Philippines Are Made up of Some 7,000Islands, Rich in a Diversity of @ Institute of Race Relations Natural Resources,From Marine Life to Minerals
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- ---- Afro-American people by Gayraud S. Wilmore ZOLTAN GROSSMAN (Kenneth Leech) 97 Black politics and urban crisis in Britain By Brian D. Jacobs; The local politics of race by Gideon Ben-Tovim,John Gabriel, Ian Law and Kathleen Stredder (Lee Bridges) 99 Race and labour in twentieth century Britain edited by Kenneth Lunn (Paul Gordon) 102 Adventurers and proletarians: the story of migrants in Latin America by Magnus Marner (Frances Webber) 103 WalterRodney: poetic tributes introduced by Andrew Salkey (Colin Prescod) 105 Banana Bottom by Claude McKay (Hazel Waters) 106 Ayahs, lascarsand princes: Indians in Britain Inside the Philippine 1700-1947by Rozina Vizram (Angela Sherlock) 107 Books received 109 resistance The Philippines are made up of some 7,000islands, rich in a diversity of @ Institute of Race Relations natural resources,from marine life to minerals. Some 70per cent of the ISSN 0306 3965 population live in the rural areas, most are poor and landless. Min- danao, the main island of the south, has a population of some 12.5 million. Heavily militarised under Marcos, it is the source of nearly all the export foods produced in the Philippines - bananas from United Fruit, pineapples from Del Monte and Dole - as well as rice, coconut and sugar. Some 500 multinational companies operate plantations and extrac- tive industries there, and more than 75per cent of the workers have in- comes below the poverty line. In the predominantly Muslim area of Western Mindanao, Muslim rebels (the Moros) have waged war against the government for some fourteen years. As late as the 1960s the Muslims - indigenous peoples who had converted to Islam long before the advent of Spanish colonialism to the Philippines in the sixteenth century - were the majority on the island. But the balance had already begun to change from the early years of this century when aprogramme was started under the US colonial regime to settle Christians from the northern islands, who spoke a different language, on Mindanao. The Christian settlers were given land and privileges at Muslim expense - exacerbating the deep divide between Christian and Muslim already in- stilled by 500 years of Spanish rule. Successive administrations con- Cover drawing from a poster available from the Philippine tinued the practice of 'colonising' Mindanao in this way, ensuring a Resource Centre Cover design by Hilary Arnott Zollan Grossman is a free-lance journalist, living in Chicago. lYpeset by Lithoprint (TV), 26-28 Shacklewell Lane, London £8 Printed by the Russell Press, Gamble Street, Nottingham Race & Class. XXVIII. 2(1986) Inside the Philippine resistance 3 legacy of lasting bitterness between the two communities. Further north lies Luzon, the largest island, where the capital Manila is located, and the export processing zone of Bataan. Bataan province (situated on a volcanic fault) was, until very recently, the scene of a long-drawn out mass struggle (involving, in June 1985, a provincial general strike) against the building, by Westinghouse Corporation, of a nuclear power plant there. At the time of writing the plant has not been activated. Luzon also contains the largest US navy base outside the US itself - Subic. It, together with Clark airfield, just to the north-east, are of fundamental military importance to the US. In the north of the island lies the province of Northern Luzon, with its spectacular moun- tain terraces where rice is grown, its fertile lowlands and dense forest. Whole communities have been driven off their traditional lands, which are rich in gold, silver, copper, zinc, iron and chromite, to make wayfor mining operations which poison the waters and huge scale timber operations which destroy their way of life. Here, in the Cordillera mountains, live the Igorot, now fighting to retain control of their lands. Overall, between 10 to 16 per cent of the population of the Philip- ~ c.; pines are from national minorities, embracing a variety of cultural ~ beliefs and ways of life. Like the rest of thepopulation, all have suffered uii ~ from the material depredations of imperialism, as well as the invasive ~ cultural penetration of the US. During the American colonial period, ~ the authorities introduced a public school system to instil US culture and ideology into their subjects. The goal was the creation of a con- sumerist and literate class which could maintain the economic pro- gramme after independence. This programme instilled into many Filipinos a sense that their own culture was inferior - a feeling that was reinforced by the awesome arrival of US military forces in the Second World War. Today, in Grossman's words: In the middle class districts of Manila, an American can feel com- pletely at home. Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, Shakey's and Dunkin' Donuts flash their familiar signs, sometimes next to suburban-style shopping malls. Guards armed with shotguns open the doors for patrons. The employees are under strict instructions to speak only English (some elite Filipinos don't even speak their own fJ language), and even the prices for a Big Mac are out of the reach of an ordinary Filipino. People go to fast-food joints not for a cheap -.~.g.D ~Y meal but for the status of being American. Manila is perhaps the t:t "{;::;.::).0 .0 ..,0 only city in the world where one can be meeting with members of the revolutionary underground, look out the window, and watch a Boy J"""'1. DO 00 ~", '\:)0 George Look-alike contest. Or>' 000 These are just some aspects of the reality with which the left movements in the Philippines have to deal: the unarmed, spontaneous, popular 4 Race & Class Inside the Philippine resistance 5 uprising that drove out Marcos was one manifestation of a long and earthquake zone. While a state of famine threatens some islands, Presi- continuing process of struggle. dent Ferdinand Marcos has shelled out nearly $2.6 billion for the plant. In testimony to the US House of Representatives subcommittee on Efforts by movement lawyers to stop the plant's operations in legal Asia, given before Marcos was deposed, Professor Charles Lindsay hearings have failed, and construction is now complete. forecast that: The Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition (NFPC), an assemblage of If the opposition came to power, a wait-and-see attitude would local and national groups representing workers, environmentalists, emerge. But if changes are not forthcoming, the radicalisation pro- peasants, feminists, students and others, has been organising for years cess will intensify. There is little reason to believe the elite opposition against the plant, going from door to door in slums and villages. Now will willingly alter the existing economic structure. To maintain its the time has come to shut down the province, under the banner of 'Peo- control, it too may beforced to resort to authoritarian methods. ple's Power Against Nuclear Power'. The 'welga' is a perfect illustration of the strategy of militant groups - from legal 'cause-oriented' groups The pieces whichfollow, based on the author's visit to the Philippines in to unions to the underground revolutionary alliance - to topple what 1985,and written before Marcos was ousted, illuminate some aspects of they call the 'US-Marcos dictatorship'. It is this strategy which has the strength and complexity of a left movement that has been steadily made these groups the most powerful and dominant in the Philippine developing in the Philippines over the last twenty years. And they also opposition. show, very graphically, that in Third World countries, precisely because I first hear of the general strike in the town of Mariveles, at the tip of of the way colonial capitalism has produced a distorted, disorganic Bataan. It is the site of the Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ), a development, there are as many revolutions as there are social forma- 'free-trade' district made up exclusivelyof foreign-owned factories. The tions - and the overall task of cohering them into one is a long drawn- factories were built in the Philippines for the same reasons the nuclear out, tortuous and, of course, dialectical process. plant was constructed here, say the BEPZ workers. Low construction The Editors costs and wages, weak or non-existent safety, pollution and tax regula- tions all make the climate 'favourable' for moving plants to Third World Bataan countries. While the placement of factories here could be attributed partly to the success of the US labour movement in winning higher The scene is not unusual these days in the Philippines. Thousands of wages, the construction of nuclear plants in the Third World could be striking workers, peasants and fishermen are barricading the main partly traced to the success of the US anti-nuclear movement in preven- highway in Bataan province, west of Manila. At 6.30am on the first ting reactor construction at home. Like banned pesticides, birth control morning of the strike, the first trucks are turned back peacefully by the devices or pharmaceuticals, the nuclear technology is 'dumped' instead protesters. The Provincial Commander of the Philippine Constabulary in poorer countries. (PC), Colonel Jose Andaya, appears on the scene, backed by heavily- The green, campus-like facade of the Zone is deceptive - inside one armed troops and a Chemite light tank. sees dusty sweatshops straight out of the nineteenth century, where the At 6.50am, Colonel Andaya gives a five-minute ultimatum to the employees work on garments, tennis shoes or clothes for Barbie dolls. strikers to clear half the road. When they fail to respond to a subsequent Over 85 per cent of the workers are women, who were originally ex- ultimatum, the tank rumbles to the edge of the crowd and Andaya asks pected to be nimble-fingered and docile - much as women workers are the strikers not to throw rocks.