One of the most important experiences of my life was the month I spent with the peasant movement of the Philippines in April of this year.  I learned more about life visiting different rural communities in the northern island of Luzon than I learned in my entire time at university back home in Canada.

There’s a certain easy-speak here in Canada, as in all industrial countries, when people talk about the Third World.  No matter how sincere someone may appear about poverty in the Third World, their concerns are usually tinged with a comfortable knowledge that they will never share in that suffering.  The distance fractures solidarity and leads to misunderstandings.  It is common for Canadians to try and explain away the poverty and their relation to it by portraying the Third World as “other” and somehow deserving of their conditions.  For instance, conflicts are often generalized as “ethnic battles”, economic problems are always the result of “corrupt governments”, the rural population is “backwards”, and the North’s good efforts to help the countries develop are useless because they are “chaotic”.  

It is quite incredible that these simple generalizations often emanate from economists and political analysts that have undertaken years of study.  It only took me one month, living with the people in the countryside of the Philippines, to find out what is truly going on. 

1.  You simply cannot begin to discuss economic development in the Philippines without addressing the issue of agrarian reform.  Anyone who visits the people in the countryside will immediately see that the Philippines is a semi-feudal country, where lands and agriculture, the fundamental wealth of the country, are controlled by a few ruling elite and their foreign partners.  In these conditions, attempts to improve agricultural productivity are useless.  Right outside of the world-renowned International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Bagong Pook, Pila, Laguna, I met with rice farmers on irrigated lands that had no water because the person in charge of the supply directed the water to the wealthy landowners that could afford the bribes he wanted.  These same farmers were adamant that IRRI, in its 40 years of work in the Philippines, had done nothing for them except exacerbate their financial difficulties because the seeds IRRI developed were tied to costly chemical inputs and didn’t perform well under real life conditions in their fields.  Most rice farmers that I met with were tenant farmers and, on average, they gave upwards of 50 percent of their harvests to the landlords.  For the little rice that remained, the millers were only paying them between 5-7 pesos/kg, and these millers were often their landlords.  There is no incentive to increase productivity when those who control agriculture, the landlords and traders, make their money by oppressing the people not by investing in them. It is the system, not the farmers, that keeps the countryside in a perpetual state of backwardness.  

Despite these semi-feudal conditions, farmers in the Philippines are able to achieve amazing results with their limited resources.  Those that I met with are incredible farmers—highly industrious and full of wisdom about agriculture, ecology, and life in general.  I remember one farmer named Roberto "Ka Alberto" Laurel, Chairman of SAMANA-Buntog, in the Canlubang Estate, Laguna, who spreads young coconut flesh and juice around the perimeter of the crop.  The coconut attracts ants and, since rats are scared of the ants, they won’t enter the field.  Another farmer named Ka Oming Valasote, from SAMANA-TK, cleverly hangs wild bitter melon at the corners of his corn crop to prevent corn borer infestation, while big companies like Monsanto have spent millions to come up with a costly biotechnology to essentially do the same thing.  Yet, there is only so much that these very capable people can do in the midst of poverty, debt, and landlessness.  To improve agriculture productivity and living conditions in general, the people must be given adequate lands and there must be genuine agrarian reform. 

2.  The idea that foreign investment is key to economic growth is entirely false.  In all of Asia, the Philippines is the country most saturated with the products of foreign transnational corporations (TNCs), yet the vast majority of the people are destitute.  Why? 

In the districts of Benito Soliven and Naguilian of Isabela province, most of the rural population was corn farmers.  In the 1970s, as part of Marcos’ Masagana 99 program, they began growing hybrid corn.  Today, this hybrid corn comes almost exclusively from two US companies: Monsanto, which owns Cargill Seeds and the Ayala-Dekalb joint venture, and DuPont, which owns Pioneer Hi-Bred.  These two companies also manufacture much of the pesticides sold in the area.  The hybrid seed package—seeds, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers—is sold by a few traders that have monopolies in their respective areas.  Generally the farmers pay 30%-40% interest per cropping season (60%-80% per year) for it and they are forced to sell their harvests back to the trader for the low price that he offers—which fluctuates between 4-8 pesos/kg.  Since the corn is only grown for animal feed, these farmers have to buy nearly all of their food and household goods from the store.  In communities that I visited where the peasants were not farming hybrid crops and had more control over their lands, we had local coffee and home cooked ginataang gabi or soup for merienda, in these provinces of Isabela we had American-style crackers and coca-cola.  Understandably, malnourishment is a serious problem for children in the area.  

Debt, however, is the worst ailment.  The dependence on these foreign products—agriculture and food—leads to an ever-worsening spiral of debt.  In order to get the cash they need to buy their household goods, they borrow from the bank.  But the bank only lends money if they plant hybrid corn.  Farmers never make enough from their harvests to pay for the interest and the costs of production, so they have to borrow more money the following year in order to survive.  For all their toil and sacrifice to feed animals that, in turn, feed mostly the rich, a handful of traders and a few foreign TNCs reap all the profits.  And, to top it all off, the government and a foreign consortium have plans to obliterate all of these lands (the life of these farmers) to make way for a giant coal mine and coal plant to service the greedy needs of the export processing zones and industrial complexes surrounding Manila.

Foreign investment has brought destruction without development.  In a number of areas that I visited, such as Barangay Calayo in Hacienda Looc in Batangas, communities were or are about to be demolished in order to build golf resorts for the super-rich, which masquerade as eco-tourism projects.  In Canlubang, farmers, who could turn any barren patch of earth into a bountiful farm, are reduced to working as caddies for the recently opened golf course.  The lands that the golf course is built on belong to the people, but the landowner, a big sugar baron, was able to exempt them from land reform by using land conversion exemption clause in Aquino’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).  There’s a lot of foreign money flooding into golf course construction in this country, but it hasn’t done a bit of good for the people—unless a nation of subservient caddies is better then one of hard-working, intelligent, and productive farmers.  The biggest irony is just down the road from the Canlubang golf course, where Monsanto, DuPont and other big foreign agro-toxin companies have set up buildings on the Canlubang industrial zone—another area exempted from agrarian reform under the CARP.  The sign on Monsanto’s building reads “Food, Health and Hope”—obviously not for the peasants of Canlubang who hoped to finally be able to farm the prime agricultural lands that once existed where Monsanto’s building now stands.

3. Certainly there is a great deal of corruption in government, but, in most places that I visited, an even greater problem was that the government doesn’t exist.  Most communities had little to no access to proper health care or education.  In the countryside, especially in Isabella, people wait for upwards of five hours for a jeepney to fill-up with passengers in order to travel back from town on a treacherous dirt road with their weekly household supplies.  I’m lucky that I didn’t visit in the rainy season or I wouldn’t have seen half the places I was able to visit.  Many communities don’t have running water, even though there are often golf courses right next to them pumping out 65,000 cubic meters of water a day.  Electricity is a luxury and phone lines are unimaginable, even in communities adjacent to industrial zones where consistent electricity doesn’t appear to be much of a problem.

The situation is despicable for a country so rich in natural resources.  The Philippines is saturated with mineral wealth, marine resources, natural gas, petroleum, genetic diversity and fertile soils.  If these resources were harnessed for the good of the people, ther would be more than enough to keep everyone at a high standard of living.  But the main beneficiaries of these resources are those who have no right to them—the foreign TNCs.  This is especially true of the fisheries and mining.  It is difficult to imagine any country in the world (with the possible exception of Canada) ever contemplating such a foolish sell-off of its wealth as the Philippines-Japan Treaty on Amity Navigation and Commerce and the Mining Act of 1995.  Large-scale mining is likely the most destructive industrial activity on earth and it is shocking to think that already half of the entire region of Southern Tagalog falls under proposed mining concessions.  Not only does mining displace people from their lands, but it also pollutes the surrounding area, bringing disease and disaster to nearby residents, especially those like the fisherfolk whose livelihoods depend on the health of the ecosystem.  Plus, with today’s technologies, a mine employs only a minimal number of skilled workers and only lasts for15-20 years—after the foreign TNC, often from Canada, has taken most of the profits.
 

Despite the many domestic problems, it is especially important for people from the West to realize that it is not just the Philippine ruling elite that is responsible for the country’s widespread poverty.  The country has been under imperial domination for generations and this is the source of the country’s rotten system.  For all intents and purposes, the years of humiliating subjection as a colony of Spain and then the US have never ended.  The Philippines, more than any other country in the region, remains firmly in the grip of the Western powers.  Today, the West and Japan enforce policies to suit their interests through the structural adjustment programs of their lending institutions, such as the ADB, World Bank, and the IMF, or through multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, such as the GATT/WTO, and overseas development assistance deals with their various conditions.  

The neo-liberal policies pushed by the West have and continue to deepen hardship in the countryside.  Farmers I spoke with had seen the prices of crops drop by as much as 95% following the liberalization of certain crops.  The little health care and education that does exist in the countryside is being scaled back under privatization schemes enacted as conditions for loans.  Similarly, the government is constantly pressured to ease labour regulations, break-up unions, and deregulate any laws that protect the welfare of the population from the interests of industry.  The claim that such policies will stimulate foreign investment and thereby improve living conditions is the biggest lie of all.  The only objective is to open the Philippines up to imports from TNCs and to strip it of all its natural resources and labor potential.

The logical outcome of this system is violence.  In each community I visited there was a growing presence of military and armed thugs.  Violence against the people is the final and inevitable action of dispossession and exploitation.  However, in the face of this aggression, the people of the Philippines remain strong and, time and again, they have shown their determination to hold their ground and fight for what is just. 

I met a union leader Ka Rod Nazareno, chairman of  the militant St. Rose Transit  who was offered one million pesos to break ranks; he laughed in the company’s face.  I visited a community facing eviction where Ka Ponyong Mendoza, chair of Samahang Magsasaka ng Lansay Lumot and Vice-chair of PUMALAG, a poor peasant, and was offered 50 million pesos by the developer to walk away from the land; he turned it down without hesitation.   I spoke with Ka Gimo Bautista, a peasant leader from UMALPASKA-Hacienda Looc, whose fellow leaders were shot dead, whose family was terrorized by goons, and who had narrowly escaped an attempted murder on his own life; he said he would stay on his land until his blood ran over it.  I slept on floors and tables with many community organizers who braved harassment from the police and military, constant arrests, and more and more frequent “disappearances” to struggle for the dignity of the people.  

Of course, struggle is nothing new to the peasants of the Philippines.  Wherever I went, the communities told me about how they had tried so many times to get what’s rightfully theirs in court, but each time the courts sided with the landowning elite.  They told me about how each new government promises agrarian reform and better living conditions, but nothing ever changes.  In fact, for most communities that I visited, life has never been as difficult as it is now.  

There is growing realization, thanks in large part to the hard work of the KMP and its many chapters and partners, that the only solution to this situation can come from the people themselves.  The communities I visited have seen how neighbouring communities have perished-- their lands converted into plantations, eco-tourism projects, mines, or industrial zones, and the people sent into the city slums, never to be heard from again—and they refuse to let the same thing happen to them.  They believe that their strength lies in their unity and they are prepared to do whatever it takes to face the inevitable confrontation with the powers that oppress them.  It is a wonderful and utterly humbling experience to be present in the midst of such courage.  These are the people that will change our world for the better.  I am eternally grateful to them for letting me into their lives and giving me a personal foundation that will help guide me through the rest of my life.

If you want to learn the truth about this world—go to the countryside and be with the people!

During April 2000, Devlin Kuyek participated in a one-month integration stay with peasant organizations affiliated to the KMP in the provinces of Laguna and Batangas in Southern Tagalog, and Isabela in Northern Luzon.   While in Laguna he was hosted by PUMALAG and ST-AGENDA. In Batangas, he was hosted by UMALPASKA and while in Isabela he was hosted by DAGAMI and SENTRA-Cagayan Valley.  At the time of his visit, Devlin Kuyek was a project officer with the Pesticide Action Network—Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP), based in Penang, Malaysia.    During his time with PAN AP, he worked extensively with peoples’ organisations and non-governmental organisations throughout Asia, including the KMP.  It was after a recent workshop in Digos, Davao del Sur, Mindanao, on the pesticides industry that the KMP extended an invitation for Devlin to participate in an integration program.  Devlin now lives in Canada where he continues to work in solidarity with the KMP and its affiliates, PAN AP, and other pro-people organisations in Southeast Asia.