Pampanga and Western Negros
Since the mid-nineteenth century numerous regions of the Philippines have yielded export sugar, among them Batangas and Laguna provinces on Luzon, southern Negros Oriental, and the islands of Panay and Cebu. More recently, the Cagayan Valley of far northern Luzon, and Davao Province on Mindanao have become significant sources. The fields of Pampanga and Negros Occidental, however, have remained the two most consistently productive areas in the archipelago (see map 1).
The sugar lands of Pampanga and western Negros do not conform to any provincial boundaries; rather, they follow certain edaphic and terrain features of the Central Luzon Plain and Negros Island, respectively. In both places, where the soil is a sandy, friable loam and the grade not too steep, farmers have regularly planted cane for a century or longer. The Negros lowlands and Pampanga plain where sugar predominates comprise some of the finest and most extensive stretches of flat alluvial farmland in the archipelago.[16]
Pampanga's sugar area forms a rough triangle with its southern apex at a point where Lubao and Floridabianca, Pampanga, meet Dinalupihan, Bataan (see map 2). The western leg of the triangle follows the slope of the Zambales foothills as far as Barrio San Miguel in the capital of the province of Tarlac. The eastern line skirts the edge of the delta of the Pampanga River, follows the San Fernando River, bends toward the slopes of Mount Arayat (1,026 meters), then slants toward Tarlac. The northern cap en-compasses the lands of Hacienda Luisita in Barrio San Miguel. Southern Tarlac was one of the last parcels of the Central Plain settled, and it still has the lowest population density in the area. Alongside the southeastern flank of sugar lands rise the Pampangan towns of the Pampanga River and the Candaba Swamp, very old communities where rice cultivation and fishing have long flourished. Even within the sugar area, because the lowest land has a hardpan suitable for growing rice, farmers possess a degree of
Map 1.
Philippines, Major Sugar-Producing Areas, 1939
flexibility in what they plant and on occasion convert to cereal production when sugar prices fall too low. Hence, the expanse of sugar varies somewhat from season to season. In a good year such as 1970, planters devoted 53,291 hectares to the growing of cane to feed the three modern mills, or centrals, that service the region.[17]
The enormous debris from the 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo (1,610 meters) has altered somewhat the physical shape of the Pampanga region, but the effects have mainly been felt in the lowland rice-growing areas. Some sugar farmers have even reported better yields as a result of the fallout of pyroclastic materials.
Pampanga has long benefited commercially from its proximity to Manila. Early on planters and middlemen shipped their product in light sailing vessels called cascos down the shallow streams entering Manila Bay. In the late nineteenth century the main trunk of the railroad that runs north from the capital reached Pampanga. Subsequently, feeder lines branched out to meet the industry's needs, and since then the raw sugar has gone mainly by rail, either to the port, from where it is shipped overseas, or to refineries that supply the insular market.
The sugar region encompasses eighteen towns of Pampanga, four of Tarlac, and one of Bataan, where cane has been grown on a significant scale. Provinces in the Philippines break down into town-sized municipalities subdivided into smaller communities known until recent times as barrios (currently barangays ). In central Luzon, as elsewhere, each town has its commercial, social, and administrative core, usually called the poblacion , where stand the Catholic church, the municipal hall, the more substantial residences of the rich, a covered or open air market, and bigger shops, arranged around or near a central green plaza.
Change, however, is coming rapidly to the Pampanga region. The traditional homes of the wealthy with their wood and stone construction and sliding capiz-shell windows have given way to modern houses of cement and stucco with glass jalousies. The growing trend in the area is toward residential subdivisions separated from the commercial districts. The three biggest communities—provincial capitals San Fernando and Tarlac, as well as Angeles, now an incorporated city—have a somewhat different layout with their chief activities spread along main streets, and they have lost the old-fashioned hispanic character of the smaller towns with their plaza complexes. The former U.S. installation of Clark Air Force Base contributed to the distinctive character of Angeles.
In the barrios, usually comprising from one hundred to three hundred families, reside most of the workers in the area, including the tenants who actually grow the cane. They live chiefly in airy nipa palm and bamboo
Map 2.
Pampanga, Major Physical Features
houses and obtain their everyday necessities at small stores called sarisaris . Better-off farmers might have electricity, and a new feature of the countryside is the more permanent cinderblock house with metal sheet roof purchased with "Saudi money" earned abroad by the adventurous Capampangan. Within the past two or three decades barrios have become much more crowded, for Pampanga has the second highest density among all the provinces in a populous country. The 1980 census revealed that for the first time urban residents in Pampanga outnumber rural ones.
All the towns have in common a central place where barrio folk visit to transact business, to socialize, and to find entertainment. Communities in Pampanga are accessible by a strong network of local, provincial, and
Map 3.
Pampanga, Main Roads
national roads over which stream jeeps, buses, tricycles, and horse-drawn calesas that make travel easy and fairly inexpensive. The many roads and short distances between settlements have facilitated strong social interaction among the local denizens. The predominant language here is Capampangan, one of several important regional dialects in the country; however, one also hears the national language, Pilipino (Tagalog), spoken, especially in town centers. In Tarlac, Capampangan is interspersed with the Ilocano spoken by descendants of settlers from the northern Ilocos area who joined migrants from Pampanga on this nineteenth-century frontier.
The northbound expressway out of Manila passes by San Fernando and Angeles, bisecting the heart of sugar country; near Barrio Dau the highway
becomes a typical provincial road as it proceeds toward more rural Tarlac. Arteries off this central highway offer entree to old towns with many fine examples of colonial architecture, as well as to barrios large and small (see map 3). In such communities people tend to be outgoing and curious toward strangers. Two things are likely to strike the contemporary observer: the myriad children one sees everywhere and the variety of economic activity. The province possesses not only a dense population, but a young one as well. The imperative of maintaining an economy for the many seems dear, and to meet that need enterprising Capampangan have sought numerous solutions in the face of a currently depressed sugar industry. Interspersed among the still extensive sugar fields are paddies, now double cropped and planted with strains of the "miracle rice." Padi dries everywhere, on cement roads, in house yards, and on basketball courts, and seed beds turn deep green with new seedlings. Piggeries appear frequently on roadsides, as do retail and repair shops and fruit and fresh coconut (buko ) stands. Perhaps sugar will revive one day; in the meantime, the rice, pigs, housing subdivisions, and stores suggest that the Capampangan avidly seek to diversify their agricultural economy.
On Negros Island a forest-covered central mountain spine dominated by the dormant volcano Mount Canlaon (2,465 meters) separates the western from the eastern coasts (see map 4). Numerous rivers flow down the sides of this chain of peaks, carving deep cuts and providing irrigation and alluvium to the crop lands below. Gradually rising plains surround this cordillera from the northeast to the southwest, and where the slope is not too steep farmers plant their cane. The flatest sections of the coastal littoral drain too poorly for sugar, and there farmers grow rice or other crops; but not far inland, from Kabankalan to San Carlos, stands an almost continuous band of fields that identifies Negros as the premier sugar region.
Almost all the sugar lands lie within twenty-two municipalities of Negros Occidental[18] and the portion of Vallehermoso, Negros Oriental, that belongs to the San Carlos mill district. In 1970 Negrense hacenderos devoted 190,592 hectares to sugar cane more than three times as much as did the Capampangan—which they shipped by truck or narrow-gauge railway to the region's thirteen centrals. Western Negros lacks good harbors, and before World War II exporters shipped mainly from Iloilo across the Guimaras Strait on neighboring Panay; however, raw sugar now reaches its overseas destinations via lighters that transport it from the long pier at Pulupandan or from the wharves along the shallow coastline near several centrals to oceangoing vessels off shore.
Bacolod serves not only as the capital of Negros Occidental, but also as its hub of commerce, entertainment, and transportation. While five other municipalities—Silay, Cadiz, Bago, San Carlos, and La Carlota—boast the
status of incorporated cities, only Bacolod truly seems like an urban center. A sprawling market area with a variety of shops and restaurants abuts the large central plaza with its big church and other religious buildings. The city contains colleges, one of the most impressive provincial capitols in the archipelago, and the local offices of the major planter organizations; furthermore, its hotels, movie houses, and other amenities attract visitors from all over the region. From one of its several terminals commence all journeys through sugarlandia (see map 5).
Travel through Negros proves more difficult than through Pampanga because of the greater distances between communities, the poorer road system, and the less frequent, more expensive public transportation. A two-lane highway parallels the shore slightly inland all the way around the island, and through sugar country is mostly macadamized. Off that trunk, feeder roads and paths, frequently gravel and dirt, head inland. Since their main traffic is cane trucks, they become rutted, and access to and from most haciendas is best accomplished by private vehicle.
A highway running northeast from Binalbagan makes it possible to drive through the middle of sugar country. Part hard surface, part gravel, the highway passes through fields of tall cane that block the view on both sides. In the midst of this overwhelming expanse rest the quiet, spare towns of Isabela and La Castellana, for most of those who own land in the vicinity either reside on their haciendas or elsewhere. Not far beyond La Castellana the hills start to rise, and the road crosses the central chain near Mount Canlaon and connects with the main highway along the east coast just above Vallehermoso. From there it is only a short distance to the busy mill town and port of San Carlos.
Along this portion of the coast live speakers of Cebuano, revealing their origin on the neighboring island of Cebu. Only as one proceeds toward the great northern shelflands does the language gradually shift back to the Ilongo of the western Visayas, the dominant tongue in Negros sugarlandia. The northern cap contains large fertile tracts with the highest cane yields in the whole region. This section from San Carlos to Victorias, with its mixture of languages, its rich soils, its timber stands and newer towns, reflects its frontier status as recently as seventy years ago. The cathedral at Silay and the quiet Spanish plaza of Talisay with its stately homes and church offer a contrast to the structures in later-settled northern Negros. The closed sugar mill on the outskirts of Talisay not far from Bacolod serves as a reminder that the sugar industry currently faces a serious economic crisis.
While Negros Occidental has traditionally broken down into the same municipalities and barrios as Pampanga, sugar workers (duma'an ) in the former area do not usually live in barrio communities but on haciendas in
Map 4.
Negros Occidental, Major Physical Features
the immediate vicinity of their employment. Such plantations vary in size from as small as five hectares to as large as many hundreds, and their borders do not necessarily coincide with any political boundaries.
Ruttan described the hacienda, a typical one, on which she undertook research in 1978, in the following manner:
From the town plaza of Murcia, a sand and gravel road passes through several haciendas and leads after three kilometers to
Map 5.
Negros Occidental Main Roads
Hacienda Milagros. A large acacia tree marks the place where the road splits in two, continuing to the left through other haciendas and entering Hacienda Milagros to the right. There is no gate or fence, but the boundaries of the property are known to all who live on its grounds. Two concrete buildings are situated close to the entrance. One is the warehouse (bodega ) where the tractor and cane trucks are parked, the implements and sacks of fertilizer are stored, and where the small office is
housed. It is the central place of the hacienda: here each morning the laborers assemble for the assignment of daily work, and here the weekly payment of wages takes place. The other building is the sacada house . . ., the living quarters of the migrant laborers during milling season, and partly occupied by the security guard and his family. Behind these buildings some twenty-two bamboo and nipa houses line a narrow, winding path. There are the houses of workers and salaried employees—the overseer and timekeeper, foremen and drivers. Across the fields on the northern side of the hacienda is a second group of ten houses built along a river, while a third cluster of six houses lies further downstream. Eight more houses lie scattered in the hacienda. Vegetables and fruit trees are grown in the small, well-kept yards. The house lots border on the sugarcane fields, and when the cane stands tall it hides the houses from view.[19]
Sugar laborers rarely leave the haciendas, for their workdays are long, and they can buy most necessities in shops on the premises. Their isolation, their strong dependence on their jobs, and their constant supervision by management personnel have made the duma'an shy—more so than the sugar tenants or casamac of Pampanga. Only recently have conditions in Negros become so harsh that on a number of estates some duma'an have resorted to protest and to union organizing. Nevertheless, the strongest opposition to landlord control remains among those who have joined the New People's Army (NPA) on the fringes of sugarlandia or among the political demonstrators in. the streets of Bacolod.[20]
Hacenderos, at the same time, seem more outgoing and gregarious, usually eager to defend the vaunted Negrense way of life, by which they mean the planter style of doing things. Planting consists of borrowing from the bank enough money to have others place a crop in the ground in hopes of gaining great profits. If the balance sheets look good, spend those profits lavishly; if they look bad, borrow more and replant. These hacenderos perceive themselves as gamblers, forever ready to raise cane if credit is available; however, they do not appear as willing as the Capampangan to gamble on alternate investments to sugar. Despite a recent tightening of bank funds in the face of poor overseas market prospects, despite a deterioration in the quality of the soil, and despite the mounting threat of the NPA, the majority of Negrenses remain committed, more so than the Capampangan, to the monoculture that has sustained them, identified them, and shaped their way of life since the nineteenth century.
No matter how else the hacenderos from Negros and Pampanga differ, they respond alike to the physical elements that have long determined their
agricultural calendar. Pampanga and western Negros have similar growing seasons susceptive to an annual weather cycle prevailing throughout tropical Asia. Usually the southwest monsoon begins to blow in May and brings an increased amount of moisture, frequently in the form of torrential rains, to fields left dry by the prevailing northeasterlies. The rains abate in November, and farmers commence the harvest of cane planted the preceding year.[21]
From the dissipation of the southwest monsoon until mid-May, gangs of workers take to the fields where they laboriously cut, trim, and load the cane onto assorted vehicles—carts, trucks or tram cars, depending on the location of the hacienda and on the milling district—for transfer to centrals. The cane reaches the central according to an intricate schedule designed to avoid backlogs that would allow the sucrose-laden stems to deteriorate. What complicates this process is that the Philippine sugar industry is structured differently from that in other countries, for the central operators do not, for the most part, own or manage the majority of farm property in their districts. Rather, these lands belong to numerous private planters who contract with the mills to process their cane for a share of the finished raw sugar. Thus, each central must arrange its grinding to accommodate the harvesting timetables of its numerous clientele.
Meanwhile, the emptied fields must be replowed, harrowed, fertilized, and planted once more with foot-long cuttings from the tops of the cane. In some select fields the stubble is cultivated, and another crop grows from the stools, a process known as ratooning. Later on, the young cane crop requires weeding and cultivating to assure good growth, and farmhands pass along the rows several times with plows and hoes accomplishing those chores. With the overlap of planting and harvesting that necessitates a large manual labor force, even women and children find employment in the fields. Planters also normally hire temporary workers from neighboring regions to cut and load cane.
During six or seven months each year, life in sugarlandia revolves around the frenzy of making raw sugar, but in May the pace slackens. As the southwest monsoon reasserts its domination, field work comes to a close, most mills shut down, and migrant laborers return home. All that remains of activity are the repairs around the haciendas. While the next crop matures, even the business of marketing sugar lags.
For those who still plant and mill cane the seasonal rhythms are old ones.