Christianity and Radical Democracy in the Philippines: Building a Church of the Poor [1 ed.] 9781003302780, 9781032299334, 9781032299327

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Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

CHRISTIANITY AND RADICAL DEMOCRACY IN THE PHILIPPINES BUILDING A CHURCH OF THE POOR Christopher Moxham

Christianity and Radical Democracy in the Philippines

This book analyses faith-based development action in the Philippines by studying Catholic social movements and development studies in Southeast Asia. By drawing upon primary, qualitative data, this book examines cultural production and community resilience amid poverty and structural restraints. It also interrogates the discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities, the smallest organizational unit of the Philippine Catholic Church, to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the social movement. The author shows that the dream of local economic development and empowerment requires help from the Catholic hierarchy, particularly the organizational and leadership resources at the diocese level. This book is a unique contribution in opening up interdisciplinary approaches to religion, faith, and social development. It will be of interest to researchers on Asian Studies, especially Southeast Asian Studies, Development Studies, the Anthropology of Development, Social Movements, and the Anthropology of Christianity, Missiology, and Religious Studies. Christopher Moxham teaches in the Department of General Education at Mount Royal University, Canada.

Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

22 Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters The Relevance of Ancient Wisdom for the Global Age Edited by Ming Dong Gu 23 The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions Devi as Corpse Anway Mukhopadhyay 24 Divinizing in South Asian Traditions Edited by Diana Dimitrova and Tatiana Oranskaia 25 Christianity in India The Anti-Colonial Turn Clara A. B. Joseph 26 Chinese Theology and Translation The Christianity of the Jesuit Figurists and their Christianized Yijing Sophie Ling-chia Wei 27 Christianity in Northeast India A Cultural History of Nagaland from 1947 Chongpongmeren Jamir 28 Theories of the Self, Race, and Essentialization in Buddhism The United States and the Asian “Other”, 1899-1957 Ryan David Anningson 29 Christianity and Radical Democracy in the Philippines Building a Church of the Poor Christopher Moxham For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Asian-Religion-and-Philosophy/book-series/RSARP

Christianity and Radical Democracy in the Philippines Building a Church of the Poor Christopher Moxham

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Christopher Moxham The right of Christopher Moxham to be identified as author[/s] of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-29933-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-29932-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-30278-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

This book is dedicated to the Catholic faithful in the Diocese of San Carlos, Negros, whose tireless efforts daily mitigate poverty and disempowerment, helping poor people to help themselves.

Contents

List of Illustrationsviii 1 Introduction

1

2 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines: Philosophical Roots and a Place in Critical Development Studies

12

3 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros

25

4 Development in the Diocese of San Carlos

44

5 Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos: Place-Making, Social Capital, and the Structures That Limit Development

85

6 BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development: Potentials, Limits, Recommendations Appendix A: Herbal Medicines Index

115 139 141

Illustrations

3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2

The Philippines26 The Island of Negros35 The Diocese of San Carlos45 Key concerns of parishioners by category47

1

Introduction

From the air the water is tranquil, motionless, at once calming and unnerving. The hum of the engines and the rattling fuselage offer some semblance of basic reality. Far below the window the tankers are small and seemingly insignificant—individual progress on the water is infinitesimal, but their cumulative effect is part of a wider narrative that began nearly 500 years ago. Boats ride above ocean currents that rise up from the depths in contrasts of blue and green. Thin-slick oil deposits on the surface crisscross one another as if stitched in silk. Slivers of sunlight ripple across the water as we circle to the south of the largest island and begin our descent. Looking further south, more of the islands of the archipelago can be seen—wide plains of crops, conical mountains jutting up from the ocean floor, reefs, beaches, coves, rivers, and deltas. Some islands are enormous, with scattered settlements along coasts and river ways and vast tracts of agricultural production carved geometrically into the landscape. Other islands are the size of schoolyards and seldom see a human visitor. We pass over a large inland lake that resembles a stylized W with an elongated island in the middle. The lake water is the colour of silt, and there is a daily release of industrial and agricultural pollutants along the shore and shed. Small fishing boats dot the surface, and long stretches of the coast are squared-off for aquaculture. Industrial buildings along the shoreline are hedged in by dense human settlements, makeshift communities of labour surrounding localized centres of capital. At the far end of the lake the freshwater drains down a river towards the capital city. The metropolitan area sprawls out from a large bay along waterways and roads that lead into the hills. In the distance there are a few substantial business centres where towers stretch perpendicular to the landscape and mingle among the smoke and haze that lingers yellow and brown in the morning light. Wealth and modernity are expressed in architecture, hillside communities, and a mesh of roads that, from the sky, could be Los Angeles, Lima, or any other port metropolis. But with descent into Manila, the city becomes its own, and tracks of rust-coloured land are revealed to be sprawling shantytowns framed in by major traffic corridors, business districts, and the walls of wealthier communities. These roughhewn neighbourhoods—vibrant centres of culture, DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-1

2  Introduction family, community, and commerce—are home to the overwhelming majority of the 21 million inhabitants of the greater Manila area, people living together 18,000 to the square kilometre. Not an unoccupied piece of land in sight, and even the outer walls of the airport along the runway serve as one firm structure against which to build entire communities. The Philippines is a country of diversity and extremes, both in terms of landscape and social groups. With over 7000 islands it is the second largest archipelagic state, after Indonesia, and the islands are rich in topographic and climatic variability. Added to the physical diversity are approximately 110 ethnic groups and 170 spoken languages, as well as highly uneven economic activity, with wealth concentrated around the capital, a few adjacent regions, and a handful of cities on other islands. Unequal wealth distribution is one of the realities of uneven economic activity. With an income Gini Ratio of 42.3 (2022), the Philippines ranks 37th among countries with the highest levels of inequality in the world. By official estimates, nearly 30 percent of Filipinos live below the poverty line, although official numbers tend to be conservative. The country registers a value of 0.718 on the Human Development Index, 107th out of 169 countries, and this value is derived from a life expectancy at birth of 71.2 years, adult literacy rates of 93.7 percent, a combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 79.6 percent, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of USD 3485. Public debt in the Philippines is 39.9 percent of GDP, and external debt is USD 210 billion (CIA 2021). The accumulation of debt accelerated after World War II when the Philippines borrowed money to finance economic development and rebuild after the War. In 1980 more loans for development were secured from the World Bank, but as a condition the government agreed to neoliberal programs of structural adjustment—market-oriented fiscal and welfare changes designed to increase economic efficiency and decrease the role of the state in the economy. Over the last few decades the Philippines has passed through three distinct phases of structural adjustment: from 1980 to 1983, reform focused upon trade liberalization; from 1983 to 1992, debt repayment became the operating principle; and since 1992, a free-market ideology and neoliberal governance have steered the country towards an investment-friendly, deregulated, and privatized m ­ arket free-for-all (Bello et al. 2005). It is within this jurisdiction of state-level policies that regions, municipalities, and local communities must operate, and this is the backdrop to a varied landscape of cultural production and resilience. Unfortunately, and similar to the situation in many developing countries, the search for meaningful community development in the Philippines is considered, by the state, secondary to national economic growth (see Holden et al. 2017). Factors involved include the burden of international debt, foreign investment policies, and factions of the national elite that tend to serve and protect their own interests. In terms of the latter, market-oriented policies favour both foreign and domestic investors, while state bureaucracy is controlled by a

Introduction 3 limited number of landed families who have manoeuvred government to maintain their historical entitlement. In general, the Philippine situation is but one instance of the many ways that powerful global processes transform states, making them more easily and effectively utilized by certain interests that seek to maximize capital accumulation on the world stage. And as a typical modern state with territorial claims to land and people, the Philippines acts as an intermediary between the ever-monopolizing core and the laissez-fair fringes of globalization, a mediator for its own bordered citizens and borderless capital. This role has profound consequences for a majority of the population. In the Philippines, inequity and poverty among the masses, particularly in rural areas, have not been ameliorated by moderate levels of national economic growth. Because of this, locally derived alternatives to state development plans have mobilized through the Catholic Church at the diocese level and among small faith-based groups referred to as Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs). Comprising local families who first gathered to study the liturgy, many dioceses and BECs now work towards participatory grassroots development. This community action can be at loggerheads with local government, the state and international actors, whose own development plans often include primary resource extraction in mining, forestry, and plantation agriculture, and other capital-­i ntensive industries where the overwhelming bulk of profits are repatriated to investors who do not live in affected communities. These types of development often have little positive impact in terms of community welfare and long-term sustainability, as well as significant negative effects on the environment in a country where many people continue to live off the land. This book is a case study of BEC-driven social action in the Diocese of San Carlos on the island of Negros, where church officialdom, the network of BECs, and lay affiliates work towards community empowerment and social development throughout the diocese. It is a story of modest ­progress, with faith-based actors involved in healthcare, education, livelihood, and infrastructure, as well as contestation over market and state development plans. The BEC concept has existed in the Philippines for a number of decades, but the focus on poverty and disempowerment, as well as action, found new momentum during the presidency and dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (1965–1986). Marcos promoted marketization and foreign investment, and he implemented massive infrastructural projects, all of which fostered growth in terms of GDP. On the political front, however, corruption, nepotism, and the military suppression of dissent were rampant, and his presidency can be understood as an enormous pauperization of the state, whereby public revenues were used like a personal piggybank (McCoy 2009; Pomeroy 1992). In the end, uncounted billions (USD) were diverted into private bank accounts, with some of the stash used famously by his wife, Imelda, to fill closets with 3000 pairs of shoes. Plunder aside, it really is the general extent

4  Introduction of political oppression that stirred popular dissent, and Gaspar (1997) claims the Church was the only organization to stand up to Marcos during the period of martial law (1972–1981); it began to mobilize people around ideas of political justice, peace, and livelihood. Since then there has been a marked shift in approach and goals as the BEC movement has evolved. Originally, the social development agenda incorporated a rationale of capitalist integration, hoping to bring about meaningful change by emphasizing Christian values in business endeavours. This approach had a predominant emphasis on scriptural reflection, and a mere emergent focus on the individual as a basic unit for effecting social change—individuals were expected to be actively evangelical, scripturally reflective, and politically informed (Picardal 2005). Today the push for change is better understood from a collectivist perspective, and BECs seek a communal alternative to capitalist society, wherein members work together to meet common needs, using resources derived from their immediate environment. Most importantly, the basic scale of change moves beyond the individual to encompass the social community, offering a bottom-up approach to tackling social problems in hope of founding ‘a new society based on ecologically sustainable modes of production in connection with new forms of political and social relationships’ (Nadeau 2005: 324). Thus today many BECs can be understood as cultural approaches to community development, empowerment, and defence of place: ‘Poverty and their faith urge their members towards solidarity with one another, action for justice, and towards a vibrant celebration of life’ (CBCP 1992: 52). BECs are present in nearly all of the scores of dioceses in the Philippines and can include anywhere from 5 to as many as 100 families. There is a growing body of literature devoted to them, and the national church believes in the concept, actively encouraging their formation. Indeed, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has its own social-action branch, the National Secretariat on Social Action (NASSA), and it takes BEC formation as integral to social development: We commit ourselves to ongoing formation towards mature social consciousness; initiating and supporting sustainable development programs that uphold the integrity of the human person and of creation, and are gender and children sensitive; delivering development programs and services for the empowerment and strengthening of BECs and other faith communities; promoting cooperation and dialogue with other cultures and faiths in pursuit of genuine justice and peace; and linking and networking with other like-minded groups (NASSA 2013). The concept has three core components: (i) the cultural roots and growth of the liturgical group, (ii) socio-economic development through cooperative participation in capital markets, and (iii) the political transformation of the greater Filipino society (Gabriel 2008).

Introduction 5 At present the majority of BECs are predominantly liturgical or Biblestudy groups, but some have ventured into the realm of social action and community development. Those that have challenge local patterns of capital accumulation and offer social alternatives to development grounded in an ecclesiastical belief in living God’s word (Nadeau 2002). Much inspiration for the movement can be traced to the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), which convened over the years 1962–1965: In the mid-1960s … the Vatican promulgated a series of encyclicals which, in effect, decreed that the Church had a special mission to the poor of the Third World. In his Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963), Pope John XXIII stated the Church had to apply Christian principles to the unequal relations between First and Third Worlds … Under Pope Paul VI these once radical doctrines became the new orthodoxy. His encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) condemned ‘structural injustice’, a concept that radical priests later used to justify their attack on oppressive social institutions (McCoy 1984: 40). Following the thread of structural injustice to the political and economic injustices embedded in the Philippine landscape, the BEC movement can be envisioned as a sibling discourse to Latin American liberation theology. Both movements have historical links to the Second Vatican Council, and both encourage the faithful to become agents of change and advocates for the poor: The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order (Gutiérrez 2003: 20). Although the movements have many historical ties, BECs in the Philippines should by no means be equated with liberation theology, and informants to this study are adamant that the Philippine experience is completely different from South America, where political extremism often has boiled up into outright violence: The situation in South America is totally different. Here it is liberation of man from ignorance. We do not teach the people to go against [government], to rally. It will not solve the problems (Father Jerome); The seed [of liberation theology] is South America … [although in the Philippines] there have been attempts associated with the left. Bishops were suspicious of some priests. But in terms of popular movements,

6  Introduction Benedict [XVI, Pope] has warned the Philippines. BEC is about peace and charity, non-violence. Benedict has emphasized this; that the Church has to remain pillars of hope (Bishop Joe). Central to the movement is (i) an awakening of members to the realities of poverty and oppression, (ii) condemning the policies of the oppressors, and (iii) mobilizing the poor in a moral way that will effect positive change (Delotavo 2006). This rubric of informed action parallels Paulo Freire’s conscientização, or critical consciousness: ‘denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action’ (2000: 87). As Holden and Jacobson (2007a/b) have shown, the communities are engaged often as leaders in political opposition and protest when state plans begin to infringe upon local lands and groups. They describe opposition by the Catholic faithful on the island of Mindanao to government/corporate efforts to expand the mining sector, and the people are well informed about mining through the network of communities and seminars. For instance, the Marcopper tailings spill of 1996 serves as a comprehensive reference for the potential for socio-environmental damage (Holden and Jacobson 2007a/b). Likewise, some international blunders are well known within the BEC network as well, such as the social and ecological fallout from the Ok Tedi mine disaster in Papua New Guinea (see Jorgensen 1997; 2006). Because of this the church has entered debates on environmental issues and natural resource management, setting up ecology desks within many social action centres. What is of further interest is the language of development being constructed by those involved in the movement as they negotiate how best to act as moral agents of change on the landscape. Distinguishing key words and premises have been incorporated into the Basic Ecclesial Community lexicon, such as building a Church of the Poor, total human development, God’s Word as preference for the poor, and the integrity of Creation. These core ­concepts, when taken alongside Paulo Freire’s pedagogical principles of seeing, judging and acting, foster a radical social critique and method of action: the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side (Freire 2000: 39). The melding of Biblical concepts, particularly those derived from liturgical reflection upon Jesus Christ’s Early Church, with concepts taken from Vatican II and the social sciences, form a grander metaphorical complex

Introduction 7 that gives meaning to the concept of local development and informs its practical implementation.

Peripheral development The emergence of BECs and their subsequent social action is a story of peripheral development in a world of global capitalism, peripheral in the sense of combinations of geographic, political, ideological and economic marginality. Although the focus of this study is rural communities, the concept of peripheral development eliminates the rural-urban spatial dyad that has been privileged in mainstream development parlance. Thus, in terms of this case study, rural is an intrinsic designation with little extrinsic connection to an essentialized urban other, and data produced contributes to a broad conceptual myriad of spatial instances of differential access to wealth and power. In so doing, cases of peripheral development can be envisioned as both independent and transcendent—existing between and within rural areas, between and within urban areas, and at the interstices of rural and urban. Once these instances of marginality are brought into focus and interrogated, they can be measured against the mainstream-economic benchmark that has informed development policy for the better part of the last 150 years. The concept of local development on the margins of the greater world economy has been a central concern of critical development studies over the last few decades, and perhaps the most liberating discourse to emerge is postdevelopment theory. It presents an ideal concept of community development, locally organized and locally cooperative in terms of production and distribution. Postdevelopment is not about finding the latest academic approach to developing people; rather, it encompasses the idea of new systems of community action—new ways of imagining and practicing development—and this makes it a good theoretical starting point for the present research. Indeed, the BEC movement and literature does reframe local development, community and church within a unique language, and this new discourse of community action is shaping, and being shaped by, local practices throughout the country. What remains to be seen, however, is if certain affinities between postdevelopment and BECs leave us with a positive confirmation of postdevelopment or novel complications to be considered. Finally, we must consider connections to recent literature on faith-based organizations and how they are asking important social questions and engaging with social problems. Recently scholars have been documenting the myriad ways by which faith based groups are finding empowerment as they participate in officially secular matters, representing a resurgence of religion in everyday life and a revitalization of religious identity (Berger 1999; Clarke 2006; Holden et al. 2017; Moxham 2017). Today, ‘the meanings and expressions of lived religion—as identity, belief, practice, and cultural process—continue to be decisively public issues’ (Olson et al. 2013: 1422).

8  Introduction Thus, in a world system of geographical differences, extreme economic diversity, and political disempowerment, there seems much fertile ground for the kind of civic action and belonging embodied in wider communities of faith. As will be seen, this case study of BECs in the Philippines is a contribution to the discourse of social and economic justice in a postsecular world.

Methods This research presents little of statistical value, instead reliant upon broad themes and categories that emerged through dialogue with informants, analysis of programs, and participant observation. Primary data was produced in the Diocese of San Carlos during one field season in 2010, with subsequent clarification and updates from key informants over the years 2011–2016. Three rural villages welcomed me over the course of fieldwork, and I also spent time in San Carlos City, which is the headquarters of both Church and social action for the diocese. Primary data was produced through a number of qualitative methods, including in-depth, semi-­ structured interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation of community dynamics, particularly in regards to the cooperation of labour and spiritual commitments. Perhaps the most significant tool at my disposal was the open-ended question, an important method for gaining access to the diverse perspectives of participants in a study. Central to the process was informal conversation and a set of interview questions that served as a guideline but in no way inhibited spontaneity or natural flow. Narratives of environment, life history, and personal aspiration proved most valuable, allowing the voices, actions, and concerns of the participants to weave a story of local livelihood, community, development, and faith in one diocese in the Philippines. I hope that a useful picture of local culture, geography, and history has emerged. The bulk of informants to this study remain anonymous, with pseudonyms assigned. The reason is twofold. First, the use of real names requires a participant’s signature on a piece of paper that is kept as a record. Due to army, landlord, government, and corporate abuses in the past, including land dispossession, incarceration and murder, informants expressed apprehension about putting their names on a piece of paper. From the outset, the paper was a bone of contention, and I quickly stopped bringing it to interviews. Second, some informants, particularly in the clergy where official opinions can be mandatory, admitted that they would be less likely to express themselves fully if they knew that future readers would be able to identify them. Five of the key participants, however, insisted upon being identified: Father Edwin, my lead contact and the social-­ action director for the diocese; Bishop Joe; Sisters Daisy and Helen, who run a mission school in the mountains; and Sister Milla, who operates a community centre.

Introduction 9 A last note regarding my affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church is necessary. Other than being godfather to one child born in Canada, I have no affiliation with Catholicism and I never have. Nor am I affiliated with any other Christian denomination or world religion. I entered the field a detached observer, compiling data on a social movement that just happened to be organized by the Catholic faithful. After travelling throughout one diocese committed to building a Church of the Poor, I left the field an optimistic believer in the power of faith-based communities and the value of social programs designed by the Church.

Chapter layout Chapters 2–6 present a synthesis of important literature, historical background, and new data produced on BECs. Chapter 2 elaborates upon the philosophical roots of BECs, beginning with the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II represents a push towards a Church that is much more concerned with secular matters, such as the social conditions of the faithful, and all humanity for that matter. The concept of Church set forth by Vatican II serves as foundation and inspiration for what many in the Philippine clergy hope to accomplish with BECs. Following this, the chapter introduces the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII), in many ways the Philippine echo of Vatican II. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines convened the Council in 1991, and the collected works of the Conference reiterate clerical reflection upon, critique of, and call for action to change, poverty and oppression. The remainder of the chapter grounds the BEC movement within critical development studies, with postdevelopment presented as the conceptual frame. Chapter 3 has two main sections. The first is an overview of the Republic of the Philippines that incorporates significant historical moments and eras within the broader political economy. The second half of the chapter is an introduction to the island of Negros, the site of fieldwork. Chapter 4 is an inventory and analysis of the social action and community development programs directed by the Diocese of San Carlos. The strengths and weaknesses of each program are discussed, and what is revealed is a complex machine of social action with which the diocese is able to spur its own vision of community empowerment under the banner of BECs. Chapter 5 scales down to focus upon BECs, in an effort to understand better the realities of local development action. The BEC discourse speaks about the power of local communities—lying latent, just waiting to be activated—and this is measured against local experiences with social action and community empowerment in the rural parishes. Place-based cultural cohesion of a number of groups, grounded in bible study, reflection upon common predicament and neighbourly help, is highlighted as key to the formation and continuance of BECs. Following this, community development and social action are discussed, and a series of political-economic and

10  Introduction cultural obstacles come to light. This leads into Chapter 6, in which the most effective scale of faith-based social action in the Philippines is conceptualized. The chapter begins with the level of BECs, and moves up to the diocese before addressing the discourse itself. In each of these sections, the potentials of, and limits to, social action are elaborated, and some recommendations are made. Chapter 6 concludes by tweaking the theoretical premise of postdevelopment in order to place BECs within the frame of ­critical development studies.

References Bello, W., H. Docena, M. de Guzman and M. Malig. 2005. The anti-development state: the political economy of permanent crisis in the Philippines. New York: Zed Books. Berger, P. 1999. The desecularization of the world: resurgent religion and world politics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. CBCP (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines). 1992. Acts and decrees of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines. Pasay City: Paulines Publishing. CIA World Fact Book. 2021. The Philippines. www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/rp.html. Accessed 04/07/2021. Clarke, G. 2006. Faith matters: faith-based organization, civil society and international development. Journal of International Development, 18(6), 835–48. Delotavo, A. 2006. Ethical considerations on ecclesio-political involvement: a Philippine people power case. Asian Journal of Theology, 20(2), 221–9. Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum. Gabriel, M. 2008. Doing theology: Basic Ecclesial Communities. Manila: Anvil. Gaspar, K. 1997. Abante, Atras, Abante: patterns of the Mindanao Catholic Church’s involvement in contemporary social issues. In M.C. Ferrer (ed), Civil society making civil society. Quezon City: The Third World Studies Centre, 149–70. Gutiérrez, G. 2003. We drink from our own wells: the spiritual journey of people. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Holden, W. and R. Jacobson. 2007a. Ecclesial opposition to mining on Mindanao: neoliberalism encounters the church of the poor in the land of promise. Worldviews, 11, 155–202. Holden, W. and R. Jacobson 2007b. Ecclesial opposition to nonferrous metals mining in the Philippines: neoliberalism encounters liberation theology. Asian Studies Review, 31(2), 133–54. Holden, W., K. Nadeau and E. Porio 2017. Ecological Liberation Theology: faith-based approaches to poverty and climate change in the Philippines. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Jorgensen, D. 1997. Who and what is a landowner? Mythology and marking the ground in a PNG mining project. Anthropological Forum, 7(4), 599–628. Jorgensen, D. 2006. Hinterland history: the Ok Tedi Mine and its cultural consequences in Telefolmin. The Contemporary Pacific, 18(2), 233–63. McCoy, A. 1984. Priests on trial. New York: Penguin Books. McCoy, A. 2009. Policing America’s empire: the United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Introduction 11 Moxham, C. 2017. Postdevelopment and nonsecularism in an officially secular state: faith-based social action in the Philippines. Journal of International Development, 29(3), 370–85. Nadeau, K. 2002. Liberation theology in the Philippines: faith in a revolution. Westport, CT: Praeger. Nadeau, K. 2005. Christians against globalization in the Philippines. Urban Anthropology, 34(4), 317–39. NASSA (National Secretariat on Social Action). 2013. Mission. www.nassa.org. ph/?page_id=2. Accessed 08/04/2013. Olson, E., P. Hopkins, R. Pain and G. Vincett. 2013. Retheorizing the postsecular present: embodiment, spatial transcendence, and challenges to ­authenticity among young Christians in Glasgow, Scotland. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 1421–36. Picardal, A. 2005. BECs in the Philippines: renewing and transforming. In J. Healy and J. Hinton (eds), Small Christian communities today: capturing the new moment. New York: Orbis Books, 117–22. Pomeroy, W. 1992. The Philippines: colonialism, collaboration, and resistance. New York: International Publishers.

2

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines Philosophical Roots and a Place in Critical Development Studies

Establishing a link between critical development studies and the Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) movement in the Philippines seems a natural exercise; over the last 40 years, the crossing points of broad-based social movements around the world, developments in the social sciences and official Roman Catholic doctrine are rather explicit. For instance, the BEC concept of total human development, which is perhaps the central tenet of the movement, traces a lineage to the Second Vatican Council and its pervasive theme of integral development, a theme championed throughout the papacy of Paul VI (1963–1978): liberation, or development, ‘cannot be contained in the simple and restricted dimension of economics, politics, social or cultural life; it must envisage the whole man, in all his aspects’ (Paul VI 1975). Popes John XXIII (1958–1963) and Paul VI are among the first in the Vatican hierarchy to address deeply, and officially, the issue of economic development, in order to ‘evaluate and find a solution to economic, social, political and cultural problems which affect the universal common good’ (John XXIII 1963). What begins to emerge is a radical critique of the world system, much inspired by certain strands of Marxism, such as dependency theory, as well as what will become known popularly as neocolonialism: ‘nations on the road to progress [that] desire to participate in the goods of modern civilization … continually fall behind while very often their dependence on wealthier nations deepens … Although nearly all peoples have become autonomous, they are far from being free of every form of undue dependence’ (SVC 1965b). Interestingly the very term development is quickly abandoned in Church doctrine due to its association with the dominance and exploitation of the rich over the poor, and liberation becomes the core principle: One of the most important reasons for this turn of events is that development—approached from an economic and modernizing point of view—has been frequently promoted by international organizations closely linked to groups and governments which control the world economy … In this light, to speak about the process of liberation begins to appear more appropriate and richer in human content. DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-2

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 13 Liberation in fact expresses the inescapable moment of radical change which is foreign to the ordinary use of the term development (Gutiérrez 1988: 17). Certain themes of Vatican II shed meaningful light on the social-action prerogative of BECs, such as the indivisibility of culture, economy, and political community, but along the path to liberation the story of BECs is enriched further by key developments in the social sciences, such as grassroots participation, inclusion of local voices in planning, and challenging the one-size-fits-all models of mainstream economics. This chapter philosophically grounds the contemporary BEC movement within official Roman Catholic doctrine dating to the 1960s, and within Philippine Church doctrine dating to the 1990s, before establishing connections to academic approaches to development.

Vatican II The First Vatican Council (1869–1870), under the leadership of Pope Pius IX, convened to address certain developments in modern European society that were running counter to the teachings of the Church. In general, the social ills on the continent were chalked up to excessive rationalism, liberalism, and materialism, each of which was a challenge to the traditional values and social hierarchy of the times. The Church settled upon a reactionary path of biblical literalism and medieval scholastic philosophy as a means to counter these potential threats (Hales 1958; Kirch 1913). In so doing, the Church attempted to separate its teachings and matters of faith from nonspiritual issues, and it found refuge in an insular, dogmatic constitution predicated on mystical matters and the infallibility of the pope. This insularity continued a lineage of Catholic thought dating to the 16th century, whereby ‘the Church moved through history more or less ­unaffected by history’ (O’Malley 1983: 392). By the 1950s many in the clergy were questioning this path and searching for a way to make the Church more relevant to the faithful masses living in modern times. They sought a revived Christianity that would be an active force in the modern world, one that engaged with social and economic issues, such as famine, disease, vice, ignorance, and economic exploitation (McVeigh 1974). The new narrative of action did not appeal to all, however, and there were clashes among liberal, conservative, and radical clerics in the upper ranks of officialdom. In 1959 Pope John XXIII, a mere few months into his papacy, chose to address these concerns and, much to the chagrin of conservatives in the Church hierarchy, announced a Second Vatican Council. The intention of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was to make the Church more active in the material lives of the faithful, particularly those Catholics marginalized by political oppression and/or economic

14  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines exploitation. The world over, people were dealing with the harsh realities of late-modernity: the parasitic reach of capital into distant lands; the conversion of entire populations into wage labourers; de-colonial encounters with dictatorship; ethnic conflict and nationalist struggles; and warfare over resources. Similar to a number of other social movements at the time, including the US civil-rights movement, feminism, anti-Vietnam war protests, and the world revolution of 1968, many in the Church felt they could no longer turn a blind eye in the face of such structured disempowerment. They wanted the clergy, particularly at the parish level, to move beyond mere spiritual leadership and become community advocates for meaningful change: ‘by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God’ (SVC 1964), new relationships among the faithful would lead to new methods for solving problems of an economic, social, political, or cultural character (John XXIII 1961). Concomitantly, many wanted to see a more active role for the laity, promoting their empowerment as community activists and local church leaders as well: the laity have the duty of using their own initiative and taking action in this area—without waiting passively for directives and precepts from others. They must try to infuse a Christian spirit into people’s mental outlook and daily behavior, into the laws and structures of the civil community (Paul VI 1967); Those who are suited or can become suited should prepare themselves for the difficult, but at the same time, the very noble art of politics … and should seek to practice this art without regard for their own interests or for material advantages (SVC 1965b). Ultimately, Vatican II is a call to action for the faithful, a material break from the exclusively spiritual endeavours that had governed conduct in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, and a roadmap to liberation: The present in the praxis of liberation, in its deepest dimension, is pregnant with the future … To reflect upon a forward-directed action is not to concentrate on the past. It does not mean being the caboose of the present. Rather it is to penetrate the present reality, the movement of history, that which is driving history toward the future (Gutiérrez 1988: 11–12). The spiritual aspect of the Church, however, is not lost entirely in Vatican II. On the contrary, much of what is written revolves around mystical issues regarding the Church, the life and meaning of Jesus Christ, pastoral mandates for the clergy, and being a good Christian. Political matters among denominations are also addressed, particularly Catholic relationships with the Eastern and Protestant churches, both of whom were allowed to send guest observers to the Council. In the shadow of these matters, the social imperatives were carefully inserted into official publications of the Council, and the use at times of opaque wording and contradictory phraseology

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 15 creates a sense of neutrality that leaves certain passages open to interpretation. Nevertheless, there is much of a material value that can be extracted from the texts, particularly Gaudium et spes (SVC 1965b), which translates into Joy and hope. For instance, a general overview reveals a firm commitment to private property and private initiative, and a belief in the power of free individuals operating within a free market: ‘Private property or some ownership of external goods confers on everyone a sphere wholly necessary for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as an extension of human freedom[;] works produced by man’s own talent and energy … are a sign of God’s grace and the flowering of His own mysterious design’ (SVC 1965b). Although the market is presented as indispensable to the world economy, the Council, echoing Adam Smith, argues that it only functions under moral guidance: ‘In the economic and social realms, too, the dignity and complete vocation of the human person and the welfare of society as a whole are to be respected and promoted’ (SVC 1965b). Furthermore, the moral market is one predicated on the equitable redistribution of wealth among all groups of society, a concept referred to as the ‘universal destination of earthly goods’ (SVC 1965b): ‘the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation’ (Paul VI 1967). Vatican II, as a council on temporal issues, also upholds the nation-state division of the world system. States are considered ‘indispensable to civil society’ because of legal structures that exist in conformity with the ‘moral order’ (John XXIII 1963); they are ‘endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights’ (SVC 1965b). Although the ‘Church and the political community in their own fields are autonomous and independent from each other’, Vatican II recognizes the need for ‘some universal public authority’ (SVC 1965b) in order ‘to create world conditions in which the public authorities of each nation, its citizens and intermediate groups, can carry out their tasks, fulfill their duties and claim their rights with greater security’ (John XXIII 1963). Part of the reason for officially recognizing nation-state organization is a belief that inequity and conflict are now rampant on a global scale and international action necessitates the coordinated action of states: As these mutual ties binding the men of our age one to the other grow and develop, governments will the more easily achieve a right order the more they succeed in striking a balance between the autonomous and active collaboration of individuals and groups, and the timely coordination and encouragement by the State of these private undertakings (John XXIII 1961); civil progress and economic development are the only road to peace (Paul VI 1967). Thus independent states acting freely but in conjunction with one another are the proper scale of development intervention in an unjust world system.

16  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines The common good, or ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily’ relies upon peace, sound state and judicial power, environmental protection, and a commitment to basic human rights (SVC 1965b). Scaling down to local people and communities, Vatican II addresses a number of social issues, including labour relations, property rights, the environment, the promotion of peace, and the limits to social action. In terms of labour the Church emphasized the dignity of the worker, drawing upon images of Christ at his carpenter’s bench, and called for the wages of labour ‘to be such that man may be furnished the means to cultivate worthily his own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of his dependents’ (SVC 1965b). It was argued that a just wage must support a natural right to basic subsistence that takes precedence over the contract between employee and employer. Then, as if borrowing a page right out of John Locke’s Second treatise of government (1690), labour is deemed the source of private property, as man develops the earth and reaps its fruits through his own efforts. Private property thus ‘assure[s] a person a highly necessary sphere for the exercise of his personal and family autonomy and ought to be considered as an extension of human freedom’ (SVC 1965b). It is an intrinsic right of all individuals and a means to individual financial stability. However, man must not take more than what is necessary, for private property is not an end in itself and is only ever a means to achieve the universal destination of goods (Paul VI 1967). Thus the right to private property is upheld within a framework of redistribution among small holders, as opposed to landownership in the hands of the few. And here the affinities with John Locke taper off, for the Council maintains his original concept of moral property rights based upon effort and stewardship, but reconfirms its commitment to redistribution. (Locke, on the other hand, shortly thereafter abandons his moral economy with the introduction of money, which is used to buy other peoples’ labour, which in turn produces private property for someone else.) On the environmental front, resources are determined to be the natural right of all to share: man ‘received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all it contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness’ (SVC 1965b). Further, the Church is committed to ecological management and preservation for the next generation: We are the heirs of earlier generations, and we reap benefits from the efforts of our contemporaries; we are under obligation to all men. Therefore we cannot disregard the welfare of those who will come after us to increase the human family. The reality of human solidarity brings us not only benefits but also obligations (Paul VI 1967). In these statements defence of ecology and place become moral obligations, and the management of a healthy commons that is able to provide for the present and future multitudes is encouraged.

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 17 Social action as a means to achieve a just society is the natural accompaniment to many of the topics of Vatican II, and it is the final outcome of reflection upon human affairs in their totality. Social action is a duty of the faithful, who must organize into a proactive political community in order to prevent inequalities from exacerbating or spreading (John XXIII 1963). People ‘will come to decisions on their own judgment and in the light of truth, govern their activities with a sense of responsibility, and strive after what is true and right, willing always to join with others in cooperative effort’ (SVC 1965a). Pope John Paul II echoes this sentiment two decades later: ‘this love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better future’ (1987). The ultimate goal of, and means to, social action is peace on earth, resulting ‘from that order structured into human society by its divine Founder, and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice’ (SVC 1965b).

Second Plenary Council of the Philippines The Second Vatican Council was both inspirational and influential for Catholics the world over. One regional answer to Vatican II was the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII), which sought to blend aspects of Vatican II with more recent writings by John Paul II: ‘Before today’s forms of exploitation of the poor, the Church cannot remain silent’ (John Paul II 1985). Convened in 1991, the Plenary Council reiterated a number of the more mystical aspects of Vatican II, such as the way of Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and the cult of Mary, but it goes further than its predecessor in focusing on material circumstances, fully grounding the social discourse of Vatican II within the context of Philippine society: Thus, on the economic side: The poverty and destitution of the great mass of our people are only too evident, contrasting sharply with the wealth and luxury of the relatively few families, the elite top of our social pyramid. And on the political side: Power and control are also elitist, lopsidedly concentrated on established families that tend to perpetuate themselves in political dynasties (CBCP 1992: 12). These politico-economic realities are interpreted as part of the many outcomes of sin: We can see the terrible effects of sin and sinful structures in the many uncared for and malnourished children of our unjust society, the wretchedness of the jobless and the homeless, the proliferation of crimes, the pervasiveness of graft and corruption, the lack of peace and order, or the horrors of war. Sin shows itself in suffering, in the myriad

18  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines suffering faces that demonstrate the degradation of the human person and human society, and in the destruction of our environment that lays bare the evil shortsightedness of human greed (CBCP 1992: 34). Within this framework of structured sin the BEC is presented as a force of good, ‘emerging at the grassroots among poor farmers and workers’ (CBCP 1992: 52), and offering a site of place-based social renewal and ‘hope for the universal Church’ (Paul VI 1975). Building upon the network of BECs, diocesan, regional and national levels of organization become effective scales of change as well. Evangelization takes on a role beyond basic spiritual growth, moving beyond the building of the church, promoting ‘total human development, integral liberation, justice and peace’ (CBCP 1992: 70). This requires (i) new participatory methods by which the laity is empowered and becomes witness to the sins in society and (ii) diocesan social-action centres that encourage social awareness, organize disaster relief, train the people for economic self-reliance, and stand up for the poor and marginalized. Although secular in substance, it must be stressed that all of these social prerogatives rest upon a firm spiritual foundation: ‘Without education towards maturity in the faith, the social apostolate will become activism and will fall prey to the temptations of unchristian ideologies’ (CBCP 1992: 68). The empowerment of the people under PCP II has a number of key goals. First, development must fully address the social significance of livelihood vis-à-vis the mere economic significance. It must be geared towards the whole person and the whole community. Second, private property must be adapted from its present parasitic form into a fundamental right for all. This will serve the ultimate purpose of the universal destination of goods, and correct the vast imbalances between rich and poor people and rich and poor countries alike. Third, social justice must displace dishonesty in the marketplace, unjust wages, graft, and corruption. The common good, therefore, is a justice measured against the present system of entitlement and exclusion, a system that has only delivered ‘short term benefits for the few’ and ‘long term disaster for the many’ (CBCP 1992: 104). Fourth, peace and active non-violence are the methods of change, directly countering both the institutionalized violence embedded in Philippine society and the force of arms for which South American liberation theology is known. This also toes the line drawn by Pope John Paul II during visits to the Philippines in the 1980s: ‘He warned the workers that violence has to be rejected as an option … Violence leads to violence; hatred begets hatred; coming from whatever sources, these means have to be condemned because they destroy rather than build man’s inner worth’ (Gabriel 1999: 81). The passive (and effective) option of resistance includes rallies, assemblies, marches, demonstrations, and worker strikes. Fifth, the integrity of creation implies humans working towards environmental conservation. PCP II singles out logging, mining, and over-fishing as ecologically destructive activities that violate God’s creation, and it encourages community stewardship for healthy,

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 19 sustainable landscapes. And last, people power is envisioned as the quintessential source of democratic change: In the context of our society today, where the poor and marginalized have little genuine participation, and when the brief but brilliant moments of our liberation have been made possible because of “people power,” we realize that the integral development of people will be possible only with their corresponding empowerment. Today we understand “people power” to subsume basic ideas that go beyond the mere gathering of people in support of a cause. We understand “people power” to include greater involvement in decision-making, greater equality in both political and economic matters, more democracy, more participation (CBCP 1992: 112–13).

A place for BECs in the development literature The prospect of social development in the Philippines through BECs offers an insightful contribution to the development literature. For instance, BEC activism, grassroots organization, wealth redistribution, and the writing of new discourses are all directives firmly grounded in the postdevelopment literature. Yet some BECs embrace the market and work within neoliberal formations, confounding one of the central premises of postdevelopment theory; namely, anti-capitalism. Regardless, for the present case study postdevelopment theory is a good point of departure, for it stresses the autonomous genesis of local group action. Furthermore, it is diametrically opposed to any development that is devised by Western academics, state government or international institutions and dropped in the lap of impoverished communities. BECs with active development programs have come about for the most part without the primary management of outside players, instead relying on a network internal to the movement, information about other successful projects, and the knowledge and motivations of members searching for local solutions to poverty. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, postdevelopment encompasses the idea of new and novel systems for thinking and doing development, and the BEC literature does reframe social action within its own unique language of change. The selection of postdevelopment as an underlying premise of this study, however, requires a full grasp of the concept that includes theoretical amendments and new practical directions over the last decade or so. Such a full grasp begins with the history of mainstream development as discourse and practice. Since the mid-19th century, when development came to be associated with ‘certain ideas of the nature of economic change’ (Williams 1988: 103), development as both philosophy and practice has been highly contested. Practicing development implies action, and this can be traced to one of the overarching mandates of the enlightenment: interfering in human systems because knowledge and technology are a means to correct problems in the

20  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines world and arrive at certain agreed-upon ends. In their history of mainstream development, Cowen and Shenton (1995) note that development came to be considered the key to progress in the 19th century. At home in Europe extreme poverty, social unrest, and frantic urbanization had materialized as countries steamrollered through industrialization (see Engels 1987), and in the colonies the industrial project was not being replicated and economies were stagnating (Cowen and Shenton 1995). The remedy was development, and a new discourse and repertoire of practices came about, influenced by advances in the natural sciences, such as linear modelling, reduction of data to specific variables, and evolutionary theories of universal stages of progress. These new premises soon became common-sense mechanisms with which to understand and control entire societies. They also became the intellectual bedrock of European expansionism, classism, and racism, whereby Europeans were mandated to interfere with all others in an effort to rope and corral the savages into modernity. Along the way the narrative of development became truly hegemonic as it spilled over into popular parlance, discussed in coffee shops, newspapers, and citizens’ groups, and as it transferred into different genres of popular culture, such as literature: He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, “must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might as of a deity,” and so on, and so on. “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,” etc., etc. (Joseph Conrad 1995). Within this rational framework it is clear that society came to be understood as something to be affected—something mouldable—and development could be achieved through purposeful manipulation based on a rational order of progress. After the Second World War the United States became the rallying powerhouse of Western modernization, and development policy honed in on higher scales of intervention, such as states and geographical regions. A central mandate was the active incorporation of more territories within the US sphere of influence, although p ­ olicy was often couched in terms of spreading democracy, freedom, human rights, and general progress. President Harry Truman’s Inaugural Address (20 January 1949) ­captures the moment: we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 21 possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve suffering of these people. The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible. Proper economic development was a progression towards Western industrial capitalism, and this informed an entire lexicon of social transformation, with words serving as the great metaphors of progress, such as nation-­building, democratization, secularism, freedom, liberation, equality, initiative, and independence. Furthermore, Keynesian economic policy dominated, and this gave government a directive role in the economy. Over the last three decades of the 20th century, however, mainstream development has tilted further and further towards a market-directed mandate vis-à-vis governments, influencing massive reforms throughout the world. Some reforms have been voluntarily adopted, with the promises of wealth generation and the trickle-down effect of increased general welfare. Some reforms have been forced, particularly on the developing world, by wealthy patron countries and lending organizations, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, that insist upon business-friendly structural adjustments when lending moneys to client countries. Ultimately, the present narrative of progress relies upon an implacable faith in the market and the ability of impoverished groups to work their way out of destitution, if only they properly participate in the global division of labour (usually by offering labour to the world market at the lowest prices). Within this world system the proceeds of local/regional development often exit communities and poorer countries as fast as they are realized, and for the masses local development remains but a dream. If we reduce the focus on our lens of inquiry, the broad picture is a spatially uneven world where former colonial powerhouses tend to be wealthier centres, and previous colonies tend to be the poorer backwaters of globalization.

Challenging the mainstream By the 1970s a certain level of popular and academic ‘dissatisfaction with mainstream development crystallized into an alternative, people-centred approach’ that was adopted by basic-needs, rights-based, and alternative development practitioners—at times associated with anti-capitalism, green ecology, feminism, democratization, and poststructural analysis (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 346). New schemes came to be associated with working from below, incorporating culture, local environment and geographical history within models and mandates. The ‘library world’ of academic knowledge was given secondary importance to a more genuine knowledge belonging to the people, and methods became ‘practice oriented rather than theoretically

22  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines inclined’ (351). Postdevelopment traces a lineage to these new schemes, and theorists present a rationale for complete abandonment of all previous development policies and discourses, rhetorically teetering on the edge of nothing less than a paradigm shift. Escobar, a leading intellectual voice of postdevelopment, states that, rather than needing more development, the developing countries of the world require ‘a different regime of truth and perception’ (1995: 414). All previous approaches to development, whether within academic or policy circles, uncritically assume economic development is the solution to major world problems. This assumption fails to address the fact that development is an historical object, in and of itself worthy of scrutiny. In essence conventional approaches never came to terms with the socially constructed nature of development as discourse and praxis. It is because of this incapacity to recognize the ideological threads woven through modernization that policies have failed so entirely as to have realized the exact opposite effects, such as increasing instances of poverty, exploitation, malnutrition, and exploitation (Escobar 1995). In the end the entire corpus of development knowledge is called into question, a body of knowledge that for a very long time has held a franchise on truth production. All taken together, this has served to support the objectives and goals of modernization, which in turn serve to solidify a hegemonic system. Some of the more obvious goals include (i) an extension of power by developed countries over those still developing, (ii) the incorporation of autonomous communities, in terms of ideology, property, markets, and labour, into the international system, (iii) a change in society based upon Western ideals, and (iv) the opening of resource frontiers and cultural backwaters to capital accumulation. Once development is recognized as a product of discourse and tool of domination postdevelopment theorists are left with the hope of realizing new discourses and new conceptual models, derived locally and imbued with a myriad of voices—grassroots models that emphasize community planning and participation, environmental awareness, wealth redistribution, and mutual cooperation, to name a few. Such fresh concepts and models would completely abandon the discourse of mainstream development, not so much rewriting as simply writing new systems of meaning into daily life and productivity, leading to ‘the possibility of imagining a post-­development era, one in which the centrality of development as an organizing principle of social life would no longer hold’ (Escobar 2000: 11).

To where, from here? Perhaps the biggest questions yet to be answered are whether or not meaningful local development can be grown and sustained within a world of complex articulations among social groups and structuring processes at various scales of organization, and whether or not the problems inherent in the relations of global capitalism can be ameliorated in any program of

Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 23 development. At minimum postdevelopment compels us to theorize outside the box, but there also seems something truly generative within it: The challenge of postdevelopment is not to give up on development, nor to see all development practice—past, present and future, in wealthy and poor countries—as tainted, failed, retrograde; as though there were something necessarily problematic and destructive about deliberate attempts to increase social wellbeing through economic intervention; as though there were a space of purity beyond or outside development that we could access through renunciation. The challenge is to imagine and practice development differently (Gibson-Graham 2005: 6). Recently the praxis of different development has become central to studies of livelihood, economy, and place on the margins of international capitalism. For the present study the world-system economy is integral to analysis of the smaller-scale social transformations taking place, and groups of BECs are situated as participants in the economy (participants on the periphery of a peripheral country, for the time being). But the frame within which BECs must operate scales down one level as well, to that of the state. In many ways it is the Philippine state itself, as mediator of international exchange, facilitator of foreign and domestic capital accumulation, authority on development, and guarantor of a ruling elite, that is the most immediate structure-affecting livelihood for the masses (see Kelly 2005). The next chapter provides a broad social and historical overview of the Republic of the Philippines and the island of Negros, situating both within the global economy and bringing us up to speed on the wider structures within which the Diocese of San Carlos must conceptualize and construct its own different kind of development.

References CBCP Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. 1992. Acts and decrees of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines. Pasay City: Paulines Publishing. Conrad, J. 1995. Heart of darkness. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics. Cowen, M. and R. Shenton. 1995. The invention of development. In J. Crush (ed), The power of development. New York: Routledge, 27–43. Engels, F. 1987 [1845]. The condition of the working class in England. New York: Penguin Classics. Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Escobar, A. 2000. Beyond the search for a paradigm? Post-development and beyond. Development, 43(4), 11–14. Gabriel, M. 1999. John Paul II’s mission theology in Asia, 2nd edition. Mandaluyong City: Academic Publishing Corporation. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2005. Surplus possibilities: postdevelopment and community economies. Singapore Journal or Tropical Geography, 26(1), 4–26.

24  Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines Gutiérrez, G. 1988. A theology of liberation, 15th anniversary edition. New York: Orbis Books. Hales, E. 1958. The Catholic Church in the modern world. New York: Doubleday. John Paul II, Pope. 1985. The charism of Peter: to serve universal unity by protecting and defending the Gospel’s authenticity. L’Osservatore Romano, 21 January. John Paul II, Pope. 1987. Sollicitudo rei socialis. http://www.vatican.va/holy_ father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-­ reisocialis_en. Accessed 04/04/2011. John XXIII, Pope. 1961. Mater et magistra. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_ xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. John XXIII, Pope. 1963. Pacem in terris. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_ xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. Kelly, P. 2005. Scale, power and the limits to possibilities. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 26(1), 39–43. Kirch, K. 1913. Vatican Council. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton. Locke, J. 1980 [1690]. Second treatise of government. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. McVeigh, M. 1974. Vatican II and Uppsala: a comparison of two missionary documents. Missiology, 2(3), 327–347. Nederveen Pieterse, J. 1998. My paradigm or yours? Alternative development, post-development, reflexive development. Development and Change, 29, 343–373. O’Malley, J. 1983. Developments, reforms, and two great reformations: towards a historical assessment of Vatican II. Theological Studies, 44, 373–406. Ombion, K. and R. Azue. 2005. Negros: a bastion of landlord resistance. Bulatlat, 5(36). Paul VI, Pope. 1967. Populorum progressio. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_ vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. Paul VI, Pope. 1975. Evangelii nuntiandi. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_ vi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi_ en.html. Accessed 05/05/2013. SVC Second Vatican Council. 1964. Lumen gentium. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19641121_lumen-­ gentium_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. SVC Second Vatican Council. 1965a. Dignitatis humanae. http://www.vatican. va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_decl_19651207_­ dignitatis-humanae_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. SVC Second Vatican Council. 1965b. Gaudium et spes. http://www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_ gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed 04/04/2011. Williams, R. 1988. Keywords. London: Fontana Press.

3

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros

Part I: A state-level synthesis The Republic of the Philippines is a country of incredible diversity, both in terms of the land and its people—a place of sea shoals and ocean trenches, mountain ranges and plains, tropical and semi-arid climates, abundant natural resources, and unique human groups speaking dozens of languages— spread over thousands of islands. In trying to sort through it all, I have organized the material around three key themes: regionalism, marginality, and crisis. The first half of the chapter presents this state-level overview, and it provides a setting for the second half of the chapter, where the lens of inquiry is narrowed to focus on the island of Negros. Regionalism The Philippines is an archipelago of 7107 islands. Bordered by the South China, Celebes, and Philippine seas (Figure 3.1), the total sovereign area approximates 1.3 million square kilometres, of which 300,000 square kilometres are land. The islands are the result of orogenic forces acting upon the Pacific Rim of Fire, a belt of geo-tectonic activity that stretches from New Zealand, through Southeast Asia and Japan, over to Alaska, and down the west side of the Americas. Over geological time, the islands have formed, transformed, and collapsed along the faults and fissures of the Rim of Fire. Because of continuous, disjunctive, and uneven oceanic mountain-building processes over millions of years, the islands of the Philippines show a substantial degree of diversity, both physiographic and climatic. The physiography of the Philippines is one of regional variation among islands. Smaller islands can consist entirely of a flat stretch of arable land or a rocky cone that juts forth from the ocean. Nearly any blend of landforms is imaginable between these two extremes and can be found just across the water on an adjacent island. The larger islands demonstrate their own internal assortment of regions. For instance, Luzon, the largest island in the archipelago with 35 percent of the country’s land surface, is comprised of three mountain ranges that tower to 2700 metres, broad valleys, a central DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-3

26  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros

Figure 3.1  The Philippines

plain, a peninsula larger than most other Philippine islands, and the largest inland lake in Southeast Asia, Laguna de Bay. Mindanao, the second largest island, is irregularly shaped with deep bays and large peninsulas. It contains five mountain ranges and Mt Apo (2954 m), the highest peak in the country, as well as steep valleys, two large interior lowlands, and a number of swampy plains. Other sizable and diverse islands include Samar, Negros, Panay, and Mindoro. The physical characteristics of the country in many ways resemble those of countries on the coast of mainland Asia, with similarities in

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 27 geomorphology, climate, vegetation, and soils. In the Philippines rainfall varies between less than 100 mm in certain regions and greater than 500 mm in others, depending upon altitude, latitude, and distance from the coast. Partly resulting from this discrepancy is a high degree of differentiation in both vegetation and soil development; local landscapes range from stunted forests and grasslands to the heaviest and wettest of tropical forests. This physical variability coexists with regional differences along socio-cultural lines: ‘basic differences in language, religion, economy, and domestic dietary result from a long period of human occupation during which patterns of life have both yielded to environmental regionalisms and exploited these regional variations in significant manner’ (Wernstedt and Spencer 1967: 3). Far from deterministic, Wernstedt and Spencer imply that culture and environment mutually articulate with one another, commingling to produce unique life histories and cultural complexity. It is towards this social side of regional variation that we now turn. The Philippines has the 13 largest population in the world, estimated to have surpassed 110 million (CIA 2021) and divided among 80 provinces. Of the total population, nearly 90 percent are Christian, 6 percent are Muslim, and less than 2 percent practice Chinese religions (San Juan 2006). In general the majority of the population is considered to share the lowland peasant culture, which is a series of Malay cultures differentiated by pre-Hispanic culture, geography, and unique encounters with Christianity and Islam (San Juan 2006). Of this Malay family, there are 27 major ethnolinguistic groups, and the three largest, the Tagalog, the Cebuano, and the Ilocano, account for more than 50 percent of the population of the Philippines. Partly due to the ethnolinguistic variability, as well as the saliency of regional and island identities, there is little sense of a coherent national identity. Indeed, when trying to come to terms with Filipino nationalism one must accept a pluralized conception of the nation; there is not one but ‘many nationalisms across time and space, and with differing collective subjects/actors with changing state/civil society relationships, and differing meanings and discursive formations’ (Hogan 2006: 123). Thus the average Filipino is bound by allegiances rooted in multiple scales of identity formation that stretch horizontally across the landscape, and this overwhelms any attempt to invent a national self-referent that is accepted by the masses. Beyond sub-national identity, Philippine governance can be understood within a regional theme as well. The country is a presidential republic with a bicameral legislature, divided into 17 administrative regions. Historically, however, the authority of the state has been ‘diminished by difficult terrain, fragmented territory and ethnic diversity’ (de Dios 2007: 158). Today, a descending scale of levels of government includes (i) 80 provinces and 28 independent component cities, (ii) 1500 municipalities and 85 component cities, and (iii) 41,971 barangays, which are the smallest local-government unit, similar to villages or wards. Provinces are headed by governors, municipalities by mayors, and barangays by captains. The authority vested in each

28  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros of these tiers of local government increased after the election of President Corazon Aquino in 1986. She committed the Philippines to a neoliberal schedule of decentralization, shifting a fair degree of power, administrative function, and responsibility away from the state and towards lower levels of governance. Her policies came with the promise that local autonomy, innovative participation in local markets, and the discovery of comparative advantage would bring general development to depressed communities (Legaspi 2001). Thus the Local Government Code of 1991 institutionalized a new widespread set of relations between the centre and the regions, wherein previously state-controlled services, such as agriculture, health, social services, public works, and environmental management, were transferred to local government, along with shares of nationally collected tax revenues to cover operational costs (Legaspi 2001). But rolling back the state in the name of economic autonomy has not produced the general results anticipated, and the economy remains dominated by a handful of regional blocs. For instance, the central plain of Luzon, which is the largest lowland area, is also the most economically important. Agricultural production is dominated by large estates, with numerous tenants and few owners, as opposed to the smallholder farms that populate the mountain areas. As we will see, these circumstances are repeated on the island of Negros, where a select few families control the fertile plains of sugar production, and those who live on the mountain-margins subsist for the most part on smallholder rice production. What is apparent throughout the country, however, is incredible economic discrepancy between regions of surplus production and regions of utter deficit, and the particulars of this trend show very little divergence over time: there have been no major changes in Philippine economic geography over the past two decades; that is, the ranking of regions by socioeconomic indicators has changed relatively little. In fact, this has probably been the case for longer, though trends prior to the mid-1980s are less precisely measured (Hill et al. 2007: 41). Even within regions there is much variability; commercial agriculture competes side-by-side with subsistence agriculture, non-food crops are grown alongside food crops, and modern scientific growing technologies are employed side-by-side with traditional growing practices. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a field of industrial farm equipment worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars adjacent to a field being worked with a water buffalo and a wooden plough. The theme of regionalism in the Philippines would be incomplete if it did not address the contrast between the republic and bordering countries. To begin with, the historical development of the Philippines stands apart from its Southeast Asian neighbours in a number of ways. First, pre-­European Filipino societies were never incorporated into a kingdom, such as was the

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 29 case in China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Furthermore, due to an uninterrupted revolving door of colonial encounters (Spanish, English, Spanish, American, Japanese, American) and the predominance of Christianity, the Philippines can be conceptualized as ‘in but not of Asia’ (Hogan 2006: 115). Today, the division between the Philippines and its neighbours persists, particularly in terms of the economic successes of the latter. The Philippines is considered to be a developing country, and it stands out among many neighbours for its general levels of poverty and poor macro-economic showing over the last several decades. This despite the fact that after WWII the Philippines appeared in a strong position to outperform other Asian economies; state institutions were in place and the government was reasonably democratic, education standards were among the highest in the region, the island was not marred by extreme ethnic conflict, and the country had privileged access to the American economy (Balisacan and Hill 2002). Yet over the last half-century per-capita income of the Philippines has been outpaced by South Korea and Taiwan in the 1950s, Thailand in the 1970s, Indonesia in the 1980s, and China in the 1990s. Indeed the Philippines nearly missed out on the Asian explosion of the last few decades of the 20th century (Balisacan and Hill 2002). Bello et al. (2005) attribute the poor economic performance in the Philippines over the last 30 years to the business savvy of another group of regional neighbours, the Japanese. There has been a massive discrepancy between the levels of Japanese investment in the Philippines and investments in other countries in the region. Between 1985 and 1993 approximately USD 51 billion of Japanese capital poured into the Asia Pacific, but Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand each received upwards of 15 times more than the Philippines. The inconsistency is argued to be the result of Japanese business people identifying the Philippines as a weak site for growing capital markets, due in large part to the government priority of debt repayment (Bello et al. 2005). Unlike more predatory economic meddling, such as the American colonization of the Philippines, the Japanese sought to develop the entire Asia-Pacific region with multiple scales of internally diverse and healthy markets. Thus the Philippines, as an American resource and labour frontier, was not seen as a strong candidate for domestic growth. Today two important outcomes of these processes are an economy shackled to foreign capital and a stagnant domestic scene characterized by underinvestment in physical infrastructure (Hill et al. 2007). Altogether, the country is seen as a marginal entity among its more prosperous neighbours, and it is towards a more robust theme of marginality that we now turn. Marginality From the very first inklings of globalization till now, the Philippines can be understood as a country on the margins, with all that that implies. Indeed, if the first circumnavigation of the earth, completed by Ferdinand Magellan’s

30  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros crew (1519–22), is accepted as the original act of globalization (Davies 2004), then the original act of anti-globalization just may have been carried out 27 April 1521, when the warrior chief Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan at the Battle of Mactan, a small island off the coast of Cebu. But that opening act of resistance was unable to halt the coming tide of global change, of which European colonization was a significant part. The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the archipelago, the Guy Gómez de Villalobos expedition (1543–45), was an outright failure by most estimates, although it forever stamped the inhabitants of the islands with the name of a 14-year-old Spanish prince (Scott 1982). The real colonial encounter began 13 February 1565, when Miguel López de Legazpi landed and established San Miguel on the island of Cebu. Once in place, the colony fell under the administration of Mexico City from the years 1596 to 1821 (excluding a brief interruption by British occupation, 1762–64). Although originally chosen by the Spanish for strategic purposes—safe military ports adjacent to Asia, safe portage for goods travelling between Asia and the Americas—it was later realized that both the native peoples and the land were resources that could serve new global markets. The new land that de Legazpi reported to the Spanish crown was one of small, scattered settlements, primarily located along coastal areas and rivers—nothing approaching the size of a modern European city or the cities encountered in Mesoamerica and Asia, let alone a state with military and bureaucratic control (Anderson 1998). The population of the archipelago in the 16th century is estimated to have been two million people, and the few larger settlements that had developed with Chinese and Arab trade, in the central plain of Luzon and around what would become the national capital, seldom exceeded a few thousand individuals (Newson 2006). Predominantly the indigenous islanders congregated in small political communities, or barangays, held together by ethnolinguistic and kinship ties, and separated one from another by local terrain: barangay, a term that stemmed from the Tagalog word for “boat.” The majority of precolonial Filipino societies had a tripartite class structure, one with which early modern Europeans could easily identify and empathize: nobility, their free supporters, and serfs. Each barangay was ruled by a hereditary datu … whereas the timawa and maharlika were born free, and the alipin … were considered serfs or slaves (Irving 2010: 34). Each community was largely self-sufficient and group cohesion was fostered by a dense network of social bonds (Hill et al. 2007). In barangay ­­society there was no concept of private property in land; chiefs, or datu, acted as administrators of the lands, and individuals ‘participated in the community ownership of the soil and the instruments of production’ (Constantino 2008: 36). The pre-Hispanic political organization would prove indispensable to the

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 31 maintenance of social control under colonial rule, and the power vested in chiefs led to the first indigenous upper class in the colony, the principalía (de Dios 2007). Lack of colonial resources in the hinterlands translated into a powerful role for the Catholic Church, which served as arbiter between the Spanish authority and the indigenous peoples. Indeed, for two centuries, colonial subjects had almost no contact with secular administrators, and the friars, on a divine mission to combat heathenism, were dispersed into subdivided territories allocated to specific religious orders (Aguilar 1998). As political intermediaries, the clergy set about learning the numerous local languages and used them to intercede in colonial affairs as true cultural middlemen, leaving the Spanish language to officialdom. Inevitably, clerical acumen in local language facilitated widespread conversions to Catholicism, but it also was counter-hegemonic to Spanish administration, delivering substantial power right into the laps of the priests: the ‘monopoly on linguistic access to the natives gave them an enormous power which no secular group shared; fully aware of this, the friars persistently opposed the spread of the Spanish language’ (Anderson 2006: 87). Incorporating the indigenous into the emerging world system led to a drastic spatial reordering of the landscape. The policy of reducción relocated many into new larger centres, built around a church and governed by a local friar and his principalía. This greatly changed indigenous social structures, and it served as an effective means to control colonial subjects, especially by dispossessing them of their primary means of production, the land. Customary tenure all but disappeared under resettlement as communal lands were transformed into private property, and indigenous social forms were reconfigured to be more effectively exploitable by the colonizers. By the 1850s friar lands were the only sites of large-scale agriculture, and the ‘quarrelling Orders’ of clergy, fighting over parcels of land, ‘pioneered commercial agriculture’ and laid down the roots of a hacienda system (Anderson 1998: 195): the set-up which emerged was an artificial one, an imposition from without, a transplantation of decaying institutions of a feudal nature from a conquering country with a growing capitalist base. Therefore, while feudalism in Europe antedated capitalism, in the Philippines feudal relations … were a consequence of capitalist incursion (Constantino 2008: 39). Thus the Spanish brought the inhabitants of the Philippines into the European network of trade and strategic alliance through a political-­ economic system centred on large land holdings and the production of cash crops, such as sugar, tobacco, and copra. As a result, over the course of a few hundred years most indigenous subsistence bases were eroded and a new class of landless peasants was created.

32  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros Similar to numerous other European colonial encounters, the colony was divided socio-politically along racial or ethnic lines. Peninsulars, or whites of Spanish descent born in Spain, were the original elite, holding military and colonial-administrative positions, and owning land. Creoles, or whites of Spanish descent born in the colony, came second and tended to hold government and church positions. The mestizos were a mixed population, half indigenous and half Spanish or Chinese, and as merchants and cultural brokers they were third from the top in the social layer cake. Next came significant immigrant groups, such as Muslims and Chinese, followed by the indio, or indigenous peoples, who were the lowest class of citizens in Spain’s Las Islas Filipinas. This hodgepodge hierarchy led to numerous race-relevant skirmishes, particularly in larger centres, such as Manila. There, by the 1860s, ‘pride, envy, place-hunting, and caste hatred’ between peninsulars and creoles, and between whites and mestizos, were ‘the order of the day’ (Jagor 1965: 16). Inevitably, one group would come out on top, and by the end of the 19th century the country’s economy was predominantly controlled by the mestizos, who had become a small class of landed elite with a focus on export crops. Mestizo wealth culminated in an inter-island mestizo power-bloc rooted in regional hacienda agriculture, the groundwork for today’s Philippine version of democracy: By 1907, therefore, the foundations of political leadership in the Philippines had been established. These foundations consisted of the contending factions or blocs in provincial politics, which, in turn, were based on the contending alliances in the towns. And the latter were made up of the leading families. The family invested the party with its interests, and the party escorted and ushered the family into politics (Corpuz 1965: 97). By the end of the 20th century 44 percent of all arable land in the Philippines was owned by 5.5 percent of all landowning families, and nearly all elected offices at the national level were controlled by as few as 100 families (Vatikiotis 1996). But now we have jumped ahead, for the 20th century in the Philippines is a complex history that began abruptly in 1901 when the Americans arrived. The lure of land and labour on the margins of capitalism must have been weighing heavily upon the Americans when they colonized the archipelago, and the sacrifice of 4200 American soldiers and upwards of 200,000 Filipino civilians was a justifiable cost. By 1902 the two most pressing objectives of the new American colonial administration were the further development of plantations and the expansion of the mining industry (Pomeroy 1992). The Americans upheld the manorial system as a means for American corporations to gain access to landownership (Nadeau 2005), and exploration geologists began to identify enclaves of mineral potential, particularly copper, gold, lead, nickel, silver, and zinc.

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 33 In 1946 the Philippines was granted political independence from the United States. However, economic interdependence persisted and, in exchange for helping to rebuild the country after WWII, the US strong-armed the new republic into accepting trade agreements that essentially made ‘the Philippines a supplier of cheap raw materials and human resources … and a receiving ground for U.S.-manufactured goods’ (Schirmer and Shalom 1987: 90). Over the last half century mining has poisoned naturally productive areas and displaced communities, renewable stocks of natural resources such as wood and fish have been decimated, and the average Filipino has experienced a decrease in living standards. Official unemployment rates hover just below 6 percent, and at least 16 percent of the population lives below the Asia-Pacific poverty line, equivalent to USD 1.25 per day (CIA 2021). Three quarters of the officially impoverished are rural poor engaged in agriculture, many of whom are indentured to the landowning mestizos who dominate government. Crisis Crises are an ongoing problem in the Philippines, with roots in both the perennial political-economic instability and the numerous seasonal natural disasters. Social crises have often served to solidify the power of the elite and international organizations over the general Filipino populace, and Bankoff (1999) goes so far as to argue that the increasing gap between rich and poor in the Philippines is possibly the result of the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters that exacerbate social inequity. Such disasters include typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and lahars, and location within a tropical climatic zone along the Rim of Fire is the primary reason. For instance, the eruptions of Mayon Volcano, the most active in the archipelago, are the result of the continental Eurasian plate riding overtop of the Philippine oceanic plate. Another large and active volcano is Mt Pinatubo, whose 1991 eruption was the second largest terrestrial volcanic event of the 20th century. Tectonic activity in the region is responsible for earthquakes as well. Although the islands are affected daily by numerous smaller seismic events, larger earthquakes, such as the one that hit Luzon in 1990, can be devastating, killing thousands and destroying villages and infrastructure. Also, earthquakes can generate tsunamis, and a wave slammed into the island of Mindoro in 1994, killing 62 people and demolishing 800 homes. The tropical climate adds its own variety of disasters. Between 14 November and 4 December 2004 a succession of four tropical depressions and typhoons slammed into the eastern coast of Luzon, triggering landslides and floods that killed 1600 people (Gaillard and Liamzon 2007). In 2009 typhoon Ketsana wreaked havoc on the capital and 25 provinces, causing USD 73,680,000 in infrastructural ruin, damaging 42,566 homes and killing hundreds of people (Pulhin et al. 2010). In 2013 Yolanda/Haiyan became the deadliest typhoon

34  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros in Philippine history, and the strongest storm at landfall ever recorded, killing more than 6200 people and causing USD 1.5 billion in damage. When nature is not disrupting life the politics of corruption, mismanagement, and cronyism—three realities for which the Philippines is internationally renowned—can be counted on to foment crises. Since independence from the United Sates, the political landscape is best understood as cacique democracy (Anderson 1998), wherein an elite group of dynasties, almost exclusively of mestizo descent, has maintained politico-economic dominance as a bloc. Within this system the landowning caciques have somehow held their bloc together while waging an internal war among themselves over government revenue and what can only be described as the private enterprise of public office. This struggle is presented like celebrity gossip by the country’s national media, and tabloid-style journalism serves up corruption as a little joke meant to entertain the masses. Indeed, attention to systemic poverty and lack of development is deflected by a who’s who of naughtiness among the ruling elite. But it is not a joke, and much of the political landscape is one of violent factionalism and regional conflict among elected politicians, warlords, and private armies, with deleterious effects on the greater population: the behaviour of elites is cynical and opportunistic. If there are competitive elections, they become a bloody zero-sum struggle in which everything is at stake and no one can afford to lose. Ordinary people are not truly citizens but clients of powerful local bosses, who are themselves the clients of still more powerful patrons. Stark inequalities in power and status create vertical chains of dependency, secured by patronage, coercion, and demagogic electoral appeals to ethnic pride and prejudice. Public policies and programs do not really matter, since rulers have few intentions of delivering on them anyway. Officials feed on the state, and the powerful prey on the weak. The purpose of government is not to generate public goods, such as roads, schools, clinics, and sewer systems. Instead, it is to produce private goods for officials, their families, and their cronies (Diamond 2008: 42).

Part II: The island of Negros Even today, there are millions of peasants, small farmers and producers, artisans and workshop producers and repairers along with those pursuing alternative lifestyles or more simply coping with lack of opportunities for incorporation within the capitalist system, whose connection to the accumulation of capital is either loose or tangential … This vast army of people provides both a potential labour reserve as well as a potential market (David Harvey 2011). January 2010, an El Niño season unfolding in the Philippines and the roads along the northeast coast of the island are hot and thick with humidity.

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 35 It is explained that the land is drier already than usual for January. (Within a mere few months the newspapers will be reporting the billions of pesos in crop loss and the devastation to the marine fishing industry, rocked by warm nutrient-poor waters flowing throughout the archipelago.) The air conditioning inside the truck is freezing cold, but outside on the surface of the road the heat twists and turns objects into blurry distortions. The road follows the coastal plain and short hills along the coast, and it curves past brown beaches, rock points, stream outlets, and coves as it runs north from San Carlos City to Cadiz (Figure 3.2). The northeast coastline is rugged, the soils less fertile than the western side of the island where a wide plain of rich alluvial soil distends from the northern tip to below the city of Kabankalan.

Figure 3.2  The Island of Negros

36  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros Five kilometres west of the road a wall of green-topped mountains begins to rise to the centre of the island, emerald towers through the haze, rumours of the tropical forest that once covered the plain. The stacks of a large sugar mill smoke in the midday heat, and we pass through a number of small roadside villages along the way. It is a two-hour drive between the two cities. We are delivering PA equipment to the cathedral in Cadiz and extra sacks of government discounted rice to the neighbouring parish of Pandanan. The sides of the road are overgrown with coconut and banana trees, but beyond these the land rolls with sugarcane, and the wealth that comes from the sugar rolls into the pockets of a select few Negrense families. They say nearly all the land around the City of San Carlos City is controlled by four families: They own the fields, they own the mountains. Now they even own the water. The fishermen fish for the big boats, the big operators. They don’t have enough fish and rice for themselves that they are going hungry (Fr Naldo). The fields along the road are scattered with sugar workers. Men and women with tattered clothes and rags wrapped around their heads push through the sugarcane. There are a few behind the wheels of flatbed trucks that transport the raw product to the mill. Still others tend the many stubble fires: There is a new law against the fires—the pollution, peoples’ health—but nobody seems to be listening [pointing and laughing]. They just do what they want (Fr Edwin). Along the road trucks over-laden with stocks of stripped sugarcane chug, and they burp black clouds of exhaust that move through villages and hover at eye level. Workers hang from the sides of the trucks and sit atop the cane piles. In one of the villages there is a sharp turn in the road, a truck lies on its side, and the sugar stocks have spilled through the wall of a house on the street. The people standing inside the house look unconcerned, and it does not appear that anyone was injured. The village ends where the road crosses a shallow river that winds down from the mountains, but it is the dry season, and the green-yellow water is lifeless. There are men who work in holes along the banks of the river, digging down and shaking the soil through screens in search of any recyclables or lost valuables. Some of the holes are shoulder deep and not one is braced against collapse, but the scavengers can earn an extra 50 or 100 pesos if they are lucky (one or two US dollars, more or less). Further down the bank two women wash clothes in the water and lay them out to dry on large boulders. The women attend to so many articles of clothing it can be assumed that they are part of a small laundry service—a labour-intensive business with no capital investment in machinery.

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 37 There are billboards that advertise construction projects—ubiquitous in the country during general election time, scheduled for Monday, 10 May 2010—and each billboard states the purpose of the project, expected time to completion, the main contractor, and the cost, among a few other details. Governments are mandated to erect such notification but the cost of the contract or the awarded contractor is often left blank, so Father Edwin reports any of these discrepancies to the local ombudsman. The piece de résistance on all of these billboards is a picture of the smiling face of the politician who is responsible for the project, as if he or she is personally financing the project with money from his or her own wallet: That is the culture again, like I was telling you. The people are indebted to the politician now. The gratitude, the debt of the heart. They will vote for him (Fr Edwin). A number of the billboards have a smaller picture of outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the corner of the larger picture, implying the local politician’s place on Gloria’s team. Before we reach Cadiz Father Edwin stops once and takes note of an incomplete project billboard. On the outskirts of Cadiz there are more scavengers, working in one of the local dumpsites. Perhaps 20 individuals, both male and female, scour over the piles of trash. There are children playing nearby, a few tethered goats and hens with chicks. Six or seven dogs roam the trash freely. Two female students in matching blue uniforms walk a trail that leads straight through the garbage, connecting a community of homes with the main street. Cadiz is one of the smaller component cities on the island, as is San Carlos City. Although they are the largest in the diocese, with populations over 100,000, these centres are dwarfed by Bacolod, the largest city on the island, with a 2020 population of more than 600,000, and the centre of the sugar trade. Negros is the third largest island in the Philippines, with a total land area of 13,328 square kilometres, making it slightly larger than Jamaica or Hawai’i (Big Island). A total island population of approximately four million is divided between the provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental, with provincial capitals in Bacolod and Dumaguete, respectively. Two main ethnolinguistic groups make up the bulk of inhabitants on the island, the Hiligaynon/Ilonggo and the Cebuano, and there are smaller pockets, particularly in the mountains, where indigenous groups continue to speak their native languages and hold onto a number of traditional cultural practices. The Cebuano predominantly occupy the province of Negros Oriental and the Ilonggo, for the most part, live within Negros Occidental, although there are many grey areas along the provincial border, and intra-island migration has allowed entire Cebuano villages to sprout-up in Ilonggo areas, and vice versa. Furthermore, the provincial border, created

38  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros in 1890, is a modern administrative delineation, and it left many communities cut off from their linguistic compatriots. Despite provincial and linguistic boundaries the lives of all Negros’s inhabitants have in some measure been mediated by the sugar industry. The vast plains of the coastal regions are well suited to plantation agriculture, and the historic relations of sugar production have helped to produce a unique and rigid social structure that has transferred to other mono-crop production, such as rice, bananas, and coconuts. Sugarland Negros planters are clearly delineated by their control over the island’s land, capital, and labour, and their key commercial crops are sugar, rice, bananas, and coconut. Of an island total of 1.33 million hectares, 818,991.026 are held privately, one-quarter of which is controlled by 486 families (Ombion and Azue 2005). Productive lands are not contained to the vast plains either, and ownership in the hands of the few stretches up into the mountains, where land conversion to sugar production accelerated in 1960 when the United States increased the Philippine sugar quota in response to the Cuban revolution (McCoy 1984). By 1988 this translated into a landless rate of 82 percent for rural Negrenses, and 72.4 percent of private land was owned by 3.9 percent of owners (Diprose and McGregor 2009). Throughout both provinces on Negros this has enabled the perpetuation of a ‘closed upper class which has passed its property onward through the generations for over a century, fostering a familial style of power so strong that planter political control … is near absolute’ (McCoy 1992: 109). The planter economy on Negros, although dominated by sugar production, is not limited to sugar; rather, and similar to agricultural production throughout the Philippines, other industrial-scale plantation crops include rice, bananas, corn, and coconuts, and these tracts are interspersed with smallholder vegetable and livestock operations. The final land-intensive industry of note is aquaculture, particularly the farming of prawns and fish for domestic markets, and large square shallow ponds dot the coastal landscape. Sugar is the fourth largest agricultural crop in the Philippines in terms of revenue, with tens of millions of metric tons of raw sugarcane generating as much as half a billion USD in commodities markets. Although Philippine sugar is grown in 17 provinces, a full two-thirds of total cane production happens on Negros (Diprose and McGregor 2009). Thus, sugar on Negros covers more than half of the available agricultural lowlands, and this amounts to, approximately, 165,000 hectares in Negros Occidental and 35,000 hectares in Negros Oriental. Plantations and sugar mills continue to be overwhelmingly the employers of the Negrense masses, even though sugar work is seasonal, and the landless race to the bottom as they compete for the few low-paying jobs available.

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 39 Lack of jobs today has resulted from dynamics both internal and external to the Negros sugar economy. In terms of the former, Negros planters, as land barons, have tended to focus their accumulation strategies around rent-seeking vis-à-vis more entrepreneurial activities associated with a business class (new product development, diversified investment, and secondary or tertiary endeavours, to name a few) and this has diminished the fitness of Negros sugar planters in competitive global markets (van Helvoirt and van Westen 2009). In terms of external dynamics, the internationalization of commodity markets would drop the price of sugar below production costs in 1976, 1983, and 2004. Although they were systemic crises that rippled through the island society, planters (the wealthy) were poised to handle much better the global shocks. Once the dust had settled, they downsized their labour forces and reengineered production around capital investment in industrial farm equipment: ‘The machines produce more, cost less, and are not inclined to disruptive industrial action. After five years of paying for a machine, a planter has acquired a capital asset, not a social responsibility’ (McCoy 1984: 71). Thus the peasant masses suffered the brunt, with layoffs, eviction, and competition for limited work, and over the course of the 1980s farm mechanization would put more than two-thirds of sugar labourers out of work. Work for labourers in the sugar game has always been seasonal. Milling tends to take place between October and May, and the off-season of little work and little income is June to September. Many families struggle during the off-season and only make it through by piling up debt, debt that can remain unpaid after the next milling season. Other families go hungry and can only afford two meals per day (del Rosario-Molonzo 2005). Some wage labourers are able to find employment in other primary production, such as fishing, mining, and rice, which are not characterized by seasonal fluctuation, but the influx of unemployed individuals seeking work drops wages and breeds hostility among those already employed in those alternatives. As a result of the social relations of cash-crop production on Negros and planter control over the private enterprise of public office, life for the many remains one of basic subsistence that seasonally dips into the red—livelihood fluctuates like a typical boom-bust cycle, although boom may be strong word. The situation is exacerbated further by a growing population of youth with little hope of employment. In line with greater Philippine trends the island’s population is young. In Negros Oriental 38.65 percent of individuals were classified below age 14 in the year 2000 census (NOH 2021). In Negros Occidental the 2018 census showed that more than 33 percent of individuals are aged 14 or less (PSA 2020). Thus, with this demographic trend of an expanding worker-ready base of young people, the living standards can only be expected to sink further without a massive reform of the economy centred on job creation and/or land reform.

40  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros

Part III: Negros Occidental Negros Occidental is the ninth largest province of the Philippines in terms of area, with 792,607 hectares, 68 percent of which is privately owned and alienable. The remaining 32 percent is forested land. Although mineral extraction generates annual revenues of more than USD 30 million, the province remains firmly grounded in its agricultural roots. Cash crops dominate the landscape with 165,289 hectares sugarcane, 122,940 hectares rice, 58,760 hectares corn, 34,599 hectares coconut, and 9,503 hectares of banana trees. But the crops also dominate the lives of the many, and a full 44 percent of the provincial population is employed in work directly connected to agriculture. The 2.9 million inhabitants are spread throughout 661 barangays, 19 municipalities, and 13 cities. A density rate of 362 individuals per square kilometre shows much variation between urban centres, such as Bacolod City (3,199/km2), and the rural frontiers. There are 473,343 households, and almost 85 percent of Negrenses practice Roman Catholicism, with Aglipayan (an offshoot of Catholicism that rejects the authority of the Pope and allows married clergy), Islam, United Church of Christ, and Bible Baptists accounting for most of the remaining 15 percent. The average household is five individuals, and annual family income averages 73,923 pesos (USD 1607) or 202 pesos per day. For every 100 working individuals there are 72 persons dependent upon them, the overwhelming majority of whom are children. Fifty-two percent of income is derived from wages, 27 percent from entrepreneurial activities, and 21 percent from gifts, remittances from abroad, pensions, and workers’ compensation. Family income is quickly spent on daily living, such as food, clothing, education, and transportation, and on average a mere 6.33 percent is saved. But average income can be a poor measure in a land of such inequity, and 31.4 percent of families and 42 percent of individuals live below the poverty threshold, equivalent to 13,975 pesos per year. If we differentiate the poverty figures further, 54 percent of rural Occidental Negrenses and 27 percent of urban live below the poverty threshold (NSCB 2005). Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of other demographic trends, and in the province of Negros Occidental its ties to health and nutrition are significant. The leading cause of death in 2009 was hypertensive vascular disorder, responsible for 1507 deaths, or 59 individuals per 100,000. Other leading causes of death are pneumonia, heart disease, cancer, influenza, and diarrhoea. Among infants, 6 of 1,000 will die during their first year of life, and the leading causes are pneumonia, septicaemia, pre-maturity, and acute respiratory distress. Of the 1,000 live births 5 mothers will die, most frequently from hypertension and post-partum haemorrhage, particularly uterine atony. These are grim statistics for the working poor, regardless of a provincial government that can boast of 20 government hospitals, 10 ­private hospitals, 19 municipal health offices, 12 city health offices, and 528 barangay health centres. As in other developing countries, much of the data

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 41 on health and morbidity in the Philippines can be correlated with access to healthcare—although the centres of care exist, access is obstructed by distance, number of beds, socio-cultural barriers such as family commitments or gender roles, and, perhaps most importantly, basic costs. Cost for both transportation to health centres and the care received there is a determining variable in a land where there is no social safety net for emergencies. The average distance from outlying referral hospitals to one of the ten main centres is 83.5 kilometres, which can cost upwards of three days’ pay to travel. Once there, basic treatments can run into the thousands of pesos, more than a month’s wages for many families. When the social conditions in Negros Occidental are mapped out, it is difficult to imagine how any grassroots or local development scheme can make any meaningful progress—the structural impediments to local agency are fully entrenched and seemingly insurmountable. And yet the Catholic faithful press on, searching for justice, equity, and greater control over family and community livelihood. Organizing at the levels of diocese, parish and Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC), the Catholic community is able to effect positive change for many of the rural and marginal communities living in Negros Occidental. The next two chapters present some of the social developments happening in the Diocese of San Carlos. Chapter 4 concentrates on the diocese scale of development organization and social intervention, and Chapter 5 scales down to activities happening at the parish and BEC level.

References Aguilar, F. Jr. 1998. Clash of spirits: the history of power and sugar planter hegemony on a Visayan island. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Anderson, B. 1998. The spectre of comparisons: nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. New York: Verso. Anderson, B. 2006. Under three flags: anarchism and the anti-colonial imagination. Pasig City: Anvil. Balisacan, A. and H. Hill. 2002. The Philippine development puzzle. Southeast Asian Affairs, 237–252. Bankoff, G. 1999. The politics of natural disasters in the Philippines, 1985–95. Pacific Review, 12(3), 381–420. Bello, W., H. Docena, M. de Guzman and M. Malig. 2005. The anti-development state: the political economy of permanent crisis in the Philippines. New York: Zed Books. CIA World Fact Book. 2021. The Philippines. www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/rp.html. Accessed 04/07/2021. Constantino, R. 2008. A history of the Philippines: from the Spanish colonization to the Second World War. New York: Monthly Review Press. Corpuz, O. 1965. The Philippines. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Davies, W. 2004. Globalization: a spatial perspective. In J. Matthews and D. Herbert (eds), Unifying Geography, 189–214. New York: Routledge.

42  Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros de Dios, E. 2007. Local politics and local economy. In A. Balisacan and H. Hill (eds), The dynamics of regional development: the Philippines in East Asia. Northampton: Edward Elgar, 157–203. del Rosario-Molonzo, J. 2005. Sour on the plantation. The Front, 26(9/10), 6–7. Diamond, L. 2008. The democratic rollback: the resurgence of the predatory state. Foreign Affairs, 87(2), 36–48. Diprose, G. and A. McGregor. 2009. Dissolving the sugar fields: land reform and resistance identities in the Philippines. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 30, 52–69. Gaillard, J.-C. and C. Liamzon. 2007. ‘Natural’ disaster? A retrospect into the causes of the late-2004 typhoon disaster in eastern Luzon. Philippines. Environmental Hazards, 7(4), 257–270. Harvey, D. 2011. The enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hill, H., A. Balisacan and S. Piza. 2007. The Philippines and regional development. In A. Balisacan and H. Hill (eds), The dynamics of regional development: the Philippines in East Asia. Northampton: Edward Elgar, 1–47. Hogan, T. 2006. In but not of Asia: reflections on Philippine nationalism as discourse, project, and evaluation. Thesis Eleven, 84, 115–132. Irving, D. 2010. Colonial counterpoint: music in early modern Manila. New York: Oxford University Press. Jagor, F. 1965. Travels in the Philippines. Manila: Filipiniana Book Guild. Legaspi, P. 2001. The changing role of local government under a decentralized state: the case of the Philippines. Public Management Review, 3(1), 131–139. McCoy, A. 1984. Priests on trial. New York: Penguin Books. McCoy, A. 1992. Sugar barons: formation of a native planter class in the colonial Philippines. Journal of Peasant Studies, 19(3/4), 106–141. Nadeau, K. 2005. Christians against globalization in the Philippines. Urban Anthropology, 34(4), 317–339. Newson, L. 2006. Conquest, pestilence and demographic collapse in the early Spanish Philippines. Journal of Historical Geography, 32, 3–20. NOH Negros Oriental Home. 2021. Human resources. http://www.negor.gov.ph/ index.php/human-resources. Accessed 04/04/21. NSCB National Statistical Coordination Board. 2005. Estimation of local poverty in the Philippines. Makati City: National Statistics Coordination Board. Ombion, K. and R. Azue. 2005. Negros: a bastion of landlord resistance. Bulatlat, 5(36). Pomeroy, W. 1992. The Philippines: colonialism, collaboration, and resistance. New York: International Publishers. PSA Philippine Statistics Authority. 2020. Negros Occidental quick stat: 2018. http:// www.psa.gov.ph/quickstat/negros-occidental. Accessed 18/02/20. Pulhin, J., M. Tapia and R. Perez. 2010. Integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation: initiatives and challenges in the Philippines. In R. Shaw, J. Pulhin and J. Pereira (eds), Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction: an Asian perspective. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 217–35. San Juan, E. Jr. 2006. Ethnic identity and popular sovereignty. Ethnicities, 6(3), 391–422. Schirmer, D. and S. Shalom. 1987. The Philippine reader: a history of colonialism, nationalism, dictatorship, and resistance. Boston: Southend Press.

Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 43 Scott, W. 1982. Cracks in the parchment curtain and other essays in Philippine history. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. van Helvoirt, B. and A. van Westen. 2009. Inter-firm relations and regional development: experiences from the Central Visayas, Philippines. European Journal of East Asian Studies, 8(1), 91–120. Vatikiotis, M. 1996. Political change in Southeast Asia: trimming the banyan tree. London: Routledge. Wernstedt, F. and J. Spencer. 1967. The Philippine Island World: a physical, cultural, and regional geography. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

4

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos

San Carlos is one of four dioceses on the island of Negros (Figure 4.1). Together with Kabankalan and Bacolod, they are suffragans of the Archdiocese of Jaro, situated on the adjacent island of Panay. San Carlos is a large territory that straddles the eastern third of Negros Occidental and the northern tip of Negros Oriental, with a total land area of 32,489 hectares, and a population just below one million. It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the people who live within the boundaries of the diocese are Catholic, although there are many remote and under-serviced areas where Catholicism either remains or has become a minority, particularly due to the efforts of evangelical faiths, such as the Seventh Day Adventists and the Latter Day Saints. There are 25 parishes, the majority of which are predominantly rural, four mission areas and approximately 60 priests. Most priests are parish priests, but there are others assigned to diocese business, monsignors assigned to larger centres and those retired or on leave. The diocese is committed to social change, arguing that a ‘most dehumanizing poverty’ has taken root across the Philippine landscape, due to economic exploitation, political manipulation, cultural domination, and religious ignorance: ‘We, the Pilgrim Church of the Diocese of San Carlos, are committed in Faith to Incarnate the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Justice and Love, where there are viable living conditions in freedom and participation, integrity, culture and religious maturity’ (Diocese of San Carlos 2016). This vision of change is more than a slogan and the diocese has set itself the task of fostering social, political, and economic development for the poor and marginalized people within its jurisdiction: We are striving to build a people of God, living as a witnessing community in worship, prayer, in preaching, in service, in sharing. We follow the social teachings of the Church, monitor the current social realities. We envision the Social Action Center as an agent of change for the transformation of the present-day society (Fr Edwin). By no means a simple mission and, indeed, a different species than the typical sacred task of the clergy, secular transformation requires substantial DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-4

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 45

Figure 4.1  The Diocese of San Carlos

human resources. Fortunately the diocese has available labour power in its mass base, a strong social network, and a moderate degree of disposable income. So far these factors are proving to be a good start for effecting change, however gradual, in local communities. Being an agent of change in the community requires further organization, and the diocese envisions Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) as the most useful organizational premise for the fulfilment of its goals. Furthermore, the BEC concept maintains the liturgical goal of small communities of Christian worship whose solidarity is the foundation upon which social action occurs. Thus the thrust in San Carlos is to build BECs and a strong and connected diocesan church, creating a network at multiple scales of

46  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos organization, such as families within BECs, clusters of BECs, the parish and the diocese. Fortunately BECs have existed there for decades, so when the diocese set about building BECs they were merely adding more to what was already a large pool. That being said, the task remains a difficult one: ‘We are always rebuilding them. They fall apart as fast as you can make a new one’ (Fr Edwin). Today there are hundreds in the diocese, and all parish priests report having some in their parishes. The number per parish varies greatly, from a mere handful to dozens, and individual BEC size varies significantly, with small groups of 5–7 families and others of 60–80 families. Thus, it suffices to say, when the diocese entered upon its path to social change it already had a strong organizational frame within which to operate. In 2004, to better understand and meet the development needs of the people, the diocese applied to the National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA) for funds to conduct a survey. NASSA had recently been pledged three million pesos (1 USD = 46 PHP) over three years from the government of Spain, and a portion of this money was used to fund the survey. The survey was predicated on the idea that meaningful, participatory development involves the voices of local people and their own conceptions of community improvement. As part of the survey they asked people to prioritize problems for a proposed action plan. Land issues, including livelihood, agriculture, and environmental sustainability ranked highest on the list of priorities, and many people expressed the need for a cooperative: It is an integrated program, including all objectives. We started with a survey to prioritize needs. Cooperative was the keyword of the survey [but] the concept involved giving as well as taking, trying to eliminate the dole-out mentality (Fr Edwin). In the end a wide spectrum of concerns emerged that was organized into eight key categories of grievance (Figure 4.2). The diocese settled on a number of programs and services by which it could make a difference. Programs include livelihood and sustainable agriculture, a consumers’ cooperative, an alternative healthcare program, a bottled water operation, the building of high schools in under-serviced areas, good-governance and anti-mining campaigns, and a partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines focused upon reconciliation and infrastructural development. Concomitantly the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San Carlos applied for and was granted NGO status: ‘it gets us past the separation of church and state, even though the Bishop is president [laughing]’ (Fr Edwin). In 2010 the Social Action Center became a registered charity. The remainder of the present chapter elaborates on each of the programs carried out at the diocese level, and offers insights from key informants regarding program efficacy, teamwork, and to what degree each program is supported by community leaders. From the picture that emerges it is

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 47

Figure 4.2  Key concerns of parishioners by category

clear that great efforts have produced substantial results, and the concept of integrated or total human development stands out. We can see this thread woven through all the programs: ‘It is holistic. We are building people rather than building churches’ (Fr Edwin). However, it is clear also that there is much contestation among those who work for the diocese over the practices of local empowerment, community development, and proper clerical leadership. The order in which the programs are presented is arbitrary, but because herbal medicine production has financed many of the other ­programs, it seems fitting to begin with it.

Herbal medicines Since 2004 the Social Action Center has produced herbal medicines for people throughout the diocese, and today it offers 19 different products for

48  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos the treatment of a variety of ailments (see Appendix 1). Herbal medicine was seen as a powerful development thrust with great income-generating potential, and it would correct some of the problems with the Community Based Health Program (CBHP), the latter implemented by the national church and partner NGOs during the Marcos years of martial law (1972– 81). At the time of inception the CBHP was designed to deliver medical services to communities not serviced by government clinics, mainly due to physical distance and the absence of roads. The program consisted of training seminars on traditional medicine production and use, acupuncture, and massage. Interestingly, the medicinal program was designed to be 100 percent traditional—Western medicines were argued to have harmful side effects, and they were seen as simply ‘making the Western countries rich’ (Fr June). The CBHP was moderately successful, according to priests, but it also fomented a radical critique of the existing social order in the Philippines. Indeed, communities became aware of their political and economic circumstances—‘first and foremost, a lack of government services’ (Fr Edwin)—and they began to reflect upon change. Reflection was inevitable, given the necessity to explain why the church itself had become involved in local health and development, and in time the CBHP seminars became ‘risky business because they were biased. There was indoctrination toward the left. People went to the streets to protest, they became political’ (Fr Naldo). In the end, whether due to political dissent or the basic economic circumstances of the Philippine state, it was explained that cuts to funding over the years have diminished the efficacy of the CBHP, and both monitoring and training have nearly disappeared: ‘These programs are only good if there is funding. At the same time the people have tried to sustain what they have learnt. Good results, too’ (Fr Jerome). Father Edwin and members of the Social Action Center decided to take action in 2004, believing that they could strengthen basic healthcare within their own diocese. The idea was introduced by Berna, a community nurse who had worked for the CBHP and who had organized medical, health, and nutrition missions in many mountain parishes. As a result she had learnt a great deal from the locals. After an initial survey, she and Father Edwin discovered that many of the communities that had produced traditional medicines, either historically or through the direction of the CBHP, were still actively producing them: It was good because people were looking after their own health—­family health—to an extent. Unfortunately, this did not help communities ­generate income’ (Fr Edwin); ‘there was so much demand, we needed a new plan. We needed a license for sanitary conditions, standards. At first we were using a coffee grinder [laughing]—you know, to make the medicines (Berna).

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 49 At the time they discovered that users of maintenance drugs in the community, for ailments such as arthritis, diabetes, and asthma, were able to get therapeutic results from traditional medicines equivalent to pharmaceuticals. Demand was increasing, and Father Edwin and Berna began to envision a diocese-wide health program based upon the mass production of herbal medicines. They believed that the herbal medicines could be used as a vehicle for health promotion and income generation, as well as ‘a cash foundation, a basis, for funding other development throughout the entirety of the diocese. Our plans are always holistic. It is an integrated development, and the herbal medicines really are the base’ (Fr Edwin). At the time traditional medicines were consumed locally in communities and not for retail sale because they did not meet the standards of the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFD). In order to put the products on the market herbal medicine production would have to be streamlined by the diocese, and the diocese would have to hire a permanent pharmacist as a requirement for certification with the BFD. Part and parcel of certification was the registration of a product name, Alternative Health Care Herbal Products, and its placement within the BFD category of Food Supplement (the latter because the diocese is not allowed to claim that its herbal medicines are drugs, per se). What started as a series of seminars (and a dream) had morphed into a proper laboratory in 2005 and BFD certification by 2008. During these years the diocese obtained 50,000 pesos of funding from NASSA to be used for pilot projects in five parishes. The pilot parishes were successful enough to warrant an information seminar for all parishes on the topic of establishing a boteka sa parokya (parish pharmacy). Botekas generally are located on church property, often directly beside the church itself, in already existing buildings. For pharmacy start-up the diocese lends 5000 pesos worth of herbal products without interest. It is hoped that repayment will begin after 3 months and conclude around 18 months later. It is hoped also that the new pharmacy will have been successful enough, both in terms of healthcare provision and income generation, to continue to purchase products. Thus start-up involves little more than initiative, leadership, space for a retail counter, and transportation for the goods. By 2008 there were 16 botekas throughout the diocese. There are a few guidelines that the parish pharmacies must follow, however. For instance, the parishes are not allowed to buy from outside suppliers. The reason given by the Social Action Center is that the diocese cannot risk problems associated with mixing medicines or external tampering, because the Bishop, as head of the NGO, is accountable. Furthermore, this policy ‘eliminates uncertified, local suppliers’ (Fr Edwin), such as the nun who had to be reprimanded by the Bishop because she used the product name for her own herbal medicines that she then sold in her home parish. ‘The Food and Drug people could have found out. Her local product did not have certification. And our sales were affected, because the people thought it was from the diocese’ (Berna). The parishes are prohibited also

50  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos from bringing in their own supply of Western medicines for sale in the botekas. Each boteka sells a small range of Western products, such as generic flu medication, ibuprofen, cough syrups, and dermatological ointments, and the diocese controls the supply through a local distributor in Bacolod. The strict control is justified by the purchasing power and official certification of the diocese: ‘They cannot get a better deal, so we control it. And this keeps things in check with the Bureau—they check up on us two times a year’ (Fr Edwin). Ultimately, herbal medicine production is about multiple sites of ‘income generation through health promotion’ (Fr Edwin), with the intention of using some of the profits realized by the Social Action Center to fund other development within the diocese. Income is generated by charging two or three pesos per capsule, and although this is a small fee, the members of the Social Action Center say the medicines are profitable and sustainable: ‘We can call it self-sustaining because we have the income and are paying our workers already. We got a real grinding and powdering machine [laughing]’ (Berna). Self-sustainability may sound somewhat subjective in the above statement, but within the first five years self-sustainability of herbal medicine production had amounted to a yearly gross profit of approximately PHP 1,250,00 and a net income of PHP 650,000 based upon the initial purchase of just over 50,000 pesos worth of raw ingredients from local farmers. Furthermore, much of the difference between the yearly gross profit and net income can be attributed to labour hired within local communities and salaries and allowances within the Social Action Center (PHP 445,500). The business employs seven fulltime workers in the Bishop’s compound. Berna, the head of production, is paid 10,500 pesos per month, which ‘is low for a community nurse [approx. 15,000], but I gave myself to the Church … when my husband died’ (Berna). In addition to her salary she is given use of a small apartment for herself and her two children, attached to the Social Action Center. A fulltime quality control officer is paid 350 pesos per day, an employee assigned to quality assurance earns 150 pesos per day, and three bottle fillers each earn around 150 pesos per day, at a rate of 15–20 centavos (peso cents) per capsule. Once again, these sums are part of the operating expenses accrued before the final net-income tally of 650,000 pesos. In terms of suppliers, communities benefit from the business as well. ‘They sell to us the raw materials that we process and this gives them additional income. We sell back to the community with a small mark-up’ (Fr Edwin). There are seven parishes supplying the raw materials for mass production, and purchasing data in the Social Action Center showed that families selling the raw ingredients earned on average 100 pesos extra per month. Between 45 and 50 farmers are involved as suppliers, and although 100 pesos may seem a small sum, it is an extra day’s pay each month for the collection of plants that grow naturally: ‘The farmers do not have very much labour. Before the medicines were identified they saw them as weeds and pulled them out anyway’ (Berna). One dulaw supplier who I met showed me a wild thicket of the

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 51 plant growing behind his house. His extra income amounted to 200 pesos per month: That one grows all over, many sources. We maintain checks to prevent fertilizer and pesticides. I use it for this [rubbing his elbow and shoulder: arthritis]. I used to take drugs but I couldn’t afford it anymore, and then I couldn’t work. I just lied in bed and watched TV. But that one [pointing at the dulaw] works just as good. I can work again. Although the boteka sa parokyas are controlled and operated independently by each parish, the diocese does operate its own out of the San Carlos Borreo Cathedral, which is the central cathedral for the diocese. It employs three people fulltime and generates an additional 100,000–200,000 pesos per year for the Social Action Center. The most successful parish boteka, located in Canlaon City, consistently posts a net income approaching 150,000 pesos, based upon gross sales of nearly 500,000 pesos and the efforts of a few employees. It was explained by some priests, however, that half the botekas have met with little if any economic success: ‘They struggle to keep their shelves stocked. No profit at all’ (Fr Carlo). But the other side of boteka success, healthcare delivery, does seem more widely distributed among the parishes with pharmacies. In an effort to learn about the efficacy and convenience of the herbal products, interviews were conducted in two parish pharmacies, selected for convenience (I was in the parish on Sunday, attended mass and spoke with each person who was in line for herbal medicines before and after the church service). Of 27 people questioned, 21 purchased one of dulaw, kumintang, or lagundi, which are described by Berna as ‘maintenance drugs for chronic ailments’, four were buying generic pharmaceuticals and two were buying mangagaw. Eleven purchased dulaw, and every single one said it was for arthritis. Seven of the eleven stated that it was very effective. It is for my husband. He had the other [pharmaceutical] medicine for a year and could work again. But then it was too much for us, we have no money. He sat at home again, but our sons helped us, so we didn’t starve. The traditional medicine is very good. Very, very good. He’s working again, today! That’s why he’s not at church [laughing]. Four others said that the dulaw helped or was okay. Six people purchased kumintang, five of whom said it was very effective in the treatment of diabetes, and one of whom said she was using it to treat a urinary-tract infection. The four people who purchased lagundi stated that it was very effective in the treatment of their cough, bronchitis, or asthma. The average cost of herbal medicines for the 21 individuals who purchased for chronic ailments was 11 pesos per day, and although the people do not like to part with their pesos, they did feel it was a very good price:

52  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos Three a day. Nine pesos—that is like three, four cigarettes. The prescription medicines are much, much more (sugar worker); Before I lived with the pain. Western medicine will cost too much, and you have to pay fifteen pesos to get to the city and fifteen pesos to get home (sugar worker, BEC lay leader). With the general lack of pharmacare in the Philippines and the price of Western medicines beyond the means of an average family, it is difficult to comprehend why some parishes have botekas and some do not, particularly when medicinal efficacy is widely accepted by users. In terms of the start-up and viability of the botekas, there is a marked difference in statements given between those priests interviewed who are over 42 years of age and those under. According to eight of the ten younger parish priests, key to the start-up, success, and sustainability of a parish pharmacy is the i­nitiative of the people and ongoing involvement of the Parish Pastoral Council (lay leadership): It comes from them. The PPC needs to be involved from the start and involved in the monitoring, so they have the knowledge to operate the store on their own. I am not a merchant (Fr Carlo); There is a boteka in the works. They are organizing it. People are resorting to cheaper medicine (Fr Augustus); No boteka, but they need to start one. They say, “Doctor, I don’t have any breakfast. How can I buy this medicine?” Maybe they will just boil the prescription (Fr Emilio). The older priests, however, seem to intuit a much more fundamental role for themselves as community leaders, and it shows in their thoughts on the parish pharmacies: The key is the parish priest, getting started and making it work. I really know our function—we are service providers. We serve the people through the parishes (Fr Edwin); You understand our culture. Our people are humble. They follow, often blindly [laughing]. That is why we end up with these leaders who take advantage. But the priest is more than the spiritual leader of the parish. He is a community leader as well. And it is his charisma that gets things done (Fr Karl); The priest gets transferred every six years, and what happens if you get a new priest who doesn’t know anything about the boteka or maybe he doesn’t even care to learn? Not all priests are the same, you know (Fr Jimmy). With or without the support of all priests in the diocese the production of herbal medicines has taken off. It is employment for a number of individuals, a source of income for the Social Action Center and it helps poor people who are sick to feel better. Furthermore, as we will see, it has become the golden goose for a number of other development projects hatched by the diocese.

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 53

Livelihood The Social Action Center uses funds from herbal medicine production to finance a number of livelihood initiatives within the diocese. Some of these, such as multipurpose cooperative stores and what they refer to as microcredit lending, have become self-sustaining, while other projects, such as livestock and sustainable-agriculture, continue to require funds. Selfsustainability does not translate into independence, however, and Father Edwin’s insistence on an ‘integrated’ series of ‘development thrusts’ comes to mind. Nevertheless, in each of these livelihood endeavours we can see new seeds of cooperation, what begin as small subtle steps toward development, blossom into a more meaningful and sustainable network of socio-­ economic change, particularly for poor and marginalized people who live in the diocese. The San Carlos Diocesan Multipurpose Cooperative (SCDMC) was established in 2004. Over the next ten years membership grew to around 600 families. The cooperative offers four primary services to members: (i) four consumer general stores, located in the cities of Calatrava, Escalante, San Carlos, and Toboso; (ii) a micro-credit/lending program; (iii) a group-­managed swine project; and (iv) a bank for regular savings deposits. Membership in the cooperative requires an initial investment of 1000 pesos, a security deposit of 500 pesos, and a yearly membership fee of 100 pesos. The cooperative does offer a few different schedules for new members to finance these initial 1500 pesos, and ‘All members who comply with the requirements can use the services’ (Tonio). The micro-lending service is well used, and 90–95 percent of member families have loans, which come in one of two sums, 5000 or 10,000 pesos. Since 2004 approximately 1200 loans have been made. The loans accrue interest at 2 percent per year, and the rate of interest depreciates as more and more of the loan is paid back. Most loans are repaid within three to five years, although there is a delinquency rate of 10 percent. ‘When they are delinquent the board of directors visit homes. And some cannot repay; they really have nothing left. But for others we figure out a new repayment plan’ (Tonio). Most loans are for small-business investments, emergencies, or schooling, although the latter ‘is discouraged because it is not income generating’ (Fr Edwin). Seventy percent of borrowers (‘more or less’) are women, and the cooperative is happy with this because loans to women are typically ‘for the benefit of the whole family’, meant to fund something with conservative expectations, and ‘the women are better at paying back, especially when a group of them borrow together. Then they are on themselves to pay back, they are responsible to one another’ (Fr Edwin). The four Consumer Cooperative General Stores are places where members can buy basic goods, such as rice, coffee, milk, water, corn, soap, and a few other household products at reduced prices. Purchases are listed in notebooks and they become the basis of a patronage fund that is paid

54  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos out annually to members. The average annual payout is between 220 and 250 pesos, cash. Non-members are not permitted to purchase from the store, but they are encouraged to join the cooperative and the incentive is lower prices for basic goods and ownership, a literal ownership due to membership and a figurative ownership that relates to ‘greater control of their lives’ (Tonio). The four stores can generate as much as PHP 750,000 income in any given year, of which one third is net surplus. Half the surplus is divided among a reserve fund, an education fund, a land/building fund, and a diocese/parish share. The other half is distributed among the members. The most important item sold in the stores is rice, the bulk of which comes from the National Food Authority (NFA), although the cooperative is ‘trying to contract local supplies, because NFA rice can be limited’ (Tonio). The Philippine government has operated a rice program through the NFA since the time of Marcos, and this has made the Philippines the largest importer of rice in the world, with 95 percent of stocks coming from Vietnam. The NFA imports the rice and mixes it with rice grown in the Philippines. It then sells the rice for as little as 18.25 pesos per kilogram sack: ‘The sack is up to twenty-five pesos less than non-subsidized rice’ (Mark). A number of citizens’ organizations, NGOs, local-government units, and dioceses take part in the distribution of the cheap rice. San Carlos distributes of hundreds of bags per month, ‘and we would take more if we could, if they [NFA] had more for us’ (Tonio). The diocese marks up the price of the rice in order to cover the transportation cost of bringing the rice into the diocese. This amounts to less than a peso per kilogram, and the rice that is sold to the cooperative is typically sold for 19 pesos per kilogram. Thus the cooperative purchases each 50-kilogram bag for 950 pesos, and their mark-up is another 300 pesos, or six pesos per one-kilogram sack. Each of the stores marks up the price per sack another two to three pesos in order to cover their own specific costs, and the final price for the consumer is between 27 and 28 pesos per kilogram sack. This represents an approximate savings of 12–18 pesos per kilogram over rice sold elsewhere. In real terms, the average ­family of five or six individuals requires three kilograms of rice per day. Thus a family who belongs to the cooperative is able to save 36–54 pesos per day on food, or 252–378 pesos per week. This is a substantial savings, given that key informants estimated the average daily wage of rural families to be between 100 and 200 pesos. Furthermore, it is a substantial savings for urban families who belong to the cooperative, even if their income is two or three times higher than their rural counterparts. Outside of the cooperative the diocese’s two main livelihood projects are livestock raising and sustainable agriculture. Both of these continue to be beneficiaries of money realized through herbal medicine production, but they are becoming self-sustaining. The original 6 cows cost 15,000 pesos each and the diocese plan to keep them for 10 years, with the hope of one calf each per year, was a success. These 60 or so prospective calves are dispersed

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 55 in smaller groups throughout the different parishes, given to parish pastoral councils and BECs with the intention of those recipients repeating what the diocese is doing with the original six. When the dispersed herd reaches a sustainable size the groups involved plan to sell off cattle at a rate that will not deplete the stock, ‘either at market or to other families—cheap’ (Mark). The cattle graze, but they do require supplemental feeding. The feed is made in house from a mix of molasses, rice bran, and banana, and the recipe is an organic alternative to mass-produced ‘supplements that are full of chemicals and hormones, but we do have to use vaccines’ (Mark). The recipe for the feed came from an organic farming seminar attended by an employee of the Social Action Center. The piggery was brand new during fieldwork, and the 11 one-month-old piglets were purchased for 25,000 pesos. They live in a pen in the far corner of the Bishop’s compound, and the future offspring of the 11 piglets are now dispersed in groups throughout the diocese, similar to the cattle. The batch of pigs is fed an organic diet of molasses, rice bran, corn bran, potato leaves, banana, and the fermented juice of a local plant, kangkong (Ipomoea aquatica). Kangkong is ubiquitous in the diocese, grows back within three days of being chopped, and is chock-full of essential amino acids. The recipe for the pig feed was given at a NASSA seminar, and it is stated that just ten pigs produce 2000–2500 kilograms of organic fertilizer in the first six months for diocese lands. It should be noted that this is the diocese’s second crack at pig husbandry. The first, which was non-organic, failed ‘because it was too expensive. The feed is too expensive to buy. It is unsustainable’ (Mark). The diocese is a significant landowner, but hardly any lands are productive in terms of agriculture or livestock. Most are parish church properties, small plots donated for rural chapels and unproductive sections hanging off the sides of mountains. However, the diocese does have 22 hectares of farmland, some of which is being grazed by the cattle, and two of these hectares are used to produce rice. The rice is planted twice per year and it is sold at a low price in communities with need. A minimum of 60 sacks of milled rice is produced each year (3000 kilograms), and although it seems little in the grand scheme of things, it meets the typical family requirements for 1000 days of rice. Each kilogram is sold for 30 pesos, which pays for seedlings, wages, fertilizer, and transportation costs. The 30 pesos are more indeed than the 19 pesos that the diocese charges for NFA rice, but this is due to the government subsidy on NFA rice, and not due to any profit seeking on the part of the diocese, which barely recovers its costs from rice production. The livelihood projects within the diocese are of various sizes, with varying effects upon many poor and marginalized people who live in the parishes. The positive outcomes of something as large as a 600-strong cooperative are easily identified, but even the smallest livelihood initiative, such as pigs or cows sent out to the BECs two-by-two, can bring meaningful change and

56  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos become the first rung on the ladder out of abject poverty. Truly, it is this first rung with which the diocese is concerned most, a firm basis upon which the masses can stand as they work together to change their own circumstances. For the poorest of the poor, however, life remains rooted in basic survival, and it is to this survival that we now turn as we explore the church’s feeding program.

Feeding the most vulnerable The diocese is committed to basic food security in the parishes, and this has culminated in a diocese-wide feeding program for vulnerable populations. The initial impetus came from a meeting with a Manila-based NGO, Pondo ng Pinoy Community Foundation, when the diocese was given literature outlining nutritional guidelines for children, a small quantity of feeding materials and information on the NGO’s own feeding program, Hapag Asa (Table of Hope). The Social Action Center began to monitor vulnerable communities and populations in 2005 and became affiliated with a US non-profit Catholic organization, Risen Savior Missions (RSM), through Pondo ng Pinoy. RSM receives requests for feeding programs from the Philippines (their target country) and organizes fundraisers in the United States to pay for the shipment of the food. According to informants, Risen Savior Missions has shipped tens of millions of donated children’s meals to the Philippines and reversed malnutrition in hundreds of thousands of children. The food—a mixture of rice, soybeans, dried vegetables, 20 vitamins and minerals, and chicken stock—is provided by another non-profit organization, Feed My Starving Children, that organizes fundraisers to purchase ingredients and works with volunteers to pack the food, seal it, and box it for transport. I met representatives from both organizations during fieldwork, and they said that much of the packaging of ingredients is done by groups of children in Minnesota: The bulk contents, the rice, the beans, the empty bags, they get delivered to birthday parties and other kids’ events, and the children work together to fill the bags, like a party activity. It’s a game for them, but we try to make sure they learn something. And they are good, caring Christian children, and cooperative. And do you know what’s really special? They’re concerned about these kids, right here [in the Philippines] (Michael). The feeding program for San Carlos had to wait until 2006 when the first shipment of food arrived in the Philippines and passed through customs. Unfortunately there was a delay at port due to taxes that are placed on food imports: ‘The proper documents were not in order. They held the food for months. Then they charged us 300,000 pesos! We don’t have that much money.

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 57 We had to call RSM to bail us out!’ (Fr Edwin). The next few shipments were more easily cleared by customs because the diocese solicited the help of Children International, an NGO already operating in the Philippines. Today, due to the NGO status of the Social Action Center, the diocese is able to clear the shipments on its own. Over the first five years, five shipments had come to the diocese, totalling 6270 boxes or 225,720 bags of food. Those bags of food translate into approximately 1,354,320 servings. The support of RSM does come with guidelines, in terms of the leadership, execution, and monitoring of the feeding program. The bishop is to be the overall head of the program in any given diocese, his social-­ action director is directly accountable for the implementation of the feeding program within the diocese, and the social-action director must have an identified assistant or liaison responsible for follow-up reports and data generated on the entire diocese. At the parish level the parish priest oversees the implementation of the program, assists in the determination of the best possible feeding sites, and coordinates local reports for submission to the diocese. Furthermore, if necessary, local social workers will be included to help identify recipients, certify reports, and present data to the Regional Director of the Department of Social Work and Development. Monthly reports from each diocese must include a summation or narrative of all parish reports, data on weight gained by children and four to six pictures from each feeding site. There are 21 feeding sites for undernourished children throughout the diocese, and over 4000 children, hundreds of pregnant and/or breast-­feeding mothers, and dozens of extremely vulnerable families have benefited. The feeding sites were identified during the monitoring period in 2005 and were assessed upon numbers of people in need within the vicinity and convenience/accessibility. Prior to first feeding a series of seminars were held in the barangays and sitios to educate the people about the program and other health-related issues: We must teach the parents first. They come and get the food, and [some] mothers can be too lazy, they only cook the rice and throw out the bean … [The seminars are] not just about how to come and make the food. We are trying to educate the mothers about other things they can do, like vegetable gardens. So if the foods are not available they can still feed the kids (Fr Edwin). But even after the seminars, Sister Milla, a retired nun who works as a missionary in the village of Cabagtasan, had to monitor the parents in her feeding sites: I found out that if the children did not like the food, the parents were feeding it to the pigs. So we had to have another seminar for the parents on properly cooking and preparing the food.

58  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos The program commitment was for five meals per week, and the duration was either 60 or 120 days, subject to the appraisal of a nutritionist from the Department of Social Welfare: The masses of all the children were recorded at the beginning of the program, and after sixty days the average child had gained two kilograms, more or less (Berna); You can see their faces like they are dying. But after a month you can see in the face the life, glowing in the eyes (Fr Dundun). After the initial 60/120 days a follow-up study is conducted to determine if another regimen of feeding is necessary in the area: Feeding is just temporary. Many children will be malnourished again. This is not our first feeding at this place. But we are trying. And it is working. There are results (Fr Jublas). The feeding program is supposed to be temporary, and the priests fully admit that many children will become malnourished again. But the concept for the diocese is ‘an integrated feeding program’ (Fr Manuel), whereby the ‘parents become partners and apply what they have learnt about nutrition and sustainable agriculture and the health botekas and everything else’ (Fr Jimmy). Within this conceptual model, feeding the most vulnerable is the ‘head start, the jump start … just to get their feet on the ground’ (Fr Edwin), and most vulnerable is a flexible category that includes more than children, despite the directive of RSM. For instance, the diocese has loosely interpreted the name ‘Feed My Starving Children’, insisting that ‘we are all God’s children’ (Sr Milla). Because of this, and certain that a family’s total nutrition is reflected in the nutrition of its children, the diocese supplies extra food bags for the families. Thus the children are sent home with up to five more bags of food for the week. Furthermore, and consistent with a thread stitched through all social action, the feeding program is neither reserved for regular attendees of Sunday Mass nor those families that are strictly Catholic: ‘There are Muslim families. I know a man, he is very happy with the food. He has eleven kids!’ (Fr Karl). In Cabagtasan Sister Milla took bags of food to Mary, a woman with five children. Mary said that she was too shy to come to the feeding because she was not Catholic, but she accepted the food gratefully. The greatest feeding challenge for the diocese since program inception is keeping up with demand. More and more priests have stepped forward to request a feeding site in their own parishes, and in order to accommodate this spike in demand the number of days in each feeding program has been affected: ‘So now 120 days is going to sixty. Less days, more people [shrugging]. Maybe that’s not the right approach’ (Berna). Furthermore, the feeding program has met with additional challenges at the family/community

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 59 levels. First, some mothers are unable to complete the feeding cycle of their children due to tardiness, conflict with work and basic economic obstacles, such as transportation costs. Second, necessary volunteers are lost due to the same reasons, as well as a lack of organization and the members’ need to be continually complimented and affirmed. Third, the ningas cogon attitude of the people—‘a brief burst of super, super enthusiasm that completely disappears when they start to lose interest’1 (Fr Karl)—makes much participation short lived. And lastly, there is a complete lack of support from the civil authorities. Despite these challenges the diocese presses on, and the Social Action Center has expanded the distribution of National Food Authority rice into the parishes in an effort to feed even more vulnerable families. At the time of fieldwork 12 parishes were involved. The rice is brought into the parishes for 19 pesos per kilogram, and there it is transferred into one-kilogram sacks for distribution. I visited two parishes where priests and their pastoral councils handle local rice distribution, Pacuan and Pandanan, and their systems are fairly similar. In both locations rice is transferred from the 50-kilogram bag to the one-kilogram sacks by members of the parish pastoral council and other church volunteers, and these same individuals sell the rice. In Pacuan the parish sells the rice for 25 pesos per kilogram, and they sell to anyone who needs it. The maximum amount of rice that one family can purchase in Pacuan is five kilograms per day, and the parish will usually sell ten 50-kilogram bags each month. That generates 3000 pesos profit for the parish, and the money is used to fund other livelihood projects, seminars on health and agriculture, youth programs, and the fiesta. In Pandanan the parish distributes 20 50-kilogram bags each week, and a 1-kilogram sack is sold for 20 pesos. The bags are available on Saturday and Sunday, and the profit of 1000 pesos is used in much the same manner as the profits in Pacuan. Like most of the projects and development thrusts of the diocese, rice distribution heavily relies upon ‘the energy and enthusiasm of the [local] priest’ (Fr Naldo). This may begin to explain why a mere 12 parishes out of 25 have become involved in distribution. It is a great effort to coordinate rice distribution, even when Father Edwin and the Social Action Center work tirelessly to simplify the process. Roughly half the parish priests have made less effort when it comes to helping the needy: One priest, he said to me, “No thanks, we are okay.” We are okay? [laughing] What does that mean? There are no starving people in his parish? Then he says, “Ask me next year” (Fr Edwin). Much of the money required for the feeding program and rice distribution (transport, storage, wages, and training) is generated by the herbal medicine program. As mentioned earlier, Father Edwin regards the herbals as a ‘cash foundation … for funding other development’. Thus the feeding program and

60  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos its thousands of beneficiaries are indebted to the efforts of those involved in the production of herbal medicines.

Mary’s Well Another beneficiary or spinoff program of both the herbal medicines and the cooperative is Mary’s Well, and it is now self-sustaining. In a country with many more polluted water sources than clean, Mary’s Well is a bottled water operation owned and operated by the San Carlos Social Action Center. It was established in August 2009 because many of the parish priests were getting sick from bad water and the diocese could not afford to have them absent or pay for their medical bills. Furthermore, bottled water is costly. Thus it was decided that clean drinkable water was an essential service that was not going to be provided by government any time soon, and that the diocese could pick up some of the slack, the slack of the LGUs and the municipalities … It is wrong to think you can ask help from the government. In my personal opinion you do not have a hope, because they cannot even provide basic services (Simon). The idea came from a seminarian who had owned and operated his own water business before joining the seminary: ‘Experience? I’ve got it. I had this concept. This is a Third World country; it is different. If you have some capital, why not?’ (Simon). The project was accepted and initially funded with the profits from herbal medicine production. It was explained that a bottled water operation should cost around 750,000 pesos to set up, but the diocese had established its own for around 320,000 pesos because they already had their own delivery trucks and a building in which to house the purification system. The costs incurred were for a purification machine (180,000 pesos), 600 containers (81,000 pesos), renovations to an existing building (50,000 pesos), and a business permit (10,000 pesos). Mary’s Well takes raw municipal water from San Carlos City and purifies it through a number of stages. The raw water first enters a fibreglass tank with a charcoal filter, positively charged to attract chlorine, some sediment and a number of volatile organic compounds. After this the water enters a second fibreglass tank that contains a multimedia filter bed of bituminous coal, anthracite coal, sand, and garnet. As the water passes through the bed an ion exchange occurs that reduces turbidity caused by sand, iron, and oxidized sulphur. The third tank into which the water moves is a standard water softener that removes calcium and magnesium. The water then proceeds into a long chamber for reverse osmosis, where any residual particles, including microscopic organisms, are pushed out. Prior to bottling the water undergoes ultraviolet disinfection, ‘just in case’ (Simon). The entire water purification system is good for a maximum capacity of 3000 gallons per day.

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 61 Mary’s Well employs fulltime a manager who earns 3000 pesos per month and a worker who earns 1500. Both work six days a week and receive all their meals from the diocese. Free water is given to certain chapels, the mission schools, the Bishop’s compound, and people working on projects for the church. This adds up to a truly intrinsic satisfaction with Mary’s Well: ‘Water is profitable in itself. We are using the water for our own consumption and it costs us nothing’ (Tonio). Although the diocese would like for everyone to enjoy the free water, the reality is different. Parish priests and parish pastoral councils who want the water have to pay a reduced rate based upon the bulk of delivery, and a parish’s expenses can be recouped if the parish sells some of the water to the community at a price below other bottled water that is already available in grocery and sari-sari stores. It also is argued that expenses are recouped indirectly when priests and church workers have less sick days as a result of waterborne disease. Most of the water produced for consumption is being sold privately now and a substantial amount of income is being generated. Net profits, even with the free water consumed by the diocese, amount to more than 15,000 pesos per month. The water is sold in four-gallon containers for 25 pesos each, which is significantly less than paying 15–20 pesos per 500 mL bottle in a grocery store. In order for Mary’s Well to be profitable, given the amount of water that is distributed for free, the Social Action Center must sell a minimum of 50 containers per day, thus generating 1250 pesos in gross sales. The 50-container minimum is easily exceeded by demand, and it appears that the only obstacle to increased production is the absence of one more employee and 600 more recyclable water containers in circulation. Indeed the seminarian who came up with the idea for bottled water is disappointed that water purification is being run below capacity: We’re not competing with other water companies. You just have to increase to 100 jugs a day … They have to do marketing, household marketing, get out to the people, establish relationships. The more clients you have, the more you supply the water. Everyday you need to sell 100 jugs at thirty-five pesos each—3500 per-day income, times twenty-­ four monthly, that’s a lot … They [workers] should make time on their own while delivering. Drop off at one house, ring the doorbell on the next house. You save gas, time, etcetera. We need to expand so that each parish becomes a distributor. Marketing strategy is for the parish to become a distributor. The bulk delivery of water (Simon). With the success of Mary’s Well, both in terms of the product and distribution, it is unexpected to find so few priests bringing water into their parishes. The diocesan priests and the priests who work in the parishes where there are mission schools have all the water they can drink, but the other priests are on their own to introduce the clean water, and only six have: ‘It is quite new. And we have our own springs, and deep well water,

62  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos and tabay—that is a well dug along the bank of a river’ (Fr Mickey). Seven priests state that they are on some form of municipal water and do not become ill regularly. One priest admits that he was sick twice last year from the water but argues Mary’s Well water is ‘too far because of limited number of containers’ (Fr Jerome), implying that his parish is so remote that Mary’s Well cannot afford to have too many of their containers stuck there. The seminarian who proposed the project says that one of the reasons why certain parishes have not embraced the distribution of bottled water is that ‘priests may not be business minded. They are preoccupied with pastoral work and, I don’t know, maybe they need to appoint someone’ (Simon). A number of parish priests agree: Some priests work harder. They see the people suffering and want change. But then others, they just want to do the spiritual work. They don’t see value in clean water—cheap! It is so easy to become a priest. Becoming a good priest is another thing. It is a community responsibility, not just the spiritual (Fr Dundun). Of the six priests who had brought Mary’s Well water into their communities, four state that it had been their own idea, triggered by endemic pollution and/or local waterbourn diseases. The other two state that it had been at the request of the local parish pastoral council: ‘I am supposed to be the shepherd, but they tell me what to do!’ (Fr Emilio). All report feeling better or taking less sick days already, and three claim the water pays for itself. Four parishes visited during fieldwork had Mary’s Well water, although two of these are where the mission schools are located, so the purified water is a given. In the other two parishes the water is mainly used by those individuals working for the parish, although I did see some people paying to fill their own containers with Mary’s Well water. Of all the operations carried out by the Social Action Center, Mary’s Well seems the most business focused, as opposed to community focused. Whether due to the nature of such an operation—mechanized production and great transportation expenses—or the panache of the young seminarian, the organization and operation does feel different. In six short months it was self-sustainable and had morphed into a profit-driven enterprise. After interviews with key informants it is not difficult to understand how this particular project of the diocese did drift from its more-communitarian roots: Even with such a small amount we ask for clean water, we cannot get the parishes organized. This is more difficult than the herbals—at least the people are sick! But now we have to convince them that they need to buy water too (Fr Edwin); It is cheap, and it makes money. But we have to make profit. The diocese is very big. Big enough to sell only to the Catholic people and make money, the church. Not all the priests support the project. I cannot reconcile (Simon); I would like to give the

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 63 water to everyone, but the reality is that it is more complicated than just doing that (Bishop Joe); Right now, we generate a small margin of income and pay the operational costs. That is it! If we selected [just] two parishes for free water, we [would] begin running into the red. Then the whole thing collapses, falls apart (Joseph). Ultimately Mary’s Well depends upon a certain percentage of water being sold to private buyers. It also depends upon priests in the parishes who have committed to purchase a certain amount of water on a quasi-regular basis, so that the diocese can invest in more containers without the fear of those containers sitting idle around the Bishop’s compound. Although the operation has the potential to expand, arguably exponentially, the clean-water service provided to those working at the diocese level already is significant. Two of the largest groups of consumers of free water are the staff and students of the two mission schools, and it is to these two schools that we now turn in our analysis of development in the Diocese of San Carlos.

Building schools Bishop Joe’s central concern as community leader is education, and he has committed the diocese to ‘educating the people out of poverty’. He argues that the central reason for poverty in the Philippines is government corruption, particularly as it affects funding for education: With corruption there is less [money] going to education, which, for me, is a vehicle for economic development and opportunity to be lifted out of poverty. In the Philippines there is a very strong correlation between education achieved and salary (Bishop Joe). A primary objective for Bishop Joe is building schools, with the intention of providing quality ‘education that minimizes religious ignorance among the young people in the hinterlands … produces good, committed and responsible leaders in the community … [and] makes available to the youth venues for their development for a brighter future’ (Diocese of San Carlos 2016). Since 2002 the diocese has organized, funded, and built eight high schools in under-serviced locations, and one fully accredited postsecondary vocational college. The first school built, Our Lady of Peace Mission School (OLPMS), is located 20 minutes into the mountains from San Carlos City, in the Barangay of Prosperidad. It is on a major road that connects San Carlos City with Bacolod (east Negros island with west, respectively). The area was selected as a possible site for a high school because there were already eight elementary schools but no secondary school nearby. After graduation from elementary school more than 50 percent of the children have ‘no other choice but to work in the rice fields or sugarcane plantations to earn wage to augment the

64  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos family’s income’ (Diocese of San Carlos 2016). Thus, in hopes of combating this plight of youth, six and one-half acres of land were donated by a family who owned a fair amount of land in the mountains of Prosperidad. Bishop Joe had spoken with one of the grown sons of the family, while scouting the mountains for a location. The son relayed the request for a donation of land to his mother who was living in the United States at the time. His mother, who now lives in Prosperidad and operates a store/kitchen on the school property, explained to me that her son looked around and none of these children were in school and it made him sad. He said that the children needed to go to school or they would do nothing. They were just walking around on the roads. So he spoke to me about giving the land away, and then he went to see the Bishop. The family gave the land under condition the diocese prioritizes the project, and the Bishop committed a sum of 250,000 pesos that he borrowed from the Social Action Center. The money was used to purchase bamboo and metal roofs for the original classrooms and pay for labour. Many families in the vicinity stopped at the school site to participate in the construction. It was explained that this style of impromptu community service is frequent in the Philippines, whereby an entire community recognizes the value in a certain initiative and comes together for the benefit of all. The offer of help by community members during construction of the mission school is considered ‘sweat equity’ or ‘dagyaw’ in Cebuano, ‘communitarian work without pay’ (Fr Edwin). The bamboo classrooms were only ever meant to be temporary, the start of something larger, and a first test of the mission-school concept. The concept seemed to pass the initial test rather quickly and, immediately upon opening the school, the diocese set about organizing funds for a concrete building to replace the bamboo classrooms. Within a few years they had raised 5,500,000 pesos. The vast majority of donations were secured by San Carlos residents with international connections to both individuals and organizations. Added to these were four substantial donations from non-profit organizations in Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and the United States. Today there is a long, terraced concrete building and the school has 12 classrooms. Due to increased enrolment more temporary bamboo classrooms have been erected, but they are slated for future replacement with concrete. The Philippine Department of Education is, and has been since the planning stages, in consultation with the community and diocese. The Department maintains standards of education set by the state and in turn guarantees funding. In order to receive funding from the state for the children the school needed at least 50 students for its inaugural year. A campaign was launched in 2002 in order to solicit students, and one nun and two male members of the community set about canvassing the mountainside. Family homes were visited and parents were encouraged to allow at least

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 65 one child to enter the school, although the diocese understood that many families could not make ends meet without the daily labour of every child in the home. After the campaign, enrolment was held between 28 May and 23 June 2002. On 24 June 2002, the first day of classes began at Our Lady of Peace Mission School, with the 50-student minimum more than met. The government funding amounts to 5000 pesos per student, and that sum does not meet the operating costs for the diocese. Furthermore, the government only pays for the finished product, which is the completion of the school year by the student. Thus the diocese is always one year behind in funding and left with the bill for students who do not complete the school year. For the first academic year the diocese had to come up with all the money needed to school the students. Once again they borrowed from themselves and were able to solicit donations from individuals willing to sponsor a child’s education. Later on the diocese came into contact with Enfants du Mékong, a French NGO with a focus on education in poor communities along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia and throughout the Philippines. A Franciscan sister in the diocese who had worked with Mékong in Luzon for many years arranged a meeting between representatives of the charity and the diocese. Fortunately, the people from Mékong were ‘looking for poor but deserving students’ and ‘when they saw the mission school they said, “We’ll take ten!”’ (Fr Edwin). Tuition amounts to 500 pesos per month and in 2010 there were 428 students, 80 percent of whom were covered by the government fund. Nearly all the rest were being sponsored, and in order to expand the diocese is perpetually recruiting new sponsors for new children. Twenty-four of the students lived in dorms and received three meals per day. This extra cost amounted to 400 pesos per student per month. The diocese/sponsor covers 300 and the family of the student is expected to contribute 100. If families are unable to cover the 100 pesos, a contribution of rice and/or vegetables is accepted in trade. Other students who live too far to walk each day board in nearby homes for 100 pesos per month, and they are expected to cook their own meals and follow their own curfews. These students would typically begin their week on Sunday with Mass in Prosperidad, go to school from Monday to Friday, and walk back home Friday afternoon: ‘For the majority of these kids, Saturday is a day of work. Farming the rice, the sugar’ (Ma’am Judy). Of the students who walked from home each day, the average distance was 3.6 kilometres each way, although some students reported a walk of up to ten kilometres each way. And still, with distance and cost, the students are eager to be in school each and every day, and after almost 20 years the school has graduated thousands of students. Like the other projects undertaken by the diocese there are economic spinoffs for the community. In this case the mission school employs 14 teachers and a principal. The teachers earn between 5000 and 7000 pesos per month, and as an added incentive they receive room and board in a teachers’ dormitory. National schoolteachers on Negros typically earn between 7,000

66  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos and 12,000 pesos per month, and because of this discrepancy in pay ‘many [mission school] teachers leave for National School jobs’ (Fr Edwin). In the spring of 2010, two teachers were leaving OLPMS at the end of the school year for better pay, and another teacher who had chosen to stay at least one more year said, I cannot afford it, my family can’t afford it. And then I am away all week long. But I do it for Father Edwin. I cannot say no to him. He is a very charismatic man. I just can’t say no (Ma’am Cindra). By 2008 Bishop Joe was scouting for a second school site, this time further into the mountains, and much more remote. He found it in Cabagtasan, one of 12 sitios in the barangay of Codcod, and the last stop on a dirt road for any vehicle larger than a motorcycle. There are six elementary schools, and four are in the vicinity of the second high school. Cabagtasan is 48 kilometres from San Carlos City, which translates into another hour’s drive past Prosperidad on a tortuous, rain-rutted dirt road. Half the sitio, including the school site, is without electricity. Two hectares of sloping land was donated by a Catholic woman for what would become Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School (OLMMS). The woman donated the land on condition she is allowed to situate a sari-sari store on the property at the side gate, where the students and teachers can purchase lunch, snacks and native coffee. Once the site had been confirmed the Social Action Center put together 350,000 pesos and recruited the villagers to help with the construction (dagyaw or sweat equity, once again). Also, through a partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (more below) the military cut terraces into the slope and aided in the construction of the buildings. For one month in the spring of 2009, and six days each week, a number of military personnel worked with the community on the high school. At the end of construction five classrooms, a laboratory, a library, a counselling room, and an office had been constructed from bamboo poles, shaved and woven bamboo walls, galvanized roofs, and dirt floors. Two Franciscan nuns, Sisters Daisy and Helen, came to Cabagtasan to run the school and act as headmistresses, counsellors, and teachers. For the first seven months of the school year they slept on the floor in the home of a family who donated land for a new church. Then they received a donation of two wood-framed beds and moved into a bedroom. They hoped in the next few years to have use of a house that is closer to the school, and the homeowner ‘can have his house back [laughing]’ (Sr Daisy). The homeowner, despite being put out of his own house for many months, was excited about the new school and the future church: ‘The school has brought new people along the road. It is active, busier now. The village is more alive, and that is good. The school has been a good thing, for the village’. Early in 2009 an enrolment campaign was sent to scour the mountains, and the school opened in June. At the time of fieldwork the school had

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 67 182 students, down 16 from the beginning of the school year, mostly due to family commitments, particularly farming. It is inevitable that a certain number of students will not finish the academic year, normally playing out in one of two ways: (i) family responsibilities overwhelm a student when home on Saturdays and the decision is made to drop out or (ii) twice per year during the rice harvest a student must miss two to four weeks of classes, and s/he will not be able to get caught up on school work. ‘It is understandable. The family may starve without the extra help. But then, for their studies, it is very, very difficult to catch up again’ (Sir Thomas). The teachers estimated that 80 percent of students come from outside the sitio proper, some walking as far as two hours from their homes. Similar to Prosperidad, there are host families with whom many children stay. There is a fairly even split between male and female students (in both mission schools), so there is no obvious indication that mainly daughters are being sent in order to keep sons at home working the land. According to the teachers more than half the students have school-aged siblings at home, but most families cannot afford to send more than one child to school, either in terms of tuition cost or labour lost: Our mission is to serve the poor. But the poor owe money to the capitalists. There are even capitalists who come here. They sell them fertilizer, and often what they [the farmers] make in a month is not enough to pay back the debt. The children cannot even pay tuition because the debt has taken all the family’s income. You will see them. You will pity them (Sr Helen). The cost for tuition at OLMMS is 300 pesos per month. Because the government fund covered only 50 of the 182 students, the diocese had to solicit donations and sponsors for the children. By March of 2010 they had secured funding for 30 students and believed that another 10–15 students would be covered for the following academic year. Also, Enfants du Mékong interviewed local families interested in sponsoring another five to ten students. I once had the opportunity to ride to Cabagtasan with a business owner from the northern part of the diocese who was sponsor to 15 students. He had come from moderate wealth, by Philippine standards, but he believed that the country was being ‘run into the ground’ by corrupt politicians, that the people in rural communities were being ‘left behind by their own government’, and that it was ‘our duty to help poor people’ (Charlie). His teenaged daughter was interested in sponsoring a student with her allowance, and she came with us to Cabagtasan that day. She took many pictures to show in her own high school classes, in the hope that her peers might become sponsors as well. In the spring of 2010 OLMMS employed six teachers, one administrator, and heavily relied upon the efforts of Sister Daisy and Sister Helen. The local missionary, Sister Milla, was active also in the mission school, as a

68  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos guest teacher and guidance counsellor. Every single teacher with whom I spoke in both mission schools agreed that teaching is a very good job: Teaching is a very honourable job. Very well respected in the community (Ma’am Denise); It is a very good job. I would have no other job, just motherhood (Ma’am Alina); I am excited to get back to class. Everyday it is exciting to see students. I am happy to see them, and teach. And the students are excited, so that is good. Only sometimes the weather is so hot [pinching his collar]. Sitting in the hot weather, in the class, I get bored. But being a teacher is a very exciting job (Sir Julio). The teachers at Our Lady of the Mountain are paid less than the teachers at Our Lady of Peace—4000 pesos per month—and they recognize that the wage is very low for their profession. However, only one teacher in Cabagtasan stated that she would leave the mission school for a national position after this year. The five other teachers, four of whom were raised in the mountain barangay, all thought that the lower wage is an acceptable trade-off for being able to live near their family homes, and serve their community: ‘Our standard of living is much higher here, and we have fresh water and gardens’ (Ma’am Alina); ‘It is a peaceful community. We are happy, we love it here. You save money by not buying veggies or vinegar. Cities are very expensive’ (Ma’am Lita). Sir Sisco spoke of working in Dubai for four years and coming back with enough money to buy farmland, animals, and equipment, and that farming is his primary income: ‘I teach because my neighbours said I was a bad example to the children. I had my education, I went to school, and then I came back and am only farming! So, I teach to make the neighbours happy, but I love it’. Another teacher, Sir Julio, came from a small island off the coast of San Carlos City, and he said that the coastal climate no longer agreed with him: ‘The best part of the community is the weather, the muddy, the cool. My health is really for here in Cabagtasan, rather than the city. And the water is so clean and cold when you take a bath in the morning. The weather and the water—the nature’. His enthusiasm is noteworthy, particularly considering that at the time of fieldwork, because of an absence of kinfolk in the area and despite a chronically sore shoulder, Sir Julio was sleeping on a mat on the floor outside the Franciscan sisters’ bedroom. They provided him with three meals a day, he helped around the house and, according to him, the dog that curled up beside him at night loved him most of all. At OLPMS teachers estimated that most students would not have attended/ finished high school without the mission school. The highest estimate of student attendance/completion without the mission school was 40 percent and the lowest was 20: ‘Without the high school, kids would be farming or working away from home. Maybe a few would go to another high school’ (Ma’am Christen); ‘Eighty percent would not graduate. They will stay with family or go to the city to work as house servants’ (Ma’am Denise). Most teachers believed

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 69 that the majority of students would not have attended/graduated from high school without the mission school, while two thought that a mere 10 percent would have found their way to another school: ‘Without the mission school? Most of the students would be at home, on their farms’ (Ma’am Alina); ‘Mostly the students would be on farms. Ten percent, very small would go to the high school in Quezon. It is too far and costs too much to get there and room with an adoptive family—fifty pesos per month!’ (Sir Sisco). Due to the success of the first two mission schools the diocese has built more, and it now administers eight high schools. Early on, with the relative success of the mission schools, a new concern for the educators and the diocese quickly became what becomes of the graduates once they leave: ‘Many of the children will finish the four-year program, but many will not be able to use that education because they do not get a scholarship for post-secondary. This is systemic, not just mission school’ (Sr Helen). During my own travels I met two young women who had graduated in the last few years from a public high school and were living back in their villages. One was farming and one was tending a sari-sari store. ‘Perhaps five percent will get to go to post-­ secondary. Others will go to the city, and then probably come back and get married’ (Ma’am Alina). The Franciscan sisters expressed much concern about the fate of female students who leave Codcod for the city. ‘Many will go to work down in the city, to be house servants. And they are treated as slaves, you know!’ (Sr Daisy). Because of these real concerns the next stage in Bishop Joe and Father Edwin’s education plan was the construction of a technical/ vocational college for graduates from the mission schools, and they were hearing support for this from the mission school teachers as well: ‘These kids need a youth organization and a vocational college’ (Ma’am Lita); ‘The college is the most important next step to development’ (Ma’am Alina); ‘They cannot afford college. They have to move off the land’ (Sir Sisco); ‘If built, 100 of 182 will go to the tech school, I’m certain’ (Ma’am Donna). By the spring of 2010 plans for a technical college were well under way. The diocese had presented a plan to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), an agency of the Philippine government responsible for the management and supervision of technical/skills education, and received approval for four government-accredited programs that would give students official certification in the job market. The programs were small-engine repair (300 hours), welding (360 hours), dressmaking (280 hours), and massage (500 hours). The intention was to charge the students 5000 pesos per course, and pay the instructors 150 pesos per hour. At these rates it required 9–15 students per course just to balance tuition and teacher wages. By March 2010 the diocese was busy processing documents for TESDA, and acquiring a permit from the electric cooperative in order to tap into the electricity grid. The diocese broke ground in the summer, once 550,000 pesos had been raised for two concrete rooms and another 500,000 for equipment, and today the technical college continues to be a practical next step for many of the students who graduated from the mission schools.

70  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos

Anti-mining campaign The diocese has a well-organized anti-mining campaign. Inspired by the principles of empowerment, ecology, and social justice, the anti-mining campaign is an example of a transformative program that draws upon parishes and BECs but truly functions at the diocese level. Anti-mining, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps a better label for the campaign would be activists seeking alternative mining that helps to strengthen communities. Indeed, in a meeting of the group with 15 representatives from different parishes, there was little to suggest the outright rejection of mining in the area: ‘The people … aren’t against the mine, because of jobs and money in the area. The problem is that the benefits are not so good [when taken] with the bad. In my village there was a landslide and people got hurt. Also, the mining would be better with labour controls’ (Marissa). Thus the group is organized and committed to major changes in the present mining industry on Negros. Like many social movements in the Philippines they are inspired by the People Power Revolution (see Chapter 3), and the belief in effecting change through the channels of civil society: ‘We have the people power, we just have to be organized’ (Carlito). (Unfortunately, people-power movements in the Philippines are not without their risks to participants and a number of informants new or had heard of leaders in social movements being killed, including priests. One of the men relayed a story about his son. Shortly after his son signed an anti-mining petition, the son was taken into custody and interrogated for many hours by local police. Later, the son lost his college scholarship, and the family believed that it was due to his signature on the petition.) The meeting was attended by seven women and eight men, all of whom had somewhat professional occupations within their communities, such as a teacher, a local-government nutritionist, a secretary in a cooperative organization, and a self-employed business man. All are regular church attendees and all belong to a local BEC. The host of the meeting was a lawyer working for the Philippines Misereor Partnership Inc (PMPI), an organization created by Misereor, a German Catholic Bishops’ charitable organization, in order to streamline the focus and direction of Catholic NGOs and POs in the Philippines, including ten organizations working in the four dioceses on Negros. The PMPI’s anti-mining campaign on Negros had been active since 2006. The two most prominent sites of struggle between civil-society groups and government/industry have been in the regions surrounding the cities of Kabankalan and San Carlos, and different protest groups are more than happy to cooperate in the name of the common good: We joined rallies against exploration. There was a cement factory. We have to educate the people. The people did not believe us, but then they found out the mining lease had already been given. Land was bought by

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 71 big landowners. People cannot grow crops, the people have to get work in the city. We found out it was already decided … thousands rallied in Dumaguete (Berna). The diocese’s anti-mining campaign began with the dissemination of leaflets in five key parishes. The leaflets contained information on existing and future mining activities in the area, the potential socio-­environmental effects of small-scale quarrying and a few larger magnesium and gold projects, and opportunities for community participation. ‘There are mining applicants from Cadiz to La Libertad, but the residents do not know. Many applicants. But the status of the application is held in the local government unit, due to negative reaction, especially of farmers’ (Tonio). Given these circumstances the initial leaflet was a first attempt at community awareness, and the Social Action Center translated the original PMPI document into Cebuano and Illonggo. ‘This was an important first step. We need access to education about mining acts, laws and bills, in order to properly advocate for ourselves’ (Juan). Thus community advocacy is perhaps the key objective for the anti-mining campaign: ‘We want to see education, study and consultation with communities’ (Carlito); ‘The Social Action Center needs to be involved in this—education campaign and orientation, then communicate this to the community’ (Juan). As it now stands, communities in mine-affected areas are without information or representation when mining leases are granted, and community leaders are worried about lasting consequences, such as air pollution, waste products, loss of livelihood, landslides, and skin disease. Ultimately, in a country where government and industry tend to steamroller the little guys, the campaign is meant to educate people about the social, environmental, and health risks, and facilitate a forum for community input into local mining activities. The objective is a more humanized industry that consults and cooperates with local communities as a means to form ‘a bridge, a link, between economic development and the development of the people’ (Fr Jerome). One of the concepts promoted by the campaign, as an alternative to the dominant industry, is small-scale mining, whereby smaller leases are granted to local companies, minimizing the environmental impact, and local people participate in the projects either as fair-wage earners or artisans. The belief is that the scale of mining can be kept at a level that is ecologically sound, and that this level will enable the local economy to grow and diversify without compromising other sources of livelihood or the environment that is being left to future generations. Also, they argue that local ownership will be held accountable more easily than distant/foreign ownership: ‘Because it is local, the people have more power to pressure the business, to stop the mine or pressure the mine. Because the local owner is accountable to neighbours’ (Chester). This small-scale alternative rests upon some significant assumptions, which the campaign recognizes: first, that the nature of the mineral deposit is suitable for a less-evasive extraction process; second,

72  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos that investors are willing to support an artisan-style process and invest in local communities; and third, that people with little title to land beyond the small plot underneath their homes and immediate gardens can make claims over anything in the vicinity. Added to these concerns are some problems that they have identified with small businesses: This allows companies to skirt the mining laws that have been set up to protect us from large-scale mining by foreign companies. Also, the owners do not have to follow labour laws (Marissa); Small scale may not use big equipment, but it is big because of how much they are doing. Yes, it is small-scale, but the cumulative effects can be just as bad as the big mine when you add them all up (Chester). Little progress has been made in terms of a switch within the industry to the small-scale concept. Nevertheless the campaign presses on, confident that their alternative has merit and just needs a chance to be proven. As the meeting ended the group settled on a policy of continuous education and information, and regular monitoring and assessment: ‘If the people know the effect of the mining we believe they can prevent it, some of it, the bad’ (Tonio). Concomitant with this, the group will continue to promote the idea of small-scale mining for the benefit of affected communities. They also hoped for additional personnel to be added to the Social Action Center to deal exclusively with mining, although one of the employees of the Social Action Center later explained that funds for extra personnel are non-existent: ‘We are completely stretched out!’ (Tonio). At the end of the day the anti-mining campaign can be proud of the progress that has been made over the years. Since 2006 there have been 35 major new mining leases under consideration within the Diocese of San Carlos. Of these the campaign has become involved in 16, with various results. Most anti-mining activity consisted of seminars in villages affected, letters of opposition, and protest marches. Once again, little was accomplished in terms of overhauling the industry, but community concessions have been granted in a number of disputes, mostly meant to ameliorate socio-­environmental problems and labour antagonisms. The greatest achievement thus far, however, is the outright stoppage of two corporations, Asturias Chemical Industrial and Negros Oriental-Western Mining. Between the two corporations a total of nine applications for gold, silver, and copper were on the table, with the potential to affect 166,576 hectares of land: ‘These were big. That is people power’ (Carlito). One other smaller operation was completely stopped as well. Only five priests with whom I spoke were stationed in mine-affected areas, and all support the anti-mining campaign: I am for the protection of the environment. Advocacy is more than the environment. It is about the whole person—integral solution. We [the

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 73 clergy] have shifted from the spirit to the whole person (Fr Jerome); The Church has a great role. It is almost a year since the petition [by a lobby of mining companies] to grant prospecting rights almost the length of the diocese, from Umpala to Canlaon, that whole corridor. So, especially here, where our people are so dependent on the land they till, we see that one as important. Many people would starve to death (Fr Mickey). That being said, two of the priests, ages 31 and 33, did not claim to be actively involved in the campaign as community leaders: A bishop once said, “Sustaining the people is the work of a social worker, but the priest’s work is a spiritual aspect.” Good people will become good community members, and the people will find leaders. If the priest is too into the social activities he cannot give the proper spiritual support to the people, because his responsibilities are divided (Fr Carlo). With or without the support of the local clergy the anti-mining campaign is active in a number of parishes and well organized at the diocese level. The group’s ability to effect change in rural communities is enabling transformations in society that have the potential to empower people and reconfirm local community.

Good governance In the Philippines there are uncountable numbers of citizens’ and volunteers’ groups who have set themselves the task of monitoring government spending and the bidding and awarding of government projects. The primary focus of many of these groups is the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), a mandate of the Department of Internal and Local Government. The IRA is a legislated sum within each barangay, municipality, and city, equivalent to 20 percent of total local government funding. It amounts to 80,000 pesos per 100 individuals. That sum is legislated to be spent on local development and infrastructure, and ‘this has to be watched because government will abuse this. The other 80 percent already goes to government salaries and expenses’ (Fr Edwin). Any group involved in the IRA watch has to be a legal entity, such as an NGO or PO, and as we know the diocese qualifies as the former. Any legal entity that desires to monitor local-government spending must apply for accreditation from the local office of the ombudsman. The diocese is involved in the monitoring of government spending through its Good Governance program: The government must be held responsible, accountable for their actions. They take so much already from the people. Twenty percent of all

74  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos projects are going to the politicians. How can the people develop with so much taken from the beginning, before it has even started? Before the project has even started? (Fr Naldo). Three of the Social Action Center employees help to coordinate the program, and there are two part-time field staff, 47 active volunteers, and a lawyer and an engineer who volunteer their services as well. The Good Governance program, organized in 2008, has monitors in 29 barangays, three cities and two municipalities. The volunteers have a regular meeting every two months, and the program coordinator in the Social Action Center conducts weekly follow-up meetings with any new barangays as they come on board. Also, during the first year of operation, the Good Governance program facilitated two ombudsman forums for local-government and city officials, in San Carlos and Cadiz, attended by 190 and more than 200 officials, respectively. Because the IRA watch is sanctioned by the Philippine state, barangay officials recognize local volunteers as legitimate representatives of the ombudsman: ‘Officials are friendly right now because they are afraid of the reporting. They are afraid of the ombudsman … [however] there is some danger to volunteers because some barangay officials are connected to the big politicians. We advise volunteers to not work in a destructive way. Work smoothly’ (Tonio). When volunteers are in the neighbourhood the local barangay captain is notified, and the volunteers wear uniforms with identification badges that are signed by the ombudsman. The basic work of the volunteers is to audit local-government spending, and much of what is discovered to be unlawful is blatant. For instance, there are ‘many projects discussed in the annual investment plan that were not started. Still, the allocation is claimed to be there for the next year’ (Tonio). Numerous times a barangay captain refuses even to provide documents for inspection, however. When this occurs the Social Action Center will first make a formal request to the captain, and if this request is ignored the ombudsman is notified: ‘Very few comply, but the ombudsman or the DILG [Department of Internal and Local Government] will inform the captain to give up the document’ (Tonio). The penalties for non-compliance with the IRA are fines, suspensions, and dismissal; once a city mayor was suspended for 90 days because he had diverted public money to purchase a personal vehicle—‘[laughing] he still has the vehicle, however’ (Tonio). Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the audit, however, is the check that local officials now feel compelled to keep upon spending in their respective governments: ‘They know they are being watched. And they are correcting their poor behaviours’ (Fr Augustus). The Good Governance program has spurred many barangay officials to hold semi-annual assemblies, ‘which they are supposed to hold anyway because that is the time to explain projects to the people’ (Tonio).

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 75 A local business owner who belongs to a BEC gives an elaborate explanation for monitoring government, while offering three reasons for poverty in the Philippines: Graft. The number one reason is the politics and the greed. Secondly, it is our culture. It is part of what we are. We are a people who are to be dominated. The entire history of the Philippines, since Spanish colony times, we are the people who allow ourselves to accept things the way we are told they are. There is no fight, look at the politics. We all go out and vote back in the same bad politician … The third reason that I would say is the utang na loob, a debt of—how would you say?—a debt of gratitude, from the heart. Culturally, when someone does something for you, you owe that person for a very long time. You cannot let it go. And that person does not let you forget it. “Come on, I give you this or I do this for you. Now you owe me.” And there are those in the culture who have learnt to take advantage of this. They become politicians and take advantage of their office (Anthony). A priest later echoed the business owner’s sentiment: We have this belief that the rich man is better than us, naturally better. Even if he got all his money stealing from the community, he is better. So we look up to him and think he is better. And then if he becomes a politician we vote for him because he is more honourable than us. And if he gives the community a little money back we will bow our heads and say “thank-you, sir” and re-elect him—even if the money he gives back is taken from our own pockets. This is how the people think. They really do (Fr Robert). All the priests stated that the Good Governance program is important and that they have seen positive results: ‘Good government is very important. We have the best laws in the land but they are not being implemented. We are trying to work in the middle ground’ (Fr Jerome). Even a few priests who said the Church must remain out of politics support the Good Governance program: ‘No, the Church must remain neutral. We are spiritual help, and some economic, but not political. Good governance … is about basic rights. It is not political to insist upon recognizing basic Filipino rights. Or checking up on politicians to make sure they are obeying their own laws. That is a civic duty—task. Not duty, task’ (Fr Manuel). The year 2010 was an election year and during fieldwork most dioceses in the Philippines became involved in the election, providing seminars on the new automated balloting system introduced by the Philippine Commission on Elections. The seminars were intended to inform community leaders about the new system, new voting procedures and potential threats to the ballot process. Furthermore, the seminars were intended to solicit volunteers

76  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos as monitors in the coming election. In San Carlos priests and lay leaders met in the Bishop’s compound to learn about the automated election: Personally, I think that is one of the duties of the priests. The people look up to us, so we are already the right people. We have a very grave responsibility to do something about this election, to achieve our dream to have an honest election. And we are campaigning against vote buying. It is a cancer. You heard my homily at Mass, “the dignity of the vote.” It is something sacred. We should simply not let it be bought. Money talks, money puts the person on the pedestal. We call that one [the homily] “Voter Education.” Although we remain non-partisan. We have a guideline: pro-God, pro-poor, pro-Constitution, pro-environment. Cardinal Sin2 said, “No one is obliged to fulfill an evil contract.” So people do not have to vote for who they were paid to vote for (Fr Mickey). A group of priests after the elections seminar discussed whether or not perfect voting conditions could bring change to the structure of Filipino society, and the answer was overwhelmingly no: ‘I haven’t voted since EDSA [1986]. It was a time for change, but nothing has changed. So I don’t vote anymore. It is the same people, the same group. Even since Marcos’ (Fr Johnny). Bishop Joe explains that there is no democracy in the voting process because of massive vote buying and cheating and patronage. So the manner in which we elect our people? I really question it because the people are not so free. So, whoever has the three Gs—goons, guns and gold [laughing]—they rule. No vote? Ebot! (Vote or your home will be pulled out of the ground). Despite such negative sentiment the importance of empowering the people through the vote remains: The politicians need to know that they are being watched, that they are responsible to the people, ultimately. I believe the people can make a difference, and very much at the lower levels of government, the Barangay, the province. Because those politicians do have to answer. But the ten, fifteen families or so at the top, the national politicians who run the country? They do what they want (Fr Amado); It is a sickness, and watching the government has helped. There has always been those who try to have everybody else working for them. The government has their own culture, trying to keep everyone poorer than themselves (Fr Johnny).

Church-Military Advisory Group I attended a meeting of the Church-Military Advisory Group (CMAG) while on Negros. CMAG is an attempt to reconcile long-standing tensions between the Church and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) through cooperative

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 77 action in local communities. Founded in 2007, the group meets every few months and includes church leaders from all four dioceses on the island and soldiers of rank from each of Negros’s seven military areas of operation. One bishop, however, does not send his social-action centre priest to the meetings: ‘He says that he has regular meetings with the army all the time and he can call them whenever he needs to. So it is a waste of time to attend the meeting’ (Fr Edwin). The group has circumvented that bishop’s stance by inviting lay representatives from his diocese to attend. The regular topics of conversation include community infrastructure assessment and delivery, local grievances with the army, and church-military social events. ‘The military is trying to win the hearts and minds of the people … and defeat the rebels [New People’s Army: communist guerrillas]’ (Fr Edwin). The positive presence of the army, bolstered by the enthusiasm of church leaders, is a bloodless boon for the army vis-à-vis the rebels, and the effort seems to be paying off: For most of my life I was against the military. I was brainwashed to think all they did was the corruption and violence. I was on the other side, the left side. But now I can see that the army is trying to do better things. It is trying to win the hearts of the people by going into communities, working in communities with the people. This is a big step, but it is worth taking (Fr Edwin). Within this concept peace and development have become the buzzwords of social action, products of a new era of cooperation and dialogue: It is a new way of dialoguing, the conferential type. We already know that it produces convergence and divergences of ideas and opinions. The conference type of dialogue will lead us to know and understand each other more, rather than just engage in fault finding (Major). The January 2010 CMAG meeting was a formal event, complete with chairperson, secretary, panels, and PowerPoint reports from all military areas of operation. There were over 20 military personnel, including three colonels and four lieutenant colonels, three representatives from the Philippine National Police, four priests, the lay coordinator of Pax ChristiNegros, and an attorney as legal advisor. The meeting began with a discussion of local grievances that citizens had expressed with the army. Church representatives voiced the concerns of which they had become aware since the last CMAG meeting, and army officers responded with clarifications, rebuttals, and/or promises to investigate. Afterward the army officers expressed their concerns about some local churches being infiltrated by the communists, as excuse for some of the grievances: Those churches or church affiliated organizations are not communist organizations but are infiltrated by the communists and are being

78  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos utilized or exploited by the communists. The approach to this situation is not to antagonize these churches or organizations affiliated with the church, but to reach out to them and let them understand (Lt Colonel). At this early time in the meeting, and with the subject matter of grievance, the sense of camaraderie between church and state was striking, as if all parties were fully committed to the concept of peace and development. And as the meeting transitioned into reports from the different areas of operation it became apparent that CMAG and the civilian-development mandates of the army were genuine prerogatives with some successful results. If we take one military report by an infantry battalion of activities in one area we have an illustration of the work of CMAG in local communities. Between early November 2009 and early January 2010 the infantry battalion participated in Holy Mass in seven different barangays and provided security assistance at 17 different festivals/celebrations. The security is helpful. It is needed assistance. The Masses go a long way, to show the people that we are the people as well. We are not the enemy, the enemy is bandits living in the mountains. Disorganized bandits, nothing more (Lt Colonel); Mass is the most sacred time of the week, and it is good to see them [army] here. The children love the military. They want to be soldiers too. They [soldiers] are big and strong. They are role models and the people feel safe. They come and it is peaceful (Fr Frank). The two-month period saw the battalion provide community assistance eight different times, lending multi-media projectors and operators, and tents for a number of events, including church, college, and barangay functions. An annual festival in one community was made exceptional when the army put together a firing range for the public to sample high-powered military weapons. At other times, the army helped to transport post-­secondary athletes to and from an inter-campus event, and it delivered milk to a sixday rural feeding program. The battalion also carried out 16 civic-action visits in communities within its jurisdiction. Civic action is a blanket term for a number of programs, including community development projects, medical missions, environmental awareness and protection, peace-convergence efforts among hostile parties, involvement in national and historical events, and the facilitation of dialogue among government, church, NGOs, and citizens’ groups. Some specific civic actions in which the army participated for the two-month period include a six-day milk-feeding program at ten elementary schools (more than 4000 child beneficiaries), the planting of 1000 seedlings of narra (the national tree of the Philippines), mahogany and acacia along the banks of a river, and a medical/dental mission to an isolated village (217 beneficiaries). The battalion also donated 3000 board-feet of confiscated lumber

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 79 for renovations in four schools and, in conjunction with a local government unit and the Philippine Red Cross, organized the donation of enough blood for 300 recipients. This breakdown of civic activities carried out by the Army over the twomonth period is but one report among seven presented at the CMAG meeting. Each of the six others presented similar activities on the island. The meeting continued with discussion of a few larger projects on the table. These included CMAG’s organization of repairs to a school, construction of a community/multi-purpose centre, and the paving of one kilometre of a heavily sloped road in Cabagtasan, the latter so that those who live down slope can get their wares to the Thursday market, even in the rain. From these reports a positive picture of church-army cooperation emerged, and informants’ statements in the villages were fairly positive as well. In the village of Cabagtasan individuals from the community predominantly are positive about the army presence. Among rice farmers, storeowners, students of age, members of the clergy, and my neighbours, there is a general belief that the army is a positive presence in the area, and that the New People’s Army is no longer widely supported. The main reason for supporting the army stemmed from the help it gave during the construction of the mission school, even if it was the first time anyone could recall the army participating in local development. All six teachers at the mission school think it perfectly normal that army and church would be working together in its construction, although some are cynical about army work ethic: ‘The army are more on laziness. They work for three hours and rest for the afternoon [laughing]’ (Ma’am Alina); ‘They sat around a lot. But we got our school’ (Sir Sisco). Priests, on the other hand, were divided yet again, and the split between younger and older was much the same as with other topics. Eight of ten younger parish priests believed that CMAG was a positive step toward cooperation. We have a good relationship. You have heard of CMAG? They [officers] try to patch up military abuse. They try to discipline their soldiers (Fr Rox); The military is very positive. They helped build the chapel (Fr Eduardo); This is a new development, a good one. Not so much partnership as cooperation, maybe respect. We have the leftists. They are headquartered in my Parish. People have been shot. Two years ago a man was shot by the RPA. We are asking the help of the army men. People come to us, asking for help from us, and we have to attend to them. Negros is especially bad, because the NPA has split, and there is the RPA, and the two fight each other in our villages and on our roads (Fr Mickey). Of the older group of parish priests six do not support cooperation between the church and AFP. It appears that partnership, for them, is code for collaboration. It simply re-entrenches the existing system of inequality,

80  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos with the church playing junior partner to the dominant hegemonic bloc (see Moxham and Grant 2013): I do not believe in any Church-Military partnership. What, working together on infrastructure? Is this happening, throughout the country? I don’t know, I don’t know about that. That makes us part of the system, and the system is broken (Fr Naldo); I am not happy about CMAG. The military is still trying to assert power, but we are a civilian government. CMAG seems like the Church is being co-opted, and then we have to wait for a [CMAG] meeting to address an issue that is already ­happening? (Fr Jimmy). One older priest, who happened to enter the clergy rather late in life, thinks the CMAG partnership is positive. Two others avoid talking about it and one flip-flops over whether the cons of collaboration are offset by the opportunity to voice concerns at meetings: No, the army and the Church cannot be working together, like in line with one another on the same task. The Church, the parish priest, is the middle, the middle ground. He is responsible to his parish, the people. He is in the middle, and he communicates between the government and the people. So, if the CMAG is a place of communication, then that is a good thing, because the people do need to know what is going on and they do need to know if concerns, like abuses for example, that they are being addressed. If there has been violence or something stolen from someone’s house, then this needs to be addressed with the army. So, the council is a good thing, because it allows the priest to act as a middleman between the people and the government (Fr Amado). For many communities on the island of Negros the army is seen as the group that shoots up villages during battles with the NPA, tortures innocent civilians suspected of ties to the communists, and murders local leaders (including priests) who voice opposition to the government and army (see Holden 2009). This image of destruction, torture, and death does not foment wide civilian support for the NPA, however, for the NPA is guilty of its own list of crimes against the people. The vast majority of informants are in agreement that the NPA has lost steam and the new army presence is a welcome one. The anti-government people used to be here, but they are not in these mountains anymore. They are still in other parts of the diocese. Their power, their size is getting smaller, and that is good. You cannot develop the people without peace. How can you expect the people to prosper if they do not even have their own safety? (Sr Milla).

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 81 This is the general sentiment, although one lay minister states: We have a good constitution but only the poor are told to follow it. Not the rich. That is why we have the people in the mountains, the rebels. They want the government to follow the constitution. That is all. Just follow their own constitution. Interestingly the older priests who are less tolerant of CMAG are also the ones who tend to have a more positive stance on the NPA: For as long as the government is doing their bad things, I believe this group will continue, and flourish. Especially those victimized by the army. Very negative with the presence of military. Before they thought I was working with them [NPA], but I said, “I am working for the people.” Today, those who join come from poor families. Some join for adventure, but they do not stay for long (Fr Jimmy). The left used to be identified with the priests. We were all left in the eyes of many. We perhaps shared the same basic cause, helping the poor. But the NPA has fallen out of favour in almost all of the public eye. They are petty, peasants, like the rest of us. They are not—. Many who join are good people. They are people like you and I, looking for a change, some change. But change has not come, and their ways of change are no longer seen as the right way (Fr Naldo); [The NPA is] talking about the way the politicians run the government, and the poor, and equal distribution of the land. But they are using violence. For me, I respect their ideology. We have the same sentiment for the people, but different means. We do not repay evil with evil (Fr Robert). Even Bishop Joe offers his two cents on the situation: The left is very strong in Negros. They really flourish because of the social problem here, not the mountains [for hiding]. Land problem, social problem. They really have to react this way, because of the situation. The social problem is a reality, so very evident. They thought it [communism] was a means of transforming the situation here. It is not, but it is at least understandable. One of the mission school teachers, however, has a much more cynical (and arguably practical) impression of the AFP-NPA encounter: The people don’t agree with the communists, with violent revolution. Anyway, the whole thing is business. If the army wanted to capture all the bandits they could. But instead they just chase them from this town, over to that town [pointing across the mountain]. And it is business. The army captures them, takes their guns, then sells their guns back to them

82  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos later. And, you know, it is distraction, having the bandits in the hills and the army in pursuit. There you go! There is your government at work. And the army takes credit for no more bandits, but do you know the true reason why the NPA is no longer around Cabagtasan? Because of the [cellular] networks. The reception for Smart [Mobile] doesn’t work down here, and Global [Mobile] won’t work over there. And that is how they communicate (Sir Sisco). Ultimately CMAG is a forum where military and civil leaders come together to address grievances and local development. Even given the army’s ulterior motive of counter-insurgency, there are positive results from the army presence in rural peoples’ lives, and local projects are being identified, planned and prosecuted. ‘This is a new way of government working for the people—your government at work! [laughing]. No, but really, you can see, out there, we are trying to help the people’ (Major). In so doing the military’s attempt to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’, as Father Edwin says, seems to be working. Over time, however, the extent to which the church’s very own counter-narrative of BECs is being co-opted, through CMAG, by the dominant hegemonic partner will remain to be seen (Moxham and Grant 2013). Each day the Social Action Center of the Diocese of San Carlos takes modest strides toward the goal of total human development for the people in its territory. Many priests, nuns, and lay leaders daily walk this path, and in concert their efforts help to produce a measure of local, meaningful development. Total human development is social, spiritual, political, and economic, and through economic cooperation, feeding programs, low-cost medicinal supplements, the construction of schools, alternative-mining campaigns, and cooperation with government the diocese has met with moderate success in its efforts to develop the people. The overwhelming opinion from informants is that the diocese has taken, and continues to take, great strides in its battle against poverty and exploitation. What is apparent also is that the diocese is attacking social problems at an appropriate scale. Building schools and organizing anti-mining campaigns against large conglomerates is hardly the work of small communities, let alone individual BECs, as the discourse of BECs will have us believe. Nor is a partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the distribution of enormous quantities of rice or the provision of thousands of meals to needy families. These actions are appropriate at the diocese level of social organization, simply because they require resources (both human and pecuniary) that are not available at smaller scales of Philippine society. Much of the development success within the diocese can be attributed to a handful of key actors who have framed a unique picture of development and set themselves the task of its realization. Indeed most accomplishments are the result of tireless efforts on the part of key leaders within the Church. This, however, draws attention to those leaders whose general lack of effort makes them,

Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 83 well, less tired on a daily basis. As shown, all clergy, although Of the Cloth, are not cut from the same cloth, and the efforts of some far outweigh the efforts of others. For instance, in the priesthood, the present analysis brings to the surface a stark division between priests ordained prior to the mid-1990s and priests ordained later. Key informants are aware of the discrepancies as well. The younger priests ‘are not so socially aware. It is the seminary formation. They are not exposed, up to date on issues. Too engrossed in liturgical studies. They are not really socially aware about what’s going on. Not only the diocese, the whole country and globally’ (Fr Jimmy). The Bishop confirms this sentiment: Seminary teaching has changed and this is why younger priests are not as aware of the social problem. It has to do with exposure to Marx and social conditions. Those educated and ordained after 1990—there was a lot going on … the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the USSR. Pope John Paul [II] was a conservative pope. The seminary changed. It was explained that since the early 1990s the greater Catholic Seminary had changed into a much more socially conservative one, focused upon liturgical studies, and at times outright opposed to any organized protest against secular powers. Producing a general lack of awareness in regards to social issues, this trend was generative also of a lingering apathy that the older clergy finds troubling: Different priests have different mindsets. Some are looking for greener pastures outside. Actually, the first part is often economic survival. But if a priest is very active, maybe good things will materialize. What gives me grief—and encouragement!—is that I am working with people with different attitudes and different mindsets, and it will take a long time to change attitudes and mindsets. The world doesn’t stop. If you concentrate on grief you will be paralyzed. In the words, “it takes a long time for change to come,” there is the truth that change will come, eventually (Fr Edwin). The Bishop is disappointed in some of the parish priests as well: They like it [social action] but they won’t lift a finger. They want the Social Action Center to do it all. Even when they hear about humanrights abuses, they want the diocese to handle it. Though I don’t push it, because they are hardworking. A final point to be made concerns the place of non-Catholics within the diocese’s framework of development, particularly since the present work is predicated on the idea that Catholic groups are able to generate their own meaningful development. Not one program administered by the diocese is intended solely for the benefit of Catholics, nor is the primary intention of any program to solicit converts to Catholicism. Conversion

84  Development in the Diocese of San Carlos ‘used to matter, we used to care about that, but now we just don’t care. Suffering is non-denominational’ (Fr Edwin). Sister Milla states that only 20 percent of Cabagtasan, where the second mission school was built, and only a slightly higher percentage of students there, are Catholic: The church is fairly new here. We did not have a priest here till recently. The people are coming back to the church, however. But the other churches were here first, and the people needed a place to worship. I like them though. They are my friends. Mormon, Adventist, we are all God’s children (Sr Milla); This is not proselytizing, that’s more pressure [and] the object is to transfer people to your religion. We are not pushing like that. All the social-action activities, schools for instance. Preaching is when one does God’s work. So, indirectly, preaching through action is God’s work. There is no push [for converts], though it is inevitable. We are not naïve about that (Bishop Joe). Ultimately the Diocese of San Carlos is committed to the economic and social development of all the people who live within its borders. It is a church that recognizes the ties that bind spiritual and secular prerogatives, and a church that understands that the development of God’s people is coterminous with the development of the individual families and communities who live within the diocese: It is integrated. In all our actions we touch on deeper causes, not just the poverty itself. We cannot be neutral. The direction, the organizing, goes as far as being an activist in a certain sense. It is radical, from the Latin radicalis, going to the roots. We cannot do away with it. The direction goes as far as changing government, changing the system (Fr Edwin).

Notes 1. Literally, in Tagalog, ningas cogon means a roaring grass fire—but ignited only to watch it burn out. 2. Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila (1974–2003). As the spiritual leader of Filipino Catholics he became disgruntled over government corruption and outright murder, involved himself in political issues, and played a significant role in the People Power Revolution that toppled Marcos.

References Diocese of San Carlos. 2016. Vision. http://www.sancarlosdiocese.org. Accessed 23/07/16. Holden, W. 2009. Ashes from the phoenix: state terrorism and the party-list groups in the Philippines. Contemporary Politics, 15(4), 377–93. Moxham, C. and M. Grant. 2013. Passive revolution: a church-military partnership in the Philippines. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 34(3), 307–21.

5

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos Place-Making, Social Capital, and the Structures That Limit Development

The concept of being Church through Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) has been part of the organizational vision of the Diocese of San Carlos for more than 20 years. Father Jimmy, described by other priests as a pioneer of the BEC concept and the resident expert, explains: Generally, the history of BECs on Negros starts in 1988, but some parishes predate this. People were organized to address the current problems affecting the life of the people. I said that BEC is based on the faith of the people. It is just a way of being church, the community. The transformation of the life of the people should not be limited to the economic. Social, cultural as well, and political life. It is precisely why we have these programs in organizing an apostolate, especially concern for the youth. Since 1988 the number of BECs in the Diocese of San Carlos has been on the rise, due to the efforts of both priests and lay leaders. As mentioned at the outset of the previous chapter, all parishes have multiple BECs, ranging from a small handful to dozens, with highly variable numbers of families involved in each individual community. The basic premise of BECs in San Carlos is twofold: (i) any group can be strengthened by its commitment to a local church, Christian values, and the members’ commitment to support one another and (ii) the wider Catholic Church will be strengthened by the solidarity of the many small groups that are its foundation. Both of these underlying assumptions stress the essential element of the people as the church, although the latter, strengthening the greater Catholic community, can be understood as a responding variable to the first: The people have asked, “Where is the Church?” They are the Church! Why are they asking me? My role is how to strengthen the unity of these people living in a community. It is evangelization. Talking about the Kingdom of God, where all are united and equal. So we have to work on this journey to getting there. And building BECs is strengthening the political will of the people, to Christianize our politics and avoid the BEC being politicized by DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-5

86  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos any one group. Also, when church and state are at odds, where will he or she [the person] side. This helps guide people (Fr Jimmy). Although the number of BECs is on the rise in the diocese this neither implies their longevity nor the permanence of families that make up their membership; rather, it results from a general trend, a path walked by the faithful, usefully understood as two steps forward and one step back: I do not think of it as building BECs, because they fall apart so quickly. We are rebuilding BECs. Constantly rebuilding them! (Fr Edwin); When I arrived very few people were coming. I tried to reorganize. Now there are twenty-one BECs situated in four barangays. The past parish priest was not very good about forming BECs, but I have a group of seven—my disciples [laughing]—who come along and they help to organize (Fr Jimmy). All parish priests are key actors in the germination of BECs within their own territories, either personally or through appointed lay leaders, but in many ways the flowering of community is left to the people themselves. When asked about who initiated the formation of the greatest number of BECs in individual parishes, the majority of priests stated either that they were approached by the small communities themselves—many of whom had already constructed a chapel and desired its blessing—or that the previous parish priest had been the lead actor. BEC formation begins with the liturgical community, a group of Catholic faithful who come together outside of their daily lives to read scripture, celebrate Jesus Christ’s life, and share stories, food, struggles, and hardships. It is this basic group—rooted in culture and faith, united in neighbourliness and common predicament—that must be established before any semblance of socio-political reflection, let alone group action, can occur: The building of the community is integral. Otherwise, when something goes wrong, it just disintegrates. So, first the spiritual community, then we try for something more (Fr Edwin); You understand the base, the root. The people require a foundation upon which to grow, and the spiritual aspect is the foundation. It is what unites them, and they need this unity before action (Bishop Joe). But even the task of spiritual organization can be difficult in a land of landlessness and labour hardship, where basic livelihood consumes most of the day’s energy: We are trying to organize them spiritually, then maybe developmentally. But it is very hard, difficult. Most work the sugar. They are dependent on the hacienderos. Their daily lives are difficult. They do not have the time (Fr Johnny).

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 87 The focus of this chapter scales down to the BEC level, with data from three parishes. The BECs in the parishes serve as cases with which to understand (i) BECs as communities of families and sites of place-making, (ii) the role of women in the communities, and (iii) the prospect of socio-economic development. Furthermore, this chapter seeks to interrogate the discourse of BECs—small communities of worship that organize to achieve local developments and transform the greater structures of Philippine society— questioning whether they are the appropriate scale of political-economic intervention. As shown in the previous chapter, much development is taking place at the scale of the diocese, and as will be shown in this chapter, parishes in San Carlos are chock-full of BECs that are meaningful places of community and solidarity. But after a few decades the search for a BEC where truly endogenous, autonomous, and sustainable small-community development has taken root—development that is able to support or substantially supplement BEC families—remains elusive. Development is a loose term for a number of markers and instances of social change, and through the efforts of the diocese individual BECs are beneficiaries of important developments. But development strictly within the context of individual BECs is a tougher measure, and the present work relies upon the diocese’s very own benchmark: income generation. Incomegenerating projects (IGPs in the local lingo) are considered the cornerstones of community development, and in an ideal world BECs in the Philippines would all have discovered their niche within the economy, pooling labour, talent, and resources for meaningful change. Thus, based upon the diocese’s own interpretation of development, travels throughout the diocese produced a rather saturated puddle of data. In a nutshell, the communities all want economic self-reliance and a small measure of autonomy, but they have no money. And their dreams of generating income are far from extravagant, instead focused upon the most rudimentary building blocks of independence, such as a group swine project, land for community gardens or a few communal carabaos for tilling a donated section of steep terrain, to name a few. Another layer of complexity affecting income generation is the structural reality of families locked in a daily struggle to place just enough food on the table. Hunger is compelling, especially in the eyes and voices of dependents, and abandoning quasi-secure wages in the hope of realizing something without guarantee is a near-impossible choice to make. Ultimately, as we will see, having the will does not give you the way under systemic hardship. The remainder of the chapter is divided into two main sections. The first section is an exploration of BECs in two rural parishes, Pandanan and Pacuan, geographically located at two ends of the diocese. The former is a place where the rural poor live in scattered villages and tend to subsist as wage labourers in the sugar and fishing industries. The latter is a place where tenant families on small parcels produce rice and corn. The section begins with an overview of the two parishes and data is organized around

88  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos themes common to both, as opposed to an individual chronicle of each parish. The second section of the chapter homes in on a final field site, the parish of Cabagtasan, a rural and remote mountain parish where smallholders farm rice and corn. Cabagtasan was chosen because of the diocese’s overarching support of the concept of total human development: ‘Once multiple programs are in place the entire community will be able to grow and develop on its own’ (Fr Jublas). Cabagtasan benefits from the most social programs offered by the diocese, including a feeding program, herbal medicines distribution, infrastructural developments, such as road construction and a fresh waterline, sponsorship of a number of families’ income projects, and the second mission school.

A tale of two parishes The parish of Pandanan is located at the northern end of the island, along a stretch of coast slightly east of Cadiz. Although a mere narrow strip of cropland hemmed in by mountain and sea, the area is prime sugarcane property and most families in the scattered villages have at least one member employed in the industry. Others work on fishing boats or in aquaculture, and the men who have secured employment on fishing boats are gone for one to two months at a time, earning 2000 pesos per month (less than USD 45). The large boats can be seen from the beach behind the parish church, as they enter and exit the Cadiz harbour ten kilometres away. Just offshore single fishermen in small craft paddle among buoys as they check their lines. Along the beach families and/or neighbours of five to ten adults and their children wade out from the sandbar. The groups walk enormous fishnets out into the surf, at first linearly and parallel to the coast, then slowly bring the two ends together into a wide corral as the tide recedes. The process can take more than one hour, and some groups will walk away with a mere few fish for their efforts. Labouring for small rewards is a reality for the masses, whether it be fishing for food or chopping cane for landowners. Father Manuel explains that the minimum wage is 100 pesos per day for labourers, which is just enough money for an individual but not enough for a family. He says it needs to be increased by at least 50 percent, which does not seem much to ask for ten hours of work. But Father Manuel is a young priest, Pandanan his first parish, and minimum wage is explained better by two veteran priests, one assigned in the vicinity of Pandanan and one from south of San Carlos City: The man does not get minimum wage because he will sign a blank piece of paper. One day the paper will say he accepts working for less than the minimum. If they don’t sign, there is plenty supply of workers. So the man earns fifty to sixty pesos, rather than 100. And the average family can earn between 200, maybe 225 pesos per day. The whole family! (Fr Jerome); The people in my parish predominantly work in the sugar

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 89 fields. The family income is less than 200 pesos per day. Men earn sixty to eighty; women, less than sixty; children, forty pesos for working in the sugar (Fr Mickey). Whether earning wages in sugar, another mono-crop, or in the service sector, the vast majority of rural people subsist on no more than 200 pesos per day. Basic wages are quickly spent on daily food, transportation to and from work, clothing, cigarettes, and some form of entertainment—­festivals, karaoke, television, drink, or gambling. A slim minority earn a higher income (10,000–20,000 pesos per month) from more stable sources, such as business ownership, teaching, and local government employment. In terms of the latter the coveted local government positions, such as barangay captain, open the door to the private enterprise of public office, and official income tends to be topped up (and often eclipsed) by unofficial sources. Debt is a reality on Negros, and almost everyone owes some money. The two most common debtors are the landlord and extended family, but some owe money to neighbours, local moneylenders, and businessmen who sell fertilizer in the market. Debt in Pandanan is seasonal, coinciding with times when sugar requires little labour and workers go without work. Money borrowed can amount to many weeks’ worth of family income. Like the crops upon which Negros’s economy is based, debt is cyclical, perennial, and structured into the social relations of large-holder, mono-crop production. There are stories of neighbours and friends who have been repaying debt to landlords for many years, and others who are repaying decades-old debt accumulated by their parents. Perhaps the one silver lining of employee debt is that it tends to guarantee one’s employment in a land of mass unemployment. Back in the villages the unofficial unemployment rate is 50 percent. There are seasonal times of family hunger for the majority, when livestock and vegetables are traded for cash and cheap dry fish from the market. The people live in a number of villages scattered throughout the parish. A larger village will typically have an elementary school, town hall, daycares, a number of water wells, bars, places of worship, and sari-sari stores, and a densely packed series of single-family homes that twist along impromptu streets. Smaller villages are much the same, minus schools and town halls, and they tend to have only one or two churches. In small and large village alike, music blares from home stereos and smoke from cooking fires hangs thick in the narrow streets. Traditional houses are constructed from palm fronds, cogon grass, and bamboo. Other people have made use of things scavenged when constructing a home, such as large billboards, sheet metal, and packaging materials. A select few homes of the wealthier residents are concrete with metal roofs, glass windows, gates, and flower gardens. Regarding the smaller homes belonging to the poorer residents in sugar villages, although houses and personal contents are privately owned, the ground underneath is not titled to the family. Thus houses and entire villages can be subjected

90  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos to removal and relocation, although this is rare. Many homes have multiple rooms, televisions, and DVD players. Sewers are a luxury seldom seen, but sewage is kept in check by the efforts of the entire community. It is carried into the forest, buried under outhouses or occasionally contained by rudimentary septic systems. As elsewhere in the Philippines garbage is abundant in Pandanan, collecting along pathways and on the edges of the forest that skirts the villages. Wages, unemployment, debt, and land tenure add up to a bleak outlook for the bulk of inhabitants, particularly young people. Groups of youth walk the streets and visit in yards much of the day. Cards and gambling are a favourite pastime and, at 25 pesos per pack, the smoke from Camel and Marlborough cigarettes lingers ubiquitous in the air. In one yard five teens exchange peso coins, betting over whether or not a small monkey, missing a leg from the knee down and tethered to a tree, will eat certain fruits placed in its hand. It is explained that the animal would have died in the wild with only one leg, and it is happy enough. (Only later is it explained that the animal lost its leg in the owner’s trap.) Among the youth a post-secondary education or training program is a priority, and many are actively trying to muster, through wages and borrowing, enough cash to enter a program. A number of colleges and vocational schools are physically accessible to the parish, but access for many remains illusive. Interestingly, post-secondary education is seen unequivocally as a guarantee of employment, regardless of a systemic lack of jobs in the country. There are a couple dozen BECs in Pandanan, comprised of 20–30 families each, some self-organized by the laity and others organized by the previous parish priests. Each new BEC has approached the parish priest, Father Manuel, and he has appointed the lay ministers himself. By having a lay minister, the small BEC is able to have a local Mass each week in its own chapel without making the trek to the parish church, which can be costly and take time. BECs that have yet to construct a chapel perform an outdoor Mass around a small shrine or altar. The only difference between these small Masses and the priestly Mass is that the lay minister cannot draw the Holy Spirit into the wafer and wine for communion. Because of this Father Manuel makes an effort to visit each BEC chapel at least once per month, so that the faithful can have an official Mass with communion. This means that Father Manuel travels to say Mass in two or three different locations almost every day of the week, with Saturdays reserved for special occasions such as weddings, festivals, funerals, and confirmations, and Mondays being his only days off. In terms of income generation, the parish of Pandanan makes some money selling the discounted National Food Authority rice (see Chapter 4). More importantly, two women on the parish team are making large profits from the manufacture of candles that they sell at Mass and during other religious events. Dozens of wicks are strung around a stick, dipped in hot wax and allowed to dry. By the time the last stick of wicks has been dipped,

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 91 the first is dry and ready to be dipped again. After a long series of dips the candles are ready, and they are roughly the size of a large ink marker. Hundreds of candles are made each day, and at five pesos each and with low overhead costs for string and wax, the two women generate tens of thousands of pesos each month. Some of the income generated is available to fund other social developments in the parish, as well as sprucing up the parish grounds; for instance, the parish team spent more than 25,000 pesos on a concrete grotto with a statue of Jesus’s mother inside. The parish of Pacuan is an isolated area located in the southern end of the diocese, a valley surrounded by lush green mountains and natural springs that was once a hotspot of New People’s Army activity. An hour inland from La Libertad, it is accessed only by a severe and tortuous gravel road of some 20 kilometres, interspersed with short strips of broken pavement. At times the road seems to hang by a thread from the mountainside. Along the way the hills are dotted with small wood-frame homes and the land is carved up for agricultural production. A small child stands on the side of the road, holding a leash attached to the nose ring of a pink carabao (water buffalo), and she waves as we pass. She wears no shoes, her long shirt tied around her waist with a pink belt. It is explained that her family is most likely in charge of raising another family’s carabao, and the profits from its sale in one or two years will be split between the two families. Pacuan is a farming community—a central business centre in the bottom of a valley with a couple hundred homes packed together, surrounded by sloping hills that are divided into smallholder farms. Most of the people subsist on corn, rice, vegetable gardens, and livestock, and all the land is rented from a few landlords who do not live in the area. Income for farmers is equated at one-third of crop yield, with the other two-thirds going to the landlord, but families also have gardens and animals around their immediate homes. The gardens are especially helpful during two off-seasons when corn and rice fields do not require labour. Vegetables and livestock are sold, and proceeds are used to purchase corn, rice, and cheap dried fish, trucked in on market day. Father Carlo, the parish priest, estimates that 10 percent of families are impoverished enough to experience periodic hunger. One-hundred pesos is the standard answer when people are asked how much they earn, and this per day figure begins to sound rehearsed (as if the workers are either embarrassed to admit working for less among neighbours or have simply repeated the 100 figure too many times to warrant reflection). Furthermore 100 pesos for each day worked does not clearly describe the amount upon which people subsist monthly or yearly. Off-seasons and halfdays of work are a reality with which families must deal, and 25 working days per month can equate to less than 2000 pesos, let alone weeks and weeks of off-season unemployment. As in Pandanan, income is much higher for business owners, teachers, and government workers. General unemployment is high in Pacuan as well, and sentiment among the youth is similar to that in Pandanan; most aspire to higher education with the prospect of

92  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos securing a good-paying job. Those that receive a scholarship or have family members in the cities with whom to live while attending post-secondary are grateful for the opportunity. Pacuan has a village centre with health clinic, schools, town hall, churches, and central business area consisting of sari-sari stores, bars, food stores, rice and corn mills, and small-trades shops. The weekly market is held on the central business strip, and hundreds of locals make the trek into town to buy and sell household items, produce, and packaged food. On market day the open spaces behind the main strip of buildings are jammed with parked motor scooters, tethered horses, and carabao, the animals standing in about eight inches of garbage. The banks of the river that winds through town are also a favourite dumping ground for garbage—mainly plastic packaging for items brought up from the city, be they chips, chocolate bars, or karaoke machines. Such a remote location struggles to rid itself of the waste trucked in each week: It all just rolls down into the valley, and then it hits the river—splash [laughing]. No, but really, we have no money for that. The infrastructure does not exist. You saw the road. The men, they have trucks, they bring it in but we can’t get it out (barangay official). Over the years BECs in Pacuan have been organized by a strong parish team that predates Father Carlo’s tenure in the area. As a younger priest (age 31) he is grateful for the efforts of the parish team that has accepted much of the responsibility for building and maintaining BECs in Pacuan. Father Carlo has allowed the team to continue to manage its own basic operations since arriving in the parish and, in terms of bringing onboard new BECs, he does follow-up visits once the ball is rolling. A number of BECs have built a small community chapel that is blessed by the priest and visited at least one time each month for official Mass. Just as in Pandanan, weekly Mass (minus communion with the Holy Spirit) is performed by a lay minister appointed by Father Carlo. And similar again, income generation in Pacuan has remained rather elusive. NFA rice produces some extra cash, and the only other significant venture fell apart when the lead man, the previous parish priest, was transferred: No funds for livelihood. There was once one. It relied on the charisms of the priest. It was part of social action, lending 10,000 pesos to BEC members. We purchased a sari-sari store, owned cooperatively. When he left, it collapsed (William). Communities of families BECs in both parishes are family based. Organized by key founding families, most have grown to include dozens of families over the years. They are communities of neighbours who come together to share their faith and

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 93 reflect upon life and hardship. It was often the people themselves, questioning their faith and the sacraments, who came to the priest for answers, and his answer was a small community for reflection: We went to him [the priest]. We had these questions. What would God say about this? What does the Church say about that? We were not getting answers in the Mass, the Sunday Mass. We were not even allowed to ask the questions! So he said we needed to talk about these things, and he said he would talk about them with us, too (Manny). Later, the BEC concept spread as other small groups heard about it and approached parish priests, asking for help in making their groups official BECs. Eventually, with the help of parish lay leaders, seminars were given to potential candidate groups. A few BECs date to the late 1980s, but for the most part the number of BECs, as in other parishes in the Diocese of San Carlos, has exploded since the turn of the millennium. First and foremost, the principle aspect of community during the initial formation of a BEC is coming together to share the liturgy: The Bible sharing makes us closer to God (Rachel); We are helping each other, and ourselves, better understand the meaning and how to act as good Christians must act. How to be good to ourselves and neighbours (Juan). The group members report a new sense of purpose and place as Christians. For many this has helped to replace longstanding feelings of anomie vis-àvis the Catholic Church: I went to Mass, I prayed, I sang—I’m a great singer, you know! But then we just walk out and no more church till the Sunday again. Now, we are a church everyday. Our own church and our own chapel (Enrile). Bible study is weekly, if not twice weekly, and Sunday prayer is performed in the community chapel, led by a lay minister. Thus the small communities are a means to grassroots Christianity, as opposed to top-down Christianity officiated by the central Church, whereby members read and interpret the scriptures and apply them to their own daily lives. This style of hands-on worship and reflection gives place-based meaning to being a good Christian, and Bible study can be understood as a pedagogy of moral, just, altruistic and self-reflective daily living for members of a particular community. An important marker of identity on the BEC social landscape is the community chapel, and the community owners of the buildings expressed incredible pride in the structures: This is the centre of BEC, where we come together, for worship, and we are a family, you know, every one of us, together. We spent two years to

94  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos finish the chapel, and it’s not finished still. But it is nice (Melanie); With money we would finish the church, the chapel. It is not finished. Father Manuel got us some money, but as you see the wall needs completion, and the benches are being built. Maybe 600 more pesos, a few months maybe (Jon); Most important, right now, is the BEC chapel, for we do not have one. You need one. Then the parish priest will come and give us the communion in our own chapel. It is very important to have that here. Often the men are not able to leave the work, the haciendero will take the job and give it to someone else. So they do not take communion for sometimes months. I believe it is upsetting to Father Manuel (Gale). The chapels are rudimentary structures, often incomplete and usually pieced together with local materials, such as cogon grass and bamboo, although some make use of concrete blocks and sheet metal. A complete chapel is a preoccupation for those BECs without one, as if the structure itself is the pre-eminent group marker, and this seems to reiterate the liturgical foundation of the groups. Ultimately the structure itself is the site of group organization, refuge, and meeting, a place both symbolic and practical, and this helps to explain why the poor will give what few pesos they have left at the end of the week to constructing the monument. It is, or will be, their one cultural possession on a landscape of dispossession. In contradistinction to the local chapel, the parish church to which people trek weekly is historically the location of a more imagined community—a site where the Catholic faithful congregated for a few hours but did not truly share in the production of church community. This passive worship did not always promote attendance. Small BECs have changed this pattern, however, and they are now a fully grounded community wherein the members fully participate in the making (and breaking) of church: My husband never came [to Sunday Mass]. Only Christmas and maybe Holy Week. With GKK1 he’s part of the church again, and he comes to the parish for Mass as well. Father Manuel is happy (Clara). Like Clara’s husband, many have discovered that their BEC is a vehicle for active participation in the parish church as well, a means for individuals to become much more than mere vessels filled each week by an all-powerful priestly class. Perhaps the most empowering event is when an individual BEC sponsors the Sunday Mass in the parish church. BECs in the parishes take turns with sponsorship, which entails arriving early to clean the church grounds and tend to the flower and vegetable gardens, helping in the set-up and take-down of the Mass, presenting a formal offering of rice and vegetables, preparing a lunch to be eaten with the clergy and any guests, and organizing an after-Mass event, such as a basketball game. Other important parish events in which BECs participate are the fiestas, including celebrations during Christmas and Holy Week, and the annual fiesta, considered

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 95 by most as the premier event of the year. Fiesta is a time when BECs come together to plan, organize and deliver these yearly celebrations. These acts of giving to the greater community are a form of production, a social praxis in which BEC sense of belonging and networked unity is communicated. On numerous Sunday mornings dozens of members of the lead BEC for the week can be seen working cooperatively to prepare the parish church grounds for services, and they are honoured to be performing such an important task: This is our gift to the church, our offering, I guess. It is important to have the place look nice. And we like to do it. It is an honour to work for the priest. But it is our place as well (Connie). Sense of belonging is fomented in other ways not directly tied to worship and liturgy, as well. The spirit of living by Christ’s example encourages camaraderie, and BEC families work together to help one another, particularly in times of need. Families donate small amounts regularly to an emergency fund for vulnerable members. Although the amount donated is neither set nor mandatory, over the course of the year donations are believed to balance out among members: ‘Sometimes a family will go months without giving the tithes. But they can make it up. Eventually. We are poor’ (Crystal). When necessary the fund is tapped to carry a needy family through desperate times, and gifts of rice, vegetables, and market fish are given. Goods are not the only things given, however, and BECs also will organize labour collectively to help needy families. Beyond times of desperation BEC families lend labour regularly, working in each other’s gardens, caring for children and preparing meals for the elderly or infirm. Through these acts of cooperation and compassion the community of faithful are being church and further stamping their own mark on Negros’s landscape. True to the BEC concept families in Pandanan and Pacuan take time each week to reflect upon their social circumstances. Once again, by focusing on their own poverty and injustices in their own villages, members are able to evaluate critically place-relative conditions in contrast to any social critique handed down by the greater Catholic Church or civil organizations. Through analysis of the status quo BECs create a discourse inflected with scripture, Christian morals, local wisdom, and even concepts taken from the social sciences: Sin is in the society itself. It is structured, part of the reality. But it is man’s sin, not God’s punishment. No equality, and the graft—that is the root of this poverty. We have a very corrupt system here; the politics, the economics, the hacienderos. And the people are kept very poor by it. It is not part of His original plan. That is man against God’s will. But we are hopeful. We pray for change and we know it comes … It’s our struggle, our dignity that gives us hope. We are the meek of the Bible, the poorest … Father Marcus—another priest, before Father Manuel’s

96  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos time—he says it’s about the transformation of a broken system, transforming it from within (Melanie). The social critique is a concrete accompaniment to the mysticism of the scriptures, giving real-life and timely substance to the ancient gospel. Bible stories are selected for their contemporary significance and provide an entrée into social analysis as members come to terms with both the strengths and weaknesses of their own lives as social agents. The Book of Job, which chronicles one man’s unyielding faith in God amid great personal suffering, is a favourite motif in BEC critique, and although much reflection is negative, ‘we always see the good things around us, even taken with the poverty’ (Bobby). Poverty garners much reflection, for it is systemic and local, structured and lived daily. It is both social injustice and scriptural abhorrence, and the number one reason contemplated for poverty in the Philippines is corruption: It has to be the corruption. What is Japan, Taiwan? We have the copper, the manganese, the sugar. We have all of this, and yet we are so poor. Twenty percent minimum goes to the corruption. But I know of one-hundred percent. The government forces the engineer to sign a contract for a project that doesn’t exist. Sign or resign. My friend, Antonio—Imelda Marcos forced him to sign for a contract, and two weeks later the job does not exist (Henry). Many members of the clergy agree with the corruption explanation and add a few other factors into the social brew, such as landlessness and unemployment: Number one: corruption! Because the Philippines is very rich in natural resources. That is why we are called “Pearl of the Orient”, but who has the pearls? [laughing] Secondly, distribution of wealth (Fr Jimmy); People are not given a chance to own the land, or even to have jobs. In most countries, there is a job for you. That’s why we have so many OFWs, the overseas workers, mainly young girls. We don’t have work, and then the corruption of the bureaucracy. No opportunity. Seventy percent are impoverished in this parish, but at least the people have food and salted fish (Fr Jerome); The rich are few. They control everything. They own the land and they control congress, the senate … Look at Noy-Noy [President Aquino, as of May 2010], The family land [Hacienda Luisita] is still in the courts, but nothing will come of it. He calls it his “ancestral home” as if he has natural rights. As if the history of slavery that built it did not happen. This is the problem with the Philippines. This must change. But it is hard to convince a rich man to stop being rich, to give up. And the rich are driven by competition between themselves. So, who will be first to step forward and stop it, change it? (Fr Naldo).

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 97 The effect of mass landlessness is also reiterated by BEC members: I don’t know. The rich landlords. They have to give up some of their riches. They have to give up the land. In that village [we visited in the morning], the barbwire is there—I showed you. The land is in the courts. Those villagers, the people were given the land by the government, but another man wants to develop it, into a beach resort I think, so he bought the land even though it was not for sale. He paid the politicians. He is the brother-in-law of a congressman. So the people are suing, but the lawyers they have can be bribed, too. It is all corruption. I don’t understand why these men need so much. They have so much and they want to have this piece of land. It is two hectares, many families (Jon); The number one reason for poverty in Pilipinas? Unequal distribution of wealth. The only way to begin to fix the Philippines is to have the rich people give something up. Until then, this [pointing at men working on rice terraces] is the Philippines. Land ownership has to be changed (Helena). A third common explanation for the continued prevalence of poverty in the country relates back to the concept of debt of gratitude, addressed in the preceding chapter. A number of informants spoke in general terms about the Filipino propensity to feel obligation towards landlords and hacienderos. This feeling results from knowing that a richer person has given you land to work, for instance, without critically evaluating the abuse and exploitation that often comes with the gift. The feelings become impediments to any social action that might peg worker against patron: For example, you know the people who work for the landlord? The landlord gives you the tiny piece of land to cultivate, and even though he makes you pay him with your rice and vegetables you feel debt for his gratitude. Or he does something for your child, buys your child something. You are unable to ever stop feeling this debt, this indebtedness to him (Christian). But through reflection, poverty is not just seen as something imposed from above. Human indiscretions are also situated within the debate, and the two most common improprieties are laziness and gambling: Because, I think—depends—laziness versus hard working. The lazy are comfortable with needs. In hard working there is rich (Roxie); Some of the Filipinos are lazy. If they have the food for one day, they don’t work till the next day (Crystal); For example: if they have three sacks of rice they are contented with what they have, and when it runs out they go back to work (Denny); I cannot say, but for my own idea, because of the laziness. Some of the people have, mostly in the mountains, they like

98  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos to stay in their homes, rather than to work on their farm. And some of them like playing cards, behind the market. They are more on standby than wanting to work. Others are hard working and I am happy for them. In the morning they work and then relax only after five o’clock. I don’t blame the government. The poverty depends on the person (Richard); Gambling. Others, they are lazy. They only work for today without considering the future (Bobby); Tongit (the cards). The Filipino man makes 100 pesos per day and he bets thirty (Crystal). BEC members report feeling a new sense of belonging that did not exist before the groups formed. Group cohesion through empathy, camaraderie, and support has helped to cement families together in ways that did not previously exist, and the meanings of neighbour and community have changed: ‘Before we only worked for ourselves. We were divided. You did your work and I did mine. But now we are a community, and we work together. We are being Church and being is the active’ (Charles). Belonging has also led to new feelings of group empowerment and ideas about BECs as vehicles of social transformation. This does not imply landslide changes in the general order of things; rather, collective action is thought to be a basis for subtle changes in the local social fabric: ‘we have hopes and dreams, too. Next year we build a piggery. All the families—maybe two years [laughing] (Bobby). As if humbly aware of the capabilities of such a small group, altering the entrenched system on Negros entails small acts of BEC resistance—a piggery here, a communal garden there, participation in infrastructural development around the corner. Thus, although greatly empowering, the power of the basic group itself to effect change is understood in realistic terms, and dreams are kept in check by the daily demands of making a living and maintaining a family’s sustenance. Women at the helm Women take a leadership role in BECs, and meetings are often comprised almost exclusively of women and their young children. Indeed the only man is often the chosen lay minister. The exception to this rule is when the BEC is organizing something more than Bible study or when the BEC is participating in something larger than a local project, such as the anti-mining campaign. In terms of the former, when a BEC has a community project—a feeding program, waterline installation, daycare repair, or mission school construction, to name a few—the men are in attendance. It seems, for men, the tangible result of inputting energy and producing change feels more like development, as does the ability, at the end of the day, to point at the physical manifestations of their efforts. Conversely the men tend to be averse to prayer meetings, which they argue are futile, stating they are too tired at the end of the day or too bogged down by their own gardens.

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 99 Because of the overwhelming prevalence of women at meetings and in key roles it would be easy to mistake the BEC movement for a women’s movement. This would cloud deeper social issues, however, and it would project an exogenous sociological category onto the communities. Women in the groups categorically reject the idea that BECs are about women’s empowerment and women’s rights, arguing instead for an understanding of BECs as sites of family and community advocacy. The women are not blind to the gender differentials at meetings and events, however, and there is a general sense of embarrassment when asked where all the men are hiding: My husband does not come to the weekly meetings, the Bible prayer. He thinks it’s a waste of time. He does go to the parish Mass. But for BEC, he only participates when we do something. He built some of the benches here. My son, too. But they are so tired after working in the fields, they skip the weekly parts. I think they would like to come more often, maybe (Clarissa). Priests also intuit that the daily demands of livelihood and survival are too much for many families and, although disappointed, understand fully the reasons why workingmen cannot commit to weekly BEC functions: It could be confused as a women’s movement, if you do not look inside. But the substance, the core, that is not sex or gender important. The communities are family-based. The object is the family. The men are not there because they must work sixty or seventy hours each week. They are too tired to read the Bible. Attendance? Can you blame them? I don’t think so. The mother’s are essential. They may be leading, but it is not a women’s movement. No, BEC is about social class. These are the people standing at the bottom of a very steep mountain (Fr Jimmy). Social developments Thus, if BECs partly are about social class in a highly class-stratified society, we must turn our attention now to any social developments on the horizon emanating from the ranks of the poor—have groups moved past their critiques and into the realm of development action? Recall the three pillars of group solidarity in an ideal world of BECs: liturgy, endogenous social development, and broad-based structural transformation. We have seen transformations in the previous chapter, under the direction of a strong diocesan church, and we have caught a glimpse of the prevalence, strength, and bonds of the liturgical groups in this chapter. What remains to be seen is if any of the liturgical groups are able to generate meaningful, sustainable socio-economic changes in their communities. Unfortunately, after visiting with a number of BECs in Pandanan and Pacuan, and speaking with

100  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos individuals from BECs throughout the diocese, the unequivocal answer appears to be No. All BEC members express a desire to work cooperatively on a livelihood project, and most BECs have discussed the idea already. Ideas for cooperative livelihood include animal husbandry, opening a general store, accumulating cropland, or starting a local farmers’ cooperative. The dreams of economic self-reliance are far from grandiose, and with each of these ideas BEC members stay true to their small-scale, local roots, maintaining a realistic outlook on what can be achieved, at least initially. Realistic or not, the basic problem with getting anything off the ground is a lack of pesos. Other than choice of words, informants are curt and to the point: the groups have no money. Even such humble projects require an initial investment in the range of tens of thousands of pesos. Divided among families, even 300 pesos, equivalent to approximately six or seven US dollars, remains out of reach for the vast majority of households as they struggle to keep the family fed and pay off debt. Another significant reason why cooperative production is stalled is that women are tied up with childrearing and maintaining the household economy: We are too busy. We cook, we clean. The house will fall over, caput, and the children will starve. The men will starve! No, now honestly, they have to get to school each day, you see. There are so many tasks yet to do—ai yai yai. I need a vacation (Helena). The daily tasks of just getting by include cleaning the house and doing laundry, procuring and preparing food for meals, tending to dependent children and elders, helping neighbours with their own dependents and gardens, ensuring any school-going children make it to school, and caring for sick family members. On daily, weekly, and monthly schedules, these basic tasks of maintaining the family require substantial time commitments. When all is said and done, ‘Where is the time? Money is just part of the problem’ (Clarissa). Furthermore, the very idea of pooling much needed money at the expense of a family’s daily standard of living is difficult to reconcile: ‘So, say I save the money, but this comes with a price. We need the money to spend today. Putting it aside, I cannot. Otherwise we borrow again at the end of the week. Or we go hungry. So what is the point in that?’ (Clara). Finally, the natural leaders of socio-economic development among BEC members can be the least interested in entering into a cooperative economic project. By natural leader I refer to those members who have higher educations and/or business and managerial experience. Although the vast majority of BEC families are basic wage earners, all BECs have some members with higher skills/training and better paying jobs, in government or industry. It is these individuals who can offer both expertise and confidence in business matters—development, planning, organization, prosecution—but it is also these individuals who tend to be tied up by their own job commitments.

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 101 Furthermore, these individuals have more to sacrifice, including comfortable lifestyles, by committing to the group’s dream of cooperative production. For instance, a female BEC member who is the principal of a rural elementary school and is married to a barangay captain (family income of approximately PHP 20,000/month) had little interest in participating in a cooperative project, although she thought it a worthy strategy for the rest of her group: Pigs, cow fattening. Livestock seems like a good idea, but the cow is 14,000 pesos and chickens cost too much because you need electricity to keep them. It doesn’t matter—no money, no time. The most important right now is the chapel. We don’t even have a door! Maybe later, when the chapel is complete, something can be organized (Karen). The clergy are fairly sympathetic to the basic plight of their parishioners, although some of the clergy have expressed frustration with their parishioners’ efforts, financial-management skills, and vices, suggesting that a little more sweat, organization, and self-control could make for great change: There is very little money. We are building communities of faith. Economic communities just haven’t happened. The BECs are poor. The parish is poor. The diocese is poor [laughing]. The Church of the Philippines is poor, too. There is no money (Fr Naldo); The people do not have the money to pool together. And we try to help them, but it is not successful. These are very poor people, but they are also tired. They have no time at the end of the day. They work Sundays. They say, “Sorry Father, I cannot attend the Mass today. I have to put food on the table.” They need every 150, 200 pesos, everyday. But they are not good with finances, with organizing the money. And the extra money is spent gambling (Fr Manuel); When people get the money they spend it, it is gone. They buy something they need or want that day. There is no ability to save, maybe no way to save (Fr Edwin); We have training seminars, but it doesn’t always work. We showed them about gardening for their own consumption, gave them seeds, but they don’t grow their own garden. Instead, they knock on the priest’s door and want his vegetables (Fr Jimmy). Other priests recognize that some BEC member families do not always share the clergy’s sense of abject community poverty. Thus the poverty over which a given priest struggles in his own community, and about which he often laments in the weekly sermon, can be a projection not shared by the entire community of faithful. This can impact efforts towards organizing community development: In spite of the poverty I see the joy, the contentment. I see these problems but the people say, “This is your problem, Father. Not ours. We

102  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos are fine.” They are content. They do not see the poverty. Or is it total helplessness? Sometimes Karl Marx is right: religion is the opium of the masses. Because they come to church and look up and see a big apple in the sky. We say blessed are the poor, but how can they be blessed when they are so poor? (Fr Jerome); We have this saying, “Bisan pamahaw saging, paniudto saging, panihapon saging, basta kanunay lang loving.” It means, “Banana for breakfast, banana for lunch, banana for dinner, but the people are still loving.” If your lifestyle is so simple, then you are happy with what you have (William). Therefore any attempts on the part of the clergy at mobilizing local economic change or political transformation can be hampered by a segment of locals who do not believe there is a need for sweeping changes. At minimum this can amount to a priest and his pastoral council running around trying to develop the locals, without always first checking what the locals think about development work, if anything. Ultimately, in the parishes of Pacuan and Pandanan, social development through the vehicle of BECs is hampered by pecuniary circumstances, time constraints, and an unwillingness to see the need for change on the part of some for whom development is targeted. For now, at the parish level of social development, the priests concentrate on the programs offered by the diocese. For instance, Pacuan makes use of the discounted rice from the National Food Authority, participates in the anti-mining program, and the parish organizes seminars on health, sustainable agriculture, good governance, and the youth. One seminar on organic agriculture, meant to benefit the environment and reduce debt, resulted in more than 50 families changing to a new fertilizer derived from fermented rice, sugar, and molasses, and a new pesticide derived from chilli peppers, tobacco, and a local weed. Farmers soon realized the efficacy of the concoctions, and they appreciated not having to spend their money on commercial products: ‘You spend only effort, because you can see these [ingredients] anywhere’ (William). Likewise, in Pandanan NFA rice is distributed, herbal medicines are grown and brought in from the Social Action Center, and two women continue to generate large sums of money from candles. Priests in both locations stated that they had consulted with Father Edwin in hopes of incorporating their own parishes into the diocese’s feeding program for vulnerable families.

Cabagtasan Throughout my travels, from Cadiz in the north to La Libertad in the south, stories of development are similar: there are no IGPs at the BEC level that have effected sweeping changes in livelihood. Operating under this basic premise I inquire into the whereabouts of any optimal social conditions in the diocese for communities to prosper on their own. Based upon land rights, access to clean water and a forest of plenty, not to mention the

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 103 most extensive list of diocese-level programs, the sitio of Cabagtasan is recommended. The road to Cabagtasan winds up from San Carlos City along narrow mountain valleys and severe cliffs that are lush and as green as emeralds. For 15 kilometres the road gains altitude and the vista is cane fields on a coastal plain, ocean tankers slicing through still waters, and the island of Cebu in the distance. After climbing 700 metres from sea level the thick wet air has been replaced by a more arid and thin mountain breeze. Along the road there are huts pieced together with local forest products and things scavenged, such as four-by-eight billboards advertising Tide laundry detergent or Tanduay Rum. Many of the homes are cantilevered over the steep hillside, and they incorporate the road’s guardrail into the front wall, a seemingly secure anchor against gravity, wind, and rain. Other homes are built on terraces carved out of the red clay soil and some, although small, have all the characteristics of a modern home—paint, doors, windows, veranda, flower boxes—save for the bamboo stilts upon which they are mounted. Every few miles a number of houses appear in a line along both sides of the road, an impromptu village of perhaps 20 families. In these villages there are three or four houses that have open-faced walls onto the road, some side-by-side, and people sit behind counters and sell chips, candies, soda-pop, local pastries, beer, and rum to any neighbours or travellers who happen to stop. There is also a bar in each small village, often with enormous speakers on the roof, video-karaoke screens inside, and a pool table out front beneath a plastic tarp. Goats and carabao are tethered to trees, chickens and dogs run free, and children wash clothes and collect water at natural springs that bubble forth from the side of the mountain. Some of the villages along the road have their own chapel, little more than an open-air room with a tin roof and a cross above the doorway (which may or may not have a door hanging in it). In many ways the communities have developed with the road, and they owe their very existence to the needs of travellers. Father Edwin mentions that shop owners are the people who have saved enough money to open a little store, and now they are able to generate a little more income than when they worked the land. With each shop a little village has sprung up on the shoulder of the road, a micro-economy of merchants, labourers, children, and livestock. The road is active—dogs, chickens, and ducks share the path with workers walking to and from the fields and terraces, men shouldering 50-kilogram sacks of produce or fertilizer along the way. For amusement children push bicycle tires with long sticks that have a y-shaped fork at the end, balancing the tire with the fork as they hurry up and down the road. At times one side of the road is closed for a few hundred metres because farmers have raked out long patches of rice to dry on the hot concrete. The patches of rice take up the entire width of one lane, and any one patch can stretch for as much as a hundred metres. This obstacle causes little concern for the motorists, for the unofficial rule of the road in a land with few functioning traffic lights is

104  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos simple and absolute: yield to the larger vehicle. Another prominent obstacle on the island roads is the check-stop, set up by local police forces, army, and/or the Philippine National Police. Barricades stop the flow of traffic and the cars are sent through one at a time by police officers in camouflage holding machine guns. We pass through a checkpoint, and a police officer smiles and greets me as Sir before he checks the glove box and backseat for guns. My two duffle bags in the bed of the truck are ignored. The national elections will be held in a few months and multiple levels of government are working to minimize the number of guns in public. Previous elections in the Philippines have been wrought with bloodshed as families and factions compete for the lucrative public offices. One of my companions explains that the bags were left unchecked because a foreigner is not under suspicion of firearm possession. Furthermore, it is bad publicity to have an encounter between the police and an American, a general designation for any white foreigner in the country. Twenty kilometres outside of the city the highway veers right and continues to Bacolod. At this point the road to Cabagtasan is a turn to the left, and the paved road ends around a few more corners and the truck drops off a two-inch lip of broken concrete. We continue on hard-packed mud pocked with water-filled potholes, the rutted road barely more than a goat trail through the mountainside for the next few dozen kilometres, and there are family farms scattered all along the way. Halfway to Cabagtasan there is an elementary school sitting on a raised plot in the middle of a sugar field, full of children, even though there are only a few homes in plain site. At this point we are in the barangay of Codcod, which is made up of 12 sitios and about 12,000 people. In consideration of the large population basic infrastructural amenities may seem to be lacking, but there have been modest steps towards development taken by government and local organizations. The total land area of the barangay is 12,637 hectares, and the greatest single land-use activity, which covers 5510 hectares, is agriculture. Fields of crops are contoured into the rolling hills and flow sinuously around natural barriers, such as streams and volcanic rocks the size of houses. Just before reaching the village, the road straddles the top of a tortuous west-facing bench overlooking a valley, and 11 terraces of rice descend into the valley floor below. The view from the road is spectacular in all directions, with walls steeped in terrace as far as the eye can see and small homes on stilts that overlook the rice. The valley itself opens into a much wider and longer expanse, eventually reaching a series of high peaks that stretch perpendicular across the western horizon. Across the valley the concrete road to Bacolod looks like a stitch in the distant forest, a slight fissure at the base of a green mountain. Cabagtasan is situated in the north end of Mount Kanlaon Natural Park, a 245 square kilometre area around the Kanlaon Volcano (2435 m). Mount Kanlaon is a large strato-volcano, and part of a chain of volcanic

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 105 mountains that runs like a spine down the centre of the island. It is one of the six most active volcanoes in the country, and the land around it is made up of intercalated lava flows, an argillic composition of base sediment, and a scattered assortment of large boulders and other ejected debris. Residents in the area claim that the black topsoil from the volcano is the best in the country, and most of it has washed down the southern slope of the mountain: ‘Canlaon City is much more prosperous than the rest of the mountain parishes. They got all the best soil’ (Fr Augustus). The Natural Park makes up part of the Western Visayas Bio-geographic Zone, which is one of fifteen official bio-geographic zones in the Philippines. The zone is protected for its natural beauty, biological significance, and tourism potential. The area boasts a spectacular topography of lush forested mountaintops, broad valleys, waterfalls, and natural springs. Upon entering the sitio of Cabagtasan there is a public elementary school and a number of sari-sari stores. The homes in the village proper are concentrated along a two-kilometre stretch of the road, and they are of a variety of sizes, from one room to four and five rooms. Most homes are pieced together from a number of light materials. Natural materials include bamboo for the walls and floors, and cogon grass and coconut leaves for the roof. Scavenged materials include scraps of plywood, advertisement billboards, sheets of metal, and fertilizer sacks (curtains). Six of the large homes along the road are built partially or entirely of concrete, save for the sheet-metal roofs. The space between homes becomes less and less until one reaches the densely packed market area, where a few dozen households are packed together, many sharing common walls and roofs. The market is separated from the church by a basketball court, and the local priest lives in three small rooms attached to the side of the church; bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/study/greeting room. The total space of his convent amounts to less than 300 square feet. Continuing away from the market the road bends around and dips over a series of hillocks before it withers into a clay trail. Along the way goats, pigs, and carabao are tethered to trees, and small garden plots can be found down footpaths that branch off from the main road. There is a daycare with more than 30 children on an average day and two uniformed staff. A little further down the road, beside the last electricity pole, is Sister Milla’s mission house. The Paglaum Mission (hope mission) is the last structure on the road to draw power from the electrical grid, and it is another 300 metres to Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School. The homes further from the market are spread out again with definable yards, and four are quite large with multiple rooms and second stories. Other homes are scattered around the countryside, spread over adjacent hills, and separated by terraces and natural fissures. Because the families who live in the hills make use of the network of rice terraces for transportation, there are no distinctly human paths that lead to and from the distant homes, and they look much more isolated than they truly are.

106  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos Cabagtasan is comprised of approximately 200 households, which amounts to a total population of 1000–1200 people. Twenty-five percent of residents live along the road within the sitio proper and the other 75 percent live in homes that are either on side roads or scattered across the countryside. The average nuclear household consists of two parents and three to five children, although it is not uncommon for one or two elderly parents to live in the home of a son or daughter. Farmsteads often extend beyond the nuclear family with elderly parents, adult siblings and their families occupying larger homes or a series of homes in one large yard. The predominant income in the area comes from farming, and approximately half of the farmers rent small parcels that belong to one of their immediate neighbours and the rest are owner-cultivators. The modal size of land that is cultivated by one nuclear family is 1.5 hectares, although some of the owners will cultivate up to five hectares, and this requires the seasonal employment of neighbours as wage-labourers. To better serve those in the agricultural industry Codcod has three cooperative organizations—the Codcod Multipurpose Cooperative, the Codcod United Farmers Association, and the Agrarian Beneficiaries of Codcod—but initial membership fees in these organizations are cost prohibitive and thus unavailable to many rural farmers. The owner-cultivators are not rich landlords; rather, they claim that they are just as poor as their tenants. If true, part of the reason for a general level of economic even-handedness in Cabagtasan is owing to unique land rights in the area that do not facilitate the large-scale ownership of land by one or a few very rich families, such as occurs in most other parts of Negros, or the Philippines for that matter. The unique land rights stem from the fact that the area is within the Kanlaon Natural Park, and property relations in the Park are based upon state ownership with customary tenure. Under a system such as this use rights to plots of land are alienable, the rights are bought and sold among the villagers, and a certificate of size and tenure is produced. Although customary tenure works well in Cabagtasan and stimulates the micro-economy, there is little outsider interest because use rights are not nearly as lucrative an investment as actual property rights; the latter can allow profits from mineral development, returns from investment in the real-estate market and increased rent from ownership economies of scale. Thus state title to land in the shadow of Mount Kanlaon seems to have kept possession by property magnates at bay, and control has remained in the hands of smallholders. As a result there is less economic differentiation between families who have customary use rights to more than one plot and those families who rent from them, for in the end they are all farm families that daily must hack out their own livelihoods. The family with the greatest amount of land in the area is a perfect example. They own 30 hectares, farmed by elderly parents and the families of five sons and one daughter. Even this family considers themselves poor; only one of six school-aged grandchildren attends school because the 30 hectares require the labour of the children, and one of the daughters-in-law had been granted a visa to

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 107 work in Dubai. She would leave for four years, with her husband and daughter staying behind. Her daughter will be eight years old when she returns: ‘I can make a lot of money to send home, and when I return my family, my husband and daughter, everyone here, will have a better life’. General economic uniformity and a near absence of competition among neighbours can only boost the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation in the sitio. This spirit of being in the same boat, so to speak, is illustrated well by public access to natural springs that bubble-up in the village, more often than not in someone’s private yard. Springs are few and far between in Cabagtasan proper, but the water that does find the village is cold, rock-filtered, and 100 percent potable. The water originally falls as rain on the mountaintops, then percolates through the rocks and springs to the surface, very clean. When the water finds the surface in a person’s yard access remains public. As a neighbour and member of the greater community an individual would not consider the good luck of a natural spring on his/her property an advantage to be held over others. Thus people freely enter the few yards that have springs in order to bathe, wash clothes, and draw water for cooking. Twice per day, once after breakfast and once before dinner, there can be a queue of up to ten people waiting for the water—a time to visit and catch up on the day’s events, and if anyone is impatient it is well disguised. Some adjacent neighbours purchase one-inch hoses, divert water from the main spring, and bring the water directly into their own houses. And even with all the users in the sitio, constant rain replenishes the springs: ‘We are very blessed here. Where there is water there is life, for rice and vegetables and the animals. And it is a good life in the mountains’ (Sir Julio). The good life in the mountains for most revolves around the family farm, and cash crops include rice, corn, and sugarcane, as well as vegetables. In interviews I asked what percentage of families in Cabagtasan farmed, and the standard answers were around ‘ninety percent’ or ‘everybody’. Thus the workday for most of the residents of the sitio is general and predictable. Individual roosters and dogs practice solos intermittently throughout the night, but the real concert begins around 04:45 when every animal within earshot seems to wake from sleep at the exact same moment. This is followed shortly thereafter by voices. For many families, both men and women work the fields, and the children have duties as well. A strong native coffee made from beans indigenous to the mountains is knocked back before work begins at 07:00, and at 09:00 the farmers return home for breakfast and more coffee. They also will take lunch (and more coffee) and an afternoon snack before the workday ends, between 16:00 and 20:00. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are cooked over charcoal or wood stoves and thick smoke billows from kitchen windows and trickles along rooflines. A handful of families have gas stoves purchased in one of the cities. Another source of family income and food is livestock, including pigs, goats, chickens, cows, and ducks. Much of the livestock is consumed locally by the villagers, but in times of need, when rice production is low, animals

108  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos are sold in the local market, which is held on Thursday each week. Also during times of rice shortage the people will go into the forest and collect cassava and serve it with an inexpensive salted fish purchased in the market. Cassava grows in the forest like a weed and, although people say that it tastes terrible, it remains a suitable (and free) substitute for rice. Other forest food groups that are never in shortage are fruits and vegetables. Bananas, mangos, and papaya grow wild and most families have gardens where they grow taro, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, chillies, umpala (a bitter leaf), red and green onions, carrots, string beans, cabbage, and radishes. Many gardens are located far away from the owner’s home, but theft is seldom encountered: No! Never! For example, if I saw someone taking from my garden I would make sure that he had enough, because if he needs to take vegetables he must be very hungry. And I would show him my radishes and I would say, “Take that one”, because that one is very, very delicious (Sir Julio). Rice fields do not require daily maintenance, and a system of balanced reciprocity enhances the village’s cooperative feel. The farmers stagger planting to help one another, work together on household projects, and buy and trade labour among themselves. The going rate for labour is 75 pesos per day, with lunch and snack provided. Added to this are a number of elaborate schemes of cooperative income generation, such as cow fattening, whereby an individual purchases a young cow and a neighbour’s child is given responsibility for its care. Roughly two years later the cow is sold for perhaps double the purchase price and the owner and the caregiver split the profit. This also occurs with pigs and goats, although with smaller animals caretaking often involves breeding, and the owner and the caregiver split the offspring. Farmers average 100 pesos per day (that standard response once again), although this average is derived from sporadic weekly fluctuations and seasonal disruptions when income can disappear for many weeks at a time. Thus household budgeting, vegetable gardens, and livestock help to carry farm families through leaner times. Furthermore, times of income scarcity do not relieve farmers of their debts. Almost every farmer is indebted to the businessmen in the market who sell fertilizer. Those farmers without debt have more often than not just recently repaid their debts—a brief respite before the next round of planting. Some farmers are indebted to neighbours, with debts often repaid in labour, and renters can fall behind on paying rent. Nevertheless, the people of Cabagtasan report being very happy and, fortunately, unemployment is lower there than in the other two parishes previously discussed. Many young people are certain that they will stay in the sitio and live as farmers. It seems that in-migration is low, and as the younger generation reaches maturity there is an older generation

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 109 transitioning into some form of retirement or family assistance. Thus much of the cropland is passed along, usually to one’s own children. In other cases, where children have left the village for work in cities, older farmers will rent out or sell parcels of land to which they have customary title. Renting land from a neighbour is considered to be a good life for young people who wish to stay in the area, and renting is almost certain to become owning over the years. There are a few work opportunities in the sitio outside of farming, and some families are able to supplement their farm income. There are dozens of owner-operated sari-sari stores and vegetable stands, and at least a dozen bars. Schools employ teachers, the daycare has a small staff, there is a massage parlour, and security is hired for Thursday’s market. Also, when not farming, some residents can work a limited number of short-term jobs for the Local Government Unit, when they become available. For example, villagers were employed to dig (by hand and shovel) the new spring-water pipeline from Cabagtasan proper to the neighbouring village of Napaturan, a distance of nearly ten kilometres. They were paid 75 pesos per day, and they worked extra hard to complete the project, because it was ‘another election promise. That is why they rush to get it done, because the funds will disappear in May [after the general election]. Vanish’ (Sir Sisco). The implication was that as soon as the incumbent for the area is re-elected his campaign projects would suffer a terminal shortfall in funds, and the abandoned water project would never reach family and friends in Napaturan. The church also employs residents periodically on a short-term basis. In March 2010 22 men gathered for ten days to build the new chapel, and they were paid 200 pesos per day for eight of the days and worked the other two days for free (dagyaw or sweat equity). A final source of income, or income loss depending on the luck of the day, is to be found in the numerous gambling opportunities available in the sitio. The national pastime is alive and well in Cabagtasan, and thousands of pesos change hands in games of dice, cards, billiards, and rock tossing. In addition to these activities there is often a cockfight to be found down one of the alleys behind the market. Apart from the economic side of gambling, it is a social and cultural activity where men and women come together to purchase an afternoon’s entertainment. This entertainment, however, is a bone of contention for the church and many spouses. As one woman said, ‘My man bets all. I hide the money—and we need all the pesos—but he can find it. Sometimes, almost one-hundred pesos, he bets’ (Gloria). A lay minister suggested that part of the blame for poverty ‘is because of the people. They gamble—the cockfighting, the cards, the betting. They throw the money away. Filipinos are not good with money’ (Denny). A less costly and perhaps equally uplifting social event for residents of the sitio is church. Cabagtasan is home to many Christian denominations, including Mormon, Seventh-Day Adventists, Church of Christ, Iglesia ni Christo, and Roman Catholic:

110  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos Because the [Catholic] church is fairly new here. We did not have a priest here till recently. The people are coming back to the church, however. But the other churches were here first, and the people needed a place to worship (Sr Milla). Churches are much more than places to worship, and in many respects they are the cultural and social places of the rural masses. For many, church is the only weekly social outing beyond visits with immediate neighbours and family. It is a time to participate in something removed, both socially and spatially, from the daily tasks of farming, a time when community gathers for lunch, when relatives separated by distance come together, when a local project, such as the construction of a communal vegetable garden or repairs to a multipurpose centre, is planned and executed, and it is a time worthy of one’s best clothes. For BEC members it also is a time to offer one’s labour to the Church by helping to clean and maintain either the BEC or parish chapel. Churches may be the most important places of weekly community gathering, but by far the most anticipated weekly event is the Thursday market. Vendors begin to arrive in the market area at 05:00, a series of storefronts and tarps are strung together, and the market continues until 14:00. Trucks arrive from the cities with perishables, consumer goods, electronics, fish, feed, fertilizer, candy, and alcohol, and the trucks leave filled with local produce. Other than bulk cereal crops, locals sell vegetables, baked goods, fruits, veggies, and drinks. A small number of locals purchase produce from neighbours that they then transport to the cities, particularly certified organic vegetables such as rice, papaya, carrots, tomatoes, and squash. For instance, each week a woman and her daughter took on credit 60 kilograms of produce (4000 pesos) from local growers. She then rode ‘the slow bus’ to Bacolod at a cost of 57 pesos and sold the produce for 7000 pesos. ‘Very good profit, for three or four days’. From this profit, she owed the original sellers in the market 4000 pesos plus 400 more in interest. There are other stories like hers, but success requires organization, hard work and, most importantly, capital. Thus the stories are few and far between. The more-likely scenario for a rural villager is to watch his crops and produce leave at the lowest price on the back of an outsider’s truck. Tomorrow those same trucks will be found in another scheduled market (six days per week). The produce that leaves the rural markets is marked-up 200–500 percent. ‘You see, the most important business quality of the businessman is a truck. It is not smarts or being clever or even entrepreneurial. It is owning a truck! That is what sets him apart, and the people here stay poor’ (Fr Carlo).

Cabagtasan BECs: Places in the world Alongside the daily tasks of running a farm and the weekly activities of the sitio, many families come together for worship and community. Cabagtasan is the central parish for 12 BECs that, as in Pacuan and Pandanan, operate

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 111 as small satellites to the parish: ‘I think of the Church as a large pie, and GKK [BEC] is the smallest slice’ (Fr Jublas). Father Jublas, the parish priest, is brand new to the area, and he is the first priest assigned to Cabagtasan proper. Before his tenure, Cabagtasan itself was a satellite of another parish, visited weekly by that parish’s resident priest. Seven of the BECs predate Father Jublas’s time, and he admits to not spending much time organizing new BECs. He does take it upon himself to appoint the lay ministers of each BEC, however: I do not force it. They come to me, if they are ready, and I will bless their small churches and give them Holy Communion … I appoint him [the lay minister]. He must be someone of trust, a trustworthy man. His role is to represent the priest, and do a good job. And part of his duty is regular presence at [the parish] Mass. The lay minister must attend Mass. This is a rule. Also, if he is married he must be married in the Holy Church. A fair bit of Father Jublas’s weekly routine is taken up traveling among BEC communities and saying Holy Mass. Because there are only 12 BECs with which to deal, he visits each one almost every week for a local Mass. Nine of the BECs have finished building their chapels, once again predominantly constructed from local materials, such as cogon grass and bamboo. For all intents and purposes BECs in Cabagtasan show little variation from BECs in any other parish—despite hints of uniqueness here and there, the basic reasons for existence, structure and practices remain intact. The Cabagtasan communities range in membership from 6 families to 27. Once again, it was questions of faith and moral practice that brought the groups together: We just asked to learn about the ways of living by a good Christian way, living towards ourselves and our neighbours; the right way for a man to act, for a wife, for children to act. The righteous way … We did not always attend the Mass. It is very far, by and by, but we did not always understand what it was telling us to do afterward anyway. So we start to consider on our own way (Tina). The liturgical reflection provides the groups with a foundation upon which to build places of faith, community, and social critique, and the BEC chapel is the symbol of a solid foundation. As in the other parishes visited the parish church has also been incorporated into BEC place-making strategies; the men from BEC families were hired to build the new church, each BEC has a small plot of flowers in a garden on the front lawn that it tends weekly, and individual BECs take turns sponsoring the Sunday Mass (set up, clean up, formal offering, and meal). Holy Week, Christmas, and fiesta are other times of active BEC participation in the greater community of faithful.

112  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos BECs in Cabagtasan are places where families make the time to help one another, mostly by trading labour in each other’s fields and often by working cooperatively on community infrastructure, such as daycare and well construction. The BECs also have an emergency relief fund, although it is admitted that some of the funds are very new and not well organized, implying that the amount is very small. That being said, spur-of-the-moment giving has carried many desperate families through hardship, and the BEC families seem to have been able to rally together, when necessary: I already had three children and my wife was pregnant again and she had twins … but two days later my wife got sick and they took her down to the hospital—on the habel-habel [motor-scooter taxi], you know it? She died in the hospital. The people came together and helped me with my garden and some extra money. Thanks be to God, my wife’s sister was unmarried, because she came and took care of the babies (Gustus). Thus communities are able to achieve some semblance of a social safety net. Each of these developments owes some of its genesis to the action of concerned families who have congregated to reflect critically upon their lives and brainstorm ways to make life in the community better. Group reflection revolves around key themes. In terms of lifestyle, themes include righteous living, moral behaviour, kindness to family and neighbours, and avoidance of gambling and drunkenness. The themes of social critique are the usual suspects: poverty, corruption, structural sin, landlessness, laziness, and vice. Interestingly BEC meetings in Cabagtasan are attended by more men than meetings in other parishes, with men accounting for roughly 30 percent of each group. The men admitted to having time for weekly activities, suggesting that rice cultivation for smallholders is a manageable lifestyle, even after labour is traded among neighbours: The rice work is not constant. That is why we are able to help each other out, here and there. Sometimes we walk a long way … But we make the walk; sometimes I go that way, sometimes he comes to my house. Other men, too. We all walk, by and by (Benito). The health and livelihood of community members is enhanced further by the various social programs offered by the diocese. Cabagtasan is home to a mission school, feeding program, herbal medicine distribution, adult literacy program (in conjunction with the Philippine Department of Education), and sustainable agriculture program, and it has been the site of a number of Church-Military infrastructural developments. Also, anti-mining and good-governance programs in the area are protecting vulnerable communities from environmental degradation and local government abuses of revenue allotment. These programs have had positive effects in BEC

Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos 113 communities, and the families speak highly of the changes brought about by the diocese and Father Edwin, who for many is the living, breathing embodiment of social change. The general consensus in the sitio is that people are happy and content, although they welcome the extra efforts. The mission school and feeding program seem to be the centrepieces of the community vision, for they are the most spoken of by BEC members. No doubt, they are also the most immediately used programs. Many children of BEC families are enrolled in the mission school, and the feeding program is both a place for vulnerable families to take nourishment and a place for less-vulnerable families to participate as volunteers. Meaningful social development through BEC cooperative livelihood projects is a topic of conversation in Cabagtasan as well. Once again, dreams of economic self-reliance are humble, with small livestock operations and community crop production being most common. A second concept that has been discussed by BECs is forming an economic cooperative: We need better control over the sale of rice, and the purchase of the fertilizers. For now, we must sell our rice in the market, and the businessmen do not pay fair value. They sell it in the city for much, much more (William). But BECs have not been able to reach the stage of income generation hoped for by the communities and the diocese. Rather, other than some basic local infrastructure that is funded externally, either by the diocese or the local government, the BECs remain strong communities of culture with little on the economic front. The standard reason given for this state of affairs is a familiar one: no money. Once again, projects that can require upwards of tens of thousands of pesos, even when spread among dozens of families, remain dreams far beyond the reach of BECs. Other reasons for an absence of development in BECs include family commitments and lack of initiative and organization. Finally, even with the extra freedom that comes with smallholder cultivation and community protection inside the Natural Park, farming is a struggle and it is exhausting—trudging barefoot all day through eight inches of mud, hunched over knee-high crops in 33 degree Celsius heat, leaves little energy at the end of the day. The farmers are dead tired, whether from their own rice fields or their neighbour’s, and mustering the will for community action (that may or may not pay off) is difficult. Father Jublas understands why BECs cannot prosper economically, but he continues to hope that they will one day find the means, even if it means more work for himself: None of them have true income-generating projects at the moment. That requires initial capital investment. If they did? My role would be to guide them. The people are not very good with money, they will blow it. So the priest, if they organize, has to help them along.

114  Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos The best efforts of the Catholic Church at the diocese level have brought meaningful community developments to Cabagtasan. The strengthening of community, new geometries of place-making solidarity, and increasing social capital are evident, and these are of incredible importance to community members; indeed, in many regards, being Church and living community seem to satisfy what groups are hoping to achieve. The question for the future is if these achievements will translate into anything new, in terms of political empowerment and economic development, at the level of BEC. The diocese’s own concept of program integration, wherein many branches of development come together and form one healthy tree, is becoming a reality, and it is evident in Cabagtasan, but this has not (yet) provided the pathway necessary for small family cooperatives to find their own niches in the economy through IGPs. Thus faith-based development in the Diocese of San Carlos is both a shining success and a measurable failure (although labelling something a failure before it has progressed beyond the idea stage seems a harsh judgement). What is apparent in this case study, however, is that there are material and structural issues of scale not considered in the literature on BECs. This is but one of the topics discussed in the following chapter, which deals specifically with the potential of, and limits to, faithbased development in the Philippines, as well as some humble recommendations, from an outsider.

Note

1. GKK—Gagmay’ng Kristohanong Katilingban, a Visayan translation of Basic Ecclesial Community.

6

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development Potentials, Limits, Recommendations

Strengths and weaknesses of individual programs were included in the last two chapters. The present chapter deals with the overall picture of both local community and diocesan development, as well as the discourses of Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) and postdevelopment. The objectives are twofold. First, this chapter tables a holistic appreciation of the potential of, limits to, and recommendations for, BEC social development, by focusing on local-level communities and the diocese, respectively. Following this, the chapter turns to a broader discussion of what this study reveals about the merits and shortcomings of the discourse of social action through BECs. In the final section, the relevance of postdevelopment theory is interrogated, as well as the ways in which this case study contributes to critical development studies.

BEC: The smallest scale Over the course of fieldwork very little has been witnessed in terms of BECdriven development, or community developments that are strictly the result of organization and practices happening within individual BECs. Rather, the small communities are tight-knit, with strong bonds among members rooted in Catholic faith and social critique, but organizing economically remains ever elusive. Despite the strong desire to make the communities vehicles of social and economic change, it appears the landscape of Negros Occidental is fallow ground for the seeds of such change. That said, BECs do have potential, and with some initial help from an outside source, such as the diocese or a private donor, a BEC could organize cooperatively. Community potential Perhaps the greatest strengths of BECs are their group cohesion and solidarity. In San Carlos the communities of neighbour families are making places out of BECs through chapel construction, Bible study, sponsoring the parish Mass, reciprocal farm assistance, aiding the needy, reflection upon social circumstances, participation in diocese programs, and imagining DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-6

116  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development a future cooperative livelihood project. These practices have served to strengthen the bonds between families over time. Common predicament, in terms of livelihood and uncertainty over the meaning of faith, may have been the impetus for many BECs, but it has morphed into a strong and diversified socio-cultural base through daily and weekly praxis. If cooperative economic participation in local and extra-local markets is an important goal, then the solid social network and communal base is perhaps the cornerstone. After all, any livelihood or business relationship predicated on cooperation and mutual benefit, as opposed to rigid hierarchy and self-­ interest, may prove highly successful and highly stable as general livelihood increases among families, group empowerment is experienced, and the ups and downs of ownership are lived together. This is not to envision a completely harmonious and conflict-free business relationship among member families if a livelihood project becomes reality, for the business relationship itself is likely to bring new disagreements. But some of the conflict inherent in business relationships might be stymied by the history of the group, particularly one grounded in reflection upon Jesus Christ’s messages of communalism and moral action, and reflection upon exploitation and inequity in the Philippines. Furthermore, in a land where individual success for the poor majority is impeded near-completely by exploitative labour relations, landlessness, and debt-servitude, the idea of group success is a ray of hope and group strength its beacon. A second source of potential is the network of different BECs in the area. If certain BECs can begin to branch into socio-economic development, this will prove an important resource in two regards. First, BECs can learn from one another as they come together to share their stories of success and failure with respect to project organization and management, as well as barriers encountered. These stories will be indispensable as opportunities for replication and ironing over past mistakes. Because many initial livelihood projects will be targeted for local markets, replication in different parishes should not infringe on another group’s source of livelihood. Second, the network itself may prove to be a tool of livelihood on a much larger scale if multiple BECs can organize cooperatively. Parish-level and even diocese-level cooperation is not an unrealistic scenario when the communities involved envision themselves as a greater entity founded upon the same social ties that bind individual BEC members together. After all, the basis of an imagined community (Anderson 1991) of BEC faithful within the diocese, and even throughout the Philippines, already exists, with practices and beliefs replicated at these greater scales of social organization. Thus, at minimum, imagining a greater cooperative or economic community is hardly a stretch for the groups. In terms of social transformations, the BECs hold great potential as numbers and network. The individuals living in communities affected by mining or mismanagement of government resources are unable to fight for social justice on their own. Corporations and elected officials in the Philippines have

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 117 a tendency to steamroller the little people as they press forward with their own plans, and holding public hearings or reading petitions of rejection are often best understood as lip service or going through the motions. But with organization and increasing numbers of individuals, the small communities themselves have the ability to be recognized as legitimate voices for local and regional economic development, particularly with respect to largescale, environmentally degrading activities. Furthermore, local government officials may be drawn into debate, fearing their own termination of office, as local constituents come together to demand representation. Similarly, as the networked BECs fall into line on local, regional, and national planning issues, Philippine people power may become a factor as spatially diversified communities are drawn towards a specific cause. Ultimately, support across the Philippine landscape, with regional and national organization, has representational potential when the terms of official development are negotiated. Building community requires power, and dagyaw (free labour) is an excellent source of potential energy intrinsic to BECs, harnessed at times for community transformation, such as infrastructural development. In San Carlos, as we have seen, dagyaw contributed to the building of chapels, communal gardens, and two mission schools, and it demonstrates that people power can have implications outside of politics. It is a force of the most rudimentary development, anchored by cooperative tasks and the gifting of one’s time and effort, but it holds the potential for much more. Thus the future organization of dagyaw for social change seems likely as bodies are drawn into cooperative tasks, although participant flexibility seems a must so that the daily livelihood demands for each member are not infringed upon, particularly during the first months or years of a project when financial returns on energy investment might be low. This flexibility seems imperative to any long-term commitments and sustainability. Fortunately, the ability to organize this labour power is enhanced greatly by the pre-existing group bonds, and although it has yet to be used to build sustainable BEC-driven development projects, its latent value is evident. There are many ifs when discussing the development potential of BECs. Without the convenience of a crystal ball, it is difficult to determine whether structural circumstance will ever align with embryonic group energy to produce meaningful change. As unknowns abound, it is all too easy to dismiss the idea of BEC-driven development and to accept that families are caught in a cycle of hopeless poverty, but that would be to quash the dreams of those whose very solidarity is predicated on hope and faith. Imagining beyond outright dismissal, thus, requires a leap of faith, but hardly one without merit in reality. BECs are bursting with potential, and the majority of members are enthusiastic about effecting change. The leap of faith has already been taken—what is left is for groups to overcome their own development obstacles. Pushing a few of these out of the way may be the initial boost necessary to spur group action and create something sustainable.

118  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development Limits to action The obstacles to community development action are formidable, and perhaps the greatest one common throughout the diocese is the energy demand for basic survival. The vast majority of rural families have no savings and daily income is spent on daily living. The working population is compensated with just enough to get through the day, whether as wage-labourers on plantations or smallholder farmers. Food, water, clothing, shelter, and cellular communication require the bulk of family income. The little leftover at the end of the month may be spent on a luxury item, such as a DVD player or a new phone, or used during a time of crisis. Thus, pooling a substantial amount of money together among families is difficult. Even when pesos are saved by families, they tend to be used up during times of shortage. The very idea of communities saving money (tens of thousands of pesos) is not realistic. If it were, there already would be BECs showing some independent economic success. Part of the daily, weekly, and seasonal system of earning just enough to get by is the burden of dependents, prevalent, and common in all parishes visited. With infant children, elderly relatives, and general unemployment among the youth, family income from one or two wage earners and a garden or livestock is quickly redistributed and spent. This burden is a significant limitation on what a typical family can contribute to a BEC cooperative project in two regards. First, extra money that could exist at the end of the month or year for a family of two adults and their minor children, if they only had themselves to support, does not exist. Instead, one or two incomes provide support for five to seven individuals. Second, infirm elders or dependent children require a substantial amount of women’s time. Thus women, who tend to be the most enthusiastic about BEC action, are tied down by the basic need to give care to those who cannot care for themselves, and this care can be a fulltime job. A further limitation on BEC social action is the burden of debt, ubiquitous in agricultural areas and often amounting to several days or weeks of wages. Although predictable (often revolving around growing season or weekly market) and relatively manageable for most farming families, debt is a reality that affects family savings and the pooling of community resources. Families are constantly returning borrowed capital at interest, and income earners are constantly labouring to piece the capital payments together. Under such circumstances, the chances for BEC development action are stifled. Money is limited and bodies are locked into debt, which is different than merely being an instrument of labour production. Indeed, debt servitude is much less flexible than wage earning; it includes expectations beyond one’s own livelihood, and payments to satisfy the creditor tend to take precedence over anything else. Giving of one’s labour is fixed on servicing the pre-existing relationship, as opposed to a contract between employee and employer that ultimately can be broken by the employee, and this affects

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 119 one’s ability to give labour to something else, such as a BEC. In the long run a family can negotiate its own terms of livelihood, but the terms of debt are structured and the service of debt is physically taxing. As discussed by informants, gambling can be seen as a national pastime in the Philippines, and the livelihood of a number of families in Negros Occidental is affected by it. Spending any extra hard-earned pesos on gambling tends to be counterproductive to family savings and investment, and gambling tends to increase (and diversify) the debt load. As with other vices, money, time, and energy are diverted away from loved ones and spent on something with little tangible results other than immediate gratification and long-term hardship. Over time, winnings do not tend to balance losses, because winnings are always re-gambled and become losses in due course. Although gambling can be understood as entertainment consumed for a price, there are social costs suffered by families, including those that belong to BECs; money that could be used for family and community advancement is surrendered in the gaming pit. In Chapter 3, inclement weather was presented as one source of instability and continued impoverishment in the Philippines. Recovery from sporadic weather events greatly dampens efforts at mitigating sustained poverty, and on Negros the opposites of drought and excess precipitation periodically wreak havoc on the agricultural sector and exhaust the resources of worker and farm families. Although the vast majority of those affected are not landed, their jobs are affected, and times of work stoppage translate into times of hardship, when families are stretched to the limits of survival. Any savings is spent, vegetables and livestock are liquidated, and pesos are borrowed to float families until work resumes. Key informants say the climate of Negros is changing (see Holden et al. 2017), with a new longer and dryer dry season, and this presents a threat to the sugar industry as crop yields diminish. Although drought is the greater concern for now, torrential rain does take a toll as well, but much less frequently. Fortunately, because the island is buffered from the open Pacific by a few hundred kilometres and a few large islands, Negros is spared the brunt of most tropical typhoons (normally deflected north along the outer islands of the country towards China, Korea or Japan). But times of agricultural crisis are regular occurrences, and this translates into yet another limitation placed upon BEC social action because extra resources are consumed on a monthly/seasonal basis in order to support the families put out of work and/or home by the crisis. Finally, individual participation in BECs can be limited by fear of employment loss. Some individuals who have participated in transformative programs or signed petitions have been known to lose their employment because the object of the action went against local landlords or against development that might benefit landlords or their friends. Such action might include a push for local agrarian reform, worker unionization or anti-­m ining protest. Each of these presents resistance to the landed or elite business class, and local agitation may be dispelled with employment termination or at least its

120  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development threat. Once again, in a world of economic uncertainty, having a job provides some semblance of certainty, and the fear of being without work can be compelling enough to stammer the dissent of entire families and entire BECs. This does not bode well for participation in transformative programs that require a mass base upon which to operate, and the potency of the threat is hardly surprising when families have few livelihood alternatives. Much of the discussion on both the potentials for and limits to development has come back to what amounts to access to cash. Ultimately, are funds available to get BEC-driven development off the ground? The focus on monetary inputs runs the risk of confusing the present work with a treatise on economics or mainstream development, which is not the intention; rather, the purpose is to demonstrate that, even with the dream of founding a cooperative economic unit and finding a competitive niche in markets, a perennial peso shortfall for families continues to stand in the way. (And recall, these communities do seek participation in capital markets and thus require cash.) Daily life involves access to a certain number of pesos in order to meet basic needs, but the relations of mono-crop production bar access for the many. And although structural barriers are firmly rooted in the island’s own political economy, they also are tied to much wider processes, such as the Philippine state, foreign investment, and world sugar prices (more below). Recommendations Locally grown development at the level of BEC requires a jump start—some impetus that can push the groups beyond the present cycle of daily wages, seasonal fluctuation, and debt—if BECs are to participate cooperatively in capital markets. It is a stark reality in San Carlos that initial funding is beyond the means of the communities themselves, and the preliminary input most likely will have to be from an external source, such as the diocese, the national church, or a community benefactor. Although this runs counter to the literature on BECs, it does appear the only plausible option for making the dream of development a reality. Indeed, the discourse has to come to terms with the material circumstances of systemic poverty and disempowerment. During my travels I visited a few families who arranged funding from outside sources and made a success of their good luck. Benefactors are almost exclusively overseas relatives who left Negros years ago and became established in North America or Europe. For instance, a large benefactor to Cabagtasan is the family of Sister Milla, specifically her brothers and sisters who moved to California decades ago. With yearly remittances from them, Sister Milla has provided initial funding for the economic projects of five different families and a rural community of a few dozen families; this includes the purchase of five hectares of rice field, the establishment of a vegetable farm, and a small piggery. Economic projects are complex and require detailed planning, and Sister Milla expects a rigorous business

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 121 proposal before any funds are given. The initial capital is a no-interest loan, and when the money is repaid it will be loaned again to another family. Sister Milla began her lending program in 2007, and she has yet to recoup the bulk of money loaned, but she is being repaid on a regular schedule by borrowers. What is demonstrated in securing outside loans for some families is that, with motivation and the initial stimulus, meaningful development can be generated at the local level and some economic independence can be achieved. This does not translate into benefactors lining up to hand out money, however. These first few instances of success are limited, and convincing more outside investors of any group’s potential requires a leap of faith. Fortunately, for BECs, they are part of a wider community of Catholic faithful that includes benefactors with surplus wealth throughout the diocese. During the Mass on Sunday the wealthiest people in the parish and the poorest share a pew, so there is opportunity for single benefactors to partner with individual BECs. Although a business relationship between BEC and patron runs the risk of deteriorating into yet another instance of debt-­ peonage or another relation of exploitation, a secured loan with minimal interest could form the basis of a more symbiotic relationship, if wealthier residents of the parishes choose to see the value in developing their own communities. The more likely scenario for funding BEC projects is one where the diocese plays a key role, and the communities wait patiently to be sponsored as money becomes available. This is being attempted with the distribution of livestock young into the parishes. If the animal program proves a success, it may provide the faith necessary to support BEC-driven development projects and open the gates to other forms of lending and distribution throughout the smallest segments of the church. Similar to the famous Grameen Bank, the diocese has learned through the San Carlos Diocesan Multipurpose Cooperative that a lending program among the poor is both secure and a source of revenue. Micro-credit lending represents income generation at multiple scales, from families to BECs to the diocese. The lending program of the cooperative could be replicated by the diocese, over time, with a modest initial investment and some preliminary maintenance funding. Whether funds in the future are provided by the diocese or a wealthy patron, any BEC soliciting help for its economic project will require a sensible, well-planned business proposal, with details regarding basic organization, labour commitments and target market(s). Throwing good money after bad is not an option for rural development, so offers of help must be understood as foundational, not ongoing. They are support for a wellplanned project that can become self-sustaining, and they are to be repaid so that financial support can be given to others. But assistance for BEC development requires more than financing, and BEC members themselves are intrinsic to the development process.

122  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development The BEC literature stresses the role of the entire family as an agent of community change—individual members within families cooperate among themselves, and individual families coordinate to become the next scale of social action. The concept only appears practical with the support of entire families, for without this it will be difficult for different families to come together and bring meaningful change—it only takes one uncommitted household decision-maker to suffocate family fervour, which in turn has wider implications as some families remain noncommittal. This does not imply that all family members have to offer their labour to the local BEC, but it does imply that family members who do not give labour at least support those who do. Minimal support can be emotional and greater support can be help with household duties, such as childrearing and tending to gardens, or earning extra pesos. In extreme cases, support may come indirectly from family members who choose to give up gambling or other bad habits in the hopes of a better livelihood. Ultimately, the idea is to have strong, supportive families that can then become strong, supportive communities. Negative sentiment regarding poor attendance at Bible-study or lack of general effort in the community on the part of some family members is probably counterproductive; as has been shown in the preceding chapter, those who labour in Negros Occidental have legitimate excuses for limited participation in BECs. Therefore, perhaps the seed of total family commitment is a carte-blanche acceptance that many family members have only their spirits to commit to the cause. After all, the parish priests themselves accept the demands of daily work as a legitimate excuse for non-participation in BECs. This leads to a final recommendation, and it regards the role of the clergy in helping BECs. In any parish the priest already is the symbolic and practical community leader, looked upon for guidance and endorsement. In the Philippines the average priest also has knowledge that the lay in rural BECs do not tend to possess. For instance, as community advocate, spiritual leader, dispute settler, general social worker, and liaison between landlords and labourers, priests gain knowledge about local economic and political dynamics that would prove useful in building cooperative communities and sustaining them within local and regional economies. Furthermore, the administration of a parish is tantamount to the administration of a business franchise; a diocese is a substantial operation, providing services, collecting and redistributing revenue, and administering upwards of 100 employees. The smaller branches of business organization (parishes) are an important part of the business machine, and priests gain knowledge from their experience in local communities and from operating within the framework of a diocese. These attributes well position the priestly class for roles in guidance, consultation, advocacy, and initial administration. This is not to suggest that priests over-commit to BEC development vis-à-vis their spiritual duties, but it does suggest that time can be allocated for the communities, particularly when projects begin.

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 123

The diocese: A rung higher on the ladder to development If the goal of social change through BECs is a qualified failure, then many of the actions of the church at the diocese level are an unqualified success. Programs seen during fieldwork demonstrate the capacity for social change, and communities that benefit from the programs are seeing tangible results. Thus it is the diocese that has stepped forward to push the dream of local social development, cognizant of the limitations under which small communities operate. The number and variability of different programs operated by the diocese is a promising leap towards total human development, but the key actors recognize that without the germination of BEC-level development the diocese runs risk of becoming a purveyor of maintenance programs that never lift the rural masses out of their current conditions. What follows is an inventory of some of the strengths and weaknesses of diocesan development in San Carlos, with some recommendations. The intention is a critical analysis that will provide the diocese with a synthesis or overview to consider, as well as a few thoughts on the future from an outsider. Diocesan strengths The organizational structure of leadership in the diocese and the established ranks of parish leaders are a strong foundation upon which to build meaningful change. Far beyond the limits of individual BECs, the Social Action Center is an extensive business operation that delivers a number of social programs within a vast territory of nearly one million individuals. The size of undertaking necessitates a well-defined and logical organizational structure, and the diocesan clergy have the lead roles, particularly the social-action director, Father Edwin. The chain of management is fixed by Bishop Joe, and as a strong advocate of social action one can see that his choice of diocesan priests is far from arbitrary—they are highly committed and highly effective in their various roles. Moving down to the parish level, the parish priests are all in place as lead actors, aware of their various roles in local and greater communities, and ready to serve the needs of the diocese. Furthermore, the clergy as community leaders already possess the necessary skills for local advocacy, and many have connections with local workers’ groups, landlords, business professionals, and government officials. All of this translates into favourable conditions for clerical management of social programs based upon an established hierarchy within the organizational frame, and it makes sense that the church would use its own human resources, in the way it sees most fitting, whenever it can. Exceptions to clerical staff include the pharmacists and sustainable-agriculture coordinator, among others, experts that had to be added to the business machine. Thus, if a well-defined apparatus of bodies and leaders is requisite to broadbased action, then the diocese can count its rigid division of labour as a force of potential.

124  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development The shear size of the diocese, both in terms of people and area, is a positive factor for effecting change as well. Due to the number of communities represented and the common struggles that stretch the length of the diocese, action at this scale has far more tangible results than anything produced by a local community. Whereas the grievances of small local groups can be swept aside easily, the mass base constitutes a voice to be heard and perhaps reckoned with. As a large organization, the diocese is in a position to bargain with large governmental and corporate organizations, and it is recognized as a legitimate representative of the masses. Both anti-mining and good governance are examples of programs that give voice to predominantly powerless rural communities. But the capabilities of such a large organization go beyond representation over conflict, and the diocese is also able to use its clout in cooperative tasks with other organizations, such as its partnership with the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The AFP never would have been solicited for partnership by individual BECs, but the diocese, with the backing of the Bishop, has fostered collaboration and meaningful results. Moving beyond organizational management and size, the BEC network presents its own inherent potential as change agent. Father Jublas said that the BECs were the smallest slices of a large Catholic pie, implying a scaled interconnection among the faithful that stretches from the rural countryside all the way to the Holy See. Indeed the Vatican is located thousands of kilometres and an entire continent away, but the three smallest levels of church organization in the Philippines, BEC, parish, and diocese, are all interconnected and doing their own parts, giving strength to the concept of church as vehicle of social change. In such a relationship the network of BECs perhaps offer the greatest source of diocesan potential, for the people are organized into clusters already, just waiting for their own people power to be activated. As mentioned earlier, the network creates an imagined community that stretches across the landscape, wherein individual BECs can be certain of a spiritual connection to the vast others, grounded in common predicament, livelihood struggles, poverty, neighbourly compassion, and righteous behaviour. Ultimately, it is a connection grounded in praxis, which includes critical reflection and imagining a better life. This camaraderie is strong, and it has been organized rather well for transformative programs by the diocese, such as anti-mining and good governance. Presently it is being organized economically with the livestock program as well. Thus the mass base for broad social change exists, with open lines of ­communication and resource sharing, just waiting to be activated in terms of cooperative production and distribution. Although labour resources are aplenty in the diocese, development does require more than people power to become reality and money is a determining factor. The diocese generates its own income in typical church fashion, mainly through tithes and offerings, but those pesos are spent on basic operating costs and a few investments, or they continue up the line of offering to

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 125 the archdiocesan level and beyond. Thus the diocese is not sitting on vast amounts of savings that could be given to social action on a regular basis. Fortunately the Social Action Center has made good use of its loans from the diocese and is now in a position to redistribute some of its own revenue from income-generating programs, such as herbal medicine production and bottled water, into other programs. This extra revenue provides the initial boost necessary to get new programs off the ground, and it maintains struggling programs through desperate times; indeed many of the projects would never have seen the light of day without the guaranteed stream of revenue from older, established projects. The directive of profit seeking in the name of redistribution (as opposed to accumulation) is the raison d’être for income-generating projects, meant to generate sustained growth by constantly reinvesting in communities. It may also hold the key to total human development. In Negros Occidental the general social relations of production—part feudal, part laissez-fair, rather inequitable—have created an environment where the struggle for daily livelihood is waged at the level of the family, and the struggle is without end. This has trapped most rural families in a cycle dependant on each day’s wage, and it has kept the door to cooperative livelihood closed. Furthermore, the system has maintained the poverty of the masses, if not exacerbated it. If the present system, bent on land and capital accumulation in the hands of the few, is a dismal failure for the majority, then the diocese’s attempts at redistribution in the name of general development may offer a broad corrective to the system. Instead of being deposited into personal bank accounts, revenues are kept within the network of communities as different programs commence, where they can be utilized and reutilized to the betterment of all. What remains to be seen is whether the establishment of income-generating projects will provide a second boost to livelihood, by no means replacing the hegemonic structure of the island but at least creating an alternative, adjacent, and supplemental option for communities. Finally, the greater landscape on which local developments may or may not occur is altered in favour of the masses by the Center’s commitment to integral development. A series of integrated programs is a solid foundation upon which to build communities and stimulate local autonomy—a broad place-based reorganization of space—integrating health (herbal medicine, feeding, bottled water), livelihood (the Cooperative, livestock), education (schools), and social justice (anti-mining, good-governance). Already each program is making a difference on its own, but it is their cumulative effects that increase the potential of each as program results are compounded and development is not isolated to one among health, education, social justice, or livelihood. Although many programs are new and the cumulative effects are difficult to measure, the concept has merit and potential, and once again the programs are not meant for maintenance support, but for a foundation upon which communities can forge their own development.

126  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development All of the strengths and potential of diocese-level development rest upon a strong social-action centre, with staff dedicated to the development of all people for the betterment of all communities in San Carlos. Dedication can come in the form of personal sacrifice, with non-clerical staff accepting lower wages as their own personal offering to the church, and in the form of clerical support. Without these frontline workers, ready and willing to cooperate daily on the tasks of community advancement, Father Edwin would be left with an insurmountable workload. Finally, as figurehead and supreme decision-maker, the support of Bishop Joe is essential to the continued growth of social action. The key players may be disbursed throughout the diocese, but their cooperation in organizing resources and bringing development to the people is predicated on a centralized mandate and an effective organizational structure, and as a unit they are effecting moderate change across the landscape. And still, even with such strength among the faithful, development remains a slow process with many obstacles. It is towards an understanding of the obstacles that we now turn. Factors limiting diocesan development The benefit that comes from dedicated key players in the clergy is jeopardized by others who give little support. As shown in Chapter 4, the clergy do not present a unified voice on church involvement in social, economic, and political matters. In fact, a number of priests demonstrate outright aversion to taking part in things beyond the spiritual realm. In terms of constraints on the movement, this lack of unity and support appears to be the most problematic variable. If only some are committed to the development machine, then the organizational effectiveness of the diocese is dampened by conflicting imperatives among key community players. Part of what makes development a reality at the diocese scale (vis-à-vis individual BECs) is the size of the operation, including labour and capital resources. Any divergence from the clerical commitment to worldly matters, particularly when cultivated by the shepherds of entire parishes, can only but weaken the momentum of diocesan development. For instance, broad-based programs are reported to be occasionally at the mercy of local priests who have different plans or ideas. This both stalls diocesan efforts and takes resources away from other parishes that desire the programs offered. Furthermore, even when programs are welcomed by parish priests, the priests do not always lend much of a hand with implementation, choosing instead to remain on the sidelines. Thus collective efforts are collected in fewer and fewer individuals, and this becomes a burden on those who put forth their very best. For instance, over the years Father Edwin has had extended stays in hospital, suffering from a number of ailments. The general consensus around the diocese is that he is burnt out by the workload. In the end this situation has the potential to create a new limitation, one in which key players become ineffective in any single program as they shoulder responsibility for too many programs.

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 127 Although I will argue that two or three of the priests with whom I spoke are plain lazy when it comes to social action, this is not the norm for those who remain predominantly inactive. Some truly believe that the sole priestly role in the community is spiritual leadership, and such a belief is difficult to dismiss, especially since it does follow official Roman Catholic doctrine. Others are over-committed to their spiritual tasks, whether they would like to participate in more social action or not. This latter group presents a limitation for the diocese as well. The weekly schedule of the parish priest is vigorous, requires great travel and is filled with spiritual tasks, such as Sunday Masses, weekly Masses in numerous BEC chapels, and appearances at community events. Added to this, a priest’s time at home in his convent is seldom uninterrupted, with visitors coming and going at any hour of the day for any number of reasons, from idle discussion to voicing grievance to blessing a new motorcycle. Thus the typical priest is very busy, and it is not entirely surprising when he offers only the most basic help to social action. Like the clergy, the laity has its own deficiencies that limit development, and three in particular standout: (i) ningas cogon, (ii) a dole-out attitude, and (iii) ignorance regarding certain programs offered. Ningas cogon was introduced in Chapter 4. It translates to ‘starting a roaring grassfire only to watch it burn out’, and the metaphor is meant to describe a Philippine cultural trait whereby an individual or group may show extreme initial support for something, be it a community project, business venture, reading an important book or mending a relationship, but support quickly fades and the task is left incomplete. Much to the chagrin of project leaders and fellow community members, there seems to be a segment of the population in any given parish that fits the ningas cogon mould, and the locals are well aware. In a nutshell, initial support for projects, mainly in the form of labour, is given for a while but enthusiasm wanes and projects are left in limbo. A perfect example of this is the failed sari-sari store in Pacuan; the store operated well for a while, fewer and fewer people helped over time, and when the priest who organized it was transferred the store closed. Not only can projects be left in an indeterminate state; the burden shouldered by those lead actors is redoubled as they continue to press on, with or without support. One example is that of the feeding program in Cabagtasan; initially a number of laity helped on feeding day, but over time the feeding program came to be run by Sister Milla and the workers who delivered the food. The dole-out attitude of many parishioners is a second bone of contention for the clergy that limits development. Rather than taking an active role in self-betterment and community improvement, empowering one’s self in the process, the clergy speak of a considerable segment of the rural masses who are quite happy to stand aside and let others bring development to them. Such passivity frustrates programs that operate best with full community involvement. A prime example is the vegetable seeds distributed to rural families, as mentioned earlier by Father Jimmy. Seeds and seminars on growing a family garden were provided, but many of the people did not

128  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development bother to grow the vegetables, instead wanting food from the priests’ gardens when it became available. Another example is the families who wish for their children to attend the mission school but make no effort from one year to the next to muster the tuition, even though tuition payments can be negotiated and involve trade in services, vegetables, or crops. These families simply expect the diocese to cover all costs, without considering the lengths it has already gone in terms of money and labour resources. It is not very difficult to imagine grievance among the active clergy when considering these examples of the dole-out mentality. Ignorance about programs offered is a third limitation encountered, and it comes in two varieties. First, in certain areas, there can be a lack of communication within and among communities about programs being delivered. For instance, there are times when cooperation between diocese and army is limited by too few community members showing up to help. Each time the job got done, so to speak, but with greater effort on the part of the AFP and no small measure of embarrassment on the part of the diocese. In these instances it seems information indeed passed from the diocese to the parish, but did not properly disseminate among the parishioners (although lack of support may also result from the dole-out attitude). But even when community participation is high, a program only works when the people to whom it is delivered make proper use of it. This brings us to a second category of ignorance: ineffective participation in programs offered. The most blatant example is found in the feeding program; recall that some of the mothers whose children refused to eat the meal were feeding the meals to their pigs, rather than finding a way to get the food into their children. The meal is balanced for child nourishment, with far more nutritional complexity than the local rice staple (let alone corn, for those families who must trade down). Throwing it to a pig, an animal likely to go to market and be served on someone else’s plate, defeats the collected efforts of the local parish, the diocese, two US charities and all the children in Minnesota who packed the food in bags. But ignorance is not reserved for the rural masses, and community leaders also can remain unaware of diocesan programs, like the priests who had not heard of the church-military partnership. Similar to the previous section on BEC-level development, the final and critical limitations on diocesan development are once again structural; the social relations of production on Negros, particularly property rights, wage labour, and governance, present enormous obstacles to any alternative development scheme. First, due to a number of variables mentioned earlier affecting basic survival, the very people for whom social action is intended often are unable to participate in their own advancement. The critical factor is the reality of labouring long hours for just enough wages to keep one’s family alive. For now, the mass base remains indispensable to a system that commands its labour power at deflated rates of pay. This leaves most workers exhausted at day’s end and many hungry at times over the course of the year, but they cannot give up their employment. Unfortunately, the peoples’

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 129 participation in diocesan development is intrinsic to the long-term fitness of programs, and without some fundamental overhaul of the economy that would see a general increase in living standards and a diversification away from the dominance of export crops, the struggle for daily family subsistence will prevent the majority of the rural masses from being active in the diocese’s plans as anything more than passive recipients. Second, in terms of the overall structure of Negros Occidental, grassroots mobilization in a province where landownership is controlled by an elite class with relatively few members is a difficult task for any independent organization. No matter what program is initiated the diocese must manoeuvre within a rock-solid system of property-based exclusion and upon ground that literally belongs to someone else. There is scant room for engineering change as the diocese tiptoes across a landscape controlled by an elite that has its own priorities. This is especially true when particular programs run counter to crop production or when they upset relationships between landowners and workers/tenants, as suggested in the overview of BEC limitations. Furthermore, the diocese lacks the resources to purchase land (if it were for sale), to become a propertied player in the development game. If lands were available then organizing cooperative production on community-owned lands might be a reality. But until the rural masses have access to landownership, their social development will remain greatly determined by their status as tenants with few rights and little influence. Third, the provincial and local systems of governance, in which those who control production also officially represent the people, present an obstacle. Although democratic institutions are in place, the wealthy elite has either formal or tacit control over government, making political bosses out of the same stock of economic bosses encountered in the workplace. The situation can complicate social action, for it pegs the empowered against the disempowered or, perhaps more to the point, the disempowered against those who are disempowering them. This is particularly true in regards to good-­ governance and anti-mining, for the very people to whom complaints should be addressed are often tied directly to, or implicated in, whatever is causing community unrest. Thus civil society is emasculated by the conflation of the political society and the dominant economic bloc, and community complaints tend to fall on deaf ears when elite interests are given precedence. Ultimately, the situation hardly makes for a level playing field when the rural masses and the diocese come to the bargaining table. But there is hope, and what follows are a few recommendations to help activate the potential for change, in hopes of the obstacles proving surmountable in the long-term. Recommendations for the diocese It is easy to observe, analyse, and critique development programs, as I have. Much more difficult is practicing development in the diocese as a member of the community, but I do offer some recommendations. First,

130  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development the programs need to be prioritized as a central mandate of the Church, with their importance fully communicated to all clergy through education and some form of mandatory participation, particularly as regards service delivery in the parishes. This is not to suggest a massive overhaul of clerical duties, but rather an allotment of sometime in weekly and monthly schedules for community services. A mandate of social action can help bring parish priests into line on diocesan goals, strengthening the development ideal through a streamlined philosophy of community action, even if this deflects time and resources away from independent projects in the parishes or other regular priestly commitments. Much as the lay network of BECs is argued to be a solid foundation for action, the network of priests working in cooperation, as opposed to individual clergy following their own paths, can also provide the basis for temporal leadership. This is likely to diminish parish autonomy for some priests, but it does present new forms of leadership empowerment. If the network of priests is able to coordinate the individual efforts of all clergy, then time and energy expenditure can be spread out among more actors. The first step is to have parish priests involved as key players in all local programs, simply by assigning them a certain amount of responsibility. Ideally, as more priests are brought on board, the objective would be greater transfers of responsibility that do not disrupt immensely the established routine of the priests. Nevertheless, the new mandate will require the clergy to rearrange their schedules and become more flexible. This inevitably will be at the expense of other strictly spiritual tasks, which in turn is likely to upset some clergy who truly believe their role is one of spiritual advisers, and nothing more. But ultimately the priests are employees of the diocese, which is committed to the development of the entire person—spirit, body, and community. As employees it hardly seems unreasonable to expect the clergy to adopt the diocese’s philosophy, prerogatives and praxis, and work towards common goals even when this infringes upon individual practices. An undisclosed sum of pesos from tithes and offerings enters the Bishop’s house weekly and monthly. It is impossible for an outsider to estimate the total amount of money passing through such a large organization with so many parishioners making contributions, but it is known that the bulk of income is spent on allowances, salaries, community events, management of daily operations, business travel, and property upkeep. These costs are significant, and the diocese is not left with vast amounts of money when everything is paid. Nonetheless, there is always some extra money on a regular basis, some of which has been used for social action, such as the loan that helped launch herbal medicine production. In the future, if a nominal percentage is mandated for development, with support given in the form of loans and gifts, it is unlikely that the diocese will suffer from this immediate loss of disposable income; rather, it will require a slight modification in the overall spending scheme, whereby a significant quantity of pesos is pooled

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 131 from minor cutbacks across the board. In the end some will be repaid, some will not, but the diocese will be giving back to the very communities that are its financial base. And in so doing, there is very good chance that future offerings from the beneficiaries of assistance will increase, as livelihood increases, and the diocese will recoup its costs over time. The small-percentage allocation to social development could be repeated at the parish level, for priests have disposable income as well. Particularly in the rural countryside, parish priests tend to live comfortable lifestyles relative to the poor masses, with food and cash received as offerings and room and board provided. Parish income is once again undisclosed and highly variable from one week to the next, as well as between parishes. Nevertheless, a number of priests have personal cars and/or motorcycles, justified by the need to travel great distances. If the money to pay for these is available with an extended period of savings, then the ability to siphon off a small percentage of parish income on a regular basis for a fund seems a realistic option for rural development. If all parish priests set aside their own small sums from weekly offerings, they could organize a fund of the parishes, a purse to which they all contribute, used to fund social developments, one project at a time. The 654,999 pesos net income from herbal medicine production already is used for funding many of the other programs, and with future growth can provide financial backing to parish- and BEC-level development. Other possible sources of revenue include income from bottled-water production and yearly payouts from the cooperative. Through each of these the diocese is reaping hundreds of thousands of pesos after expenses and capital investment. Indeed it is prudent to retain a substantial cash base, but now that a reserve fund is established it is not unreasonable to imagine that a portion of income can be channelled regularly into smaller-scale projects without jeopardizing the aggregate fitness of social action in the diocese. Projects partially overseen by the Social Action Center make sense at this stage, such as cooperative livestock or agriculture in the parishes. They have the potential to bring meaningful local change without completely surrendering decision-making authority to the diocese. Furthermore, if income eventually is generated then the communities will be in a position to repay initial loans and perhaps, one day, carry forward the lending legacy and fund projects in neighbouring communities. In addition to this, the diocese is in a position to influence the investment strategies of the multipurpose cooperative. The cooperative has savings and investments, and members are interested in other potential investments. If they could be convinced of the merit (and potential) of loans to rural communities, it could be a win-win situation, wherein small projects become the seeds of change in the rural parishes and the cooperative gains investment returns from what amounts to charitable lending. In this situation the diocese could act as liaison between cooperative and rural groups, selecting well-planned business ideas from the parishes for presentation

132  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development to the cooperative. A sensible business plan is integral, and the diocese could have the added function of providing seminars on smaller projects. The seminars might address such issues as organization, finding a product/niche and drafting a business plan, and other projects (be they concept or reality) could be presented, if only for the sake of brainstorming possibilities. If the diocese can concentrate further on the cooperation of its own human resources, particularly voluntary labour hours, and if it is willing to transfer a greater percentage of capital to social action and small projects in the rural countryside, it may be able to overcome some of the limitations placed upon local development, opening the door to change and fulfilling the dream of development through BECs. All of this, however, will produce new concepts for the discourse of BECs in the Philippines.

The discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities Thus far, in terms of political transformation and economic development, a disconnect has been drawn between the discourse of BECs and the practices among Catholics in San Carlos. Indeed, the discourse is a narrative of liberation inherent in any small community, the potential for change just waiting to be activated by eager members who take initiative. It tends to read as utopian, with harmonious, egalitarian, and democratic cooperatives finding economic niches that are socially and ecologically sustainable, complete with increased standards of living for all. This is not a criticism, and the discourse ultimately is one of hope: for a better future, for community empowerment, for one’s children. In San Carlos utopia is put to the test and, as has been shown, reality presents a much different reading of development among the Catholic faithful. Broadly speaking, a number of structural restraints lie along the path to change, an inevitable consequence of working on the margins of the greater political economy of the island. This begs questions about the extent to which the disconnect is likely to exist in other dioceses in the Philippines as well, and whether San Carlos serves as a useful case study for the BEC movement as a whole. One of the most pressing concerns that should be addressed in the literature on BECs is the absence of multiple scales of social organization as an operational principle. Although there is some attempt at organizing a national platform, the discourse is centred on the empowerment of local communities, which we now have learned remain fairly powerless on their own. Indeed, it is only through strength in numbers that any seeds of change land on fertile ground, with numerous BECs working far beyond the limits of any individual community. Thus the dream moves closer to reality with a comprehensive understanding of what a number of BECs can achieve together through multi-site, extra-local development programs. Although this does imply network, the key is actually a shift in perspective to come to terms with the organizational necessity of vertical integration,

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 133 particularly at the diocese level—a strong network can be the circulatory system of social action, but a diocese is the heart. Operationally, a diocese is in a much stronger position to guide development than a small community, and the kind of broad-based social action proposed necessitates vertical complexity of human resources. Furthermore, the parish, a second level of organization, needs expansion in the literature. The discourse will do well to evaluate the scales of social action above local community, and how they articulate together, thus offering a broad corrective to the small-scale focus of BEC action in the literature. The inclusion of vertical integration will provide the concept with a better blueprint for change, but it also has the potential to reveal much more. Indeed the BEC movement in San Carlos has produced a scaled division of labour, but what remains to be understood is the ways in which different scales of social organization articulate to produce new social realities among the faithful—hierarchical, organizational, and even cultural. This may lead to a shift in perspective—away from the ideal, towards the real— and it could serve to bridge the gap between the dream and reality of community development. If this study is any indication, subsequent research may demonstrate that strong vertical integration is the key to BEC development, raising an important question: should the vehicle of change in the literature actually move past the local community and be re-written for the diocese? In San Carlos the answer appears to be affirmative, but there are deeper implications for such a conceptual shift. The literature is much more than a functional inventory of what works and what does not; rather, the discourse is one of hope, dreams, and empowerment among the masses, and it motivates local communities to participate against the odds. Ultimately, it is the discourse itself that has a very important part to play in rallying the masses, and a complete overhaul may emasculate its empowering potential, rewriting the masses as passive recipients of their own development. Under such consideration, it seems that participation would gain most from an inclusion of the diocese scale in the literature that does not diminish the importance of local communities, instead emphasizing the functional and creative relationships inherent in vertical complexity. The incorporation of scale may also provide an important base for addressing a necessary division of labour; there are certain things achievable at the local level, but the structural framework in which the faithful operate is elaborate and extra-local. For example, a local community has little ability to effect decisions about municipal or provincial development initiatives, but the parishes and dioceses do. Similarly, as regarding the anti-mining coalition, a diocese proves indispensable when actions transcend diocesan boundaries and are directed against national and multinational conglomerates, often tied to a regional elite or foreign capital. Finally, with respect to scale, it does seem plausible that the diocese may be the appropriate upper level of social action. This is not to diminish the

134  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development importance of a national committee or national assemblies, which are vital for building the discourse, networking, and presenting successes and failures; rather, it is to emphasize that BEC is a national concept with regional effects. Indeed the most intimate player in social action seems to be the diocese, and the most immediate concerns are local or regional in scope—land rights, working conditions, health, education and livelihood. Suggesting the diocese is the correct upper scale of intervention makes sense for a number of reasons. First, any given diocese has a target population within defined boundaries; if dioceses begin to focus their efforts beyond their boundaries, say on greater-Philippine projects, priorities may change to the detriment of more immediate concerns. Second, surrendering authority to national affiliates can diminish the capacity for change in one’s home diocese, as commitments expand and human resources are stretched horizontally. Third, the country is divided politically, economically, and geographically, so a focus of diocesan efforts on other regions may have no consequence for one’s own region. Finally, and perhaps most crucial, with each scale up the ladder, the base communities are pushed further down in importance, particularly regarding local empowerment. This is problematic, for in the end the mass base must be central to the vision and given opportunities for empowerment (recall the ideal of postdevelopment from Chapter 2). Thus it appears to be the diocese, as local advocate, which presents the greatest opportunity for local agency. The alternative is a macro-scale program of development agreed among powerful key players and dumped in the laps of passive communities, with little political or emotional attachment to community members. A final suggestion for the evolving discourse of BECs concerns pedagogy. In San Carlos the clergy who are most effective in social action are of an older generation, and the seminary has changed, particularly over the last 15–20 years. The seminary once included a more robust social critique, informed by a cross-disciplinary approach to social science and inspired by civic action described by the Second Vatican Council. A return to a more radical critique of economy and society could prove instrumental in bringing the clergy into line on issues of, and participation in, community advocacy. Building BECs as liturgical groups is stressed presently, but the importance of BEC social action is left in the hands of individual seminaries and their bishops. If the ultimate goal of the Philippine Catholic Church is total human development, and if there are tangible results of advocacy such as we have seen in San Carlos, then bishops and seminaries have to at least agree upon the primary place of social action in clerical instruction, even if the pedagogical details remain specific. The alternative is a series of disconnected seminary curriculums whose commitments to social action fluctuate between lip service and absolute. Ultimately, BEC is a discourse of social change, scripted through practice and dialogue, but it can only reach its full potential in the Philippines with mass participation. It is one seed of postdevelopment, but one that still needs sowing.

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 135

Postdevelopment revisited The theoretical starting point of this study was postdevelopment, and in many ways it remains a solid fit for an analysis of BEC development. Postdevelopment begins with a critique of all previous forms of development, particularly top-down approaches that are imposed by powerful, exclusionary agents and institutions operating at the international scale. It is an affront to any development model, mainstream or alternative, that continues to reproduce the hegemonic structures and power relations passed down as the discourse of developing people has evolved over the last 150 years. In contradistinction, postdevelopment asks us to imagine a world where communities develop themselves, and it comes with a counter-­ hegemonic challenge: rewrite the limits within which we are able to think and practice social development and self-advocacy. It calls for the production of novel discourses predicated on local place-making, grassroots ecology, egalitarianism, democratic decision-making, and even romantic ideas about tribalism and communalism. The call for new discourses was the initial impetus for presenting this study of BECs within the postdevelopment frame; after all, a discourse of livelihood and liberation had existed in the Philippines for years, inflected with many of the central tenets of postdevelopment. The discourse was there for analysis, and in true postdevelopment fashion, local communities were already imagining (if not yet practicing) community empowerment. The literature on BECs stresses the community strength that can be generated by first coming together for the liturgy. But the need for community strength implies some measure of prior weakness—poverty, disempowerment—in the historical landscape, and reflection moves beyond Biblical assessment to encompass an appraisal of Philippine society. Furthermore, community is much more than meeting for discussion, and BEC families grow together culturally, with weekly social events, reciprocal farm help and aid for the most needy. These practices serve as the cultural basis of group solidarity and community action, and they are a solid foundation upon which to grow participatory development. In this regard, then, BECs demonstrate another prerequisite of postdevelopment theory: the existing cohesion of a local group grounded in culture. If socio-economic development is going to be added to the cultural repertoire of a group, then a group must possess already a tried and tested cultural foundation. But as we have seen, the prerequisites to community development have not guaranteed development, and this is where the present study begins to deviate from the postdevelopment ideal. Rather than an emerging series of autochthonous economic communities grounded in faith, complete with pooled resources and democratic decision-making, it is often the tiring efforts of a few key individuals that enable progress towards achievable development goals. Key actors take on roles as managers in the development process, and the natural leaders are not always residents of the community,

136  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development as we have seen with the work of lead priests. ‘The priest is always the president of the daily operations. The voice of the priest. This is the ideal versus the real in terms of empowerment of the lay. The reality—priests are natural leaders’ (Fr Edwin). Thus strong leadership has led to what amounts to managerialism, with a number of projects under the guidance of a centralized authority and funded by a centralized revenue stream, and a number of communities drawn into development as donors, labourers, and beneficiaries. Although there is opportunity for local empowerment within this framework, lay leaders tend to defer to the clergy (who have their own structure of leadership, as we have seen). The extra-locality of leadership and authority draws attention to another deviation from the postdevelopment ideal. Similar to BECs, postdevelopment does not emphasize the vertical integration of actors in the overall development scheme. The concept stresses place, eco-territorial rights, and network, but scale remains under-explored. Arguably, part of the reason for this is that scale implies hierarchy, and hierarchy necessarily runs counter to the egalitarian ideal presented. But, as we have learned, on-the-ground realities, such as structures of governance and economy, force the actors to operate outside the ideal guidelines of postdevelopment. Ultimately, if large-scale structural forces are encountered along the road to local development, it is an extra-local organization that will prove most valuable in negotiating these forces and mitigating their effects. A final departure of note from early postdevelopment theory relates to BEC participation in capital markets, a vital aspect of the great strides taken by the Diocese of San Carlos. Postdevelopment began as stringently anti-capitalist, with emphasis placed upon a communal alternative that was so intrinsic to a group that it was better understood as cultural process than economic form, per se. It was the spaces of capitalism, after all, that had impoverished and disempowered the masses, but the places of community held the key to ameliorating these social problems. Part and parcel of this reversal was a demonization of capital markets as essentially predatory and dysfunctional to group strength and solidarity. Thus the answer for the Third World was rejection of all things capitalist. Yet, as we have seen, faith-based development in San Carlos tends to embrace the market, even working within the dominant neoliberal rationale, and this confounds the staunchly anti-capitalist bent of postdevelopment. Key actors and beneficiaries throughout the diocese are enthusiastic about finding their competitive niches—using the market for community advantage—and this represents a formidable movement away from an orthodox reading of postdevelopment theory. If this study can be summed up, it is a study of alternative development on the margins of both the Philippine political economy and the world system, complete with an emerging discourse of community action grounded in Catholic faith. As such, inclusion of material circumstances at various scales is essential to our understanding of the complex relationships between

BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development 137 international capital flows, state development policies, local development projects, and community livelihoods. These relationships are dynamic and, in the past, have been neglected often as development research has tended to focus on either capitalist expansion or local intervention, and never the twain shall meet: it is clear that whether we are speaking of development intervention or capitalist expansion, we are concerned with place-based processes in multiple locations spread across the globe that become enmeshed with each other and thus become global phenomena at the same time as they are driven by, and have often transformative effects upon particular people in specific places … place-based analyses of interventions, livelihood and resistance have a series of conceptual and methodological implications for understanding both how these processes are bound up in transnational networks of intervention, and how and why capitalist development occurs and is governed in the ways that it is (Bebbington 2003: 300–1). Thus, as has been attempted in this study, a more robust understanding of the pivotal connections among structures and actors is a broad corrective to studies that have either solely focused upon local livelihood or the macro-economic picture. By bridging the gap, critical development studies may be able to weave a more complex web of the many structures and many agents that concern development initiatives at the local level. The intention of this study was to determine if faith-based group action could bring meaningful development to poor and marginalized communities in the Philippines, a country where tens of millions struggle daily to make ends meet and the forces of government and globalization often present impediments to local empowerment. Interest in the topic resulted after introduction to a growing discourse on BECs in the Philippines, one in which Catholic communities are urged to take proactive steps towards their own socio-economic advancement, with the promise of empowerment and higher standards of living through communal action. Ideally, small groups of families are the scale of intervention, and organization and strong determination are the keys to group success. After familiarization with the BEC literature, the project was organized around a straightforward pair of theoretical questions: By organizing communally, yet participating in capital markets, are faith-based communities in the Philippines able to generate meaningful development that is socially and ecologically sustainable, helping poor people to help themselves mitigate poverty? And if so, what are their limitations? And what of results? What of the original thesis statement? I can argue now that the answer to the question posed is in the affirmative and the negative—both yes and no. It is true that meaningful community development and social action can be produced by faith-based communities, and that

138  BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development these communities search for economic niches within established markets. We have seen what the power of a committed diocese can do in terms of social development, and we can see the desire for empowerment and change in local communities. Added to this is an (incomplete) inventory of the limitations against which these groups struggle. Indeed, then, faith-based groups can effect positive change at local and regional levels. But, then again, it can be argued that I abandoned (conveniently) my initial thesis statement when I found ample development happening at the diocese level, but very little autonomous development at the level of local BECs. Although not explicitly stated in the thesis question, I implied individual BEC communities were the scale of focus for this study, and the implication was reinforced by the BEC literature review. Regardless, for the time being, it can be argued that the participation of individual BECs in capital markets will remain limited without the help and leadership of a diocese.

References Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined communities. London: Verso. Bebbington, A. 2003. Global networks and local developments: agendas for development geography. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 94(3), 297–309. Holden, W., K. Nadeau and E. Porio. 2017. Ecological liberation theology: faithbased approaches to poverty and climate change in the Philippines. Cham: Springer Nature.

Appendix A Herbal Medicines

1. ALAGAW (Premna odorata) Indications: sinusitis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cough and colds, asthma, bronchitis, fever, palpitations, nervousness, body malaise. Recommended usage: 1–2 capsules per day. 2. AVOCADO (Persea americana) Indications: headache, fatigue, diseases of the throat and stomach, bronchial swelling, neuralgia, irregular menstruation. Recommended usage: 2 capsules, 2–3 times daily. 3. BANABA (Lagerstroemia speciosa) Indications: diabetes, hypertension, urinary problems, edema, hematuria, kidney stones, liver disorders, hepatitis, gout. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3 times daily, 7–10 days. 4. COBRA VINE (Smilax herbacea) Indications: tuberculosis, pneumonia, asthma, cough and colds, influenza, toothache, haemorrhoids, diabetes, high blood pressure. Also for anti-haemorrhage, dog/snake bite. 5. COMFREY (Symphytum officinale) Indications: haemoptysis, kidney ulcer, tissue neurosis. Also, facilitates the circulation of blood, resistance to virus. 6. KUMINTANG (Catharanthus roseus) Indications: certain cancers, goitre, hypertension, urinary problems, diabetes, shaky hands. Recommended usage: 1–3 capsules daily for maintenance; 3–6 capsules, 3 times daily for 6 months treatment. 7. DULAW (Curcuma longa) Indications: hypertension, high cholesterol, gallbladder disorder, viral hepatitis, peptic and duodenal ulcers, painful menstruation, shoulder and chest pains, flatulence, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis. Also, treatment for food poisoning. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3 times daily, 3–6 months. 8. GINSENG (Panax ginseng) General usages: combats fatigue by supporting the adrenal glands. Helps body adapt to physical and emotional stress. Increases resistance to disease. Body strengthening. Enhances immune function. 9. GOTU KOLA (Centella asiatica) General usages: strengthens veins, lowers varicosity and blood pressure. Wound and burn healing. Supports memory function.

140  Herbal Medicines 10. LAGUNDI (Vitex negundo) Indications: cough w. sticky phlegm, asthma, fever due to influenza, sinusitis, bronchitis, stomach colic, irregular menstruation, poor milk secretion. Recommended usage: 1–2 capsules, 3–4 times daily for fever; 1 capsule, 3 times daily for other complaints. 11. MAKAHIYA (Mimosa pudica) Indications: chronic bronchitis, insomnia, neurasthenia, nervous breakdown, asthma, urinary complaints. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, twice daily, 10 days. 12. MANGAGAW (Euphorbia hirta) Indications: gastrointestinal disorder, acute bacillary dysentery, gastroenteritis. Also, stimulates lactation, normalizes blood platelet count during dengue fever. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3–4 times daily. 13. MALUNGGAY (Moringa oleifera) General usages: lowers blood-sugar levels. Treats anxiety. Recommended for anaemia and malnutrition. 14. MIAGUS (Lumanaja fluviatilis) Indications: urinary tract disorder, kidney and bladder stones, high uric acid, rheumatism, prostate disorder, hypertensions, diabetes. Recommended usage: 1 capsule, 3 times daily, 7–10 days. 15. PANDAN TSINA (Pandanus amaryllifolius) General usage: strengthens/regulates heart. Helps fight disease affecting muscles. 16. SAMBONG (Blumea balsamifera) Indications: cough and colds, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, gastrointestinal pain, diarrhoea, arthritis, rheumatism, urolithiasis. Recommended usage: 1–2 capsules, 3 times daily. 17. TSAANG GUBAT (Ehretia microphylla) Indications: severe abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, pyuria. Recommended usage: 1–2 capsule, 3–4 times daily. 18. WACHICHAO (Orthosiphon aristatus) Indications: loose bowel movement, diarrhoea, dysentery, gout, kidney disease. 19. ZEDOARY (Curcuma zedoaria) Indications: hypertension, gallbladder attack, viral hepatitis, ulcers, cervical cancer. Recommended usage: 1–2 capsules, 3 times daily.

Index

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures; page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. active development programs 19; see also Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) active non-violence 18 agricultural production 1, 28, 38, 55 alagaw (Premna odorata) 139 Alternative Health Care Herbal Products 49 anti-mining 70–73, 124, 129, 133 aquaculture 38, 88 Aquino, Corazon 28 Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) 46, 66, 76–77, 82, 124 Asia-Pacific poverty line 33 Asturias Chemical Industrial 72 avocado (Persea americana) 139 bamboo classrooms 64 banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa) 139 Bankoff, G. 33 barangay society 27, 30, 40, 66, 74, 78, 101, 104 Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs): Cabagtasan 110–114; community development action 118–120; community potential 115–117; cultural approaches 4; development 87; development literature 19–21; diocese, upper scale of intervention 133–134; Diocese of San Carlos 3, 45–46, 85–86; division of labour 133; entire family, agent of community change 122; formation 86; funding from diocese 121; grassroots development 3; international blunders 6; liturgy 5;

local development action 9, 120–121; multiple scales, social organization 132–133; Negros Occidental 41; outside loans 121; Pacuan 92; Pandanan 90; parish priests, role of 86; peripheral development 7–8; place-based social renewal 18; role of the clergy, in helping 122; seminary curriculums 134; small communities 115; social developments 4, 99–102; total human development 12; women in leadership role 98–99 Battle of Mactan 30 Berna 48–51 Bible study 5, 93 bicameral legislature 27–28 Bishop Joe 63, 64, 66, 69, 76, 81, 123, 126 botekas 49–50 burden of debt 118–119 Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFD) 49 Cabagtasan 88; BECs 110–114; churches 109–110; CMAG battalion 79; family income 107–108; farmers 108–109; funding 120–121; gambling 109; health and livelihood 112–113; high school 66–68; homes 105; income generation 113; lifestyle 107; Mount Kanlaon 104–105; owner-cultivators 106–107; physiography 103–104; population 106; public elementary school 105; water sources 107; work opportunities 109 cacique democracy 34 Cadiz 35, 37, 88

142  Index Cardinal Sin 76, 84n2 cash-crop production 31, 39, 107 Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines 4, 9 Cebuano 37, 64, 71 Church-Military Advisory Group (CMAG): AFP-NPA encounter 81– 82; civic activities 78–80; foundation 76–77; infantry battalion 78–79; meeting, January 2010 77–78; parish priests 79–81 civic action 78–80 cobra vine (Smilax herbacea) 139 colonialism 31–32 comfrey (Symphytum officinale) 139 common-sense mechanisms 20 community advocacy 71, 72, 99, 122, 134 Community Based Health Program (CBHP) 48 community participation 71, 120, 128 Consumer Cooperative General Stores 53–54 cooperative economic participation 53, 54, 116 corruption 63, 96 creoles 32 dagyaw (free labour) 64, 117 debt of gratitude 75, 97 debt servitude 118–119 de Legazpi, Miguel López 30 Department of Social Work and Development 57 diocese: BECs, upper scale of intervention 133–134; BECs as source 124; clerical commitment, development 126–127; development programs, central mandate of the Church 129–130; dole-out attitude 127–128; herbal medicine production 130–131; ignorance, programs offered 128; income generation 124–125; lending loans 130–131; limiting factors in development 126–129; local developments 125; multipurpose cooperative 131–132; ningas cogon 84n1, 127; organizational structure, leadership 123; redistribution 125; San Carlos 46; size of 124; social change 123; strengths 123–126 Diocese of San Carlos 8, 9; anti-mining campaign 70–73; BECs 45–46; Church-Military Advisory Group

76–84; development success 82–83; education and building schools 63–69; elections 75–76; food security 56–60; Good Governance program 73–76; herbal medicines 47–52; initial funding 120–121; key concerns, parishioners 46, 47; livelihood 53–56; Mary’s Well program 60–63; physiography 44, 45; religion 44; social change 44 dole-out attitude 127–128 dulaw (Curcuma longa) 139 ecological management 16, 132, 137 economic autonomy 28 economic discrepancy 28, 29, 66 economic meddling 29 economic self-reliance 18, 87, 100, 113 employment loss 119–120 Enfants du Mékong (French NGO) 65, 67 environmental conservation 18–19; see also ecological management ethnolinguistic groups 27, 37 European colonization 20, 30–32 evangelization 18, 85 external debt 2 Father Carlo 91, 92 Father Edwin 8, 48, 49, 59–60, 69, 102, 123, 126 Father Jimmy 85 Father Jublas 111, 113, 124 Father Manuel 88–90, 93–94 Feed My Starving Children 56, 58 fiesta 94, 95 First Vatican Council 13 Freire, Paulo 6 Gagmay’ng Kristohanong Katilingban (GKK) see Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) gambling 97–98, 109, 119 Gaspar, K. 4 Gaudium et spes/Joy and hope 15 Gini Ratio 2 ginseng (Panax ginseng) 139 globalization 3, 29–30 Good Governance program 73–76 good governance 124, 129 gotu kola (Centella asiatica) 139 gross domestic product (GDP) 2

Index 143 group cohesion 115–116 Guy Gómez de Villalobos expedition 30 healthcare 40–41 herbal medicines 47–52, 139–140 Hiligaynon/Ilonggo 37 historical development 28–29 Human Development Index 2 ignorance, diocesean programs offered 128 Income generating projects (IGPs) 87 integral development 12, 19, 125 Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) 73–74 island of Mindanao 6, 26 island of Negros 9; construction projects 37; El Niño season 34–35; ethnolinguistic groups 37; physiography 35, 35–36; population 37; sugar industry 37, 38–39; views on NPA 80–81 Japanese investment 29 Kanlaon Natural Park 106 kumintang (Catharanthus roseus) 139 labour relations 16, 116 lagundi (Vitex negundo) 140 Latter Day Saints 44 laziness 97–98 liberation 12–13 library world 21–22 liturgical community 86; see also Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) livestock raising 54–55 local development 7, 22–23 Local Government Code (1991) 28 Locke, John: Second treatise of government 16 Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria 37 maintenance drugs 49 makahiya (Mimosa pudica) 140 Malay cultures 27 malunggay (Moringa oleifera) 140 mangagaw (Euphorbia hirta) 140 Manila 1–2 Marcopper tailings spill (1996) 6 Marcos, Ferdinand 3–4 market-oriented policies 2–3, 21 Mary’s Well program 60–63

mass landlessness 38, 86, 97 Mater et Magistra (Pope John XXIII) 5 Mayon Volcano 33 mestizos 32, 33 miagus (Lumanaja fluviatilis) 140 micro-lending service 51, 53 milling 39 Mindoro, island of 33 mineral extraction 40 mining 6, 33, 70 modernization 20, 22 money lending 21, 92, 121 Mt Apo 26 Mt Kanlaon 104–105 Mt Pinatubo 33 National Food Authority (NFA) 54, 59, 102 National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA) 4, 46, 49 nation-state organization 15–16 natural disasters 33 natural leaders 100–101 negative sentiment 122 Negros Occidental 40–41, 119; labouring long hours 128–129; landownership 129; limited participation in BECs 122; provincial and local systems of governance 129; struggle for daily livelihood 125; weather instability 119 Negros Oriental-Western Mining 72 ningas cogon 84n1, 127 Ok Tedi mine disaster 6 Our Lady of Peace Mission School (OLPMS) 63–65, 68–69 Our Lady of the Mountain Mission School (OLMMS) 66–68, 105 ownership of external goods 15 Pacem in Terris (Pope John XXIII) 5 Pacific Rim of Fire 25, 33 Pacuan 87; BECs 92; communities of neighbours 92–93; community chapel 93–95; feeding program 59; income 91–92; income generation 92; physiography 91; poverty 96–98; sense of belonging 95, 98; sharing liturgy 93; social circumstances 95–96; social critique 96; social developments 99–102; village centre 92; women in leadership role 98–99 Paglaum Mission 105

144  Index Pandanan 87; BECs 90; communities of neighbours 92–93; community chapel 93–95; debt 89; feeding program 59; houses 89–90; income 89; income generation 90–91; labouring 88; physiography 88; sense of belonging 95, 98; sharing liturgy 93; social circumstances 95–96; social critique 96; social developments 99–102; unemployment rate 89; women in leadership role 98–99; youth 90 pandan tsina (Pandanus amaryllifolius) 140 Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) 52 peninsulars 32 people-centred approach 21–22 People Power Revolution 19, 70 Philippine Department of Education 64–65 Philippines Misereor Partnership Inc (PMPI) 70–71 piggery 55, 98, 120 policy of reducción 31 political intermediaries 31 politico-economic realities 17–18 Pondo ng Pinoy Community Foundation 56 Pope John Paul II 17, 18 Pope John XXIII 5, 12, 13 Pope Paul VI 5, 12 Pope Pius IX 13 Populorum Progressio (Pope Paul VI) 5 postdevelopment theory 7, 19, 22–23; capital markets 136; community strength 135; counter-hegemonic challenge 135; extra-locality of leadership 136; faith-based group action 137–138; lead priests 135–136 post-secondary education/training program 90 poverty 29, 40, 75 pre-Hispanic political organization 30–31 private enterprise of public office 34, 39 private property 15, 16, 18 public debt 2 ‘quarrelling Orders’ of clergy 31 regional conflict 34 Republic of the Philippines 9; crises 33–34; debt 2; diversity 25;

faith-based social action 10; grassroots development 3; inequality 2; inequity 3; international exchange, mediator of 23; jurisdiction 2–3; lack of pharmacare 52; landscape 2; liberation theology 5–6; under Marcos 3–4; marginality 29–33; regionalism 25–29, 26; Second Plenary Council of the Philippines 17–19; structural adjustment 2; weather instability 119 Risen Savior Missions (RSM) 56–57 Roman Catholic Church 9; ecological management 16; labour relations 16; modern European society 13; Negros Occidental 40, 41; Second Vatican Council 13–14; social action 17; universal public authority 15–16 sambong (Blumea balsamifera) 140 San Carlos see Diocese of San Carlos San Carlos Borreo Cathedral 51 San Carlos Diocesan Multipurpose Cooperative (SCDMC) 53–54, 121 Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII) 9, 17–19 Second treatise of government (Locke) 16 Second Vatican Council 5, 9, 12–17, 134 Second World War 20, 29, 33 self-sustainability 50 Seventh Day Adventists 44 Sir Julio 68 Sir Sisco 68 Sister Daisy 66, 69 Sister Helen 66, 69 Sister Milla 57–58, 67–68, 84, 120–121, 127 small-scale mining 71–72 Smith, Adam 15 social action 17 Social Action Center 46, 47–48, 50, 53, 56, 59, 60, 62, 64, 66, 82, 123, 125, 131 social bonds 30 social justice 18 social transformations 116–117 socio-economic development 116 Spanish colonialism 30–32 Spencer, J. 27 state-controlled services 28 structural reality, families 87 sustainable agriculture 55–56

Index 145 tabloid-style journalism 34 Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) 69 total human development 12 Truman, Harry 20–21 tsaang gubat (Ehretia microphylla) 140 tuition 65, 67 typhoon Ketsana 33 typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan 33–34

Vatican II 12–17; see also Second Vatican Council violent factionalism 34

United States: Philippine sugar quota 38; political independence, Philippines 33; Western modernization 20–21 ‘universal destination of earthly goods’ 15

zedoary (Curcuma zedoaria) 140

wachichao (Orthosiphon aristatus) 140 Wernstedt, F. 27 Western industrial capitalism 21 Western modernization 20–21 world-system economy 23