Sánchez: 2015

Monday, February 13, 2012

FOR us here in Negros Occidental, the end of days seems not on December 21, 2012 during the Winter Solstice—supposedly the end-date under the Mayan Calendar, but on 2015. Where believers of the Mayan Calendar embellished Mayan predictions with astronomy, the end of days in Negros Occidental 2015 is couched in economic terms.

Filmmaker Jay Abello’s video documentary “Pureza: The Story of Negros Sugar” captured the Negrense’s (read: hacienderos’) doomsday fears: when the sugar industry sneezes, the province catches a cold. Planters unable to pay their sugarworkers; uncompetitive vis-à-vis tariff-free Thai sugar.

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The interviewees also blamed the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program which hindered the industry to attain efficiency through largescale plantation mechanization because land distribution has re-introduced carabao farming suited for three-hectare farms.

The documentary struck a responsive chord among the largely well-heeled audience who probably found in the movie the handwriting on the wall, their meeting with destiny. At film’s end, the audience gave the film a warm applause—perhaps as a gesture similar to the Filipinos’ commemoration of the Fall of Tirad Pass, Bataan and Corregidor.

I won’t be surprised though if most of the SRO audience spite Roberto S. Benedicto and Professor Solita Monsod who smirked at postponing the inevitability of 2015. Monsod scoffed that the industry need protectionism, asserting that the sugar and sugarcane still belong to an “infant industry.”

The film compared the Negrense and the Thai sugar industry. Some of those planters interviewed in the film argue that Negrenses cannot compete with the Thais because of the latter’s lower wage rates. Implied that to be competitive, Negrense planters should lower the pakyaw rates, which the film graphically demonstrated to be lower than the mandated minimum wages. The subtext: many planters are breaking the minimum wage law and are getting away with it.

I got amused with one of the film’s closing segments. When asked for alternatives to the sugar industry, the interviewees ticked of efforts to plant vegetables, or to shift the end product from sugar to the agrofuel ethanol, which they insist turned out to be crop failures. Which of course is another way of saying Negros Occidental shall forevermore be Sugarlandia.

The 2015 and its tariff-free future for the sugar industry is a done deal and already set in stone as the film reminds the Negrenses. I find any denial of that future a defeatist if not a fatalistic proposition, an attitude of losers. Can we expect the sugar industry to snow over, dragging the Negrenses and the economy down with its demise?

Maybe not, as Direk Jay Abello showed us. He has re-invented himself. Abello’s future is now more tied with the country’s indie film industry than with the sugar industry in his home province.

In seven years, Abello rose from the ranks as property master to co-writer of the films Sa Huling Paghihintay and Dos Ekis under Viva Films. A year later, he moved to television as floor director to three of the top rated television series (Ang Iibigin Ay Ikaw, Te Amo, and Mulawin) under GMA-7 Network Television and then as director/producer/co-writer of Ligaw Liham in featured in the 2007 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival.

For Abello, 2015 could go hang for sugar but his future is secure. A former sugarcane farm manager, he’s now a filmmaker and cinematographer. He invested on developing his production experience working and learning from many of the country’s best directors such as Erik Matti, Yam Laranas, Peque Gallaga, Laurice Guillen, and Mark Meily.

As Abello made a stinging rebuke of his class. “Good or bad years, most hacienderos refused to adapt. After all, for generations, he was born to privilege. He has led the most comfortable of life styles.”

I managed to catch the video’s curtain call. My thanks to Shei Datinguinoo and Roy Bautista of the Office of the Presidential Adviser to the Peace Process for the free ticket. On the way to Aboy’s for a late dinner, I pointed to them the night life along Lacson Street, indicating that despite the sugar industry’s wheezes, the Negrense economy is not about to catch a cold soon.

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