“You had a few hacienderos (plantation owners) who had a benevolent sense of responsibility to the people and when their workers got sick they would pay for their care and that type of thing,” she says, “but that was the exception.”

If that were the exception, what was the rule? Let’s hear it from her:

“I remember I spent one week working with the women in the field, I did that with a group of seminarians who had come to Negros for an immersion; I spent one week, they spent six weeks. And going to the fields with the women early in the morning – at that time they were putting fertilizer, and they had to dig a little hole and drop the pellet in, and we held the fertilizer in an apron, in front and it weighed about probably at least 15 lbs., and my back was aching and of course I was tired and so I said to the women, ‘Do you ever get used to the work?’ and the answer was: ‘Oh yes, we’re used to the work. What we’ll never get used to are the cries of our children when they cannot sleep because they’re hungry.’ And this was the everyday life of most of the sugar workers.”

Debts and landowner brutality

Sometimes, she said, she would be with the workers as they lined up for their pay at the end of a week. Most of them would get no money but only a list of expenses they had incurred.

“To buy food or anything, they had to buy from the company store, and it was deducted from their salary,” she reveals. “But of course the cost of these supplies was much higher in the hacienda than if they could have gone out to buy.”

“And so many of them really never got money, they only got their debts reduced,” she adds.

She also tells the story of a man who had lost four children, all to malnutrition and diseases he couldn’t afford to buy medicine for. The man hailed from Antique province but worked in Negros Occidental. The man owned land in Antique, she says, but didn’t go back there. “We have land, but it’s not near the road and we could not earn anything because if we grow food, we have no place to sell it,” she remembers the man telling her when she asked why they didn’t go back.

“Four children have died, why don’t you at least go back where you could have food for your children and live?” she remembers asking the man in return.

And that was where she got the real answer: “Because I cannot pay my debts, I cannot go back home.”

She also remembers having talked with a hacienda owner who didn’t want the workers’ children to go to high school because if they finished high school, she remembers him telling her, there would be no one to work on the hacienda. “This was an attitude that was very prevalent among the owners of the haciendas,” she says. “They really looked upon the workers as implements of labor.”

And she tells stories of landowner brutality: of goons pointing their guns at peasants as they brought landgrabbing cases to court, of a hacienda owner in La Carlota who, when the workers he employed went on strike, sent goons to destroy the vegetables they had planted to stave off hunger during the strike, and other similar instances.

CBHP

In the martial law years, she helped establish the CBHP, which involves doctors, nurses, and other health workers going to the remote areas where they heal the sick and harness the potentials of community members – most of whom didn’t even get past elementary school.

From three pilot areas in 1973 – Iligan City, Lanao del Norte; Palo, Leyte; and Ilagan, Isabela – the CBHP attracted scores of other health workers and sprouted in other areas throughout the country. The growth of the CBHP led to the establishment in 1988 of the Council for Health and Development (CHD), which serves as the national organization of CBHPs, coordinates and consolidates the program, and provides the services required by these.

In the course of her work in the CBHP, she would get to meet, among others, Dr. Bobby de la Paz – for whom she has the highest esteem.

A graduate of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine, De la Paz ignored the temptations of greener pastures abroad, which had lured many of his classmates. He also diverted from the path taken by his relatives, who had opted to work in private practice and hospitals. Instead he chose to work as a community doctor in Samar, one of the country’s poorest provinces. It was as a community doctor in Samar that De la Paz was felled by military bullets – accused of giving medical aid to New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas and their suspected supporters. Twenty-two bullets were pumped into the young doctor’s body.

Faith and hope

Her involvement in the Philippine social movement both as missionary and community health worker, she says, enriched her experience of Christianity.

“I had grown up in an era when we were taught catechism, and who is God, and this and that; but these answers didn’t hold water anymore,” she says, “and then I really asked myself: ‘Do I believe? Am I only pretending to believe because I am afraid to say I’m not a Christian?”’ But little by little, I began to find three qualities that I believe could identify a God I could believe in: truth, justice, and loving compassion. So in the future, when I would meet people and be invited to participate in activities, I could just ask myself: ‘Is this helping to search for truth? Is it working for justice? Are the actions of these people showing love and compassion, particularly for the poor and the oppressed?’ Yes I still believe in God, but very different from the God I believed in from my catechism lessons.”

In less than two weeks, she leaves the Philippines – which has become a second home for her – for a new assignment in Myanmar. What are her hopes for the Philippines, where she spent more than 40 years?

“My hope is that the Philippines would finally have a democratic government, where its people could enjoy the fruits of their love and labor,” she says. “I don’t think the Philippines has ever had a democratic government. But I wish we could see that before its rich resources and beautiful environment are totally destroyed.” Bulatlat

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© 2004 Bulatlat ■  Alipato Publications

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