INFRASTRUCTURES FOR PEACE: COMMENDING MINDANAO’S LANAO PROJECTS

INFRASTRUCTURES FOR PEACE: COMMENDING MINDANAO’S LANAO PROJECTS  

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

 

Peace be with you! To all devout sons and daughters of Allah, love and peace!

 

Permit me, through this note, to commend an ongoing project in Mindanao (Philippines) that showcases the theme of ‘infrastructure for peace’. This is the GEM Project, short for Growth with Equity in Mindanao. Funded by the United States A.I.D., the GEM will ensue till 2012 yet.

 

A report titled “GEM program continues in Mindanao” (Manila Bulletin, 25 July 2010) gave a brief update about the GEM situation particularly for the province of Lanao del Norte.

 

To reminisce a bit, Lanao was among the provinces where the insurgent MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) operated most actively, and was among territories that could have seceded from the Philippines. A peace pact was signed between the MNLF and the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) in the 1990s, during the incumbency of Fidel V. Ramos as president, thus ending decades of conflict.

 

The conflict down south led to casualties of over 100,000, while another 500,000+ Mindanaoans (mostly Muslims) migrated from the island to more peaceful areas across the Philippines and in Sabah (over 250,000 alone ran to Sabah and are still residing there). That conflict explains why there are so many Muslims in Manila today.

 

The GEM infrastructures, dubbed as BIPs or Barangay Infrastructure Projects, are showcases of development engagements that were able to take off and prosper largely due to the cessation of hostilities between state and rebel armies. As reported in the news, there are 44 BIP projects alone in Lanao del Norte, all of which are proceeding well thanks to the strategic peace in the area.

 

What the GEM narrative is telling us is that total cessation of hostilities is a pre-requisite for development engagements to prosper in any given area particularly in the hinterlands. There is no chicken-and-egg debate whatsoever when it comes to development work: build and cement peace in the area as sine qua non, and development engagements can take take off to induce growth in the affected area.

 

Having been a development worker for so long in my life, a work that almost got myself dead after contracting falciparum malaria in the early 80s, I resonate with those stakeholders who opine that development cannot proceed in an area where violence prevails as the norm. Such violence could be due to insurgency, warlordism, clan wars, and/or upscaled criminal activities (e.g. drug cartels and gambling chiefs lording it over in the area).

 

I have already gotten tired of the psychopathic propaganda of rebel Pied Pipers who peddle the lie that “insurgency has been caused by poverty, by the absence of development projects” verbiage, which is toxic mental junk. Certain insurgent groups are no revolutionaries but criminals cashing on the support of patrimonial interest groups, and role-playing social predators in their areas of operations.

 

A cursory psychoanalysis of the individual members of those insurgent groups would reveal psychopaths or sociopaths who are acutely sick of personality disorder, or at the minimum possess what Theodore Adorno termed as ‘authoritarian personality’. They are drawn to fanatical movements that cohere with their psyche and warped sense of justice, such as racist, jihadist, and communist groups.

 

Such persons, to my mind, are no longer humans in the truest sense of the word but are rather demoniacs who prey on helpless folks that suffer the most from their violent operations. Possessing borderline personalities or intelligence levels (sub-human levels), they are likewise those who join mafia groups.

 

Absent those demoniacs in the area, and you would have the environment for building peace, cooperation, and growth. That experience is what is now happening in Lanao del Norte where the BIPs of GEM are now going on.  

 

To date, 23 BIPs were already accomplished (finished contract) and are now usable, comprising of slab bridges and solar dryers for grains. You could just imagine the glee of the village folks currently utilizing those infrastructures, folks who for so long had no access to simple infrastructures such as slab bridges.

 

Let me re-echo my commendations to the GEM project and the stakeholders directly involved in their planning, implementation, and utilization. Let the GEM story reach the widest latitudes of Mindanao and the planet to remind warring stakeholders of what zero hostilities can do to build life in their given areas of operations.

 

[Philippines, 12 September 2010]

 

 

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

 

 

MARIKINA SHOES: GLOBALIZATION’S CARCASS RE-SURGES

MARIKINA SHOES: GLOBALIZATION’S CARCASS RE-SURGES

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the Pearl of the Orient!

 

Marikina shoes, the top pioneering shoe industry in Southeast Asia after World War II, has been among the carcass industries in the aftermath of globalization. Lately though, the industry has been re-surging from the doldrums, so let me share some notes about the matter.

 

Marikina is a city to the east of Old Manila and is among the model cities for couples of reasons. It’s former administrators, the Fernando couple (a developmentalist couple), were able to tap official development assistance (ODA) funds directly for local infrastructures without needing securitization from national government, thus kicking off a new trend in development financing and urbanization pursuits.

 

Officially a part of metropolitan Manila that is the ‘Manila of the present’ (old Manila is ancient and diminutive in size), Marikina had been emulated for its cleanliness, efficient traffic management, and participative local governance. It had set off a trend for local governments to embark on ambitious projects without being subsidized by national government.

 

Those feats are part of the new image of Marikina, just to make it clear. For Marikina also has an older image as the home of the Philippines’ pioneer shoe industry. At one time the exemplar of Asia in shoe-making, Marikina’s exquisite shoes have straddled the planet like conquering commodity champions worth the possession of rising middle class members aspiring to acquire apparel items worth their pockets’ powers and esteem.

 

Marikina shoes have thus enabled the flourishing of backward linkages such as leather tannery, dye industry, and shoe accessories. Upon attaining industrial maturity circa late 60s through the 70s, product quality was at par with the best that the West can manufacture. And, Marikina shoes were priced so affordably, selling at around merely 1/5 to 1/3 of the western counterpart items.

 

Trade liberalization however struck a bitter chord in the 1980s, and down came Marikina shoes with globalization’s ascent. Former shoe factories closed shop, tens of thousands of shoe workers were laid off, and shoe retail shops followed the pattern of foreclosures. At the end of the day, only a few notable Marikina brands stood tall amid the storms caused by trade liberalization and serial recessions.

 

I won’t be surprised to find out that similar industries elsewhere, inclusive of the USA’s, will be shutting down due to the same reason: globalization. The trend is now hitting shoe factories in the USA that closed down production in the homeland as the same (production) were outsourced to developing countries where labor and capital goods (leather, dyes, chemicals) are priced cheaper than the homeland.

 

As Europe’s economies literally burn, its consumers are cutting down on luxuries, thus opting to buy essentials that are more affordably priced, such as garments & apparel. We shouldn’t be surprised if the prime shoe brands of Italy and France would be knocked out cold turkey by the economic storm in the continent.

 

Incidentally, Marikina’s local stakeholders were able to address some core social issues concerning their dying shoe industry in the 1990s yet. Those strategic measures, such as relief funds for affected industries, are now reaping fruits for the industry players.

 

As a whole, Marikina’s show industry was reduced to carcass indeed, but a carcass that is able to stand up at certain junctures. With the wave of China shoes conquering so many shores worldwide, Marikina shoe industry is again getting whacked heavily and paying the price of slow adjustments to make their products more competitive (i.e. attain greater comparative advantage)

 

Another tranche of relief subsidies for affected industries, akin to a stimulus package on a local level, is now out-flowing from the city government’s coffers. Whether the said funds are able to stave off potential deaths on specific factories and outlets remains to be seen.

 

For the moment, let me declare that all of my leather shoes are Marikina products. I’ve already decided to shy away from Western imports, and I’m saying no to China shoes that suffer from quality problems. This is my own way of appreciating the craftsmanship of Markina’s shoe designers and the labors of shoe workers in the city.

 

[Philippines, 11 September 2010]

 

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

 

 

ROBOTS BETTER DO MINERS’ JOB IN NEAR FUTURE

ROBOTS BETTER DO MINERS’ JOB IN NEAR FUTURE

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the suburban boondocks south of Manila!

 

It’s playing Latin music in my multimedia at home right now. As I play the danceable tunes by Buena Vista Social Club, my eyes are focused on the news “Some Chile miners showing mental crack” in the world news of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Aug. 29, 2010).  

 

Let me then dedicate this piece to the task of mining as a way to honor the miners of the world. Honoring them means that eventually the human miners will retire from the job, with robots taking over those rather hazardous tasks related to mineral extraction.

 

To quote the report’s inception, “Five of the miners trapped underground in Chile for months to come are struggling psychologically, officials said on Friday, as engineers prepared to start drilling an escape shaft.”

 

The news coming from Copiaco, Chile further heralded, “While the rest of the 33 trapped miners were happy to take part in a video to show families they were bearing up despite what has so far been a three-week ordeal, the smaller group refused and were exhibiting signs of depression.” [AFP Report]

 

Well, what else can we expect from toiling workers trapped deep down underground, with hardly much hope for coming back to the planet’s surface till after months of hard rescue operations to come. Even a person who doesn’t suffer from manic-depressive disorder can crack up and manifest depression when confronting such a life-threatening situation.

 

If we go back to the times of the Roman republic, and maybe backtrack 2,000 years earlier than Rome, we can review their mining practices then. Mind you, contrast our mining extraction today with those of ancient times, and you just might have the shock of your life to find out that there isn’t much contrast really.

 

The technology of extracting minerals down underground remains to be dependent on human or anthropocentric labor for thousands of years now. Not even the impressive engineering works to dig the minerals from rocks down under can impress me much at all, they remain the same technology: human-driven extraction.

 

While the miners of antiquity were slaves of the imperial deus ex machina, today’s miners are cogs of the business empires’ deus ex machina. Marginal or small-scale miners, like the ones we have in the boondocks of northern and southern tips of the Philippines, are all the more risk-prone to the appalling extraction conditions and backward technology as they can be buried anytime by mining-related calamities without healthcare or ‘life plan’ to compensate them.

 

A cursory examination of the Chilean miners’ condition allows this analyst to facilely forecast that at least 1/3 of them (around 2 persons) will be in advanced form of depression and nervous breakdown as soon as the rescue operators reach them. Tragic, simply tragic!

 

That’s how human labor is treated by corporate capital since the birth of the money economy anyway: mere objects worth throwing away if they die during production operations. Miners are among the most classic cases of how capital treats human labor as cheap dirty eater stuff.

 

If indeed corporate capital—and its cultural deodorant ‘corporate social responsibility’—has the sanguine love for human miners, it should strive pronto to innovate on robotics that can do the work for the miners. Retire all the miners of today pronto, compensate them for social security and healthcare, and then gradually employ the robot miners.

 

Only token labor—comprising of technicians and engineers—are needed to operate robotics-driven mining. Robots won’t suffer from depression in case of mishaps, they won’t require healthcare and social security but rather maintenance expenditures appropriate and sufficient for their upkeep.

 

Retired miners can then afford to exhibit more productive engagements such as to serve as eco-tourist guides for students and visitors who may wish to examine former open-pit mines that have been re-greened with lush vegetation. They can likewise do some tour guide tasks for mine visits that would be as less risk-prone as their previous jobs.

 

Meantime, let me share my own lines of solidarity to all those suffering miners in Chile and the rest of the planet. May they find light at the end of the tunnel of oligarchic pseudo-slavery down shafts and pits, and tell their narratives to the planet as part of our human history heritage.

 

[Philippines, 10 September 2010]

 

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]