The barrios: the McMillan-Rivera report

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: The barrios: the McMillan-Rivera report
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XXX (No. 2) February 1954
Year: 1954
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Fulltext: carry out that mandate. A complete turn-over in that respect is neither recommendable nor possible, but there can be a considerable leavening, and this is in progress. In the new choices, mistakes will inevitably be made, but they will be mistakes of commission and not omission and it will be possible to correct them, given the will to do so, which President Magsaysay undoubtedly has. It is to be noted that many of the President’s appointments are to posts in an “acting” capacity. * Among other valuable publications received recently by the Journal, certainly the most valuable is the MSAPHILCUSA rural community The Barrios survey report, commonly cal(The McMillan-Rivera led the McMillan-Rivera Re Report) port, released to the public last month by order of Pres ident Magsaysay. The Report, in an edition of 5000 copies printed in October, 1952, had been gathering dust in a warehouse by order of the previous Administration which considered the facts revealed as damaging to the regime. The Report, entitled “The Rural Philippines” and running to 218 pages, is the work of the Philippine Rural Community Survey, a research project conducted co operatively by the U. S. Mutual Security Agency and the Philippine Council for United States Aid. The field work was carried out chiefly during the period from December, 1951, to March, 1952, in which a considerable number- of persons and various government entities took part. The preliminary drafts of the chapters on the family, housing, government, health and welfare, recreation, and community organization were prepared by Mr. Generoso F. Rivera and the final draft of the entire Report was written prin cipally by Mr. Robert T. McMillan. This Journal, in the issue of February, 1953, carried an editorial entitled “The Hardie and McMillan Reports”, but at that time only chapters II and V of the latter Report were available (in mimeographed form). The Hardie Report, by the way, entitled “Philippine Land Tenure Reform”, also created a furore at the time, but, as exclusively the work of the Special Technical and Economic Mission, Mutual Security Agency, it could not be suppressed, al though it apparently received no wide distribution. The McMillan-Rivera Report essays to present a cross section of rural life in the Philippines from the sociological point of view and is based chiefly on a detailed study of thirteen widely scattered and “fairly representative” barrios or villages, these being: (1) Cadcadir, Claveria, Cagayan, a community of small farms in the northern ex tremity of Luzon; (2) Auitan, San Pablo, Isabela, a tobacco growing community, not so isolated as Cadcadir; (3) San Pablo, Binalonan, Pangasinan, a small rice-growing com munity in Central Luzon; (4) San Miguel, Tarlac, a large barrio in the midst of a Spanish-owned sugar cane plantation and near Camp Ord; (5) San Pedro, San Simon, Pampanga, near the center of the area of Huk activity; (6) Bagong Pooc, Lipa, Batangas, a poor but peaceful village; (7) Padre Burgos, Quezon, formerly Tayabas Province, an isolated fishing village; (8) Baligang, Camalig, Albay, in a hemp-growing region, where the people also make slippers; (9) Tuburdn, Pototan, Iloilo, where most of the land is owned by absentee landlords; (10) Alegria, Murcia, Negros Occidental, a community in the sugar cane region of the south in which 96% of those engaged in agriculture are landless; (11) Cabadiangan, Compostela, Cebu, an isolated community of hill-side farms, badly eroded; (12) Lumbayao, Watu, Lanao, a typical Moro community; and (13) Tupi, Coronadal, Cotabato, a new settlement. With the exception of Auitan (Isabela) and Padre Burgos (Quezon), which are poblaciones, these are all barrios, all of them small except San Miguel, Tarlac, and most of them remote or isolated. In the opinion of the writer, it is to be questioned that these communities are indeed “fairly representative” (the words of the Report) of all the barrios of the country. Among the more than 17,000 barrios of the Philip pines, there must be many thousands in which life is easier and happier than in most of the barrios selected for the survey.1 It is not to be serious questioned that the people of the rural Philippines as a whole are far better off, econo mically, socially, and politically, than are the rural popu lations of any other country of Southeast Asia. Western observers are apt to gauge local conditions according to standards in their own countries which can not be rightly applied here. In the case of each of the barrios selected for survey in the McMillan-Rivera Report, the small number or entire absence of radios, movies, tele phones, newspapers, automobiles, etc., was brought out, and desirable as all of these appurtenances of civilization may be, and come, as they no doubt will, in time, life in the barrios can be quite pleasant without them. Western observers are likely to identify certain local conditions as causes of serious unrest which the local popu lation does not look upon as intolerable at all. Unemploy ment, for example, which would bring about grave conse quences in any highly industrialized country where people are absolutely dependent on their wages, and which is serious enough also in Manila and some other cities here, is far from being equally serious in the barrios where it is obvious that many people quite bask at least in under employment. A two- or three-hectare farm would be considered little more than a good-sized garden in some countries, but under present conditions in the Philippines this area is still about as large a one as the average farmer and his family can take care of and is big enough for them to make the sort of living to which they are accustomed and under which they continue happily to multiply. The Report states that 46% of the number of farmers surveyed were tenants on the land and not owners; the 1948 Census gives the figure of 37% for the whole country. These are high percentages, but the Report itself points out that 3/10 of the families surveyed leased it from kinsmen and that this “creates special tenure relationships between them which usually redound to the advantage of the tenant.” It is not so much the system of land tenantry which is making trouble today,—this being part of an ancient and accepted social system, but absentee landownership, which is a comparatively new development. The land owners used to live among their people; of recent years they have been moving to the cities, leaving managers and foremen in charge between whom and the people there does not exist the old-time sympathy and loyalty. Undeniably, there has been ana there remains serious unrest in a number of Philippine areas which is closely related io unsatisfactory conditions of land-ownership and the consequent poverty. But it should not be over looked that before the war much unrest was deliberately stirred up by the Sakdal and Ganap party agitators who were secret agents of Japan, and since the war by Huk leaders who are the agents of Russian imperialism. All this is not to say that everything possible should not be done to improve conditions in our barrios and rural regions,—as elsewhere in the country. But a sense of pro portion and of relative and pertinent local values should be preserved. Nothing that has been said here is to be taken as ad versely reflecting on the great practical value of the Mc Millan-Rivera Report as a well-nigh indispensable guide to the implementation of the plans of the Magsaysay AdlSee the contributed article in this Journal issue, "Tondol, Pangasinan”. 46 ministration to give special emphasis to the improvement of conditions in the barrios. This movement is indeed something new in Philip pine administration. Heretofore, government effort has been directed chiefly at improving conditions generally and especially in the cities and municipalities with the idea that the benefits would inevitably, if slowly, percolate to the barrio level. This has undoubtedly been the case, but the percolation has been slow. This is largely due to the fact that the barrios have been accorded such negligible rights of self government. The McMillan-Rivera Report points out in tliis con nection: "A unique characteristic of the barrio is its almost complete lack of legal self-government. A municipality is a legal entity consisting ordinarily of a poblacion and from 15 to 30 or more barrios. As a part of the municipality, citizens of a barrio participate in the election of a mayor and council who, in turn, can enact ordinances which must be approved by the Provincial Board. As a politic. 1 unit, the barrio is without legislative, executive, or judicial powers. The barrio lieutenant, a nominal counterpart of the pre-Spanish cabeza de barangay, is ap pointed by the municipal mayor although in practice the appointee usually is chosen first informally by residents of the barrio. His prin cipal functions are to assist the mayor in enforcing ordinances; settling petty disputes; raising funds for the annual fiesta, Red Cross,and other drives; and entertaining visitors. A municipality receives revenues from a tax on real estate amounting to 1% of the assessed value, a tax on specific occupations, a tax on vendors who sell in the public market, and levies on other minor items. Larger municipalities also operate slaughterhouses for profit. Citizens of barrios can not levy taxes for roads, schools, water supply, police or fire protection, or for any other purpose. The services which barrio people receive for taxes paid into the municipal treasury consist chiefly of medical care by the municipal physician at his office in the poblacion, periodic visits of the sanitary inspector, and an occasional visit of a policeman from the poblacion. Nearly all schools in barrios have been built by voluntary contributions of citizens and nearly all barrio roads have been constructed from materials and labor supplied by barrio people. However, with increasing frequency they are financed from municipal funds or ‘porkbarrel’ ap propriations of national congressmen.” The lack of legal self-government in the barrios, and the general restrictions as to self-government in the muni cipalities and fever) the provinces, is a result of the general centralization of government not only in Spanish times, but as deliberately decided upon by the early American administrators. This centralization was very necessary in those earlier days, but is much less so today, and this ties in with President Magysaysay’s announced plan to effect some general decentralization of government. In any program of barrio improvement, greater powers of local self-government should be accorded the barrios, because to encourage them in self-help is a far sounder thing than to submit them to being done good to by outside entities, necessary as this may still be for a time. But there should be no pampering, no mere giving. The barrios should be accorded greater rights in managing their own affairs, and, further, need only encouragement, opportunity, technical assistance, and, of course, protection against lawless elements. Three-fourths of the people of the Philippines live in barrios, and these should not be encouraged in any way to come to depend upon govern ment bounty. The barrios have so far been largely making their own way and the great majority of them have not done so badly. One has but to look at the many pages of photographic illustrations in the McMillan-Rivera Report to see that even in the barrios selected for the survey the people appear more content than the text would appear to indicate they have any reason for being. Our barrio people are, on the whole, an independent and self-reliant lot. Let them not be turned into public charges. A quite unique and valuable little book has come to hand,—“The Skyland of the Philippines,” by Laurence Lee Wilson (Baguio Printing and Publishing Co., Inc., 1953, paper-bound, 200 pp.). Progress in the The work of the well-known Mountain Province old-timer, “Larry” Wilson, Measured—L. L. Wilson gold prospector and mining man, to which pursuits, how ever, he did not confine himself, the book represents the fruit of the greater part of a lifetime of observation and study of the Mountain Province and its extraordinarily interesting people. As Sinai C. Hamada states in the Introduction: "Here is a bit of anthropology, archaeology, mineralogy, govern ment, human relations, folklore, social investigation, all blended into a rare text of history.” It is richly illustrated and contains the photographs of most of the old-time American officials in the Province whose names have become almost legendary. Of special interest to our industrialists and businessmen are the sections of the book dealing with the history of mining and lumbering in the region. Together with the book, came a reprint of an article by the same author published in the University of Manila Journal of East Asiatic Studies (for October, 1953). In this article he summarizes the economic advancement of the people of the Mountain Province in terms of wages and cost of living, as follows: “The legal minimum wage has been set by the Government at P4.00 per day and this is generally followed except in distant farming communities where living costs are lower. If we compare this wage with the 5-centavo-plus-meals wage of 50 years ago, it would at first appear that wages have soared tremendously. But in reality this is not so. Using rice as the price index, we see that in 1900 the price of rice was about 5 centavos a ganta and the daily wage was the equivalent of about 1-1/2 gantas of rice per day. Since the price of rice is now about Pl.00 a ganta, the daily wage is 4 gar.tas of rice per day. This is an increase of only 2.66% over the old days. “Furthermore a study of costs reveals that this increase is due not to a lowering of production costs (because of improved techniques, as it should be) but that the increased wages are simply added to the other (including special services) mounting costs of production. Neither the farmers, nor the mines, nor most of the industries are as prosperous as in pre-war days, and the heavy increase in tax rates reveals the mounting costs of government services without a corresponding increase in either the amount or efficiency of these services. This is an overall unhealthy economic condition which eventually will lead to industrial stagnation and should be corrected. However, this substantial increase of about three times the income over the bare subsistence standard of former days does represent a very definite improvement in the standard of living of the people. They live in better houses under more sanitary conditions, wear better clothes, eat better food, have more educational facilities, and enjoy many of the comforts of civilization. "It must be pointed out immediately, though, that this condition is not enjoyed by all. Some 64% of the people are illiterate, the Roman Catholic Church classifies nearly half of the people as being pagan, and many of them are still so isolated that we must estimate that only about 1/3 of them enjoy the above mentioned economic and social advancements and the remainder not to a full degree. “Still, the overall wealth of the people has increased greatly and life is much better, as they all agree. Government economists estimate that the wealth of the Mountain Province has, during the past 50 years, increased 5-fold, while the population has been doubling from 135,841 in 1903 to 278,128 in 1948. Moreover, this wealth is no longer in the hands of a few, but is spread out more evenly and there is a growing middle class of tradespeople and professionals who share a considerable portion of the wealth.” Mr. Wilson envisages a more rapid progress in the near future with the development of hydro-electric power along the great Agno River, regarding which he states in his book: “Of vast importance to the Mountain Province is the huge P105,000,000 hydro-electric project of the National Power Corporation at Ambuklao, Benguet. It will make an enormous change in the economy of all northern Luzon Island... The construction of this project will mean millions of pesos spent here for labor and materials, while its completion should bring abundant cheap electric power furnished to most of northern and central Luzon, including Manila,' thus to develop its many potential industries besides furnishing cheap power to the cities, towns, mines, and other present industries.” 48