So I was talking to someone close to me and I was describing the striking economic disparity of the Philippines and they told me that they can't understand how people living here would be comfortable with this status quo. Is it that Filipinos just don't care? Is there an overwhelming apathy among the elite coupled with a lack of initiative by the poorest people?
I was insulted by this assumption that Filipinos either lack compassion or that they apparently given up on bettering their country. I would like to prove that this is not the case but it is a tricky issue to analyze.
Anyone who comes to Manila will be struck by the contrast of the rich and poor. Right next to a massive mall containing authentic Louis Vuitton bags and expensive jewelry will be a slum with children digging through the garbage looking for food. I was very much affected by this also and it really does make you feel like a piece of shit for buying a T-shirt for the amount of money that could feed a whole family for a day. I never enjoyed shopping in the first place but for those that get excited over shopping then the surrounding poverty might spoil the fun. If you hang out outside a mall you will see tons of people proudly walking out displaying their recently purchased goods and just scuttle past the homeless and impoverished people without giving the impression that they care. It may seem heartless and there is definitely an attitude I sense here around the malls that I am not comfortable with. However, this is by no means specific to the Philippines. I know America and Canada well and I don't want to hear anyone tell me that America and Canada have more income equality because they have a stronger sense of social solidarity.
Also on a side-note, the gap between the rich and poor in America is rising more and more each year. So maybe in a few generations America might look a lot like the Philippines.
If I was to give my candid observation of Filipino society, I do sense some vestiges of the hierarchical social structure of their colonial period. Lighter skinned people and those with Spanish names are generally seen as more attractive and perhaps more upstanding people. Skin whitening creams are advertised everywhere and I see sometimes Filipino women with unnaturally white skin. I think it looks bizarre; like the girls from New Jersey with fake orange tans. I personally think the darker skinned girls are more attractive but really at the end of the day I like it when girls just stay with what they were naturally given. I think also there does seem to be a stronger awareness of one's status in the society. Sometimes people give me the impression that they don't go to this carnival or that bar because “that's where lower class people go.” I don't like this attitude but again this can be found probably in every country and culture in the world.
Within the universities I have seen idealistic kids discuss the issues of poverty in the Philippines. They make lofty statements about the need of “will to develop” and the importance of protecting the most vulnerable people from foreign corporations.
“It's a question of human dignity and human rights that we resist the neo-imperialism of the developed countries.” is the sort of the mantra that I hear a lot and is even written on the walls at the University of the Philippines. I never took idealism in universities seriously; even when I was a student. After the feel good message about caring for the unfortunate they get picked up by their personal drivers and driven to a spa or massage parlor to unwind after a hard day of passively contemplating the woes of the world. And then once they graduate they just try to get hell out of here and find a decent job in the States or Dubai or end up working in the government and contributing to the problem. Obviously not everybody is like that but what I mean is that it is sort of part of the university experience to imagine that you can make a difference in the world. It's not a bad thing but it just gets kind of cheesy sometimes.
Where I do agree with them is when they discuss the malevolent nature of the IMF. The Philippine economy took a massive hit during the Asian financial crisis of the late 90's. The IMF was quickly on the scene to offer bail out packages so various affected governments could stay afloat. It seems like a nice thing to do right? But the problem is that these loans had massive strings attached. You know how some people say that a crisis can be a great opportunity? Yeah it was a great opportunity for the IMF which is funded by developed countries tax payers to cement the status quo of the relatively poorer countries vs. the “developed” countries It wasn't just nasty interest rates but the IMF demanded as a prerequisite of getting the money that their be a bit of “economic restructuring”. The IMF always has these kind of conditions when they issue loans to developing countries.
First they demanded the Philippines to maintain the interest rates of their central bank very high to help prevent devaluation of the Peso. Now I'm not an economist and its hard for me to give a good analysis of the exact reason but my feeling is that they wanted to keep the Peso from massive devaluation which would make it much more difficult for them to pay the loans back in the future. The Pesos did massively devalue and never recovered to its pre-crisis level so I'm not really sure what keeping the interest rates so high during the recession really accomplished. However I can see some rationality behind their reasoning but aside from that the IMF also demanded that the Philippines completely open their doors for foreign investment and drastically scale back their barriers to free trade and foreign capital ownership. On pen and paper, if you are just analyzing GDP growth then their demands have some merit but the reality is that how can local Filipino firms compete with massive and well-funded multinational corporations? The truth is they can't and even with the amount of fertile rice paddies the Philippines still has to import rice. It isn't all the IMF's fault because their intentions should be obvious to anyone. They work to maintain the status quo and keep rich countries rich and poor countries poor. The Philippine government has little say on to how they can run their own economy and are nowhere near paying off their debt and usually just get by paying only the interest. Every Filipino politician since the Marcos era has said they will fight to reduce their foreign debt but it continues to rise. The problem is that the Philippine government willingly sells their citizens out to these foreign pressures and lets them be exposed to the worst aspect of the predator-prey nature of the world economy. I mean corruption is definitely involved but I'm not going to go as far to say that the president of the Philippines would take a suitcase of money and just look the other way when foreign companies impose harsh labor conditions on Filipinos and pay them a fraction of what they deserve.
I bring up the IMF because this also contributes to the canyon between the rich and the poor here and the complicit role the government plays. This is a democracy and you would think that that would help choose a leader which is actually good for the country but I mean honestly look around at the world democracies, I'm not going to name any names, but because of ideological voters and the nature of politics real idiots come to office who don't have the nation's interests at heart. My political beliefs do definitely influence how I perceive things and maybe someone could argue with me about the benefits of neo-liberal deregulation and privatization of aspects of the economy but the way the Philippine government handles it's debt to the IMF is demonstrably irresponsible. South Korea also took emergency loans from the IMF during the Asian crisis but those in the government at that time had a sense of responsibility and paid off those loans as fast as they could. It's not really a question of ideology. It's a question national sovereignty. I mean what difference does it make who the Filipinos elect as president if he has his hands tied by a foreign entity when trying to make decisions about the domestic economy.
What about the Filipino worker? Some people might say that if only the Filipinos worked a bit harder they could make better lives for themselves. Like they should adopt the Protestant work ethic that supposedly made United States and Germany so powerful. I mean it's kind of ridiculous and a border line racist thing to say. Filipinos are not stupid or lazy. Filipinos have immigrated across the globe to find work and not for just their own enrichment but for the livelihood of their entire family. Even with the onerous restrictions set in place in all the developed countries to stymie the flow of Filipino migrant workers they are still everywhere. Filipinos need a visa to almost everywhere outside of Southeast Asia and the visa applications are not cheap and the immigration officials are becoming more and more strict. Even with these obstacles millions of Filipinos find work as migrant workers abroad and the money they send home adds up to about 13% of the GDP of the Philippines. They are forced to leave because of the lack of opportunity and a lack of will power of the Philippine government to protect the local industry.
So the Filipino government and elite have , in my opinion, worked to maintain this economic disparity. Again, look at the United States, the business elites there do the exact same thing and the American government is also complicit (bail-outs, tax breaks for some firms that outsource their jobs overseas, etc.). There is a communist faction here in the universities and even an armed rebel group in Northeast Luzon I believe. They have aspirations of income redistribution on a huge scale and even if I can sympathize, I also hate those rich bankers and CEOs, but just look at history and I think it's clear that these revolutions were romantic but never worked out the way those involved imagined it to. Maybe Lenin did have a compassionate side and an intellectual discomfort with the sufferings of the poor but I don't see how anybody could be comfortable with what the Soviet Union degenerated into under Stalin. In the case of the Philippines they already have a quasi-civil war going in the predominately Muslim region of Mindanao and I think any attempted violent communist revolution will just cause more damage and pain. But it doesn't have to be just one or the other, completely pro-business laissez-faire government or communist. The Philippine government just has to take some bold steps by first finally paying off their foreign loans and telling bigger nations to f%ck off and let them run their own economy.
So enough about the economy and the government, are the Filipino people really complacent on a personal level with the poverty here? Of course not. Charities are widespread here and people work hard to cover for the ineffectualness of the government. I've met overworked single mothers who still find time to volunteer at local NGOs or their church. Giving charity to the poor seems like an everyday thing here for a lot of people. I believe that the social solidarity among the Filipinos is strong, stronger than any other country that I've been too. I like how some of my French friends complain at the apparent heartlessness of the Filipinos when they casually walk past decrepit impoverished people while members of the French society, such as Muslims and Roma, are systemically discriminated against with the apparent OK from the majority or the French people. That's not really fair, I actually haven't met a French person who is comfortable with Sarkozy's policy of deporting gypsies.
If you come to Manila you will be struck like I was by the slums leaned up against a Mercedes dealership. I have become accustomed to this reality. I occasionally buy the street kids dinner if they catch me. After I bought them dinner the first time they always hound me if they spot me. Haha, it's hard for me to be discreet here. Anyway, also since I am a volunteer here I don't have a massive compulsion to give the little money I have to every kid I meet on the street. It might sound weird and make me look like I've lost my compassion that I've got used to fathers trying to pimp their ten-year old girls for a bit of cash or seeing elderly people digging through the garbage but if you stay here long enough you will see what I mean. Over time the initial discomfort of seeing people in distress fades and you gain some clarity about the society here and the human condition itself. The Philippines is a poor country, there is no way to get around that fact but it is not defined by it's poverty. What I've tried to emphasize up to this point is that the Philippines is where it is today because of the animalistic world economy and the Philippine government's refusal, or just inability, to protect it's own people under pressure from more powerful developed countries. The Philippines is a beautiful place and the Filipinos are beautiful people and even if the Philippines is a poor country the economy is growing fairly quickly perhaps there is a good future for this place that I love.
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