The Philippines Where Life Is Balanced on Stilts

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan/Manila

Not far from the creek named Scorched Lime in the northern slums of Manila lies a settlement called Happy Land. The name notwithstanding, Happy Land is neither happy nor on land. A collection of lean-tos patched together from plastic, cardboard, plywood and scrap metal, Happy Land is built on stilts above the black waters of a sewage canal. Flies buzz around empty tin cans and wastepaper in the water below, as Happy Landers catwalk across the planks that lead from shack to shack. Inside cramped quarters, men play cards or sleep on chairs padded with rags; women boil rice on mottled clay stoves. Everywhere children frolic, playing tag and splashing around where the stream empties into Manila Bay.

Less than ten miles to the south, in the suburb of Paranaque, stand the stately mansions of the Plazas of Dignity. It is a serene place, which should come as no surprise, since all the residents are dead. The plazas are part of Manila Memorial Park, a cemetery for the privileged. While President Corazon Aquino's late husband Benigno, assassinated in 1983, rests in a simple tomb, other graves are grandiose: white sepulchers within marble pavilions, furnished with altars and windowed with stained glass. Some even provide bathrooms and beds for mourners.

Filipinos celebrated the second anniversary last month of the uprising they call the People Power revolution. But little of a revolutionary nature has occurred in the two years since the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos. Even as more parkland is being cleared for the well-heeled dead, life continues to balance on stilts over the brackish waters of Happy Land, a place of aching poverty and little hope.

Aquino has even struck an accommodating tone toward Marcos, who dearly wishes to return to the Philippines from his exile in Hawaii and has stopped threatening to overthrow the government. Several weeks ago, Aquino dispatched two of her relatives to meet with him. Last week she made it clear that before Marcos would be allowed to re-enter the country, he would have to return the billions of dollars he allegedly stole from the treasury. Though negotiations are still under way and an imminent Marcos homecoming is unlikely, many Aquino supporters are chagrined by the President's willingness to countenance her enemy's return. Wrote Columnist Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: "Has Cory Aquino been lured away . . . by the promise of dollars and cents? Say it isn't so."

Despite several coup attempts and continuing political uncertainty, Aquino remains ensconced in Malacanang Palace and has developed a firmer grip on power. Yet her supporters are not convinced that the President will be able to correct long-standing social inequities or steer the Philippines out of moral drift. "Merely staying in power without changing anything is retrogression in itself," Historian Renato Constantino recently wrote in the Philippine Daily Globe. "Personal success is not synonymous with national success."

A telling example of the general imperviousness to change is provided by Manila and the cities and towns that form the capital's metropolitan area. The wealthy still inhabit the luxurious villas of suburban Forbes Park and Urdaneta Village, play golf at the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club and send their children to expensive private colleges in the U.S. Though the economy is showing some signs of revival, little has trickled down. For the poor, opportunities to advance remain constricted. Asked what he hoped to be when he grew up, a street urchin turned pensive before saying "Driver."

The shanties of the poor flourish on sidewalks, beneath bridges, in alleys and in such slums as Happy Land and a neighboring district known as Aroma Beach, a malodorous seaside squatters' camp. From Happy Land, one must cross a plank bridge, trudge up a dirt path and scale a low wall to reach a highway called Marcos Road. "Guess it should be called Aquino Road now," says Luz Mira, 30, a local resident. Dump trucks roll northward with the capital's morning haul of garbage, past the remains of a pig, past a slaughterhouse, past piles of burning trash. Their destination: Smokey Mountain, a shapeless hill of garbage and ash.

Smokey Mountain looks out on a magnificent vista: beyond the great curve of Manila Bay and its blue waters rise the rugged peaks of the Bataan Peninsula. But at the dump, the scene is one of utter squalor. Each arriving truck instantly draws hundreds of scavengers. Sacks on their shoulders, black rubber boots or open-toed sandals on their feet, they rifle the trash to grab the best bits: plastic containers and sheets, tin cans, anything that can be ! recycled. "I hear that dog carcasses are being bought up," claims Hilda Juanario, who lives nearby. "Some restaurants use the meat to fill hot buns."

On a good day a scavenger can earn up to 50 pesos, or $2.40, more than double the minimum daily wage. The squatters who live around Smokey Mountain are frequently evicted by the authorities and sent to the provinces for resettlement, but almost invariably they return. "They can't make a living there," says Juanario. "They can here."

As far as the urban poor are concerned, Communist subversion or military plots to overthrow Aquino's government are distant, meaningless problems compared with the affordability of rice and dried fish. Votes are often sold in the slums for a little extra money, the equivalent of a dollar or two perhaps. Otherwise earthshaking events mean nothing. "Until visitors told us," says Sister Carolina Base, who runs a health center near Happy Land, "we didn't even know that Wall Street had crashed."

The specter of political violence is always there. But the activities of rightist militants and the Communist New People's Army are usually no more striking than the general lawlessness to which Manila has long been accustomed. Guns are everywhere; outside shopping malls and restaurants signs read FOR YOUR SAFETY, PLEASE DEPOSIT ALL FIREARMS WITH THE SECURITY GUARD. The spirit infects the drivers of jeepneys, the compact, Jeep-like vehicles that provide the main means of mass transport. Festooned with bumper flaps like KING OF THE ROAD and NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE, jeepneys often overtake on the right, ignore red lights and stop wherever they want.

Despite the great anti-Marcos outburst of two years ago, the country continues juggling standards of ethics and behavior, seemingly oblivious to inconsistency. While President Cory, as she is widely called, emanates saintliness from Malacanang, her teenage daughter Kristina, shoulders bared, hawks beauty soap in a television commercial. In a TV talent contest, a demurely dressed ten-year-old girl belts out a tune from Cabaret: "I used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie/ With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea./ She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower./ As a matter of fact, she rented by the hour."

Yet for all the unfulfilled hopes of the revolution, the Aquino aura remains intact. Mira concedes that nothing has changed since Aquino came to power. "But Cory is better than Imelda," she says, referring to Marcos' once powerful wife. Last year, Mira recalls, Aquino came to within a five-minute jeepney ride of Happy Land to inspect garbage collection. "Imelda never visited this place."

Aquino's good intentions are unlikely to be enough to keep the engine of reform moving. Corruption remains widespread. In the provinces, political warlords who prospered under Marcos are flexing their muscles. Ironically, Aquino's popularity has made some of the old problems more tolerable: Filipinos seem willing to give her more time to improve their lives.

Still, the high purpose that characterized the anti-Marcos uprising has dissipated. In 1986, behind the yellow, dusty walls of a local military camp, Aquino broke ground for a "People's Church" to commemorate the revolution. The only thing built, however, was a billboard announcing the coming construction. Months passed. Coups were attempted and failed. Soot gathered on the neglected, peeling panel. In the end, vandals defaced it, and a strong wind knocked it down.