Manila, the Other Face of Asia

Last week found us in Manila.  We were headed to a remote island in Palawan to celebrate Mitch’s XXth birthday, a vacation that promised nature reserves, sunken Japanese warships, unparalleled underwater marine life, and cozy grass huts on the beach.  It sounded too good to be true, and it was, since heavy rains in that region caused all flights to be canceled. Instead, we spent Mitch’s birthday at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, waiting for a flight that never happened, before we finally relented and spent the weekend in Manila, and then stayed in Manila some more the following week in order for me to get a special visa.  We wanted to like Manila; after all, the city sounds like a blend between Milan and Vanilla, and suggested Spanish ruins, American apparel, and fusion foods.  The city, however, bore a close resemblance to hell on earth.  Was it dirty, ugly and polluted? Yes. Was the food truly inedible or at best unremarkable? It’s true. Did it rain for 7 days straight? Sure did.  But what was most upsetting about Manila was the very apparent poverty, palpable income inequality, and this feeling of depression, rather than the vital energy that comes from knowing you are headed upwards.  The Philippines has witnessed tremendous economic growth in recent years, but as seen in the picture above, that wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of a few, while most of Metro Manila is more like the foreground – incredibly poor, and with few opportunities for improvements in quality of life.

Farewell President Cory

The day we arrived, the Philippines’ People Power President Corazon (Cory) Aquino passed away of colon cancer.  Her family’s story is remarkable, and perhaps all the more sad given that the country still has so far to go, so much to do for its people. Cory Aquino was married to Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, a very popular politician who became the country’s youngest mayor, youngest governor, and youngest senator.  As a leader of the opposition party to Ferdinand Marco’s 20-year long dictatorship (his wife Imelda is known to have bought over a thousand pairs of shoes), Ninoy was jailed for seven years, during which time his wife began to learn about politics, memorizing the news to bring to him in prison. After Marcos forced Ninoy, Cory, and their five children to leave the country, the family went to Cambridge, MA, where Ninoy held teaching positions at MIT and Harvard.  Those years Cory described as being “the happiest in her life.” Ninoy was a true patriot, however, and knew he had to go back to fight for his country.  As he walked off the plane in 1983 in Manila, he was shot dead in the head.  Although soldiers immediately shot a “communist” whom they accused of the murder, and subsequent trials convicted and jailed a number of people, it’s not known who specifically issued this order and who carried it out. The 500 peso bill (about $10) above pictures Ninoy with his most famous remark, “The Filipino is worth dying for.”

In the public outcry afterward, Ninoy’s wife returned to the country to bury her husband and became catapulted into politics as a symbol of the opposition and everyone’s hatred of Marcos.  Though she surely won the election, Marcos declared he had won (Iran, anyone?), which led to massive protests that ultimately forced Marcos to flee to Hawaii, where he died in 1989.  Cory became president from 1986-92, and was the only president in the Philippines’ history to not seek a constitutional change that would allow her to stay in power. (Even the current president that Obama spoke to so warmly is trying to prolong her stay). President Cory was known for being a good person, incorruptible, although not particularly effective as president.

To me, the outpouring of love for “Tita Cory” (Aunt Cory) symbolizes people’s gratefulness to her and her family’s sacrifices, and their aspiration for a government that can be that dedicated, that selfless. It’s not clear, however, that the ouster of Marcos and the victory of democracy has led real improvements for the country.  As James Fallows argues in this 1987 article in The Atlantic, the Aquinos represented a return to an old, elite era, rather than a new revolution. This article, written right after Cory Aquino was elected president, is still insightful about modern day Philippines.

Modern Manila

Here in the U.S., we’ve long forgotten that we ever colonized the Philippines from 1898 to 1946. (First we helped them fight off the Spanish, then we turned around and recolonized the country, which the U.S. bought from Spain for just $20 million.)  Back in those days of optimism and promise, the Philippines adopted America’s tripartite government, its language, and its architecture.  Daniel Burnham, the famous architect-planner who created the master plans for Chicago, DC, and San Francisco, also designed one for Manila, using his traditional language of a grid cut by axial boulevards that meet in glorified roundabouts.

If you look at the modern google map of the city, you’ll see that very little of this plan has been put into place; back in the 1940s, the government realized it had other priorities and wasn’t about to make the public investments needed for this plan. In the Eche..blah..blah blog, Karl Betita writes, “Manila, considered once upon a time to be the ‘Paris of the Orient.’  Nowadays it looks like the Tijuana of Asia, only filthier; a sad thought, especially for old timers who are now too old to tell stories about how glorious it was back then, as to experience a sunset on Roxas Boulevard (they called it Dewey Boulevard then), devoid of smog.”  The congestion out-traffics even Bangkok, and the air pollution was unrelenting, even in the parks, which were too small to purify the air.  The city’s residents labor through immense noise pollution, slip along streets sprinkled with unmanaged trash, rain, and construction runoff, rumble through on a ramshackle sky train, and squeeze themselves into the crowded interiors of the jeepneys. A number of huge malls dot the city (e.g., Mall of Asia, Mall of Asia 2, Greenbelt 1-5, Glorietta 1-4… the malls keep growing so the add-ons keep the name and add 1), each swarmed by waves of humanity. After all, who would want to be outside when it’s so absolutely miserable?

Nevertheless, I would contend that the city has reasonably good bones.  Perhaps due to the influence of the Spaniards and the Americans, the city is built mainly on a gridded urban fabric, with small block sizes and sidewalks that are conducive to future upgrades into a clean, beautiful walkable city.  Bangkok, though a nicer city today, is harder to upgrade because most of its streets are essentially cul-de-sacs that no amount of public transport can solve.  Bangkok grew from rectangular strips of rice/fish farms, and the city inherited this traditional street structure without consideration of modern conditions.  Yet Manila’s poverty colors the city in an atmosphere of dereliction, dejection, depression.  Like many U.S. cities, Metro Manila is composed of 10 or more cities; the skyscrapers and wealth are concentrated in one or two of these, which makes it that much harder to cross-subsidize urban improvements.  The city needs a new master plan, coordinated city planning efforts, economic development…. but what will actually catalyze a new attitude of leadership here?

The Future of Manila

What saddened me most about Manila was its children.  One night, we were stuck in traffic in the pouring rain.  Two little boys played and ran between the cars, screeching in delight whenever a car drove by on the overpass and drenched them in a fan of water.  In the red light district, where we were unfortunately staying over the weekend, little kids ran through the streets at 10 or 11 pm, with no one watching them.  Elsewhere, we saw little children playing on a busy boulevard, making mud pies out of the grime they found in the gutter.  A group of teenage boys play basketball on a congested side street, stopping every now and then to let the cars advance.  On the way to the airport, I stopped the taxi on a bridge to take the pictures above of the polluted waterway, waterside huts, and luxurious Makati’s skyscrapers behind. By the time I got back to the taxi, children had surrounded the car and were enjoying their latest entertainment of the day. (The boy in the second picture looks a little like Zack, no?) Mitch later commented, “I see this kind of poverty in many of the places I go in Asia.  For us, it’s just a snapshot, but for the people in the photo – that is their entire life. Their parents. Them. Their children.”

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