Rural organising Community building
The 1992 crisis in the Communist Party disrupted left organising of the rural poor in Negros. Rebuilding popular organisations is a slow process. The Association of Small Fisherfolk in Talok Baybay (AIMATABA) was established in 1988, after the neighbouring DBI distillery I began dumping untreated waste into the sea, poisoning most of the oysters harvested by local people. Local authorities gave one-off assistance, but refused to monitor the situation, or oblige the distillery to respect environmental legislation.
In late 1998, the organisation forced DBl to sign an agreement acknowledging responsibility for environmental cleanup, and establishing a tripartite monitoring committee. Any further fish kill would trigger compensation payments from bonded fund established by DBI.
The agreement was • never respected. DBI knows that the local people can't understand the nuances of the English-language agreement. The company also knows that Filipino authorities are unlikely to intervene. In fact, they take sides with the company" says Flor Aranguez of KAOSA, a provincial organisation of community organisations.
Each time there is a new spillage, DBl has promised a range of investments in the village (costing considerably less than their obligations under the joint agreement), but little of this money ever materialises.
Organisers uncovered serious irregularities in DBI's application for an Environmental Compliance Certificate. "But the only way to make the Department of the Environment act on this evidence is for the community to organise lobbying and publicity," says Aranguez. "The government won't intervene unless they are under pressure from a strong people's organisation."
AIMATABA is now hoping to receive a loan from the business-
According "the money has already been approved, but local government doesn't want to release it to
The Barangay captain (village mayor) is of an opposing party, and directs all the resources towards more favoured areas. Most of the village has electricity since 1998, but the nearest drinking water is 1km
Local people plan to use the money for new boats, to enable more families to fish the 10km coastal zone reserved for local shrimp and crab fisher folk. Some are also planning to raise hogs. This diversification will lessen their dependence on the sea, and the labour required can be combined with the fishing routine.
Now that the oysters have almost disappeared, fishing alone doesn't provide enough money to send the children to school. To make matters worse, the middleman takes 30-40% of the retail price of their shrimp and crab, which is mainly sold 15km away in Iloilo City.
Organisers say this situation calls for a collective solution. "If the wife takes her husband's catch to market, she has to leave at 8am, and comes back at 3pm, which means someone else has to take care of her children and do the other chores. But farmers in other areas run a collective stall in the nearest market, and eliminate the middleman."
For the moment, local people are unenthusiastic. "The middleman pays cash!" says one. "How long would it take the new collective to pay us?" Others say there is no way they could raise even the P5,000 (US$160) needed to open a market stand.
Organisers are trying to strengthen the community group before an even bigger crisis hits. As soon as the dirt track is replaced by a concrete road, the owner of the land intends to expel all the fisher folk, and build an upmarket beach resort. Some local residents still can't believe that they will lose their homes after 50 years residence
Philippine law supposedly gives land rights to anyone who has lived on abandoned land for 10 years. But the people have no lawyer, and the owner has friends in high places. Power in the union
The benefits of organisation can be seen in Punto Salok, forty kilometres up the coast. With the support of Builders, a development NGO, the Punto Salok Women's Association (PUSWA) obtained a P30,000 (US$810) loan from the Cooperative Development Authority. This provided 30 microcredits with which women bought hogs, started small-scale trading projects, or financed their children's education.
Repayment is ahead of schedule, which has allowed 10 additiona members to benefit from similar loans. Builder provides the training and support to enable community development.
The group previously received government funding for a preschool feeding programme, but decided to use the money for income generation instead. As a women's organisation, it has concentrated on non-fishing sources of income, so as to increase the family's self-sufficiency, and expand women's role and contribution.
Over half the members attended a two day residential seminar on strategic planning. The sacrifice involved shows both their determination, and their conviction that organisation has improved their lives. Not surprisingly, they now want their husbands and sons to organise a fisherman's association.
None of the women thinks there has been much change during the first year of populist president Joseph "Erap" Estrada. They place their hope in the self-organisation of the urban and rural poor, in collaboration with the rest of the progressive movement. * Contact: KAOSA, 214-A Chapel Village, Tangub Highway, Bacolod City, 6100 Negros Occidental, Philippines • Builder, PO Box 490, Bacolod City, 6100 Negros Occidental, Philippines.
International Viewpoint #313 July 1999 29
VORTHVESTERN COLLEGE the new party out of the various anti-
Maoist currents. The overriding need is for unity around the new project. We know that internal democracy and debate is the best way to ensure this unity. But it is hard to put it into practice.
• How hard?
It is a painful process, but I think it is getting easier. The most difficult thing is reinterpreting the Philippine situation,
P based on these new ideas. We say that the t1 country has a very uneven level of
Si development, reflecting a particular kind of backward capitalism. But some comrades haven't seized the programmatic implications of this move away from the Maoist model of "semi-feudal"
p.
relations.
In a similar way, not everyone yet realises the implications of our new programme, which goes beyond the obvious anti-imperialist and pro-democracy slogans, and tries to pose transitional
192 9d molix revolutionaries It is one year since most of the country's anti-Maoist revolutionaries came together to Tound the RWP-P. Pedro Sikatuna, one of the new party's five-member Political Committee shared his personal evaluation of the last 12 months with International Viewpoint's Mark Johnson • International Viewpoint: Why do you place so much emphasis on combining legal and extra-legal aspects of struggle? Sikatuna: When we were still in the CPP we expropriated thousands of hectares of land. But because the peasants were not organised, they were unable to control the agricultural process, and it was the banks and the retailers who made the real decisions. • But that didn't stop you establishing a dominant guerrilla presence in quite large rural areas
Most of the areas we really controlled were mountainous, hilly areas, far from the population centres. • Is there now a real democratic space in the Philippines?
The army and police no longer act with total impunity. These improvements did not fall from the sky, of course. They were achieved by the people's struggle.
But we are convinced that the situation could change again very quickly. If the crisis deepens, there are those in the 30 International Viewpoint #313 July 1999 bris regime who would not hesitate to escalate the level of repression. That's why our party remains clandestine. • Why do you put so much emphasis on building community organisations in rural poor and urban squatter neighbourhoods?
The party's relationship to the popular organisations is one of the most complex new questions. We don't want to control and manipulate them, like the CPP. But how exactly do we seek to lead and influence them?
What we do know is that to take state power we must build embryo organisations that could play the role of soviets. Before taking power, we need to create some forms of organisation that can take us to where we want to be.
This is all part of the new thinking, of moving away from the Maoist period. We aren't there yet. But we know which way we want to go. • What kind of new thinking?
Coming from the Maoist tradition, we are still groping our way forward on many theoretical questions. We are restudying Marx, and trying to learn from the experience of revolutionaries in other countries.