Debt bondage and labor among the many sacadas of Negros Occidental

‘My dream as a dad or mum,’ Rom mentioned, ‘is for my youngsters to have a greater life. However that’s the identical dream my dad and mom had for me.’ Fifty years later, he tills the identical land his father as soon as did.

The hacienda stirred to life because the solar climbed greater. A mirage started to type the place a bunch of individuals had gathered, and the fields awaited a full day’s labor. I raised my hand to defend my eyes, but gentle nonetheless seeped via my fingers. With my different hand, I gripped the handlebar as our tricycle navigated a patchy concrete street the place grass grew via each fissure. The same old humid air in Negros Occidental carried the candy scent of freshly-cut sugarcane and damp earth. It was February, and the harvest season was drawing to an in depth.

Farther away, the define of Mt. Silay blurred beneath a veil of mist. The air thickened as we handed rows of shacks lining the filth street, till a person got here into view, ready for us on the finish. “Sir Errol?” I referred to as as we approached. He nodded and welcomed us into his house.

We sat in a small area walled by concrete hole blocks. From the place I sat, I might see the bamboo shafts supporting the metallic roof and wood beams connecting the woven bamboo partitions. A makeshift rod stretched from the doorframe to the again wall, the place uniforms of Errol’s youngsters hung neatly.

Errol was born to Vintage migrants drawn to Negros Occidental by the promise of labor. The small plots of land tilled by Vintage’s rice farmers had been not often sufficient to help a complete family year-round, so many crossed the ocean to turn out to be transient sugar farmers. To the Negrense, nevertheless, they’d at all times be pangayaw or outsiders.

“Being a sacada was not a part of my plan,” Errol mentioned. At 16, he had a job in Manila as a single-stroke designer in a figurine manufacturing facility. However when his father and uncle died, he returned to Negros. For 2 years, he labored within the fields as a sacada.

“I as soon as requested my father what sacada actually means,” he recalled. “He mentioned it got here from the phrase sacar —‚ to extract. Like the best way a sacada slices via the bottom of the stalk. You had been sacar-ed. Taken. Pulled out of your land. Introduced someplace else to work.” His phrases got here in sharp staccato, just like the rhythm of the blade via cane.

I’ve come to be taught that the sacada system is inherently paternalistic. It fosters a deep sense of indebtedness, strengthened by the money advances given by the hacenderos. Over time, these monetary dependencies warped into binding ties, solidifying the paternal-like relationship all through generations.

Negros Occidental had been an avenue for the germinal seeds of the hacienda construction. The hacenderos directed the labor and immortalized themselves via portraits hung beneath carved calado traceries. The primary time I noticed these ornate air vents in Balay Negrense, I stared lengthy sufficient for the wood patterns to sway like sugarcane leaves within the wind. The grandiosity of all of it was deliberate. It was to say energy above the flimsy bamboo barracks that lined the sides of the inexperienced horizon.

The sugar business’s toil is etched into the lives of its employees. And so,I opted for interview-conversations with them that function a possibility to relate their very own experiences.

By midday, I met Errol once more. He referred to as out to a determine from afar, a person who approached barefoot, shifting his weight with every step. He had a receding hairline with streaks of grey threading via his uninteresting black hair. “That is Rom,” Errol gestured. “He oversees the cuartel.”

Contained in the cuartel, wood slat beds lined either side of the woven bamboo partitions. About 30 sacadas occupied the area. Items of clothes hung from the rafters. The kitchen stood just a few steps away with a single shelf holding tin cans and discolored bowls, and a metallic grate balanced on stones served as a makeshift range. A canine meandered via the area, its ribs faintly seen beneath its dusty coat.

Rom sat beside me as I started to ask questions. “My dream as a dad or mum,” he mentioned, “is for my youngsters to have a greater life. However that’s the identical dream my dad and mom had for me.” Fifty years later, he tills the identical land his father as soon as did.

And not using a diploma, Rom knew his choices had been few. By first grade, he had dropped out to assist his mom. When she remarried, her new husband saved an espading, or a curved blade, at all times inside attain. Since then, his life had adopted the rhythm of sugarcane: planting, reducing, hauling. The one pause got here through the tigpuraot or the dry season.

Rom spoke of the suma-heneral who was speculated to tally every harvest, although payday typically got here as an phantasm. “There have been no data. No record. No proof,” Rom mentioned. “You keep quiet to remain alive.” Those that complained had been held at gunpoint. He confirmed me his crumpled pay slips of handwritten figures, deductions for rice and money advances, and a internet pay of some hundred pesos. His household of 11 survived on P8,000 a month. Regardless of the passing of time, little had modified. They toiled to feed an business that would barely feed their very own.

Like Rom’s son Jun, many youngsters of sacadas have by no means set foot in class. Confronted with the distinction between their actuality and their hopes, many drop out, repeating the cycle that traps their households in debt bondage. Rom feared that the land would declare his son because it had claimed him, his father, and his grandfather earlier than him.

As I ready to bind my analysis a month later, a line from my transcript notes caught my eye: Paano ka maghandum kun pigado? (How will you dream when you’re poor?) Rom had requested me this once I final visited their house in Vintage. Whereas unpacking my issues after the go to, I noticed I had left my pen with Jun. Unusually, the thought of getting left one thing behind introduced me a quiet sense of consolation. It was as if the pen, nonetheless resting in that place, tethered part of me to the place I’d simply come from. Maybe, for Jun, that pen may at some point write one thing his father by no means had the prospect to. And maybe that, too, is how they dream — in small methods, in quiet revolutions.

I regarded out the window and noticed the fields past. The horizon blurred right into a golden haze because the solar sank slowly into the earth’s cradle. The final gentle filtered via the cracks of bundled stalks carried by the sacadas on their shoulders and into the truck.

The cycle will start once more tomorrow. – Rappler.com

Rachel Lois Gella is an aspiring lawyer with a nationally acknowledged dissertation on synthetic intelligence. A few of her writings can be found on her Substack web page.