The Place of the Ghosts: Democracy in the Philippines
by
Paige Johnson Tan
Resource: Alan Berlow, The Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge, New York: Vintage, 1996.
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If I had one book to assign to teach students about politics in the developing world, that book would be Alan Berlow’s The Dead Season. I use Berlow’s book every year in my Asian Politics course at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (bright high schoolers could enjoy it as well). The Dead Season unmasks politics in a country that is formally democratic and conveys to readers in an unforgettable way what politics feels like for many in the developing world.
The author, Alan Berlow, is a former Southeast Asia bureau chief for National Public Radio. His book reads like a novel, yet it is actually a work of non-fiction in which Berlow presents his reportage on three inter-related murders from the late 1980s in Mambagaton (“the Place of the Ghosts”), deep in sugarcane country on the Philippine island of Negros (“Neg” rhymes with egg, “ros” with the Spanish for two, dos).
Berlow’s interest in the area was sparked by the massacre of the peasant De Los Santos family, five of whom were shot to death by the Philippine military under murky circumstances. Reynaldo, known as Moret, the father, was a peasant leader involved with the Catholic Church’s lay organization, the Basic Christian Community. Once Berlow was investigating the De los Santos family’s deaths, he discovered other murders that seemed to be related: the “suicide” of Gerry De los Santos, a member of the military unit involved in the De los Santos killings (he was no relation to the De Los Santos family), and the murder of Serafin “Apin” Gatuslao, a wealthy local plantation owner.
In The Dead Season, Berlow shares the rumors that surround the murders and crafts his book as a murder mystery. The book jumps back and forth in the style of novels like the Da Vinci Code. The conflicting tales as to how the murders happened allow Berlow to portray the land and people of Negros, the area’s colonial history both Spanish and American, the role of the Catholic Church in everyday life, the rhythms of the sugarcane fields, the popular culture, and the economics and politics of the Philippines.
In the end, Berlow does appear to come down on the side of a particular view of each murder that is backed up most strongly by the evidence. Gatuslao, the wealthy plantation, or hacienda, owner, was assassinated by the Communist New People’s Army (NPA) for “crimes against the people.” He was even shot in the foot as poetic justice for his habit of kicking his workers. With methods such as these, the Communists often portrayed themselves as Robin Hoods, striking out against the rich for the poor. But, the New People’s Army let many wealthy plantation owners live. Gatuslao’s most proximate error was failing to pay ever-escalating NPA taxes and instead lending his support to the army and vigilantes battling the Communists.
Moret De los Santos and his family were killed by an elite unit from the army, taken out because Moret was believed to be a Communist, his involvement in the Catholic Church’s progressive Basic Christian Community a poor cover for his Communist sympathies. The massacre of the De los Santos family was likely a revenge attack to hit back at the Communists after the Gatuslao killing several months earlier. Lastly, Gerry De los Santos’ “suicide” was anything but. We are left to understand that Gerry was killed by his own unit, perhaps by his own captain, out of fear that he was going to go public with the real facts of unit’s participation in the massacre of the De los Santos family.
The unfolding story of the three murders paints the reader a portrait of the state of democracy in the Philippines. The events described in the book take place several years after the ouster of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the People Power Revolution of 1986. What we see, though, is that, in Sugarlandia, as Negros is known, democracy has shallow roots at best.
From the Greek, democracy means “rule by the people.” This is usually realized in a system that guarantees meaningful elections; an independent judiciary and the rule of law; majority rule and protection of minority rights; and freedoms of association, speech, and the press.
Berlow describes elections in Negros as affairs in which the people have a choice of “planter ‘A’ or miller ‘B,’” members of the elite only and thus no one with the peasant population’s interests truly at heart (Berlow 1996, 143). In the area where the story takes place, all the local officials—the mayor, governor, and congressman—come from the elite families. This is widespread in the Philippines. Take a look at the website of the Philippine Congress or Senate. The elite names like Lacson, Cojuangco, and Lopez are well represented. One will find former dictator Marcos’ daughter, Imee, and former President Aquino’s son, Benigno, too.
Elections lead to little change in the political system. On the other stipulations for a democracy, the Philippines also falls short. The right of association is imperfect. Moret De los Santos runs afoul of the military for membership in the leftist but perfectly legal Basic Christian Community organized by the Catholic Church. The Church, long a bulwark of the country’s oligarchic government, has since the 1970s turned into a voice for the poor. Because empowering the peasants is tantamount to challenging the existing social order, it is easy to see how Moret was taken for a Communist and viewed as a threat. The US State Department’s 2006 review of human rights in the Philippines recognizes harassment of labor and human rights advocates by the military as a continuing problem in the country.[1] The press is free in principle, but it is controlled by the elite families. Since 1992, the Committee to Protect Journalists finds the Philippines the fifth most dangerous place in the world for journalists (in terms of numbers of journalists murdered), all while the Philippines was notionally a democracy.[2]
There is no rule of law on Negros. The overwhelming impression left by the book is that the Philippines state is itself a ghost. For many people, life is lived under different forces battling for control: the military, the wealthy plantation owners, the Catholic Church, and the Communist New People’s Army. The military operates by its own rules, outside of civilian control. The planters organize paramilitary vigilantes to defend themselves against the Communists. The Church organizes peasants to fight for their rights. The Communists carry out “revolutionary justice,” such as the murder of Gatuslao, in areas in which they are strong. Mayor Daisy Silverio, the mayor of Himamaylan, the city of which Mambagaton is a part, admits that neither she nor the police even investigated the De los Santos family’s deaths. “Laws were frequently passed in Manila that might just as well have been issued from Mars for all they mattered” (Berlow 1996, 182). Because the massacre of the De los Santos family turned into a major news story in the Philippines, a national commission of inquiry was eventually convened and surviving members of the family compensated.
To say that on the ground the Philippines is not a perfect democracy is an important observation that helps students to see that one can have a Congress, a President, and elections and still be lacking in the fundamental features of a democracy: that the elections offer a meaningful possibility of change to the political system. A further important question, though, is: why has democracy found such infertile soil in the Philippines?
Berlow offers numerous explanations, drawing on popular culture (superstitions and fatalism) and institutions (weak political parties and a flawed legal system). Of greatest importance, though, seems to be the socio-economic system, in particular patron-client relationships and the system of landholding.
A patron-client system will come as a complete shock to American students, yet in many parts of the world, this is merely “the way the world works.” In rural areas of the Philippines, the vast bulk of the population is tied into webs of debt with their social betters through utang na loob, debts of honor. Peasants, unable to afford a wedding or medical treatment or needing a loan to get through the slow times, borrow from their patron (the owner of the hacienda on which they work, perhaps). The loan may not be paid back in cash but in other ways, particularly through acceptance of the patron’s position as patron (and the borrower’s as client). In regards to Philippine democracy, it is important that often payback is required in terms of client support of the patron’s candidate when elections come around. As Berlow observes, the original debt may just be “a few pesos,” but the recipient ends up paying “for the rest of his life” (Berlow 1996, 82).
The patron-client system helps to pervert the intention of a democratic system that the vote actually represents the interest of the voter. In the Philippines, the majority does vote (turnout is usually about 80% for parliamentary and presidential elections, according to International IDEA[3]), but the majority does not rule. As long as the people are tied into laboring in the sugarcane fields, no political change can be brought about.
This leads us to the second chief economic explanation Berlow offers and that is that the current system of landholding, particularly on Negros with its giant sugar plantations, is responsible for failures in the Philippines’ democracy. Only with land reform, Berlow would argue, can the people come out from under the burdens of debt and obligation which render them unable to challenge the existing social order.
Democracy rests on a belief that people are fundamentally equal. In the Philippines, while the Constitution upholds that ideal on paper, the reality is very different. Even democratic governments like Corazon Aquino’s that have come to power since the ouster of the dictator Marcos were unable to take action on land reform because they are made up of the very elite which sees itself as losing out were land reform to be put into place. Aquino, who had campaigned on a program of land reform, in the end did little in this area, with loopholes gutting the policy. Attempts since Aquino’s administration to sell shares in plantations in lieu of forcing sale of the land to the tillers have also floundered.
The weakness of Philippine democracy and the inequality in areas like Negros may go a long way to explaining why the Philippines continues to face a Communist insurrection in 2007. According to the Philippine Inquirer, the size of the New People’s Army is still estimated at 7,400 soldiers.[4] In 2006, the Communists conducted a flamboyant attack on Negros’ Silay City airport, one of President Arroyo’s priority projects. In local governance, a Gatuslao is in charge of city hall in Himamaylan.
The “dead season,” Berlow tells us, is the time after harvesting, when the cane is gone and there is no work to be done. In bad years, this can literally be a time of famine and death for the cane workers. I always thought with his title that Berlow meant to suggest that the Philippines was itself living in the dead season. The harvest of democracy had come with the dictator Marcos’ ouster in 1986, but the democracy was barren. “What the stories of Moret De los Santos, Serafin Gatuslao, and Gerry De los Santos suggest is just how difficult it is to make a true democratic revolution succeed in thousands of forgotten, out-of-the-way barrios like Mambagaton” (Berlow 1996, xv).
Related Resources:
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines http://www.cbcponline.org/index-2.html
Communist Party of the Philippines http://www.philippinerevolution.net/
Congress of the Philippines http://www.congress.gov.ph/index.php
Negros Occidental government, http://www.negros-occ.gov.ph/
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism http://www.pcij.org/
Sun-Star Bacolod http://www.sunstar.com.ph/bacolod/index.html
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[1] US Department of State, 2006, “Philippines: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78788.htm (accessed August 17, 2007).
[2] Committee to Protect Journalists, 2007, “Journalists Killed: Statistics and Background,” Committee to Protect Journalists, http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/stats.html (accessed February 21, 2007)
[3] International IDEA, 2006, “Voter Turnout,” International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, http://www.idea.int/vt/ (accessed February 21, 2007).
[4] Joel Guinto and Carla Gomez, 2006, “7 Suspected Rebels Nabbed over Silay Airport Attack,” Inquirer, October 13, 2006, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/topstories/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=26486 (accessed February 21, 2007).