Poverty: daily staple of Philippine society
By Gemma Tulud Cruz
National Catholic Reporter
MANILA,
Philippines -- Run-down houses · dusty roads · travel by boat to the next
barangay · intermittent power cutoffs ·These are the sights that greeted me
when I visited home for a short "re-connection" to the country where I was
born.
Nothing has
changed. This much, I can say. The same grinding poverty echoes in most
parts of my Third World country. And what's worse, it is a poverty that
grips Filipinos every day -- every single day in this seemingly God-forsaken
country -- so much so that it has driven millions of Filipinos out of the
country in an exodus that the international community has started to call
the Filipino Diaspora.
The living
conditions are worse in some areas of the countryside where even basic
social services like electricity are nonexistent. In certain places where
education is a privilege rather than a right, it means literally crossing
rivers and mountains just to get to a dilapidated school building.
This does not
mean, however, that life in the urban areas is better. Poverty also rears
its ugly head there, and in more dehumanizing ways, at that, especially for
the informal settlers, or "squatters." One can see it in the row of
makeshift houses lining the railroad tracks. One can smell it in the stench
coming from the murky and dead Pasig River, which is "perfuming" the illegal
structures called "houses" that squatters live in along the river. One can
feel it in the cramped space of the "houses" put together out of odd pieces
of wood and cardboard that are hanging precariously under some of Manila's
bridges. Indeed, if "the love for money is the root of all evil in the
world," pervasive and grinding poverty is the root of all suffering in the
Philippines.
The majority of
Filipinos do not only see, smell, taste, touch and hear poverty. They
breathe it · every day.
Severe poverty
is the root cause of the now-familiar Mindanao conflict. In Sulu, for
instance, a staggering 92% of the people live below the poverty line, while
in Tawi-Tawi and the Abu Sayyaff lair of Basilan -- the other two centers of
the conflict -- 75% and 63% of the people are mired in very poor living
conditions. The prevalence of poverty makes it very easy for the terrorist
group Abu Sayyaff to lure and recruit poor, out-of-school youths to join
them in their nefarious activities by promising easy money and a better
life.
In Mindanao,
this same gripping poverty fuels the fight of our Muslim brothers and
sisters for an independent Muslim Mindanao republic. The feelings of
revulsion and the consequent fight against devastating poverty has ignited
other revolutionary armed struggles, such as the ones led by the
left-leaning New People's Army and the Cordillera People's Liberation Army
in the North.
Conflict rooted
in poverty wrapped in history, ethnicity and religious identity: this
constitutes the daily staple and struggle of the Filipinos. Even in the
faraway Netherlands, where I am living for the moment, my country's woes
haunt me with CNN news of bombings, coups d'etat and the infamous rebellion
of the poorly dubbed "EDSA Tres."
But where does
this leave us? At the end of the day, those challenged to take
responsibility for the poverty and conflict are a diverse group. The
challenge is directed at the U.S. government, which is seen as continuing to
meddle in the Philippine government's affairs. In today's gloablized world,
it is directed at the economically dominant G-8 and the First World
countries.
The challenge
is also directed at the leaders who run the country, especially, as is the
case in the Philippines, when those leaders do not live up to the demands
and responsibility of the office entrusted to them. Finally, the challenge
is directed at the only set of players remaining: the people themselves.
Indigenous Filipino theology is characterized by a theology of struggle, which posits that the people have to be a part of the "struggle in the struggle." Indeed, in this day and age of elitist economic globalization, the struggle to combat debilitating poverty can only find authentic vision, mission and participation among those who suffer from it most: the poor Filipinos.
A decent roof over our heads · food on the table · education for all · these are but some of the basic aspirations of the majority of the people of the country I call my own.
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