is married he must be married in the Holy Church.

A fair bit of Father Jublas’s weekly routine is taken up traveling among BEC communities and saying Holy Mass. Because there are only twelve BECs with which to deal, Father Jublas visits each one almost every week for a local Mass.153 Nine of the

BECs have finished building their chapels, once again predominantly constructed from

local materials, such as cogon grass and bamboo.

153 Scattered across the mountainside, a few communities require immense effort to reach. For instance, one BEC is located on the backside of a mountain, a mountain that Father Jublas must hike for more than an hour (after driving his motorbike for an hour) to reach the chapel. Another BEC sends a ‘courier’ and horse to take Father Jublas through a tight mountain pass. Reaching any BEC is protracted by hospitality along the way, and Father Jublas will be invited to drink the native coffee many times as he traverses the countryside.

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For all intents and purposes BECs in Cabagtasan show little variation from BECs in

any other parish—despite hints of uniqueness here and there, the basic reasons for

existence, structure and practices remain intact. The Cabagtasan communities range in

membership from six families to twenty-seven.154 Once again, it was questions of faith

and moral practice that brought the groups together:

We just asked to learn about the ways of living by a good Christian way, living towards ourselves and our neighbours; the right way for a man to act, for a wife, for children to act. The righteous way … We did not always attend the Mass. It is very far, by and by, but we did not always understand what it was telling us to do afterward anyway. So we start to consider on our own way (Tina).

The liturgical reflection provides the groups with a foundation upon which to build places of faith, community and social critique, and the BEC chapel is the symbol of a solid structural foundation. As in the other parishes visited the parish church has also been incorporated into BEC place-making strategies; the men from BEC families were hired to build the new church, each BEC has a small plot of flowers in a garden on the front lawn that it tends weekly, and individual BECs take turns sponsoring the Sunday Mass (set up, clean up, formal offering and meal). Holy Week, Christmas and fiesta are other times of active BEC participation in the greater community of faithful.

BECs in Cabagtasan are places where families make the time to help one another, mostly by trading labour in each other’s fields and often by working cooperatively on community infrastructure, such as daycare and well construction. The BECs also have an emergency relief fund, although it is admitted that some of the funds are very new and not well organized, implying that the amount is very small. That being said, spur-of-the

154 Three BECs were visited during fieldwork, and members from six others were spoken with after two Sunday Masses, and during market day and the fiesta that marked the opening of the new Cabagtasan Parish Church.

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moment giving has carried many desperate families through hardship, and the BEC families seem to have been able to rally together, when necessary. Furthermore, aid comes in more guises than just pesos, and labour can be a source of support:

I already had three children and my wife was pregnant again and she had twins … but two days later my wife got sick and they took her down to the hospital—on the habel-habel [motor-scooter taxi], you know it? She died in the hospital. The people [BEC] came together and helped me with my garden and some extra money. Thanks be to God, my wife’s sister was unmarried, because she came and took care of the babies (Gustus).

Thus communities are able to work cooperatively in advancement of place, and they are

able to achieve some semblance of a social safety net, a rudimentary welfare system

predicated on charity and reciprocity. Each of these developments owes some of its

genesis to the action of concerned families who have congregated to reflect critically

upon their lives and brainstorm ways to make life in the community better.

Group reflection revolves around key themes. In terms of lifestyle, themes include

righteous living, moral behaviour, kindness to family and neighbours, and avoidance of

gambling and drunkenness. The themes of social critique are the usual suspects: poverty,

corruption, structural sin, landlessness, laziness and vice. Interestingly BEC meetings in

Cabagtasan are attended by more men than meetings in other parishes, with men

accounting for roughly 30 percent of each group.155 The men admitted to having time for weekly activities, suggesting that rice cultivation for small-holders is a manageable

lifestyle, even after labour is traded among neighbours:

The rice work is not constant. That is why we are able to help each other out, here and there. Sometimes we walk a long way; Ricardo, he lives [smooching his lips in the direction of an adjacent mountain].156 But we make the walk;

155 Of 44 individuals in three different BECs visited, there were 14 men. 156 A directionally-pointed smooch is a local gesture that translates as ‘way over there’.

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sometimes I go that way, sometimes he comes to my house. Other men, too. We all walk, by and by (Benito).

Although difficult to tease out in the interview process, it can be argued that a system in

which the individual family is free from the exploitation of powerful land magnates and

is protected also from much government exploitation, both the result of living within the

boundaries of a state park, is a system that makes for a healthier, more secure livelihood among the masses.

The general health of the communities is further enhanced by the various social

programs offered by the Diocese. Cabagtasan is home to a mission school, feeding

program, herbal medicine distribution, adult literacy program (in conjunction with the

Philippine Department of Education) and sustainable agriculture program, and it has been

the site of a number of Church-Military infrastructural developments. Furthermore, anti-

mining and good-governance programs in the area are protecting vulnerable communities

from environmental degradation and local government abuses of revenue allotment.

These programs have had positive effects in BEC communities, and BEC families benefit

from them and speak highly of the changes brought about by the Diocese.157 The general consensus in the sitio is that people are happy and content, although they welcome the efforts of Fr Edwin and the Diocese. The mission school and feeding program seem to be the centrepieces of a diocese-community vision, for they are the most spoken of by BEC members. No doubt, they are also the most immediately used programs. Many children of

BEC families are enrolled in the mission school, and the feeding program is both a place for vulnerable BEC families to take nourishment and a place for less-vulnerable BEC

157 Often, praise is directed toward Father Edwin himself. His efforts are conflated with the Diocese, and he is the living, breathing embodiment of change in the Diocese.

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families to participate as volunteers to the program. Once again, BEC members are making their own community through engagement with parish- and diocese-level development.

Meaningful social development through BEC cooperative livelihood projects is a topic of conversation in Cabagtasan as well. Once again, dreams of economic self- reliance are humble, with small livestock operations and community crop production being most common. A second concept that had been discussed by BECs was forming an economic cooperative:

We need better control over the sale of rice, and the purchase of the fertilizers. For now, we must sell our rice in the market, and the businessmen do not pay fair value. They sell it in the city for much, much more (William).

But BEC-level social development has not been able to reach the stage of income generation hoped for by the communities and the Diocese. Rather, other than some basic local infrastructure that is funded externally, either by the Diocese or the local government, the BECs remain strong communities of culture with little on the economic front. The standard reason given for this state of affairs is a familiar one: no money. Once again, projects that can require upwards of tens of thousands of pesos, even when spread amongst dozens of families, remain dreams far beyond the reach of BECs—when the average person earns 100 pesos per day, spends nearly all of it on daily living and is indebted to businessmen who sell fertilizer, pooling money together will only ever amount to a puddle, if anything at all. Other reasons for an absence of development in

BECs include women’s/family commitments and lack of initiative and organization.

Finally, even with the extra freedom that comes with smallholder cultivation and community protection inside the Natural Park, farming is a struggle and it is

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exhausting—trudging barefoot all day through eight inches of mud, hunched over knee-

high crops in thirty degree Celsius heat, leaves little energy at the end of the day. The

farmers are tired at the end of the day, whether from their own rice fields or their

neighbour’s, and mustering the will for community action (that may or may not pay off)

is difficult. Father Jublas recognizes the reasons why BECs cannot prosper as economic

units, but he continues to hope that they will one day find the means. And, due to his

many leadership roles in the parish already, he envisions his own role in an income-

generating BEC as central:

None of them have true income-generating projects at the moment. That requires initial capital investment. If they did? My role would be to guide them. The people are not very good with money, they will blow it. So the priest, if they organize, has to help them along.

* * *

The best efforts of the Catholic Church at the diocese level have brought meaningful community developments to Cabagtasan, but for now those efforts have not translated into new social developments emerging at the level of BEC. The Diocese’s own concept of program integration—“Our plans are always holistic. It is an integrated development”

(Fr Edwin), or ‘total human development’ in the BEC literature—wherein many branches of development come together and form one healthy tree, is becoming a reality, and it is evident in Cabagtasan, but this has not (yet) provided the structure necessary for small family cooperatives to find their own niches in the economy through income-generating projects. Thus faith-based development in the Diocese of San Carlos is both a shining success and an abysmal failure (although labelling something a failure before it has

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progressed beyond the idea stage seems a harsh judgment). What is apparent in this case study, however, is that there are material/structural issues of scale not considered in the literature on BECs. This is but one of the topics discussed in the following chapter, which deals specifically with the potential of, and limits to, faith-based development in the

Philippines, as well as some humble recommendations, from an outsider.

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BECs, THE DIOCESE, THE DISCOURSE AND

DEVELOPMENT: POTENTIALS, LIMITS, RECOMMENDATIONS

Since some of the strengths and weaknesses of each program were included in the last two chapters, this chapter deals with the overall picture of both local community and diocesan development, as well as the discourses of Basic Ecclesial Communities and postdevelopment. The objectives are twofold. Firstly, this chapter tables a holistic appreciation of the potential of, limits to, and recommendations for, BEC social development, by focusing upon local-level communities and the Diocese, respectively.

Following this, the chapter turns to a broader discussion of what this study reveals about the merits and shortcomings of the discourse of social action through BECs. In the final section, the relevance of postdevelopment theory is interrogated, as well as the ways in which this case study contributes to critical development studies.

BEC: the smallest scale

Over the course of fieldwork very little was witnessed in terms of BEC-driven development, or community developments that are strictly the result of organization and practices happening within an individual BEC. Rather, BECs remain tight-knit communities with strong bonds among members, rooted in Catholic faith and social critique, and with aspirations of one day organizing economically. For now, despite the

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desire to make BECs vehicles of socio-economic change, the social landscape is fallow ground for the seeds of such change; overall, the obstacles to establishment of a cooperative niche within the economic structure of Negros Occidental have proven insurmountable. That said, BECs do have potential, should they choose, and with some initial help from an outside source, such as the Diocese or a private donor, a BEC could organize cooperatively. The potential for, and limits to, BEC-driven development in the

Diocese of San Carlos are discussed in this section of the chapter, and some recommendations are put forward that could be beneficial to the struggle for BEC livelihood autonomy.

Community potential—Perhaps the greatest strength of BECs is group cohesion and solidarity. In San Carlos the communities of neighbour families are making places out of BECs through chapel construction, Bible study, sponsoring the parish Mass, reciprocal farm assistance, aiding the needy, reflection upon local social circumstances, participation in Diocese programs, and imagining a future cooperative livelihood project.

These practices have served to strengthen the bonds between families over time.

Common predicament, in terms of livelihood and uncertainty over the meaning of faith, may have been the impetus for many BECs, but it has morphed into a strong and diversified socio-cultural base through daily and weekly praxis. Thus, if cooperative economic participation in local and extra-local markets is an important goal, then the solid social network and communal base is perhaps the cornerstone. A livelihood/business relationship predicated on cooperation among members and communal benefit, as opposed to a rigid hierarchy and self-interest, may prove highly successful and highly stable as general livelihood increases among families, group

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empowerment is experienced, and the ups and downs of ownership are lived together.

This is not to envision a completely harmonious and conflict-free business relationship among member families if a livelihood project becomes reality, for the business relationship itself is likely to bring new disagreements. But some of the conflict inherent in business relationships might be stymied by the socio-cultural history of the group, particularly one grounded in reflection upon Jesus Christ’s messages of communalism and moral action, and reflection upon exploitation and inequity in the Philippines.

Furthermore, in a land where individual success for the poor majority is near-completely impeded by exploitative labour relations, landlessness and debt-servitude, the idea of group success is a ray of hope, and BEC group-strength can be argued as the source of greatest development potential.

A second source of potential is the network of parish and Diocese BECs. If certain

BECs begin to branch into socio-economic development, this will prove an important resource in two regards. Firstly, BECs can learn from one another as they come together to share their stories of success and failure with respect to project organization and management, as well as barriers encountered. These stories will be indispensable as opportunities for replication and ironing-over past mistakes present themselves. Because many initial livelihood projects will be targeted for local markets, replication in different parishes should not infringe on another group’s source of livelihood. Secondly, the network itself may prove to be a tool of livelihood on a much larger scale if multiple

BECs can organize cooperatively. Parish-level and even diocese-level cooperation is not an unrealistic scenario when the BECs involved can envision themselves as a greater community founded upon the same social ties that bind the individual BEC. After all, the

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basis of an imagined community (cf. Anderson 1991) of BEC faithful within the Diocese, and even throughout the Philippines, already exists, with practices and beliefs replicated at these greater scales of social organization. Thus, at minimum, imagining a greater cooperative or economic community is hardly a stretch for the groups.

In terms of social transformations, the BECs hold great potential as numbers and network. The individuals living in communities affected by mining or gross mismanagement of government resources are unable to fight for social justice on their own. Corporations and elected officials in the Philippines have a tendency to steamroller the little people as they press forward with their own plans, and holding public hearings or reading petitions of rejection are often best understood as lip service. But with organization and increasing numbers of individuals, the small communities themselves have the ability to be recognized as legitimate voices for local and regional economic development, particularly with respect to large-scale, environmentally degrading activities. Furthermore, local government officials may be drawn into debate, fearing their own termination of office, as local constituents come together to demand representation. Similarly, as the networked BECs fall into line on local, regional and national planning issues, Philippine ‘people power’ may become a factor as spatially diversified communities are drawn toward a specific cause. Ultimately, support across the

Philippine landscape, with regional and national organization, has representational potential when the terms of socio-economic development are negotiated.

Building community requires power, and dagyaw (free labour) is an excellent source of potential energy intrinsic to BECs, harnessed at times for community transformation, such as infrastructural development. In San Carlos, dagyaw contributed

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to the building of chapels, communal gardens and two mission schools, and it demonstrates that people power can have implications outside of politics. It is a force of the most rudimentary development, anchored by cooperative tasks and the gifting of one’s time and effort, but it holds the potential for much more. Thus future organization of dagyaw increases BEC potential for being vehicles of social change, as bodies are drawn into cooperative tasks. The potential would also benefit from flexibility for individual participants and groups, so that the daily livelihood demands for members is not infringed upon, particularly during the first months and years of a project. This flexibility seems imperative to long-term sustainability. Fortunately, the ability to organize and utilize this labour power is enhanced greatly by the pre-existing group bonds, and although it has yet to be used to build sustainable BEC-driven development projects, its value is evident.

There are many ‘ifs’ when discussing the development potential of BECs. Without the convenience of a crystal ball, it is difficult to determine whether structural circumstances will ever align with latent group energies to produce meaningful change. It is all-too easy to dismiss the idea of BEC-driven development, to accept that BEC families are caught in a cycle of hopeless poverty, but that would be to quash the dreams of groups whose solidarity is predicated on hope and faith. Imagining beyond outright dismissal, thus, requires a leap of faith, but hardly one without merit in reality. BECs are bursting with potential, and the majority of members are enthusiastic about affecting change. The leap of faith has already been taken; what is left is for groups to overcome development obstacles. Pushing a few of these out of the way may be the initial boost necessary to spur group action and create something sustainable.

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Limits to action—The obstacles to community development action are substantial, and perhaps the greatest one common throughout the Diocese is the demand of basic economic survival. The vast majority of rural families have no savings and daily income is spent on daily living—the working population is compensated with just enough to get through the day, whether as wage-labourers on plantations or small-holder farmers. Food, water, clothing, shelter and cellular communication require the bulk of family income.

The little leftover at the end of the month may be spent on a luxury item, such as a compact disk player or a new phone, or used during a time of crisis. Pooling a substantial amount of money together among BEC families to initiate some form of development is difficult under these circumstances. Even when leftover pesos are saved by families, they tend to be used up during times of peso shortage. The very idea of communities saving money (tens of thousands of pesos) is not realistic. If it was, there would be BECs that had found their economic niche.

Part of the daily, weekly and seasonal system of earning just enough to get by is the burden of dependents, prevalent and common in all parishes visited. With infant children, elderly relatives and general unemployment among the youth (ie: high dependency ratios), family income from one or two wage earners and a garden or livestock is quickly redistributed and spent. This burden is a significant limitation on what a typical family can contribute to a BEC cooperative project in two regards. First, extra money that could exist at the end of the month or year for a family of two adults and their below-working age children, if they only had themselves to support, does not exist. Instead, one or two incomes provide support for five to seven individuals. Second, infirm elders or dependent children require a substantial amount of women’s time. Thus women, who tend to be the

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most enthusiastic about using a BEC to better the community, are tied down by the basic need to give care to those who cannot care for themselves, and this care can be a fulltime job.

A further limitation on BEC social action is the burden of debt, ubiquitous in rural/agricultural areas and often amounting to several days and/or weeks of wages.

Although predictable (often revolving around crop season or weekly market) and relatively manageable for most farming families, debt is a reality that affects family savings and the pooling of community resources. Families are constantly returning borrowed capital at interest, and income earners are constantly labouring to piece the capital payments together. Under such circumstances, the chances for BEC development action are stifled. Money is limited and bodies are locked into debt, which is different than merely being an instrument of labour production. For instance, debt servitude is much less flexible than wage-earning; it includes expectations beyond one’s own livelihood, and payments to satisfy the debt-holder’s expectations tend to take precedence over all else, particularly among borrowers known for a cultural ‘debt of gratitude’.

Giving of one’s labour is fixed on servicing the pre-existing relationship, as opposed to a contract between employee and employer that can ultimately be broken by the employee.

The debt-service relationship, wherein a portion of one’s labour time is at the command of someone else, also affects one’s ability to give labour to something else, such as a

BEC. Ultimately, a family can negotiate its own terms of livelihood, but the terms of debt are structured and the service of debt is physically taxing.

As discussed earlier gambling is a national pastime in the Philippines, and the livelihood of a number of families in Negros Occidental is encumbered by it. Spending

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any extra hard-earned pesos on gambling is counterproductive to family savings and investment, and gambling tends to increase (and diversify) the debt load. As with other vices, money, time and energy are diverted away from loved ones and spent on something with little tangible results other than immediate gratification and long-term hardship. Over time, winnings do not tend to balance losses, because winnings are always re-gambled, whereas losses represent a terminal end to a day’s betting. Although gambling can be understood as entertainment consumed for a price, there are social costs suffered by families, including those that belong to BECs.158 Money that could be used for family and community advancement is surrendered in the gaming pit. Once again, of vital importance to socio-economic development in BECs is savings and pooling of money among community members, and endemic gambling presents a limitation.

In Chapter Three, the overview of the Philippines, inclement weather was presented as one source of instability and continued impoverishment. Recovery from sporadic weather events greatly dampens efforts at mitigating sustained poverty, and on Negros the two opposites of drought and torrential rain can reek havoc on the agricultural sector and exhaust the resources of worker and farm families. Although the vast majority of those affected are not landed, their jobs are affected, and times of work stoppage translate into times of hardship, when families are stretched to the limits of survival.159 Any savings is spent, vegetables and livestock are liquidated, and pesos are borrowed in an

158 It is difficult to be judgemental about blowing money on gambling. It is historical entertainment in the Philippines (often the only entertainment in town) and, arguably, it is an immediate escape from the harsh realities of poverty. Unfortunately, if debt is accrued, the fleeting escape can become a long-term prison sentence. 159 My fieldwork season in 2010 coincided with an El Niño winter, and crop loss for the country amounted to tens of billions of pesos, with heavy losses in the sugar sector. This meant that seasonal work became even more sporadic on Negros, and sugar-worker families suffered

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effort to float families until work resumes. Key informants say the climate of Negros is changing, with the emergence of a longer and dryer dry season, and this presents a new threat to the sugar industry as crop yields diminish. Although drought is the greater concern for now, torrential rain does take a toll as well, but much less frequently.

Fortunately, because the island is buffered from the open Pacific by a few hundred kilometres and few large neighbour islands, Negros is spared the brunt of most tropical typhoons (normally deflected north along the outer islands and toward China, Korea and

Japan). Thus times of agricultural crisis are regular occurrences, and this translates into yet another limitation placed upon BEC development, because necessary resources are consumed on a monthly/seasonal basis in order to support the families put out of work by the crisis.

In terms of social action, BEC input can be limited by fear of employment loss.

Some individuals who have participated in transformative programs or signed petitions have been known to lose their employment because the object of the action went against local landlords or against development that might benefit landlords or their friends. Such action might include a push for local agrarian reform, worker unionization or anti-mining protest. Each of these presents resistance to the landed or elite business class, and local agitation may be dispelled with employment termination or at least its threat. Once again, in a world of economic uncertainty, having a job provides some semblance of daily certainty, and the fear of being without work can be compelling enough to stammer the dissent of entire families and entire BECs. This does not bode well for participation in transformative programs that require a mass base upon which to operate. But it is hardly

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surprising that the threat is so potent, when families have few livelihood alternatives and little savings.

Much of the discussion on both potential and limitations for development through

BECs has come back to what amounts to access to cash. Ultimately, are funds available to get BEC-driven development off the ground? The focus on monetary inputs runs the risk of confusing the present work of social geography with a treatise on economics or mainstream development, which is not the intention; rather, the purpose is to demonstrate that, even with the dream of founding a cooperative economic unit and finding a competitive niche in markets, a perennial peso shortfall for families continues to stand in the way. Daily life involves access to a certain number of pesos in order to meet basic needs, but the relations of mono-crop production bar access for many. And although structural barriers are firmly rooted in the island’s own political economy, they also are tied to the Philippine state and international processes, such as foreign investment and world sugar prices (more below).

Recommendations—Locally-grown development at the level of Basic Ecclesial

Community requires a jump start—some impetus that can push the groups beyond the present cycle of daily wages, seasonal fluctuation and debt—if BECs are to participate cooperatively in capital markets. It is a stark reality in the Diocese of San Carlos that initial funding is beyond the means of the communities themselves, and the preliminary input most likely will have to be from an external source, such as the Diocese or a community benefactor. Although this runs counter to the literature on BECs, it does appear the only plausible option for making the dream of development a reality; indeed, the discourse has to come to terms with the material circumstances of systemic poverty

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and disempowerment, and recognize that merely having the will is not always enough to find the way. During my travels I visited a few families who had arranged funding from outside sources and who are making a success of their good luck. Benefactors are almost exclusively overseas relatives who left Negros years ago and became established in North

America or Europe. A large benefactor to Cabagtasan is the family of Sister Milla, brothers and sisters who moved to California decades ago. With yearly remittances from her relatives, Sister Milla has provided initial funding for the economic projects of five different families and a rural community of a few dozen families: this includes the purchase of five hectares of rice field, the establishment of a vegetable farm, and a small piggery. Economic projects are complex and require detailed planning, and Sister Milla expects a rigorous business proposal before any funds are given. The initial capital is a no-interest loan meant to be paid back over time, so that the money can be used again by another family. Sister Milla began her lending program three years ago, and she has yet to recoup the bulk of money loaned, but she is being repaid on a regular schedule by borrowers.

What is demonstrated by the few families who benefit from outside loans is that, with motivation and the initial stimulus of a secured loan, meaningful development can be generated at the local level and some economic independence can be achieved. This does not translate into benefactors lining up to hand money out, however. These first few instances of success are limited, and convincing more outside investors of any group’s potential requires a leap of faith. Fortunately, for BECs, they are part of a wider community of Catholic faithful that includes benefactors with extra wealth to redistribute through the Diocese. During the Mass on Sunday the wealthiest people in the parish and

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the poorest share a pew, so there is opportunity for single benefactors to partner with individual BECs. Although a business relationship between BEC and patron runs the risk of deteriorating into yet another instance of debt-peonage or another relation of exploitation, a secured loan with minimal interest could form the basis of a relationship, if wealthier residents of the parishes choose to see the value in local development.160

The more likely scenario for funding BEC projects is one where the Diocese plays a vital role, and the communities wait patiently to be sponsored, for money in the Diocese is limited. This is being attempted with the distribution of livestock young into the parishes. If the animal program proves a success, it may provide the faith necessary for the Diocese to support BEC-driven development projects and open the gates to other forms of lending and distribution throughout the smallest segments of the Church.

Similar to the world-renowned Grameen Bank, the Diocese has learnt through the San

Carlos Diocesan Multipurpose Cooperative that a lending program among the poor is both secure and a source of revenue (see Chapter Five). Micro-credit lending represents income generation at multiple scales or, income-generation at the diocese-level by helping BECs generate their own income. The Cooperative’s lending program could be replicated by the Diocese, over time, with modest initial investment and some maintenance funding (more in the following section).

Whether funds in the future are provided by the Diocese or a wealthy patron, any

BEC soliciting help with its economic project will require a sensible, well-planned business proposal, with details regarding basic organization, labour commitments and target market(s). In a place of peso shortage, throwing good money after bad is not an

160 If Karl Marx is correct, and money and capital are constituted by spent labour power, then benefactors could envision their financial contributions as their very own sweat equity or dagyaw.

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option for rural development. The offer is initial, not ongoing, support for a well-planned project that will lead to self-sustainability and (hopefully) repayment, so support can be given to others. But assistance for BEC development requires more than financing, and

BEC members themselves are intrinsic to the development process.

In the literature social development through BECs is a concept that stresses the role of the entire family as an agent of community change—individual members within families cooperate amongst themselves, and individual families coordinate to become the next scale of social action. The concept only appears practical with the support of entire families, for without this it will be difficult for different families to come together and bring meaningful change—it only takes one uncommitted household decision-maker to suffocate family fervour, which in turn has implications as some families remain noncommittal. This does not imply that all family members have to offer their labour to the local BEC, but it does imply that family members who do not give labour at least support those who do. Minimal support can be emotional, and greater support can be help with household duties, such as childrearing and tending to gardens, or earning extra pesos. In extreme cases, support may come indirectly from family members who choose to give up gambling or other bad habits in the hopes of a better livelihood situation.

Ultimately, the idea is to have strong, supportive families that can then become strong, supportive communities. Negative sentiment regarding poor attendance at Bible-study or lack of general effort in the community on the part of some family members is probably counterproductive; as has been shown in the preceding chapter, those who labour in

Negros Occidental have legitimate excuses for limited participation in BECs. Therefore, perhaps the seed of total family commitment is a carte-blanche acceptance that many

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family members have only their spirits to commit to the cause. After all, the parish priests in the Diocese tend to accept the demands of daily work as a legitimate excuse for non- participation in BECs.

This leads to a final recommendation, regarding the role of the clergy in helping

BECs achieve cooperative economic goals. In any parish the priest already is the symbolic and practical community leader, looked upon for guidance and as advocate. In the Philippines the average priest also has knowledge that the lay in rural BECs do not tend to possess. For instance, as community advocate, spiritual leader, dispute settler, general social worker and liaison between landlords and labourers, priests gain knowledge about local economic and political dynamics that would prove useful in building cooperative communities and sustaining them within local and regional economies. Furthermore, the administration of a parish is tantamount to the administration of a business franchise; a Diocese is a substantial operation, providing services, collecting and redistributing revenue, and administering upwards of one hundred employees. The smaller branches of business organization (parishes) are an important part of the business machine, and priests gain knowledge from their business experience in local communities and from operating within the framework of a diocese.

These attributes well position the priestly class for roles in guidance, consultation, advocacy and initial administration. This is not to suggest that priests over-commit to

BEC development vis-à-vis their spiritual duties, but it does suggest that some time can be allocated for helping communities, particularly at project outset.

The preceding discussion of development through Basic Ecclesial Communities is by no means exhaustive, but it does begin to touch upon some of the issues involved if

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BECs are ever to generate their own socio-economic development. There are many limitations to BEC-driven development—no doubt, the preceding chapter could have been far shorter, considering the absence of BEC social developments in the Diocese— but the potential does exist, if the means are only found. The latent resources just waiting to be harnessed for local change are significant but, like the energy in a boulder on the edge of a cliff, some impulsion is required. Mostly due to local and regional structural restraint, help to overcome BEC inertia seems destined to come from outside of the group itself, and the most obvious candidate is the Diocese. Key informants in the Diocese intuit this role of leadership and advocacy and, although they are not active yet in fostering BEC-scale development, they have organized their own social initiatives, as described in Chapter Five. It is towards a discussion of socio-economic development at the scale of Diocese that we now turn.

The Diocese: a rung higher on the ladder to development

If the goal of social change through BECs is a qualified failure, then many of the actions of the Church at the diocese level are an unqualified success. Programs seen during fieldwork demonstrate the capacity for social change inherent in the Diocese of San

Carlos, and communities that benefit from the programs are seeing tangible results. Thus it is the Diocese that has stepped forward to push the dream of local socio-economic development, cognizant of the limitations under which small communities operate. The number and variability of different programs operated through the Diocese is a promising leap toward total human development, but the key actors recognize that, without the germination of BEC-level development, the Diocese runs risk of becoming a purveyor of

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maintenance programs that never lift the rural masses out of their current conditions.

What follows is an inventory of some of the strengths and weaknesses of diocesan development in San Carlos, with some recommendations. The intention is a critical analysis that will provide the Diocese with a synthesis or overview to consider, as well as the thoughts of an outsider.

Diocesan strengths—The organizational structure of leadership in the Diocese and the established ranks of parish leaders are a strong foundation upon which to build meaningful socio-economic change. Far beyond the limits of individual BECs, the Social

Action Center of the Diocese is an extensive business operation that delivers a number of social programs within a vast territory of nearly one-million individuals. The size of undertaking necessitates a well-defined and logical organizational structure, and the diocesan clergy have the lead roles, particularly the Social-Action Director, Father

Edwin. This chain of management is fixed by Bishop Joe, and as a strong advocate of social action one can see that his choice of diocesan priests is far from arbitrary—they are highly committed and highly effective in their various roles. Moving down to the parish level, the parish priests are all in place as lead actors, aware of their various roles in local and greater communities, and ready to serve the needs of the Diocese. Furthermore, the clergy as community leaders already possess the necessary skills for local advocacy, and many have connections with local workers’ groups, landlords, business professionals and government officials—they are liaisons already between rural communities and others with influence in the communities. All of this translates into optimal conditions for clerical management of diocesan programs based upon an established hierarchy within the organizational framework, and it makes sense that the Church would use its own

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human resources, in the way it sees most fitting, whenever it can. Exceptions to clerical staff include the pharmacists and sustainable-agriculture coordinator, among others, experts that had to be added to the business machine. Thus, if a well-defined regulation of bodies and leaders is requisite to broad-based socio-economic development, then the

Diocese can count its rigid division of labour as a force of potential.

The shear size of the Diocese, both in terms of people and area, is a positive factor for social action as well. Due to the number of communities represented and the common struggles that stretch the length of the Diocese, action at this scale has far more tangible results than anything produced by a local community or BEC. Whereas the grievances of small local groups can be swept aside easily, the mass base constitutes a voice to be heard. As a large organization, it is in a position to bargain with large governmental and/or corporate organizations, and, most importantly, it is recognized as a legitimate representative of the masses. Both anti-mining and good governance are examples of programs that give voice to predominantly powerless rural communities. But the capabilities of such a large organization go beyond representation over conflict, and the

Diocese is also able to use its clout in cooperative tasks with other organizations, such as its partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The AFP would never have been solicited for partnership by individual BECs, but the Diocese, with the backing of the Bishop, has fostered collaboration with meaningful results, particularly in terms of infrastructural improvements.

Moving beyond organizational management and size, the BEC network presents its own inherent potential as change agent. Father Jublas said that the BECs were the smallest slices of a large Catholic pie, implying a scaled interconnection among the

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faithful that stretches from the rural countryside all the way to the Vatican. Indeed the

Holy See is located thousands of kilometres away, but the three smallest levels of church organization in the Philippines, BEC, parish and diocese, are interconnected spiritually and functionally within San Carlos, and this gives strength to the concept of church as vehicle of social change. In such a relationship the network of BECs perhaps offers the greatest source of diocesan potential, for the people are organized into clusters already, just waiting for their own ‘people power’ to be activated. As mentioned earlier, the network creates an imagined community in Anderson’s (1991) sense of fictive social bonds that stretch across a landscape, wherein individual BECs can be certain of a spiritual connection to the vast others, grounded in common predicament, livelihood struggles, poverty, neighbourly compassion and righteous behaviour. Ultimately, it is a connection grounded in praxis, which includes critical reflection upon society and imagining a better life for Philippine communities. This camaraderie is strong, and it has been organized rather well for transformative programs by the Diocese, such as anti- mining and good governance. Presently it is being organized economically with the livestock program as well. Thus the mass base for broad social change exists, with open lines of communication and resource sharing among the Catholic faithful, and the base is just waiting to be activated cooperatively in terms of production and distribution.

Although labour resources are aplenty in the Diocese, development does require more than people power to become reality, and money is a determining factor. The

Diocese generates its own income in typical Church fashion, mainly through tithes and offerings, but those pesos are spent on basic operating costs and a few investments, or they continue up the line of offering to the archdiocesan level, and beyond. Thus the

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Diocese is not sitting on vast amounts of savings that could be given to social action on a regular basis. Fortunately the Social Action Center has made good use of its loans from the Diocese, and is now in a position to redistribute some of its own revenue from income-generating programs, such as herbal medicine production and bottled water, into other social-action programs. This extra revenue provides the initial boost necessary to get new programs off the ground, and it maintains struggling programs through desperate times; indeed many of the Social Action Center’s projects would never have seen the light of day without the guaranteed stream of revenue from older, established projects.

Thus a few tried and true programs with their own revenues offer much potential for further developments as income is redistributed.

The social-action directive of profit-seeking in the name of redistribution (as opposed to accumulation) is the raison d’être for stressing income-generating projects, in the hopes of generating sustained growth by constantly reinvesting in communities. It may also hold the key to total human development. In Negros Occidental the general social relations of production—part feudal, part laissez-fair capitalist—have created an environment where the struggle for daily livelihood is waged at the level of the family, and the struggle is without end. This has trapped most rural families in a cycle dependant on each day’s wage, and it has kept the door to cooperative livelihood closed.

Furthermore, the system has maintained the poverty of the masses, if not exacerbated it.

If the present system, bent on land and capital accumulation for the few, is a dismal failure for the majority, then the Social Action Center’s attempts at redistribution in the name of general development and welfare may offer a broad corrective to the system.

Instead of being deposited into personal bank accounts, revenues are kept within the

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network of communities as different programs commence, where they can be utilized and reutilized to the betterment of all. Thus redistribution, in the mode of integrated and expanding socio-economic programs, is leading to a systemic increase in living standards, based upon small (but meaningful) steps. What remains to be seen is whether the establishment of income-generating projects will provide a second boost to livelihood; by no means replacing the dominant political-economic structure of the island, but at least creating an alternative, adjacent and supplemental option for communities.

Finally, the greater landscape in which local developments may or may not occur is altered in favour of the masses by the Social Action Center’s commitment to total human development. The Diocese’s own concept of integral development through integrated programs is a solid foundation upon which to build communities and stimulate local autonomy—it represents a broad place-based reorganization of space meant to provide families and communities with the basic material circumstances to effect positive change.

It integrates health (herbal medicine, feeding, bottled water), livelihood (the Cooperative, livestock), education (schools) and social justice (anti-mining, good-governance), culminating in a number of interconnected programs that stretch the length of the Diocese and feed, one into the other. Already each program is making a difference on its own, but it is their cumulative effects that increase the potential of each as social-action programs are compounded and development is not isolated to one among health, education, social justice or livelihood. Ultimately the hope is exponential advancement through combination, and a substantial reordering of the social landscape—one in which general livelihood increases and families take greater control of their futures. Although many

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programs are new and the cumulative effects are difficult to measure, the concept has merit and potential, and once again, the programs are not meant for long-term support, but for building a foundation upon which communities can forge their own development.

All of the strengths and potential of diocese-level development rest upon a strong social-action center, with staff dedicated to the development of all people, for the betterment of all communities in San Carlos. As discussed in Chapter Five, dedication can come in the form of personal sacrifice, with non-clerical staff accepting lower wages as their own personal offering to the Church (perhaps the most immediate and personal form of redistribution). And dedication also comes from many of the clergy who support social action. Without these frontline workers, ready and willing to cooperate daily on the tasks of community advancement, Father Edwin would be left with an insurmountable workload. Finally, as figurehead and supreme decision-maker, the support of Bishop Joe is essential to the continued growth of social action. The key players may be disbursed throughout the Diocese, but their cooperation in organizing resources and bringing development to the people is predicated on a centralized mandate and an effective organizational structure, and as a unit they are affecting moderate change across the landscape. And still, even with such strength among the faithful, development remains a slow process with many obstacles. It is toward an understanding of the obstacles that we now turn.

Factors limiting diocesan development—The benefits that come from dedicated key players are jeopardized by other potential key players who give little support. This section on limitations begins with the problem of key players who are not dedicated to community social development. As shown in Chapter Five the clergy do not present a

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unified voice on Church involvement in social, economic and political matters. In fact, a number of priests demonstrate outright aversion to taking part in things beyond the spiritual realm. In terms of constraints on the movement, this lack of unity and support appears to be the most problematic variable. If only some are committed to the development machine, strength in numbers is inevitably diminished, and the organizational effectiveness of the Diocese is dampened by conflicting imperatives among key community players. Part of what makes development a reality at the diocese scale (vis-à-vis an individual BEC) is the size of the operation, including labour and capital resources—the will to change is bolstered by organizational clout, with individuals united on matters political and economic. Any divergence from the philosophy and practice of Church commitment to worldly matters, particularly when cultivated by the clerical shepherds of entire parishes (ie: the leaders of dozens of BECs and thousands of people), can only but weaken the momentum of diocesan development.

For instance, broad-based programs are reported to be occasionally at the mercy of local priests who have different plans or ideas. This both stalls diocesan efforts and takes resources away from other parishes that desire the programs offered. Furthermore, even when programs are welcomed by parish priests, the priests do not always lend much of a hand with implementation, choosing instead to remain on the sidelines. Thus collective efforts are collected in fewer and fewer individuals, and this becomes a burden on those who put forth their best efforts.161 In the end this limitation has the potential to create a

161 In Autumn 2009, Father Edwin had an extended stay in hospital, suffering from a number of ailments. The general consensus around the Diocese, including Bishop Joe, was that Father Edwin had been burnt out by the workload in the Social Action Center.

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new limitation, one in which key players become ineffective in any single program as they shoulder responsibility for too many programs.

Although I will argue that two or three of the priests with whom I spoke are plain lazy when it comes to social action, this is not the norm for those who remain predominantly inactive. Some truly believe that the priestly role in the community is spiritual leadership, and such a belief is difficult to dismiss, especially since it does follow official Roman Catholic doctrine. Others are over-committed to their spiritual tasks, whether they would like to participate in more social action or not. This latter group presents a limitation for the Diocese’s development plans. The weekly schedule of the parish priest is vigorous, requires great travel and is filled with spiritual leadership tasks, such as Sunday Masses, weekly Masses in numerous BEC chapels and appearances at community events. Added to this, a priest’s time at home in his convent is seldom uninterrupted, with visitors coming and going for a number of reasons, from idle discussion to blessing a new motorcycle. Thus the typical priest is very busy, and it is not entirely surprising when he chooses to offer only minimal help with social action.

Developments in the Diocese are the responsibility of more than the clergy, however, and the laity has its own part to play, for the people are both recipients of outside help and builders of their own local communities. In many regards it is their places that are the locus of diocesan development programs, after all, and as such place- based action has the potential to empower local agency. Three limiting factors stand out, however: Ningas cogon, a dole-out attitude, and ignorance regarding certain programs offered. Ningas cogon was introduced in Chapter Five; translated as ‘starting a roaring grassfire only to watch it burn out’, the metaphor is meant to describe a Philippine

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cultural trait whereby an individual or group may show extreme initial support for something, be it a community project, business venture, reading an important book or mending a relationship, but support quickly fades and these things are left incomplete.

Much to the chagrin of project leaders and fellow community members, there seems to be a segment of the population in any given parish that fits the ningas cogon mould, and the locals are well aware. While the term was mentioned by Father Edwin and two parish priests in interviews, it came up in parish focus group discussion and conversations at least half a dozen times. In a nut shell, initial support for projects, mainly in the form of labour, is given for a while, but enthusiasm wanes and projects are left in limbo. A perfect example of this is the failed sari-sari store in Pacuan; the store operated well for a while, fewer and fewer people helped over time, and when the priest who organized it was transferred, the store failed. Not only can projects be left in an indeterminate state, but the burden shouldered by those lead actors is redoubled as they continue to press on, with or without support. One example is that of the feeding program in Cabagtasan; initially a number of laity helped on feeding day, but over time the feeding program came to be run by Sister Milla and the social-action workers who delivered the food.

The locally-labelled ‘dole-out’ attitude of many parishioners is a second bone of contention for the clergy that limits development. Rather than taking an active role in self-betterment and community improvement, empowering one’s self in the process, the clergy speak of a considerable segment of the rural masses who are quite happy to stand aside and let others bring development to them. This approach of passive reception frustrates programs that operate best with full community involvement. A prime example is the vegetable seeds distributed through the parishes to rural families, as mentioned in

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the preceding chapter by Father Jimmy. Seeds and seminars on growing a family garden were given, but many of the people did not bother to grow the vegetables, instead wanting produce from the priests’ gardens when it became available. Another example is the families who wish for their children to attend the mission school but make no effort from one year to the next to muster the tuition, even though tuition payments can be negotiated and involve trade in services, vegetables or crops. These families simply expect the Diocese to cover all costs, without considering the lengths it has already gone in terms of money and labour resources. In both of these examples we are given a glimpse of the dole-out mentality, and it is understandable why the very active clergy stressed this grievance.

Ignorance about programs offered is a third limitation encountered by the Social

Action workers, and it comes in two varieties. First, in certain areas, there can be a lack of communication within and among communities about programs being delivered. For instance, there have been times when infrastructural cooperation between Diocese and

Armed Forces is limited by too few community members showing up to help. Each time the job got done, so to speak, but with greater effort on the part of the AFP and no small measure of embarrassment on the part of the Diocese. In these instances it is argued that information passed from the Diocese to the parish level, but did not seem to properly disseminate amongst the parishioners (although lack of support may also result from the dole-out attitude). But even when community participation is high, a program only works when the people to whom it is delivered make proper use of it. This brings us to a second category of ignorance: ineffective participation in programs offered. The most blatant example is found in the feeding program; recall that some of the mothers whose children

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refused to eat the meal were feeding the meals to their pigs, rather than finding a way to get the food in their children. The meal is balanced for child nourishment, with far more nutritional complexity than the local rice staple (let alone corn, for those families who must trade down). Throwing it to the pigs (animals likely to go to market and be served on other people’s plates) defeats the collected efforts of the local parish, the Diocese, two

US charities, and all the children in Minnesota who packed the food in bags. But ignorance is not reserved for the rural masses, and community leaders also can remain unaware of diocesan programs, like the priests who had not heard of the Church-Military partnership.

Similar to the previous section on BEC-level development, the final and perhaps critical limitations on diocesan development are structural; or, as Friedrich Engels has said, “In the last instance production is the decisive factor” (Engels 1968). The social relations of production on Negros, particularly property rights, wage labour and governance, present enormous obstacles to any alternative development scheme. Firstly, due to a number of factors mentioned earlier affecting basic survival, the very people for whom social action is intended often are unable to participate in their own community advancement. Reasons include caring for dependents and the service of debt, but most important is the reality of labouring long hours for just enough wages to keep one’s family alive. For now, the mass base remains indispensable to a system that commands its labour power at deflated rates of pay. This leaves most workers exhausted at day’s end, and many hungry at times over the course of the year, but they cannot give up their employment. Unfortunately, the peoples’ participation in diocesan development is intrinsic to the long-term fitness of programs, and without some fundamental overhaul of

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the economy that would see a general increase in living standards and a diversification away from the dominance of mono-crops, the struggle for daily family subsistence will prevent the majority of the rural masses from being active in the Diocese’s plans as anything more than passive recipients.

Secondly, in terms of the overall structure of Negros Occidental, trying to effect broad-sweeping change from the grassroots in a province where landownership is controlled by an elite class with relatively few members is a difficult task for any independent organization. No matter what program is initiated, the Diocese must manoeuvre within a rock-solid system of property-based exclusion and on ground that literally belongs to someone else. Thus the Diocese is left scant room to engineer change as it tiptoes across a landscape dominated by an elite that does not tend to share its development goals. This is especially true when particular programs run counter to crop production or when they upset relationships between landowners and workers/tenants.

The people require wages, and social action must be delivered without jeopardizing employment. If certain programs upset owner-worker dealings, they run the risk of doing more harm than good, leaving those meant to be helped out of work. Furthermore, the

Diocese lacks the resources to purchase land (if it were for sale), to become a propertied player in the direction of development in the province. If lands were available (and affordable) then organizing cooperative production on community-owned lands might be a reality. But until the rural masses have access to landownership, their social development will remain greatly determined by their status as tenants with few rights, little influence and small voices.

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Thirdly, the provincial and local systems of governance, in which those who control land and production also formally represent the people, presents a structured obstacle to many diocesan development plans. Although democratic institutions are in place, the wealthy elite have either official or tacit control over government, making political bosses out of the same stock of economic bosses encountered in the workplace. The situation can complicate social action, for it pegs the empowered against the disempowered or, the disempowered against those who are disempowering them. This is particularly true in regards to good-governance and anti-mining, for the very people to whom complaints should be addressed are often tied directly to, or implicated in, whatever is causing community unrest. Thus programs can draw community members into conflict with the very people who control their employment and pay their daily wages, thus making social action a real dilemma with severe consequences for those who choose to participate. Equally important, community complaints have a tendency to fall on deaf ears, for the macro-development policies of government, determined by elite interests, are simply given precedence. Ultimately, decision-making authority for the growth of local communities, the province and the island as a whole rests with the interests of the landholding and business elite, a situation that hardly makes for a level playing field when the rural masses and the Diocese come to the bargaining table. The

Diocese’s efforts are grounded within a structured set of relationships that set real limits on any program. But there is hope, and what follows are a few key recommendations to help activate the potential for meaningful community change in San Carlos, with the hope that obstacles prove surmountable in the long-term.

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Recommendations for the Diocese—It is easy to observe, analyze and critique diocesan development programs. Much more difficult is practicing development in the

Diocese as a member of the Catholic community. Nevertheless, even as an outsider able to leave at the end of my field season, it is important to present some recommendations that may facilitate greater development success for the Diocese in the future. Firstly, the programs need to be prioritized as a central mandate, with their importance fully communicated to all clergy through education and some form of mandatory participation, particularly as regards service delivery in the parishes. This is not to suggest a massive overhaul of clerical duties, but rather an allotment of some time on weekly and monthly schedules for community services. A mandate of social action can help bring parish priests into line on diocesan goals, strengthening the development thrust through a streamlined philosophy of community action, even if this deflects time and resources away from independent projects in the parishes or other regular priestly commitments.

Much as the lay network of BECs is argued to provide a solid foundation for social action, the network of priests working in cooperation, as opposed to individual clergy following their own paths, can also provide the basis for leadership in development. This is likely to diminish parish autonomy for some priests, but it does present new forms of empowerment, as leaders in the parishes and greater community.

Social action is time and energy consuming, as key players have testified. But if the network of priests is able to coordinate the individual efforts of all clergy, then time and energy expenditure can be spread out among more actors. The first step is to have parish priests become involved as key players in all programs delivered to their own parishes, simply assigning them a certain amount of responsibility. Ideally, as more priests are

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brought on board, the objective would be greater transfers of responsibility that do not disrupt immensely the established routine of the priests. Nevertheless, the new mandate will require the clergy to rearrange their schedules and demonstrate flexibility as they become community advocates. This inevitably will be at the expense of other strictly spiritual tasks, which in turn is likely to upset some clergy who truly believe their roles are those of spiritual advisers, and nothing more. But ultimately the priests are employees of the Diocese, which is committed to the development of the entire person—spirit, body, community of residence. As employees it hardly seems unreasonable to expect the clergy to adopt the Diocese’s philosophy, prerogatives and praxis, and work toward common goals even when this infringes upon individual practices.

An undisclosed sum of pesos from tithes and offerings enters the Bishop’s house weekly and monthly. It is impossible for an outsider to estimate the total amount of money passing through such a large organization with so many parishioners making contributions, but it is known that the bulk of income is spent on allowances, salaries, community events, management of daily operations, business travel and property upkeep.

These costs are significant, and the Diocese is not left with vast amounts of money when everything is paid. Nonetheless, there is always some extra money on a regular basis, some of which has been used for social action, such as the loan that helped launch herbal medicine production. In the future, if a nominal percentage is mandated for social action, with support given to development in the form of loans and gifts, it is unlikely that the

Diocese would suffer from this immediate loss of disposable income; rather, it will require a slight modification in the Diocese’s overall spending scheme, whereby a significant quantity of pesos is pooled from minor cutbacks across the board. In the end,

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some will be repaid, some will not, but the Diocese will be giving back to the very communities that are its spiritual and financial base. And in so doing, there is very good chance that future offerings to the Church from those who benefit from social action will increase, as livelihood increases, and the Diocese will recoup its costs over time.

The small-percentage allocation to social development could be repeated at the parish level, for priests have disposable income as well. Particularly in the rural countryside, parish priests tend to live comfortable (middleclass) lifestyles relative to the poor masses, with food and cash received as offerings and room and board provided.

Parish income is once again undisclosed and highly variable from one week to the next, as well as between parishes. Nevertheless, a number of priests have personal cars and/or motorcycles, justified by the need to travel great distances. If the money to pay for these is available with an extended period of savings, then the ability to siphon off a small percentage of parish income on a regular basis for a social-action fund seems a realistic option for rural development. If all parish priests set aside their own small sums from weekly offerings, they could organize a ‘fund of the parishes’, a purse to which they all contribute, used to fund social developments, one parish at a time, as opportunities are presented. It is likely that the efforts put forward by the parish priests would have the added benefit of impressing the diocesan clergy as well, particularly those already overcommitted to social action.

The 654,999 pesos net income from herbal medicine production already is used for funding many of the other programs, and with future growth can provide financial backing to parish- and BEC-level development. Other possible sources of revenue include income from bottled-water production and yearly payouts from the Cooperative.

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Through each of these the Diocese is reaping hundreds of thousands of pesos after expenses and capital investment. Indeed it is prudent to retain a substantial cash base, but now that a reserve fund is established it is not unreasonable to imagine that a portion of income can be channelled regularly into smaller-scale projects without jeopardizing the aggregate fitness of social action in the Diocese. Projects partially overseen by the Social

Action Center make sense at this stage, such as cooperative livestock or agriculture in the parishes. They have the potential to bring meaningful local change, a few projects at a time, without completely surrendering decision-making authority to the Diocese.

Furthermore, if income is generated eventually then the communities will be in a position to repay initial loans to the Social Action Center (and perhaps one day carry forward the lending legacy by funding development in neighbouring communities).

In addition to this, the Diocese is in a position to influence the investment strategies of the Multipurpose Cooperative. After all, it is unlikely the Cooperative would exist if not for the initial efforts of the Social Action Center. The Cooperative has savings and investments, and members are interested in other potential investments. If they could be convinced of the merit (and potential) of loans to rural communities, it could be a win- win situation, wherein small projects become the seeds of change in the rural parishes and the Cooperative gains investment returns from what amounts to charitable lending. In this situation the Diocese could act as liaison between Cooperative and rural groups, selecting well-planned business ideas from the parishes for presentation to the

Cooperative. A sensible business plan is integral, and the Diocese could have the added function of providing seminars on small economic projects. The seminars might address such issues as organizing cooperatively, finding a product/niche and drafting a business

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plan, and other projects (be they concept or reality) could be presented, if only for the sake of brainstorming possibilities.

As with everything that happens at the discretion of the Diocese, recommendations have to be understood as long-term possibilities for success. Because they are offered by an outsider, suggestions must also be taken with a place-based grain of salt. Nevertheless, if the Diocese can concentrate further on the cooperation of its own human resources, particularly voluntary labour hours at the inception of new programs, and if it is willing to modify income distribution to transfer a greater percentage of capital to social action and small but well-planned group projects in the rural countryside, it may be able to overcome some of the limitations placed upon BEC-level development, opening the door to change and fulfilling the dream of development through BECs—all without diminishing feelings of local empowerment among community members. Projects managed by the Diocese and powered by the people can provide a sense of agency and purpose, with local power embodied in tangible community creations. Furthermore, the

Social Action Center’s mandate of integral development, with all programs culminating in a social landscape where individuals, families and BECs have the greatest socio economic potential, does seem to offer a strong foundation for the further development of the people. And finally, as development practitioners in the field, the lessons learned by the Diocese offer insight and can inform the general discourse of Basic Ecclesial

Communities in the Philippines.

The discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities

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Thus far this chapter has drawn attention to a disconnect between the discourse of Basic

Ecclesial Communities and the practice of faith-based development among Catholics in

San Carlos. Indeed, the discourse is a narrative of socio-economic self-liberation inherent in any small community, the potential for change just waiting to be activated by eager members who take initiative. It tends to read as utopian, with harmonious, egalitarian and democratic cooperatives finding economic niches that are socially and ecologically sustainable, and with an increased standard of living for all involved. This is not a criticism, and the discourse ultimately is one of hope: for a better future, for community empowerment, for one’s children. In San Carlos, utopia is put to the test and, as has been shown, reality presents a much different reading of social action and development among the Catholic faithful. Broadly speaking, a number of structural restraints lie along the path to change. This is an inevitable consequence of working within and on the margins of the greater political economy of the island, as opposed to fantastical development that happens in a social vacuum, as the original postdevelopment writers envisioned (cf.

Escobar 1995). The disconnect is likely to exist in other socially-active dioceses in the

Philippines as well, thus warranting discussion in the hope of contributing information useful to the BEC movement as a whole.

One of the most pressing concerns that should be addressed in the literature on

BECs is the absence of multiple scales of social organization as an operational principle.

Although there is some attempt at organizing a national platform, the discourse is centred on the empowerment of local communities, which we now have learnt remain fairly powerless on their own—a truly self-empowered, socially-active BEC, as presented in the literature, is a dream. Indeed, it is only through strength in numbers that any seeds of

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social action land on fertile ground, with numerous BECs cooperating to effect change, more often than not beyond the limits of any individual community. Thus the dream moves closer to reality with a comprehensive understanding of what a number of BECs can achieve together through multi-site, extra-local development programs. Although this does imply network, the key is actually a shift in perspective to come to terms with the organizational necessity of vertical integration, particularly at the diocese level—a strong network can be the circulatory system of social action, but a diocese is the heart.

Operationally, a diocese is in a much stronger position to guide development than a small community, and the kind of broad-based social action proposed necessitates vertical complexity of human resources. Furthermore, the parish, a second level of organization, needs expansion in the literature. Both diocese and parish represent a step higher than

BEC in terms of fellowship, and they are often the only levels upon which community development occurs. Therefore the discourse would do well to evaluate, discuss and emphasize the scales of social action above local community, and how they all articulate together, offering a broad corrective to the small-scale focus of BEC action.

The inclusion of an expanded sense of scale will provide the discourse of BECs with a more realistic blueprint for affecting change. But it also has the potential to reveal much more. Indeed the BEC movement in San Carlos has produced a scaled division of labour, but what remains to be understood is the ways in which different scales of social organization articulate to (re)produce new social realities among the faithful— hierarchical, organizational and even cultural—and what this means for BECs and development. What scale brings to the table is analogous to a dose of critical realism, an enhanced awareness of the organizational complexity intrinsic to successful social

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action—although the small communities remain the central hubs of liturgy and social reflection, the locus of social action moves up to parishes and dioceses. This will necessarily change the BEC concept. Particularly in terms of hierarchy, the distinct roles and powers of vertically-integrated people runs counter to the egalitarian, participatory and democratic foundation of Basic Ecclesial Communities. But this is a positive shift in perspective—away from the ideal, toward the real—and it could serve to bridge the gap between the dream and reality of community development. Ultimately, scale offers an amendment to the discourse, one in which the solid foundation of connected local communities can confront the reality of actually practicing development, and it adds spatial complexity to the discourse of social action through BECs.

The inclusion of scale in the discourse enables new and novel ways of understanding any new practices of being church that may result from vertical integration. The culture of BEC may produce organizational scales, but those scales also produce the culture of BEC as more communities and more bodies are incorporated into the framework. In broad terms this is an acceptance of Soja’s (1980) dialectical approach to the relationship between things social and things spatial, wherein the social informs, but is also informed by, the spatial, as each mutually produces the other. More specific to the literature on BECs is an analysis of “the social production of scale and the scalar production of the social” (Miller 2009: 52), as community and social action are renegotiated through vertically-integrated praxis. If this study is any indication, subsequent research may demonstrate that strong vertical integration is the key to development through Basic Ecclesial Communities, raising an important question: should the vehicle of change in the BEC literature actually move past the local community and

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be re-written for the diocese? In San Carlos the answer appears to be affirmative, but there are deeper implications for such a conceptual shift. The literature is much more than a functional inventory of what works and what does not; rather, the discourse is one of hope, dreams and empowerment among the masses of Catholic faithful, and it motivates local communities to participate against the odds. Ultimately, it is the discourse itself that has a very important part to play in rallying the masses, and a complete overhaul may emasculate its empowering potential, rewriting the masses as passive recipients of their own development. Under such consideration, it seems that development and social action in the literature would gain most from an inclusion of the diocese scale that does not diminish the importance of local communities, instead emphasizing the functional and creative relationships inherent in vertical integration.

As mentioned, the incorporation of scale into the discourse may add spatio structural complexity to the concept, but it also could provide an important base for addressing the necessary division of labour required to effect change within Philippine society. Indeed, there are certain things achievable at the local level, but the structural framework in which the faithful operates is broad and extra-local. Once again, this is a dose of critical realism, wherein the Catholic faithful must renegotiate the discourse to best suit the material reality of economy, poverty and disempowerment. A re-evaluation of the discourse could provide a clearer picture of a scaled division of labour, wherein certain levels of social organization are demonstrated to be better suited as change agents for specific structural constraints. For example, a local community has little ability to affect decisions about municipal or provincial development initiatives, but the parishes and dioceses do, respectively. Similarly, as regarding the anti-mining coalition, a diocese

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proves indispensable when actions transcend diocesan boundaries and are directed against national and multinational conglomerates, often tied to a regional elite or foreign capital.

Finally, with respect to scale, it does seem plausible that the diocese may be the appropriate upper level of social action. This is not to diminish the importance of a national committee or national assemblies, which are vital for building the discourse, networking, inventorying social action, and presenting successes and failures; rather, it is to emphasize that BEC is a national concept with regional affects. Indeed the most intimate player in social action seems to be the diocese, and the most immediate concerns are local or regional in scope—land rights, working conditions, health, education and livelihood. Promoting the diocese as the primary scale of intervention makes sense for a number of reasons. Firstly, any given diocese has a target population within defined boundaries; if dioceses begin to focus their efforts beyond their boundaries, say on greater-Philippine projects, priorities may change to the detriment of more immediate concerns. Secondly, surrendering authority to national affiliates can diminish the capacity for affecting change in one’s home diocese, as commitments expand and human resources are stretched horizontally. Thirdly, the country is divided politically, economically and geographically, so a focus of diocesan efforts on other regions may have no consequence for one’s own region. Finally, and perhaps most crucial, with each scale up the ladder, the basic communities are pushed further down in importance, particularly regarding local empowerment. This is problematic, for in the end the mass base must be included as central to the vision and given opportunities for empowerment

(recall the ideal of postdevelopment from Chapter Two). Thus I argue that it is the

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diocese, the local advocate, which presents the greatest opportunity for local agency. The alternative is a macro-scale program of development agreed among powerful key players and dumped in the lap of passive communities, with little political or emotional attachment to community members.

A final suggestion for the evolving discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities concerns pedagogy. I have argued that the clergy who are most affective in social action are of an older generation, and the seminary has changed, particularly over the last fifteen to twenty years. The seminary once included a more robust social critique, informed by a cross-disciplinary approach to social science and inspired by civic action described by the

Second Vatican Council. A return to a more radical critique of economy and society could prove instrumental in bringing the clergy into line on issues of, and participation in, community advocacy. Building BECs as liturgical groups is stressed presently, but the importance of BEC social action is left in the hands of individual seminaries and their bishops. If the ultimate goal of the Philippine Catholic Church is ‘total human development’, and if there are tangible results of advocacy such as we have seen in San

Carlos, then bishops and seminaries have to at least agree upon the primary place of social action in clerical instruction, even if the pedagogical details remain specific. The alternative is a series of disconnected seminary curriculums whose commitments to social action fluctuate between lip-service and absolute. Ultimately, BEC is a discourse of social change, scripted through practice and dialogue, but it can only reach its full potential in the Philippines with full participation among the faithful, lay and clerical alike—BEC is a seed of postdevelopment, but it still waits to be sown by the masses of

Catholic faithful and all their leaders.

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Postdevelopment today

Rooted in Foucauldian analysis and the work of Edward Said (1979), postdevelopment entered development studies like a hammer on stone, breaking away the very foundations of discourse and practice. It presented a poststructural analysis of the power relations that had created the ‘Third World’, and it offered a belief in the capacity for small groups to inscribe their own unique concept of development on the local landscape. Much has been written about the notion of postdevelopment since the mid-1990s, both in terms of support and criticism, and this has changed how advocates incorporate the subject into their own wider critical development studies. For most, there is a call to replace a stringent reading of postdevelopment theory with flexibility, adaptability and, perhaps above all, an appreciation of the material structures in which people actually practice development (cf. Bebbington 2000; Escobar 2001; Gibson-Graham 2005; Pretes and

Gibson 2008). This is a broad corrective to the insular concept first imagined, wherein isolated instances of endogenous development were just waiting to be activated through community initiative—as if development occurred in a vacuum, unencumbered by any structural circumstances existing at the levels of region, state or the world-system economy. Fortunately, even with the renegotiation of postdevelopment theory, the general poststructural critique of mainstream development remains strong, arguably essential to a robust understanding of the present world-system. Furthermore, postdevelopment has left us with a unique vantage from which to analyze the power geometries in which communities practice development, and the entanglement of development advocates within the discourse. In the final analysis, postdevelopment offers

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an underlying interpretation of positionality and power that is indispensible to a critical and inclusive conception of social development.

This study began from the starting point of postdevelopment, and in many ways it remains a solid fit for an analysis of development through Basic Ecclesial Communities.

Postdevelopment begins with a critique of all previous forms of development, particularly top-down approaches that are imposed by powerful, exclusionary agents and institutions operating at the international scale. It is an affront to any development model, mainstream or alternative, that continues to reproduce the hegemonic structures and power relations passed down as the discourse of ‘developing people’ has evolved over the last 150 years. In contradistinction, postdevelopment asks us to imagine a world where communities develop themselves, and it comes with a counter-hegemonic challenge: rewrite the borders within which we are able to think and practice social development, social action and self-advocacy. It calls for the socio-cultural production of novel discourses of development predicated on local place-making, grassroots ecology, egalitarianism, democratic decision-making and even romantic ideas about traditional communalism. The call for new discourses was the initial impetus for presenting this study of BECs within the postdevelopment frame; after all, a discourse of livelihood and liberation had existed in the Philippines for years, inflected with many of the central tenets of postdevelopment. Thus the discourse was there for analysis, and in true postdevelopment fashion, local communities were already imagining (if not yet practicing) community empowerment.

The literature on BECs stresses the community strength that can be generated by first coming together for the liturgy. But the need for community strength implies some

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measure of prior weakness, and the common predicament of poverty and disempowerment can be understood as the historical landscape over which new seeds of change can be scattered. Indeed, common religion is the initial seed of change for BECs, but reflection moves beyond biblical assessment to encompass an appraisal of Philippine society, and often reflection turns to ideas about affecting change. Furthermore, community-making is much more than meeting for discussion, and BEC families grow together culturally, with weekly social events, reciprocal farm help and aid for the most needy. These practices, rooted in local place and common religion, serve as the cultural basis of group solidarity and community action, and they are a solid foundation upon which to grow participatory development. In this regard, then, BECs demonstrate another prerequisite of postdevelopment theory: the prior-existing cohesion of a local group grounded in culture; if socio-economic development is going to be added to the cultural repertoire of a group, then a group must possess already some established cultural basis.

But as we have seen, the prerequisites to community development have not guaranteed development, and this is where the present study begins to deviate from the postdevelopment ideal. Rather than an emerging series of autochthonous economic communities grounded in faith and place, complete with pooled resources and democratic decision-making, it is often the tiring efforts of a few key individuals that enable progress toward achievable development goals. Key actors take on roles as managers in the development process, and the natural leaders are not always residents of the community, as we have seen with the work of lead priests. “The priest is always the president of the daily operations. The voice of the priest. This is the ideal versus the real in terms of empowerment of the lay. The reality—priests are natural leaders” (Fr Edwin). Thus

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strong leadership, embodied in individuals as opposed to the strength of the local group, has led to what amounts to corporate managerialism, with a number of projects under the guidance of a centralized authority and funded by a centralized revenue stream, and a number of communities drawn into development as donors, labourers and beneficiaries.

Although there is opportunity for local lay empowerment within this framework, lay leaders tend to defer to the clergy (who have their own structure of leadership, as we have seen).

The extra-locality of leadership and decision-making authority draws attention to another deviation from the postdevelopment ideal. Similar to BECs, postdevelopment does not emphasize vertically integrated actors in the overall development scheme. The concept stresses place, eco-territorial rights and network, but scale remains under- explored. Arguably, part of the reason for this is that scale implies hierarchy, and hierarchy necessarily runs counter to the place-bound, egalitarian and horizontal ideal presented. But, as we have learnt, the single community tends neither to be the locus nor focus of intervention, and even the best intentions at the local level require extra-local energy and resources. On-the-ground realities of practicing development, such as structures of governance and economy, force the actors to operate outside the ideal guidelines of postdevelopment as they seek effective change. This is no more evident than when we consider the magnanimous efforts put forth by certain leaders, and the mountainous obstacles that they confront, obstacles so great that they can only be traversed by an entity the size of a diocese. Ultimately, if large-scale structural forces are encountered and contested along the road to local development, it is a larger-scale, extra

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local organization that will prove most affective in negotiating these forces and mitigating their effects.

A final departure of note from early postdevelopment theory relates to BEC participation in capital markets, a vital aspect of the great strides taken within the Diocese of San Carlos. Postdevelopment began as stringently anti-capitalist, with emphasis placed upon a communal alternative that was so intrinsic to a group that it was better understood as cultural process than economic form, per se. Indeed, if mainstream development had framed an essential binary, whereby space-capital-history-progress is set against place- labour-tradition-stagnation (cf. Dirlik 2000), then postdevelopment was going to turn it on its head. It was the spaces of capitalism, after all, that had impoverished and disempowered the masses, but the places of community and local livelihood held the key to ameliorating these social problems. Part and parcel of this reversal was a demonization of capital markets as essentially predatory and dysfunctional to group strength and solidarity. Thus the answer for the Third World was rejection of all things capitalist. Yet, as we have seen, faith-based development in San Carlos tends to embrace the market, even working within neoliberal rationales, and this confounds the staunchly anti-capitalist bent. Key actors and beneficiaries throughout the Diocese are enthusiastic about finding their competitive niches—using the market for community advantage—and this represents a formidable movement away from an orthodox reading of postdevelopment theory.

Far from an outright rejection of the postdevelopment concept, however, the digressions in this study are indicative of the ‘surplus possibilities’ for development argued by Gibson-Graham (2005). Under the theoretical premise of postmodern Marxism

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(cf. Gibson-Graham et al. 2001), Gibson-Graham have been innovative in carrying forward the postdevelopment banner, particularly as regards their concept of the surplus.

Their interest is the practice of development and community place-making on the edges of the capitalist world-system, and they call for a new development viewpoint that can come to terms with the full range of experiences presenting on the world stage. ‘Surplus possibilities’ then refers to the multitude of socio-economic forms produced by local groups as they encounter the extra-local forces affecting daily life and livelihood. And, far from a defeatist attitude regarding the all-consuming momentum of international capitalism and its many structural blocs, the surplus implies the empowering momentum of local agency, evident in the miscellany of articulations emerging on the world stage among microeconomics and macroeconomics, local and global processes, informal and formal sectors, and non-capitalist and capitalist exchange. Indeed, for the present study, there are material circumstance affecting BEC development, but even with such formidable structures there remains room to grow locally-meaningful communities within the greater world-system. Faith-based organization offers an alternative to the masses, and it generates creative ways for groups to participate in local and extra-local markets.

Thus, equally important and directly related to Gibson-Graham’s amendment to postdevelopment is the inclusion of a better understanding of the greater structural realities with which any given community must interface. Once again, if San Carlos can be used as an example, even the best efforts at community advocacy must confront material circumstances at numerous scales. (Simply having all one’s ducks in a row, so to speak, does not mean that they will be able to walk through a brick wall.) Structural obstacles may include local cultural forms or social norms, politico-economic processes

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and institutions at various scales of social organization, and the prevailing relations of production that tie people to the land and economy. Perhaps the two most significant structural realities for local development in this case study are the Philippine state and the world economy. In terms of the latter, the world economy has created a place for the workers and peasants of Negros Island, primarily based around mono-crop production, where wages and standards of living are affected by international commodity prices, advances in technology, dispossession in the name of macro-economic growth, and an international business paradigm that pegs the poorest countries against themselves as they race to the bottom—ultimately, the poorest people suffer most as the economy brings the cheapest products to market. Within this system the root poverty, disempowerment and lack of resources (capital, labour-hours and energy) are all connected to the position of the Philippine rural masses within a globalizing economy, and every day the masses (at least those fortunate enough to have a job) must sell their labour in order to put food on the table. And far from a neutral entity that transcends social life and brings new freedoms for labour, the global economy incorporates its own system of governance through institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and the World Trade Organization, and through the coercive and consensual spread of ideologies, such as neoliberalism, dictating the terms by which international capital and domesticated labour must coexist. If this case is any indication, future research into even the smallest-scale community development cannot be disentangled from the world- system to which we all belong.

Similarly, the Philippine state is an apparatus meant to facilitate capital accumulation, both foreign and domestic. From a Marxist perspective, it is an economic

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agent, more often than not adopting policies that promote the free entry and exit of capital, and a friendly business environment. These policies tend to keep the majority of its own citizens shackled to poverty. But the Philippine state stretches outside a purely

Marxist conception, for its forms and processes are in many regards non-capitalist, incorporating feudal ties and relying upon primitive accumulation strategies against its own citizens (cf. Marx 1965; Harvey 2007). Within this framework, state development plans tend to favour capital-intensive projects, such as mining, agri-business or industrial fishing. Although such export-focused activities can give an immediate boost to GDP, they achieve little in terms of growing diverse internal markets, particularly when communities are uprooted and dispossessed of livelihood. This has perpetuated the resource-frontier economy established by the United States in 1902, the same economy the Japanese shied away from when they began investing in the Asia Pacific thirty years ago (see Chapter Three). Furthermore, the Philippine state is a bureaucratic entity unto itself, in which cacique democracy, tribalism and family ties reign supreme, and in which warring factions come together to exploit the masses by numerous extra-economic means that cannot be categorized as purely capitalist (even when they consolidate wealth and resources in the hands of the few). Thus states and the world-system economy, spaces in which communities develop and places are made, are formidable structures and processes affecting alternative modes of development. This brings us full circle, and we must now revisit the theories of the state put forward in Chapter Two as a means to better conceptualize the place of the ‘Third World’ state in development studies.

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Each of the three theoretical approaches to the modern state presented in Chapter

Two—liberal-pluralist, Marxist and neo-Weberian—offers a conceptual entrée into the

state as agent and operative structure. In their own ways, and to differing degrees, these

approaches have been useful in exploring the nature of states in the industrialized core

and semi-peripheral countries. For the present study the Marxist approach to

understanding the modern state proves very insightful, and yet it is difficult to

intellectually divorce the Marxists from the neo-Weberians, perhaps suggesting a gap in

the literature. In much the same way that Glassman and Samatar (1997) refused to uphold

the schism between the various strands of Marxist analysis, it appears that there is much

to be gained from an inclusion of the neo-Weberians in Marxist approaches to the state,

including an understanding of how states “function to reproduce many of the structural

constraints of capitalism” (Glassman and Samatar 1997: 167). Jessop is instructive in

reconciling the two approaches (particularly c, d and e below):

A Marxist theory of the capitalist state will be considered adequate to the extent that (a) it is founded on the specific qualities of capitalism as a mode of production, (b) it attributes a central role to class struggle in the process of capital accumulation, (c) it establishes the relations between the political and economic features of society without reducing one to the other or treating them as totally independent and autonomous, (d) it allows for historical and national differences in the forms and functions of the state in capitalist societies, and (e) it allows for the influence of non- capitalist classes and non-class forces in determining the nature of the state and the exercise of state power (Jessop 1990: 25).

Indeed, if we are going to attempt a more robust understanding of the state in critical development studies of the Global South, we must be even more open to the fluidity of the concept of the state, the diversity of processes, structures and agents operating under the auspices of statehood. This will include an appreciation of the internal dynamics of individual states as well as the relationships among states, some in league and some at

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extreme odds with one another, bringing home the overdetermined nature of the state (cf.

Althusser 1969), and revealing a complex network of causation within a social whole that breaks down the deterministic binary between infrastructure and superstructure.162 The goal is an enhanced understanding of the myriad ways in which states can both foster and encumber development as they act as official mediums between their own bordered citizens and borderless capital flows. This approach also leaves much room for consideration of all the extra-economic means by which states accumulate capital, including the myriad pre-capitalist means that continue today (cf. Marx 1965; Luxemburg

2003), means that David Harvey has labelled “accumulation by dispossession” (2007:

35).

This case study of community action on the margins of the Philippine economy calls into question the explanatory potential of any of the three theories of the modern state when applied to developing countries. For instance, under the banner of Marxism, it is argued that states are becoming increasingly internationalized to the benefit of the

“most internationalized investors, regardless of their nationality” (Glassman 2004: 14).

But in the Philippine context, we can see the prevalence of state management for the benefit of a domestic, propertied class. This class is able to dominate both government and an export economy that tends to be built on quasi-feudal relations of production and strong-arm property acquisition. No doubt, the economy does favour international capital

162 If Althusser can serve as a corrective to understanding an overdetermined state, he may also inform one of the most contradictory aspects of neoliberalization; namely, the powerful directive role that states continue to possess in the enforcement of neoliberal reform, despite a model that calls for small governments that shall not meddle in the proper workings of the economy. In marked contrast to the model, “as national states have ceded effective control of demand-side economic policy to the ‘markets’, increased emphasis has been placed on securing appropriate supply-side conditions”, including the maintenance of flexible labour markets, rewarding entrepreneurial initiatives, and regulating a healthy business environment (Peck 2001: 446).

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with investment opportunities and low-cost labour as well, but the Philippine elite has leveraged the state apparatus to maintain its own variety of domestic control. In further contradistinction to Marxist analysis, the relations of production undermine proletarianization as entire families become tied to the land they till. Under such conditions, dispossession almost seems incomplete, for large segments of the rural masses are left with homes provided, their own gardens, basic community infrastructure, and partial proceeds from various crop-sharing and employment schemes.

Lastly, in terms of Marxist analysis, as the Philippine state orchestrates specific methods of control and violence through its own state development plans, it can act as a structural bloc against community developments that have the potential to expand capital markets and provide new investment opportunities. Not only does this result from a lack of direct funding and political support, but it also results from a lack of infrastructural priorities aimed at stimulating internal market growth and diversity. Thus, instead of a capitalist class using its powers of state and state revenues to further develop markets (for example, building roads, providing better communication infrastructure, or investing in deregulated services, such as healthcare), it appears more often than not satisfied with maintaining the status quo and the vast divide between elite and poor, most obviously by funnelling state money into personal bank accounts. Once again, this may be owing to the unique situation of having a landed elite, as opposed to business-industrial elite, that has preserved the privilege it first gained 100 years ago. Ultimately, a significant portion of the Philippine political economy can be understood as a textbook case of extra-economic accumulation, with corruption, rent and dispossession enabling a massive pauperization

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of the state by an elite that has maintained landownership while diversifying into business

endeavours.

Cacique democracy and tribal contestation within government may be partially

explained through either Marxist or neo-Weberian theory, but the internal warfare among

competing groups stretches beyond either conventional ideas of intra-class struggle or

state-specific mechanisms and bureaucratic rationale. A better concept for a country such

as the Philippines might be bureaucratic irrationale, or primitive bureaucracy; democratic

institutions are in place, candidates campaign for local support and Filipinos exercise

their right to vote en masse, but campaigning is a literal battleground, and once

empowered through the vote bureaucracy becomes a dysfunctional arena of petty

antagonism and nepotism, one in which government revenue, time and energy are

consumed by personal interest, conflict and collusion, not to mention graft. Secondly,

some neo-Weberians insist upon the institutional aspects of the state, such as the military

(Driver 1991), but this leaves scant room for discussions of states where the military acts

autonomously and even at odds with the national government—a situation not

uncommon in the Philippines. Ultimately, calling into question all three theories of the

modern state, the Philippines presents as a strictly (and often ruthlessly) managed state

that over-regulates citizens in the name of under-regulated markets (Cammack 1998).

This has been a minor inventory of ways that one country, the Philippines, deviates from

the three conceptual models of the modern state, but it sheds light upon any efforts at

formulating a general narrative of states in developing countries.

Forming a coherent and meaningful concept of the Third World state is a difficult undertaking. Indeed, complexity owing to variety and extreme deviation from conceptual

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models may render the task a nightmare for either Marxists or neo-Weberians. With that in mind, theorizing the Third World state could be the poster child for poststructuralism, if this study is any indication—states in developing countries are so overdetermined by internal and external forces, agents and processes, that a coherent theory of the Third

World state runs risk of losing any explanatory power when projected onto different societies. Regardless, as with any poststructural leaning in the social sciences, our most important lesson is recognition (and often celebration) of variety, charting the complex ways in which different human groups and political systems develop within geo historical circumstances, and how they act upon geography and history. This allows for an inventory of meaningful instances, and from this poststructural vantage our greatest asset is breadth of knowledge—unending, compiled from case study upon case study. It is the breadth of experiences presented by a variety of researchers that serves as a tool for interpreting and writing about specific political communities and the states that they create. Under such academic practice, the knowledge base is growing, but growth is not measured in general principles or patterns (though some of these are sure to show themselves along the way); rather, growth is measured in diversity and the ability to compare and contrast that which may not be generalizable. Arguably, this returns us once again to Gibson-Graham et al. (2001), and their postmodern-Marxist approach to structure and agency. Just as there is a surplus of development experiences within the world-system, there is a surplus of state formations operating within the many political communities into which the world-system is carved.

The relationships among local production, regional power blocs, the nation-state and the world-system, when taken together, beg important questions about the nature and

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logic of capitalism. Some argue that there is an overarching, hegemonic and homogenous

Capitalism permeating every pocket of human life the world over. It is a single capitalism bent on profit maximization and the commoditization of all means of production, all earthly goods and all facets of social life. Tied to such notions would be a fairly reified concept of major structures, such as the state or judiciary. But a more contingent reading of capitalism opens the door to the myriad capitalisms operating in local settings, and the place-based characteristics that they display (cf. Blim 2000; Gibson-Graham 2006). This latter approach reveals that, other than the universal fact of private property and a codified narrative of property relations, Capitalism exists only as concept amid a myriad of capitalisms.

Thus there is no Capitalism above the conceptual, the discursive, the rhetorical; rather, there is only accumulation and exploitation in a world of differential access to wealth and power. And this is indicative of an adaptive system of no-holds-barred wealth and resource accumulation, one in which the rules are (re)written each day for the places in which individual instances of capitalism reside. Ultimately, and following a thread of thought from Basso’s (1996) work on Apache place-names, Wisdom sits in places, to

Escobar’s (2001) Culture sits in places, it seems quite fitting that capitalism sits in places as well.

* * *

If this study can be summed up, it is a study of alternative, local development on the

margins of both the Philippine political economy and the world-system, complete with an

emerging discourse of community action grounded in Catholic faith. As such, inclusion

of material circumstances at various scales is essential to our understanding of the

305

complex relationships between international capital flows, state development policies, local development projects and community livelihoods. These relationships are dynamic and, in the past, have been neglected often as development research has tended to focus on either capitalist expansion or local intervention, and never the twain shall meet:

it is clear that whether we are speaking of development intervention or capitalist expansion, we are concerned with place-based processes in multiple locations spread across the globe that become enmeshed with each other and thus become global phenomena at the same time as they are driven by, and have often transformative effects upon particular people in specific places … place-based analyses of interventions, livelihood and resistance have a series of conceptual and methodological implications for understanding both how these processes are bound up in transnational networks of intervention, and how and why capitalist development occurs and is governed in the ways that it is (Bebbington 2003: 300 301).

Thus, as has been attempted in this study, a more robust understanding of the pivotal connections between multiple scales of structures and actors is a broad corrective to studies that have either solely focused upon local livelihood or the macro-economic picture. By bridging the gap, critical development studies, which include the evolving discourse of postdevelopment, may be able to weave a more complex web of the many structures and many agents that affect development initiatives at the local level.

306

CONCLUSION

The intention of this study was to determine if faith-based group action could bring meaningful development to poor and marginalized communities in the Philippines, a country where tens of millions struggle daily to make ends meet and the forces of government and globalization often present harsh structural blocks to local empowerment. Interest in the topic resulted after introduction to a growing discourse on

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines, one in which Catholic communities are

urged to take proactive steps toward their own socio-economic advancement, with the

promise of empowerment and higher standards of living through communal action.

Ideally, small groups of families are the scale of intervention, and organization and strong

determination are the keys to group success. After familiarization with the BEC literature,

the project was organized around a basic thesis statement: By organizing communally, yet participating in capital markets, are faith-based communities in the Philippines able to

generate meaningful development that is socially and ecologically sustainable, helping

poor people to help themselves mitigate poverty? And if so, what are their limitations?

A qualitative methodology for challenging the thesis statement was chosen as the

most effective way to learn about BECs and produce new data. As opposed to a more

rigorous mathematical analysis of a larger population of people who are asked to answer

a select few questions, the choice for this study was depth over breadth. Thus key actors

307

were given room within the interview format to elaborate on ideas, express their own

insights and (re)direct the conversation in order to foreground their own impressions and

concerns (and the latter proved most illuminating). Data was also produced outside the

formal interview settings. Ultimately, this study began with the premise that the

participants are the experts on BECs, not a foreign graduate student with a fixed battery

of questions, and their voices need to be encouraged through informal dialogue and semi-

structured interviews, particularly if limitations to social action and contestation internal

to the movement are going to be revealed. Interview flexibility was necessary. In the field

this included outright abandonment of some central organizing themes I imported from

Canada, and the elaboration of previously-unconsidered avenues presented by

informants. Furthermore, there is more to group life and social knowledge than

statements, and this study heavily replied upon participant observation—actually

watching the praxis of community livelihood, group solidarity, contestation and

individual initiative. In essence, efforts were taken to present a robust narrative of BEC

social action in one diocese that would encompass differing opinions, beliefs and values about community empowerment. This would have been impossible if quantitative data- production techniques had been emphasized, especially considering the wealth of information communicated outside formal interview settings. In the end, the methods

used do appear to have been the most fruitful for producing meaningful data, even if

qualitative methods are more difficult to organize in the final presentation than

mathematical models. The upshot of this approach, however, is the ability to

communicate results in a narrative style that brings to life community and the voices of

participants within layers of social and geographic history.

308

And what of results? What of the original thesis statement? I can argue now that the answer to the question posed is in the affirmative and the negative—both yes and no. It is true that meaningful community development and social action can be produced by faith- based communities, and that these communities search for economic niches within established markets. We have seen what the power of a committed diocese can do in terms of social development, and we can see the desire for empowerment and change in local communities. Added to this is an (incomplete) inventory of the limitations against which these groups struggle. Indeed, then, faith-based groups can effect positive change at local and regional levels. But, then again, it can be argued that I abandoned

(conveniently) my initial thesis statement when I found ample development happening at the diocese level, but very little autonomous development at the level of local BECs.

Although not explicitly stated in the thesis question, I implied individual BEC communities were the scale of focus for this study, and the implication was reinforced by the BEC literature review. Regardless, for the time being, it can be argued that BEC communities are not able to organize communally to participate in capital markets (let alone the Thursday market in Cabagtasan). In this instance, structural limitations remain too severe to be overcome by group agency.

* * *

In many ways it can be argued that geography is a common thread among the social sciences. All social processes occur within or between spaces, all are located relationally and often integrated vertically, and many imply some aspect of distance, movement or networking. Acceptance of this premise leads to much more than a simple brushstroke of

309

spatial colour on the borders of an already complete sociological canvas, for the incorporation of geographical principles allows for a conceptualization of space that is both an expression of social relationships and a variable in the (re)production of social relationships (Soja 1980). What Soja insists is the inseparability of the social and the spatial, how each forms and is formed by the other, and any academic separation is an exercise in abstraction. By adopting this stance geography presents the rest of the social sciences with a broad corrective to past critical theory that tended to silence things spatial and construct theory as if social phenomena “happened on the head of a pin” (Cresswell

1996: 11). Indeed, in an academic world of institutional balkanization (cf. Livingstone

1992), geography reveals a common set of threads stitched through the social sciences.

Over the last few decades, geographical contributions to social analysis have focused upon territory, place, scale and network, and any given study has emphasized any one or combination of these (cf. Jessop et al. 2008). As demonstrated by this work, BEC social action encompasses all four socio-spatial phenomena and there is the possibility for much more meaningful information to be gathered and knowledge to be produced in the future, as researchers choose among place, territory, scale and network as structuring principles for their own studies of faith-based social action. Particularly as regards development studies and social movements, two categories into which BECs fall, future analyses that build upon one another, case-by-case, and bring to light issues embedded in territory, place, scale and network will enable an integration of BEC into the general studies of critical development and social movements. At the same time, the discourse of

BEC will expand and integrate more conceptual tools as more and more instances of social action are presented. As argued in the previous chapter, it is these instances of

310

case-specific research that are the foundation of knowledge about a particular topic, whether BECs, community development or broad-based social movements.

Social action in the Diocese of San Carlos is far from a closed book as well, with this study forming a basic foundation upon which future studies may elaborate. The number of diocesan activities, and the complexity of articulations among territoriality, place-making, vertical integration and community networks, are rich fodder for future research—and the Diocese has much interest in outsider participation and publicity for its cause. It is likely that, along the path to development, certain aspects of this study may need correction, as they fail to stand the test of time. This is to be expected, for social action in the Diocese, like the discourse of BEC itself, is an emerging philosophy and praxis—rather than a fixed object or totality, ‘being Church’ is a process of becoming, the sum total at any given time of actors acting. Revisions to this narrative will be particularly true if the Diocese does one day become the regional centre of a network of local, endogenous economic activities for reasons overlooked. Then, my own lingering fears about the insurmountable structural impediments to local action will prove incorrect.

And I hope to be proven wrong.

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APPENDIX A: Herbal Medicines

1. ALAGAW (Premna odorata) Indications: sinusitis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cough and colds, asthma, bronchitis, fever, palpitations, nervousness, body malaise. Recommended usage: 1-2 capsules per day.

2. AVOCADO (Persea Americana) Indications: headache, fatigue, diseases of the throat and stomach, bronchial swelling, neuralgia, irregular menstruation. Recommended usage: 2 capsules, 2-3 times daily.

3. BANABA (Lagerstroemia speciosa) Indications: diabetes, hypertension, urinary problems, edema, hematuria, kidney stones, liver disorders, hepatitis, gout. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3 times daily, 7-10 days.

4. COBRA VINE (Smilax herbacea) Indications: tuberculosis, pneumonia, asthma, cough and colds, influenza, toothache, haemorrhoids, diabetes, high blood pressure. Also for anti-haemorrhage, dog/snake bite.

5. COMFREY (Symphytum officinale) Indications: hemoptysis, kidney ulcer, tissue neurosis. Also, facilitates the circulation of blood, resistance to virus.

6. KUMINTANG (Catharanthus roseus) Indications: certain cancers, goiter, hypertension, urinary problems, diabetes, shaky hands. Recommended usage: 1-3 capsules daily for maintenance; 3-6 capsules, 3 times daily for six months treatment.

7. DULAW (Curcuma longa) Indications: hypertension, high cholesterol, gallbladder disorder, viral hepatitis, peptic and duodenal ulcers, painful menstruation, shoulder and chest pains, flatulence, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. Also, treatment for food poisoning. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, three times daily, 3-6 months.

8. GINSENG (Panax ginseng) General usages: Combats fatigue by supporting the adrenal glands. Helps body adapt to physical and emotional stress. Increases resistance to disease. Body strengthening. Enhances immune function.

9. GOTU KOLA (Centella asiatica) General usages: Strengthens veins, lowers varicosity and blood pressure. Wound and burn healing. Supports memory function.

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10. LAGUNDI (Vitex negundo) Indications: cough w. sticky phlegm, asthma, fever due to influenza, sinusiti, bronchitis, stomach colic, irregular menstruation, poor milk secretion. Recommended usage: 1-2 capsules, 3-4 times daily for fever; 1 capsule, 3 times daily for other complaints.

11. MAKAHIYA (Mimosa pudica) Indications: chronic bronchitis, insomnia, neurasthenia, nervous breakdown, asthma, urinary complaints. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, twice daily, ten days.

12. MANGAGAW (Euphorbia hirta) Indications: gastrointestinal disorder, acute bacillary dysentery, gastroenteritis. Also, stimulates lactation, normalizes blood platelet count during dengue fever. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3-4 times daily.

13. MALUNGGAY (Moringa oleifera) General usages: Lowers blood-sugar levels. Treats anxiety. Recommended for anaemia and malnutrition.

14. MIAGUS (Lumanaja fluviatilis) Indications: urinary tract disorder, kidney and bladder stones, high uric acid, rheumatism, prostate disorder, hypertensions, diabetes. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3 times daily, 7-10 days.

15. PANDAN TSINA (Pandanus amaryllifolius) General usage: Strengthens/regulates heart. Helps fight disease affecting muscles.

16. SAMBONG (Blumea balsamifera) Indications: cough and colds, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, gastrointestinal pain, diarrhoea, arthritis, rheumatism, uorlithiasis Recommended usage: 1-2 capsules, 3 times daily.

17. TSAANG GUBAT (Ehretia mycrophylla) Indications: severe abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, pyuria. Recommended usage: 1-2 capsule, 3-4 times daily.

18. WACHICHAO (Orthosisphon aristatus) Indications: loose bowel movement, diarrhoea, dysentery, gout, kidney disease.

19. ZEDOARY (Curcuma zedoaria) Indications: hypertension, gallbladder attack, viral hepatitis, ulcers, cervical cancer. Recommended usage: 1-2 capsules, 3 times daily.

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