While on the ISA delegation with KMU, we went to Sitio San Roque, a settlement of urban poor. Residents settled on public land in the mid 80s in the middle of Manila and are mostly former peasants. In 2010, the World Bank put out a report stating that the land was not being used commercially effectively and released some capital to change this. This was taken advantage of by the Ayala family, the third richest in the country with a wealth of $3.4bn. In 2010, 100 demolition workers came to destroy the community with police and SWAT protections. The result was a community uprising led by KADAMAY urban poor organisation. The people fought the riot police with barricades, sticks, stones, resulting in a brief moratorium on demolition.
They then turned to making the community's lives intolerable to get them to voluntarily demolish their homes (they get a 3600 peso, £450, stipend if they do this). They are prevented from bringing in concrete and building materials by the National Housing Authority and can't do improvement work on their homes. They do lots of little things as well, like blocking off a back exit that workers used to take a shortcut to get to EDSA street (the main thoroughfair that the community is right next to) to their jobs and instead have to walk 20 minutes round the block. There have been 11 attempts to set the community ablaze.
Under Duterte in 2018, the police would come in and kill random people suspected of being drug addicts. They "redtagged" Ka Inday, the KADAMY branch's chairwoman - the police demanded that she sign a "surrender" document, a paper admitting she is a New People's Army member. This would require her to cease all political acitivites, publicly declare herself a former guerrilla and publicly support the government, and sign on with the police every month - essentially commit political suicide. When she refused they sent a coffin to her house, and posted a 24 hour police watch outside her home.
This has had a serious effect on the community's organisation. Inday is old, 72, and this has badly affected her health. Lots of the community has been demolished bit by bit. There are 3,000 families there, but there were 6,000 families in 2019. The community is surrounded by towering skyscrapers owned by the Ayala family. They are largely empty condos and a new casino. Security guards from the casino wonder round the community and intimidate them. They built a community garden with the help of peasant union members in 2021 to feed their emergency covid community kitchen. They sold the vegetables that looked good for good money and cooked the ones that looked funny, and could feed hundreds of residents with the kitchen's output. The Ayala family has bulldozed the garden now, to make way for foundations for yet another empty condo and the car park for the casino.
In 2019, the community developed a plan to say how they wanted the area changed and improved. There's no running water, and you have to get a corrupt middleman in the water company to hook you up to the water system who installs a meter to monitor how much you use. Electricity is the same. The cost for each is about 3,000 pesos per month, with the daily income being about 300 pesos from informal work selling goods, doing delivery driving, or, ironically, construction work on the very condos that are replacing their homes. But now the KADAMAY is largely negotiating with the government on how to implement this during the relocation process. The mayor has been relatively supportive of them.
There was a few members of KADAMY youth there who were young girls who lived in the community, aged around 13-14. We got on very well, they really liked that I had the same name as Princess Catherine and I tried my best to answer their royal family questions. They said I was very beautiful :) They were clearly very bright and very dedicated to their schooling. They showed me their homes which are due for demolition very soon.
I'll admit I failed to keep my emotions in check when asked what I thought of all this during the self reflection period at the end of the day, which I am embarrassed about but everyone said it expressed how everyone was feeling. Ka Inday arrived in San Roque 45 years ago when from Mindanao her landlord killed her family over 10 hectares. There are condos all over her old farm. She said I have no choice to be an activist. They will not evict me from here.
