Philippines Table of Contents
In 1990, nearly six out of every ten Filipinos lived in villages or
barangays
.
Each
barangay
consisted of a number of
sitios
(neighborhoods), clusters of households that were the basic building
blocks of society above the family. Each
sitio
comprised 15 to
30 households, and most
barangays
numbered from 150 to 200
households. As a rule,
barangays
also contained an elementary
school, one or two small retail stores, and a small Roman Catholic
chapel. They were combined administratively into municipalities.
In the larger center, one could find a much more substantial church
and rectory for the resident priest, other non-Roman Catholic churches,
a number of retail stores and the weekly marketplace, a full six-year
elementary school and probably a high school, a rice and corn mill, a
pit for cockfights, and the homes of most landowners and middle-class
teachers and professionals living in the municipality. This urban
concentration was not only the administrative center but also the
social, economic, educational, and recreational locus. This was
particularly so where the center was itself a full-scale town, complete
with restaurants, cinemas, banks, specialty stores, gas stations, repair
shops, bowling alleys, a rural health clinic, and perhaps a hospital and
hotel or two. Television sets were found in most homes in such towns,
whereas some
barangays
in remote areas did not even have
electricity.
In the rural Philippines, traditional values remained the rule. The
family was central to a Filipino's identity, and many
sitios
were composed mainly of kin. Kin ties formed the basis for most
friendships and supranuclear family relationships. Filipinos continued
to feel a strong obligation to help their neighbors-- whether in
granting a small loan or providing jobs for neighborhood children, or
expecting to be included in neighborhood work projects, such as
rebuilding or reroofing a house and clearing new land. The recipient of
the help was expected to provide tools and food. Membership in the
cooperative work group sometimes continued even after a member left the
neighborhood. Likewise, the recipient's siblings joined the group even
if they lived outside the
sitio
. In this way, familial and
residential ties were intermixed.
Before World War II, when landlords and tenants normally lived in
close proximity, patron-client relationships, often infused with mutual
affection, frequently grew out of close residential contact. In the
early 1990s, patron-client reciprocal ties continued to characterize
relations between tenants and those landlords who remained in
barangays
.
Beginning with World War II, however, landlords left the countryside and
moved into the larger towns and cities or even to one of the huge
metropolitan centers. By the mid-1980s, most large landowners had moved
to the larger cities, although, as a rule, they also maintained a
residence in their provincial center. Landowners who remained in the
municipality itself were usually school teachers, lawyers, and small
entrepreneurs who were neither longstanding large landowners (
hacenderos
)
nor owners of more than a few hectares of farmland.
In the urban areas, the landowners had the advantages of better
education facilities and more convenient access to banking and business
opportunities. This elite exodus from the
barangays
, however,
brought erosion of landlord-tenant and patron-client ties. The exodus of
the wealthiest families also caused patronage of local programs and
charities to suffer.
The strength of dyadic patterns in Philippine life probably caused
farmers to continue to seek new patron-client relationships within their
barangays
or municipalities. Their personal alliance systems
continued to stress the vertical dimension more than the horizontal.
Likewise, they sought noninstitutional means for settling disputes,
rarely going to court except as a last resort. Just as the local
landlord used to be the arbiter of serious disputes, so the
barangay
head could be called on to perform this function.
The traditional rural village was an isolated settlement, influenced
by a set of values that discouraged change. It relied, to a great
extent, on subsistence farming. By the 1980s, land reform and
leaseholding arrangements had somewhat limited the role of the landlords
so that farmers could turn to government credit agencies and merchants
as sources of credit. Even the categories of landlord and tenant
changed, because one who owned land might also rent additional land and
thus become both a landlord and a tenant.
In many
barangays
, the once peaceful atmosphere of the
community was gone, and community cohesion was further complicated by
the effects of the New People's Army (NPA) insurgency. If residents
aided the NPA, they faced punishment from government troops. Government
troops could not be everywhere at all times, however, and when they
left, those who aided the government faced vengeance from the NPA. One
approach that the government took was to organize the villagers into
armed vigilante groups. Such groups, however, have often been accused of
extortion, intimidation, and even torture.
Economic organization of Philippine farmers has been largely
ineffective. This fact has worked to the disadvantage of all of the
farmers, especially the landless farm workers who were neither owners
nor tenants. These landless farmers remained in abject poverty with
little opportunity to better their lot or benefit from land reform or
welfare programs.
Even in the 1990s, the pace of life was slower in rural than in urban
areas. Increased communication and education had brought rural and urban
culture closer to a common outlook, however, and the trend toward
scientific agriculture and a market economy had brought major changes in
the agricultural base. Scientific farming on a commercialized basis,
land reform programs, and increased access to education and to mass
media were all bringing change. In spite of migration to cities, the
rural areas continued to grow in population, from about 33 million in
1980 to nearly 38 million in 1985. Rural living conditions also improved
significantly, so that by the early 1990s most houses, except in the
most remote areas, were built of strong material and equipped with
electricity and indoor plumbing.
Source:
U.S. Library of Congress
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