Radio Eye - Pacific Footsteps Program Three - Uncertain Archipelago

Generally thought of as being a part of East Asia rather than the Pacific, The Philippines were for many decades a US colony and before that part of the Spanish empire. It was here General Douglas MacArthur made his stand against the invading Japanese in 1941 – and when he was defeated, uttered the famous promise, 'I shall return', and did – only to reclaim Manila in one of the bloodiest battles of the second world war.

Since 1945 the Philippines archipelago – a vast swathe of islands with many different cultures (around 80 million people, some deeply Christian, others fiercely Islamist) has experienced more downs than ups. In 1955 the economy was growing at the same rate as Japan's, and some observers thought it might be the Pacific region's engine of growth. Then came the Marcos dictatorship of stagnation, corruption, martial law and oppression, overthrown in the extraordinary 'people power' revolution of 1986. In 1992 the USA agreed to withdraw its long-standing military bases.

Can the archipelago at last look forward to a prosperous, stable future under the country's second female president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, or are the ingredients for future instability still there? We explore the crowded streets of Manila and visit the former US naval base at Subic Bay, now the site of a proposed major trade hub for the Philippines. Sociologist Randy David, historian Ricardo Jose, artists Lourd De Veyra and Yuan Mor'O Ocampo, banker Alex Magno and film-maker Kiri Dalena talk about Filipino identity, development, human rights violations, and the 8 million OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers).

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Brent Clough: On ABC Radio National this is Brent Clough with the third part of Pacific Footsteps, my journey through the western Pacific, 60 years after WWII. I’m tracing the path of the conflict as it moved towards Japan, and learning more about the countries of this region today.

This time, we’re really in East Asia, in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7000 islands, over 100 ethnic groups and nearly 85 million people with a complex history of Spanish, American and Japanese colonisation. As soon as you arrive in Manila, the capital of the country, you’re thrown into hectic traffic, maybe on board one of the heavily chromed and uniquely decorated ‘Jeepneys’; buses once adapted from the chassis’ of WWII American Jeeps and, these days, Filipino originals.

Okay, we’re just coming into the Jeepney assembly area. Hundreds and hundreds of Jeepneys…this looks like a likely Jeepney to climb into, there’s half a dozen people on board already. Here we go…Hello...good view of the traffic.

We arrive in Quiapo—in the packed centre of old Manila—to be hit by a blizzard of sound…pirated CDs and DVDs of heavy metal, hip hop, R&B, and Hollywood soundtracks, all competing at maximum decibels.

There’s a very popular Manila band fronted by an outspoken young poet, and their music reflects the manic energy of their city.

Lourd De Veyra: My name is Lourd De Veyra, I’m the vocalist of Radioactive Sago Project. It’s a spoken-word/jazz/funk/punk band, but with a very, very Filipino context. Radioactive Sago Project’s in the house!

Brent Clough: I ask lead vocalist Lourd De Veyra what makes his band, Radioactive Sago Project, especially Filipino…

Lourd De Veyra: I don’t know, I can’t really explain it. It’s a very, very Filipino sort of aesthetic that’s a mixture of jeepneys, monoxide smoke, cheap gin, fake cigarettes, karaoke, urban poetry, folk songs…it’s really hard to define it. Even if you ask what is Filipino…we’ve been under the Spaniards for 500 years, under the Americans for 40 years, and the Japanese for five years, so you really can’t define what’s Filipino. It’s an ever-evolving organism, Filipino culture.

Brent Clough: And living proof of that evolving cultural blend is in the streets of Quiapo where, beyond the din of American pop songs, the faithful are called to prayer at Manila’s Golden Mosque, in a place that was Muslim before it was claimed for the Spanish Crown by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. And almost within earshot of the Mosque (if the traffic wasn’t so loud) is Quiapo Church, home to the famous life-size statue of a Black Christ, and just steps away from the crowded streets of Manila’s Chinatown.

Hours after bombing Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Japanese attacked the American-controlled Philippines. After defeating the US and Filipino troops under General Douglas MacArthur, they took the capital and the country, but never without resistance from Filipinos. Professor Ricardo Jose is a specialist on WWII at the University of the Philippines.

Ricardo Jose: The Japanese, as a coloniser, was quite different from the others. We had been colonised by the Spaniards and the Americans, but the Japanese brought in an Asian kind of concept, the Confucian idea that there are superiors, there are inferiors, so this clashed with the ideas we had from the Philippine revolution that the Americans had also taught in schools; ideas of democracy, self-help, and all that kind of thing. So when the Japanese came in and said, ‘Now we are going to tell you what to do’, that already instilled a reaction in the Filipinos. Plus, making things even worse was that the Japanese looked down on Filipinos at that time. Although many of them said, ‘We are your brothers, we are here to liberate you’, in practise they didn’t do that. Most Filipinos’ encounters with the Japanese was the Japanese sentries at the street corner who tended to slap people if they didn’t bow properly or if they didn’t pay him the due respect. To the Japanese at that time slaps were the most minor physical punishment they could mete out, but to Filipinos, a slap is really a very serious offence. During the Spanish period, the American period, they never slapped, and when someone is slapped it is really something that your whole being…not only your physical being but your mentality, even your spirit, is attacked. So when the Japanese began slapping people, this caused more people to join the guerrillas, to resist the Japanese and so on.

Brent Clough: Filipinos eventually suffered far worse than slaps. The battle for Manila, in just two months, February and March 1945, had the highest number of civilian casualties after the siege of Leningrad.

Ricardo Jose: It was only in the 1990s that some of the survivors began coming out and saying, hey, this battle was a major battle, it was really the worst battle in the Asia-Pacific area where an allied city was destroyed. According to the estimates, about 100,000 non-combatant civilians died in that battle. In the Philippine case you have a numerically small Japanese force killing a lot of these people, but the rest of the people being killed in the crossfire between the Japanese and the Americans. So the ensuing battle resulted in easily one-tenth or more than the population of Manila at that time.

Brent Clough: Surprisingly, there are few monuments to the huge numbers of Filipinos killed in WWII. Ricardo Jose puts it down to the wilful amnesia of a developing country that needs foreign aid.

Ricardo Jose: What we’re looking at, really, is how we look at ourselves. Are we really turning a blind eye to the sufferings that we endured? Are we willing to forget everything just because these people are giving us money today? We’ve lost our soul. Some of the older people say that the Filipino has lost his soul; whoever pays the highest price, that’s where we’ll go. So if the Americans will give us more aid we’ll go to the American side; the Japanese give us more aid, we’ll go to the Japanese, never mind our past. So it seems that there’re some elements in the Philippines are themselves trying to whitewash that particular episode in Philippine history, which I find very sad.

Brent Clough: Outside a rowdy bar in the financial district of Makati a young journalist, Irwin Romulo, figures the Philippines collective amnesia extends well beyond WWII.

Irwin Romulo: You’ve been asking people how life is and what do they reflect on the war and all the history that’s gone by, but it’s a national characteristic that…a trait of the Filipino to forget. Because even something as recent as marshal law has really no effect any more, which is sad. So if you go back far to WWII or anything like that, honestly it leaves no imprint. I mean, the elders might remember it, but now, my generation, I don’t think they really look back on it. They just want to move forward, they want to forget it and just move forward.

Brent Clough: One place Filipinos are moving forward and looking back is the huge, heavily forested former US naval base at Subic Bay. It is 150 kilometres north-west from Manila, and it was for many years the largest US naval base outside the US itself. The site is now the focus for the Philippines’ boldest attempt to attract international trade and tourism. We’re shown around by our cheerful media liaison person, Christina, or as she prefers, Tin Tin Geronimo.

Tin Tin Geronimo: This is where we created the airport as well as the seaport for the modernisation, that’s why they say it ‘Cubi’ which means ‘can you build it?’, can you build an airport in the water and in the mountainous area? And we did. I mean, not us Filipinos, but the Americans did, they built it.

Brent Clough: We can see the full expanse of the bay out to the right there, can’t we?

Tin Tin Geronimo: That’s the whole bay, and this is the new international airport, the Subic Bay, this was created in 1991 so we could get Fed Ex to invest here and put their Asian mother-hub in the Philippines. So later on we’re going to pass by the Federal Express, the biggest courier in the whole world, which is an American company. They are based here in the Philippines, particularly in Subic Bay.

Kenneth Peralta: It is one of our big projects, if not the biggest project of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Brent Clough: Kenneth Peralta is the youthful tourism manager for the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

Kenneth Peralta: We’re building a new port so we can compete against the big hubs in Asia. Subic Bay is a smaller Singapore, a smaller Hong Kong. It’s a tax and duty free freeport zone. We have our own fire department, we have our own law enforcement department, we have our own hospital, we have our own ambulances…it’s one of the safest places in the country. Why—we are fenced…we have 280 cops going around 24 hours, and we have cops in all entry points and exit points, so it is like a fort, it is like a real…it is like a camp. Still, but with no more military equipment, it’s just basically to protect our investors.

Brent Clough: So it’s still a little bit like the base was in the old days; it’s sealed off a bit from the outside world.

Kenneth Peralta: That’s right, but in a good way. We are still open to pedestrians or tourists walking, going in an out, but we give them IDs or passes.

Brent Clough: So, Kenneth, I was wondering if Subic Bay, because it’s a freeport, does that mean that this area doesn’t have to follow the same labour laws, for instance, as the rest of the Philippines?

Kenneth Peralta: That’s right, Brent, Subic Freeport is unique. We have our own laws here, we have our own rules that we follow according to the Republic Act 7227. There is no union, not on base. We protect our investors. We have our own labour department that calls a meeting if there is a problem regarding their employees. To sum it all up, you can do everything or follow the laws we have on base, but not really follow the laws we have out there. It’s like a state within a state.

Brent Clough: It seems like it hasn’t, perhaps, changed that much from the days when it was a US naval base.

Kenneth Peralta: That’s right, the US navy really didn’t bother the national government. When they were here, they were doing their own thing…still business as usual, wars here and there…(just a joke). But we just extended it, but now it is fully Filipino owned. We added to what they left; we’ve added more roads, more bridges, more infrastructures, more restaurants, more bars, and this is the last frontier for the Philippines. If Subic Bay Freeport will not be managed like an international corporation, for example, then there would be no hope. That’s why we are providing that hope to the Filipinos out there that…in this country, in the Philippines, there is still a place like Subic Bay freeport to look at, to emulate and to praise.

Many Filipinos aren’t waiting for the jobs promised by projects like Subic. With economic instability and low wages, a great number become migrant workers, leaving the country to earn enough to support their families back home. There are currently between 8 and 10 million Filipinos working abroad, keeping the country afloat.

We return to Manila to met Maricel Palomo, an overseas foreign worker. She’s been working as a maid in Singapore for several years, now she’s going to Angola in South West Africa for a year.

Maricel Palomo: I’m going to work there as a domestic supervisor of a diamond company. I go there to earn money for me and my family. My nephew, he’s going to school and nobody can support him except me.

Maricel Palomo: No, I don’t know. I don't know Angola...a little bit nervous because I don’t know their culture…

Maricel Palomo: Because my cousin is working there in Angola and he recommend me to apply the agency. Here in the Philippines it’s very hard to find a job and our economy’s bad.

Maricel Palomo: In Angola I don’t have friends, but in Singapore I have a lot of friends there who are working in Singapore. I have a lot of neighbours going overseas…too many, too many people going overseas.

Brent Clough: On the other side of town from Maricel Palomo is banker and political scientist Alex Magno. Alex sees overseas foreign workers as typically Filipino and vital to an economy not long ago described by the President as being in a fiscal crisis.

Alex Magno: Well, historically we are a seafaring people, so we’re all over the place historically, and that explains a lot the willingness to explore other societies, work there, take chances in other societies, and that explains why there are four million Filipinos in the United States and we’re now the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. It also explains why something like one in every ten of the population is a migrant worker; they go out, they go back, spend a year here, live again. So there’s this constant exposure to the rest of the world. In terms of documented remittances (which is an understatement), an inflow annually of about 12 billion US dollars. There’s a lot of money made abroad and spent here, and that basically has been the motor of our economy. What we call our middle-class is actually the lower-middle-class. These are families dependent on remittances. I suspects it infects the sense of allegiance to the government because this is a constituency that…for them it doesn’t matter if the government performs well or performs badly, their incomes actually don’t depend on the quality of governance that they see. It’s dependant on the quality of governance of governments elsewhere.

Brent Clough: But people here are hugely interested in domestic policies. Everyone has an opinion on the government at the moment.

Alex Magno: Yes, we’re an irrepressible people. We have this fixed idea that we’re not getting the government we deserve, which is probably true.

Brent Clough: People don’t appear to be getting the government they want in Liwasang Bonifacio Park in central Manila. It’s a sweltering summer’s day, and unions, church and civil society groups have gathered to demonstrate against the government and the president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Demonstrator: It’s Labour Day in Manila and we’re in the middle of an anti-GMA rally…

Brent Clough: The Philippines is famous for its ‘people power’ revolutions. In the country itself they’re known as EDSA 1 and 2. EDSA’s the name of the major Manila highway which was the site of the demonstrations.

There have been two decisive 'people power' events, one overthrowing Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, and the second ousting the now imprisoned, film-star president Joseph Estrada in January 2001. He was replaced by his deputy, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the current leader.

I just wanted to ask you about your banner here, which maybe you could just explain this one—‘Stop the killing. Resist terrorism of the US-Arroyo regime’?

Demonstrator: The Us-Arroyo regime has been killing activists already for...just for this four months of the year they already killed around 30 activists and leaders, so we are calling for the stopping of these killings because we know that they are just doing their legitimate protests, and the regime is turning against them.

Demonstrator: I’m from Arqam.. Arqam is an organisation of scientists and engineers that have been helping people’s organisations all around the Philippines.

Brent Clough: And have you been involved in the ‘people power’ revolution?

Demonstrator: Yes, I was there as a student, a young student, in 1986, but I was most participating in the second EDSA where we ousted the present, Estrada.

Brent Clough: Do you feel disappointed that Gloria Arroyo has not been able to change things?

Demonstrator: From day one where she did not give anything to address the real demands of the people after EDSA 2, now several months and another term, she has been slowly distancing herself away from the people, and now we see everybody ready to call for her ousting. So we know that Arroyo has been a big disappointment to the Filipino people, and we see that in the protests today.

Brent Clough: Randolf David is a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines and he’s a leading Filipino political commentator.

Randolf David: Well, the Philippines is known as the birth place of people power, and rightly so. I think we stumbled upon people power as a mechanism of regime change, and I’m very happy that other countries, from the late 80s to the 1990s, have used the Philippine experience as a source of inspiration for asserting popular sovereignty, that in the final analysis it is people who have power, not governments, not politicians. It is still very strong in this country. Unfortunately its strength affects institutional stability, where you have people in a more or less permanent state of mobilisation. I participated in the two ‘people power’ revolutions of 1986 and 2001, which ousted two presidents, but I would be among the first to say that I think we cannot afford a permanent state of popular mobilisation. Sooner or later, the task of governments has got to be attended to because without a stable government you cannot attend to the problems of poverty, which to my mind are still the most important problems in our country.

Brent Clough: Sociologist, Randy David. Writer and performer, Lourd De Veyra sees a deep malaise in the legacy of people power, which he expresses in his poem, with a suicidal, schizophrenic narrator, ‘Memories of Batman’.

Lourd De Veyra(translation): In 1982, Marcos was still the president, he was about to die, and then I suddenly, on the TV, saw Batman and suddenly my life changed. Great gear, spoke perfect English, had great costume, had excellent weapons, and then throughout the years his memory vanished into a shadow.

There’s this supposed promise that was not fulfilled because everybody thought that when you get rid of the dictator things are going to be fine, which was not the case. It even got worse…even worse in the sense that there is no central villain, no central arch-enemy to focus your hatred. So it’s like everyone’s an enemy. You’re witnessing an entire system in collapse.

Track: ‘Escape from Planet Sago’ by Radioactive Sago Project. [Let there be peace, let there be war, and let me die quietly in the bar...]

Brent Clough: Radioactive Sago Project imagining a quiet death in Manila, and, as we’ve heard, life in the provinces can be short and violent. The scientist at the May Day rally was protesting at killings that he says were orchestrated by the military. This is a view shared by many activists.

Kiri Lluch Delana is an independent film-maker and part of a multimedia organisation called Southern Tagalog Exposure.

Kiri Lluch Delana: We make documentaries about the current social issues and that intend to help the disenfranchised and the marginalised Filipinos.

Kiri Lluch Delana: The issues that we’ve worked on are about human rights violations in the countrysides. These are violations perpetrated by the armed forces of the Philippines on mostly peasant communities and indigenous peoples, and activist leaders who are investigating these cases of human rights violations. It’s very different outside of Manila because these cases are seldom reported. Before, we thought that this was already finished after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship but I realise that it is still continuing, and in fact the number of cases is escalating at this moment, not only in Southern Tagalog where I am based but also in different parts of the country like in Central Luzon and Mindanao.

Brent Clough: And how much in the public mind are these killings? Are people in the Philippines thinking about them very much or do you have to remind them, provoke them to think about it?

Kiri Lluch Delana: We started working on advocating human rights in 2000, and at that time I think Filipinos were surprised that it is still happening. But I think in the recent years—2004 up to the present—people are now growing more concerned because even human rights workers are being killed, and media personalities, journalists, who are reporting these violations, are being murdered.

Brent Clough: From the multimedia group Southern Tagalog Exposure, film-maker Kiri Lluch Dalena.

Just before leaving the Philippines we make a trip south to Calamba in Laguna Province. We’re travelling there to meet internal refugees, mostly from the province of Mindoro further south. Many of the refugees are members of political or human rights organisations like Bayan Muna or ‘People First’. Bayan Muna is a broad-based political party, and a number of its members have been assassinated. According to independent sources, 31 political activists and six journalists have been murdered in the Philippines in 2005.

Arman Albarillo’s parents, Expedito and Manuela, were members of Bayan Muna. They were killed on April 8th, 2002 in Mindoro.

Arman Albarillo(translator): His parents were accused by the military of being high-ranking members or sympathises of this New People’s Army based in the province of Mindoro Oriental. The New People’s Army is the armed component of the communist party of the Philippines, and it was during the time that his parents, particularly his father, was very critical of government policies, very vocal in explaining to his constituents the various policies that he branded as anti-people, anti-Filipino, and since that time, the military accused him of being a high-ranking member of the NPA in that area.

As well, his mother was also executed…claimed that the military forcibly entered their house, they were hog-tied and they were dragged to a nearby place outside the house. From there they were summarily executed, and because of that very infamous incident, Arman here, decided to serve as a full-time social activist so that he could also contribute in exposing and denouncing various injustices committed by the military in that area, as well as in other areas of Southern Tagalog. As of now, he can no longer go to his local area, his place, because the military is always constantly alert in looking for him. That’s why his family, his sisters and brothers, were also forced by the circumstance to live here in Calamba City after that incident.

Brent Clough: Arman Albarillo, whose parents, members of the Bayan Muna political party, were executed in Mindoro in 2002.

Back in Manila we’re in the tower block office of Alex Magno, the presidential advisor and government appointed head of the Philippines Development Bank. Alex,s work is often in the poorest, most troubled parts of the country, and he places the killings and human rights abuses in another context.

Alex Magno: The Philippines is one of only two countries where there’s an active Maoist rebellion going on. The other is Nepal. So in some of the islands where the communist guerrilla forces are strong, the military basically governs, in effect. The local mayors are too afraid, the local police forces don’t have the firepower, the training or the willingness to fight, and the military in these remote areas is basically on its own, the only instrument of order that’s left. In this war there are dirty things that happen, and…I don’t know about the particular cases, but in the last few months there has been a pattern of a more assertive campaign by the military, both in the areas of the Muslim rebellion and in areas where they’re trying to break up organised insurgent presence. They’re a thinking in the military that they just want to clear the table of all these past conflicts and deal with the next conflict, which is the war on terror.

Brent Clough: Banker Alex Magno, who believes the military’s activities have changed since the days just after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and since the increase of separatist bombings in the Philippines.

Alex Magno: In the post-1986…the military was very much restrained by the political authority but with this problem with bombings and whatever, the military are sort of been given the carte blanche to do its thing. I think that coincides with the spiral of all this human rights complaints that has happened.

Kiri Dalena: I think it’s very possible that there will be another change and another revolution. In fact, some sectors are already pushing for the ousting of the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but the government is doing all it can to stop this. I think it will not yet be a revolution because if you say it’s a revolution there will be a really big change but it’s going to be just another revolt of some kind.

Brent Clough: As we were making this program, allegations of electoral fraud emerged, and there were wider calls for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign. Military leaders have publicly stated that they won’t intervene either way, and as of this moment the president remains in office. Whatever the massive challenges which face this uncertain archipelago, Kiri Delana is still confident in the resilience and power of Filipino people to remake her nation.

Kiri Dalena: When we talk about the problems, it doesn’t mean that I’m putting down my country. In fact, I love this country, despite of all the problems. We talk about the problems because we want to change it, and the first thing that we should do to change it is be able to expose and face these problems instead of hiding them. But I think the people are good…the people, despite all of the hardships, we can adapt very much to so much and we can go through with so little, we still survive. I think that there are still so many Filipinos who will stay on and who want to change the country for the better.

Brent Clough: Special thanks to Mervin Espina, Robert Nery, Mor’O Ocampo, Toti Dalmacion, Noli Capulong, Michael Tan, the Philippines Consulate Sydney, and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

The sound engineer was Steven Tilley, and this episode of Pacific Footsteps was a co-production of the BBC World Service and ABC Radio National. The program was produced by Julian Siddle and me, Brent Clough.

For more audio, photos, and links go to abc.net.au/rn and follow the prompts to Radio Eye and the Pacific Footsteps icon.

Next week in the final of our series, we’re in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a tiny, barely known string of specks in the Pacific Ocean, vital to the end of WWII and now sandwiched between the economic giants of Asia and the USA.

Program Three: Uncertain Archipelago

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