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"Right and justice were taken away by the 'decent gentleman', and the Philippines had nothing left, only rag-like slums, bigger and bigger."
In the documentary "Kingmaker", which exposes the truth of the turmoil in the Philippines, American documentary photographer Lauren Greenfield lamented at the end of the film.
Who are the "decent gentlemen" who take away justice and wealth? How can Manila, the bustling capital of the Philippines, have "nothing"?
In fact, the Philippines became a "rich country" by relying on the war money after the end of World War II, and built the prosperous Manila, and the future was promising.
But President Marquez, who wielded the country, squandered the country's wealth in the decades that followed, turning what was once a bustling city into a "sin city" where 70 percent of the population was poor.
Today, there are more than 4 million poor people in Manila who do not have enough to eat.
(Protesting Filipinos)
So, what kind of life do these poor people live? What and who caused all this? Do these poor people still have hope of "living"?
The Manila Pauper: Material Barrenness and Spiritual Desolation
As an island nation bordering the South China Sea, the Philippines is almost entirely in the tropics. If you want to cool off in the middle of winter, the Philippines is a good choice. But for the poor who live on the Philippine island all year round, life is not so comfortable.
The Filipino people, known for their "divide between the rich and the poor", live a life of ice and fire, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the rich live in splendid and luxurious villas, and the poor can only spend the night under bridges, always suffering from the harsh natural environment.
How to survive the scorching heat is the biggest challenge for Filipino civilians.
In June 2019, a documentary called "Kingmaker" landed in foreign theaters, and photographer Lauren Greenfield depicted the misery behind bustling Manila with realistic lenses.
("Kingmaker" tells the rise and fall of the Max family)
Luke Woodland has lived in Manila since childhood and is truly "indigenous". He is familiar with life in Manila and understands the threats and challenges posed by the extremely harsh natural environment to the survival of the poor.
Located in the central and western region of the Philippines, Manila is full of jungle and often infested with fierce beasts and thorns, and Zheng He visited this place during the Ming Dynasty on the mainland and recorded it as "very dangerous".
Manila's complex natural landscape has historically been a hot, rainy, terrifying place of death.
(Landslides caused by heavy rainfall)
Today, the northern part of the city is mountainous and bordering the windfall, and two-thirds of the year is in heavy rainfall, and the city's water can reach a maximum depth of 2.5 meters.
In the east, there is a plain area where tropical rainforest grows, and there are large swamps, and the legend of "ghost swamps" is circulated.
Manila is an insurmountable magic, and its harsh natural environment has deterred countless pioneers. The extremely harsh natural environment has become the most immediate threat to the local poor, and the problem of food and clothing is the first problem for the people living here.
The special climatic conditions pose many challenges to the people living here, who struggle to walk and have to endure the tests of nature.
Manila's summer has long days and short nights, with up to 18 hours of daylight. In some areas, the hottest time can reach more than 45 degrees. How hard this is for poor people without air conditioning!
(The streets of Manila after the storm)
When it rains, the once brightly lit Manila becomes a "big bathhouse", and a torrential rain often lasts for three or five days before it ends. The monsoon wind, like a whistle, rolls people up from the ground.
Where the flood passed, trees were uprooted, the houses of the poor were collapsed like dominoes, while the houses of the rich were built on high places, unaffected by the flood.
The flood took the lives of many poor people, and in the face of natural disasters, the lives of poor people appeared extremely fragile, and death became their fate and end.
The harsh environment is one of the reasons for the deteriorating living conditions of the poor, and the people living here have to accept the "gift" of nature and have a hard time. In the slums of Manila, life and death tragedies are staged time and again.
The poor living in Manila are also vulnerable to disease.
"Poverty is inherently unfortunate, and when combined with disease, it is even worse."
Poverty and disease kill human lives, and the poor in Manila struggle to survive.
Luke Woodland's younger brother got up early every day to catch the sea in order to earn money to see his mother. As a result, a wave hit, and his life was lost. In order not to drag down the family, Luke Woodland's mother committed suicide by jumping into the sea.
(Slums of the Philippines)
With the yearning for the life of the rich, large numbers of poor people flock to the city in search of development opportunities.
However, their exodus did not gain economic and spiritual independence, and they still faced a state of material deprivation and lived without dignity.
On the one hand, the working environment for rural people to the city is poor.
Due to their own constraints, Manila's poor can only work in the city in service jobs that are relatively unskilled and insecure.
The poor can only move around the city as "migrant workers". Some of them help wash dishes and dishes in restaurants, but the working conditions are harsh and there are no days off.
Many poor people come to the city with a longing for a more decent life, but when they arrive in the city, they are busy all day for basic daily expenses and are stuck in endless labor.
Heavy physical labor has not changed the reality of poverty and whiteness, the poor are still in trouble, while the rich are still in high positions.
At the same time, the poor, although living in the cities, are not accepted by the urban rich, and they are excluded from the normal social order.
The rich always wear colored glasses to see the poor, and for the rich, the poor are outsiders and have no right to speak.
(Poor Filipinos living in pipes)
Although the poor live in the city, they are still afraid of the city. As the theorist Said put it, the spiritual drifter "is always in a state of incomplete adaptation, always feeling as if outside the intimate, familiar world where the locals live." ”
So how can they change the reality of the gap between rich and poor?
Faced with both material and spiritual oppression, Luke Woodland's head was pressed very low.
We can't help but ask: what is it that made a strong country in the middle of the last century now a weak country full of poor people?
Second, the chaos is stacked: who is the initiator?
During the fifties of the last century, thanks to the use of troops by the United States in North Korea and Vietnam, the Philippines made a lot of "war money", and it was a rich country at the top at that time.
At that time, the people lived in peace and contentment, and everyone had countless wealth.
During the same period, Fernandi Marks, a soldier, was elected president of the Philippines. And it was this small shift that ushered in the Philippines on a rollercoaster of four decades.
Some call Max a "revolutionary," but others see him as the culprit in the Philippines' wealth divide.
At the beginning of his tenure, Max launched an "agrarian revolution", using government funds to buy land from landlords and then selling it to farmers at a low price, so that everyone had land to grow.
(Max's luxurious presidential palace)
Immediately afterwards, Max launched the "Green Revolution", which made the Philippines, alone on the ocean, self-sufficient in food, and even able to export food to neighboring countries.
In the opening scene of "The Kingmaker", Max's wife, Imelda, is giving a passionate speech on "Saving Children in Poverty."
However, every time Imelda appeared on camera, she wore expensive luxury clothes and exaggerated gold and silver jewelry.
After her husband became president, Max's wife rushed to fashion capitals such as Manhattan, New York, and Paris, France, in order to buy local luxury goods.
When Max was investigated for corruption, his wife had more than 5,000 dresses worth thousands of dollars, and various designer jewelry amounted to hundreds of kilograms, which were incalculably valuable.
According to the survey, the Max family has deposits in more than 170 banks.
(Max and Imelda)
It's hard to imagine that when the Max family was asked about Filipino civilians, they could say with tears in their eyes:
"We're worried about the Philippines."
The history of corruption and bribery of the Max family is the process of the Filipino people from wealth to poverty.
It can be said that since the initial agrarian revolution and the green revolution, the Max family has stopped doing anything for the Filipino people.
In the seventies, Imelda boasted of making Manila, the capital of the Philippines, a "paradise", and she let her husband build a lot of construction, making Manila full of high-rise buildings.
During a trip to Kenya, Imelda was fascinated by the wild animals running on the grasslands, so she placed one order after another, buying wild animals like clothes.
But at the time, Kenya's president had banned the export of wildlife.
Finally, with a phone call from Max, the absurd deal finally went ahead.
(Old Imelda)
For Max and Imelda, the Philippines is their "back garden", anyone who disagrees will be imprisoned, and who dares to say Max's shortcomings means a dead end.
By the end of the eighties, the assets embezzled by the Maxes had reached more than $10 billion.
As the saying goes, the Max family, which is so crazy about accumulating money, aroused the discontent of the people, and opposition leader Nino Aquino stood out and led the poor Filipino people living in poverty to rebel.
As a result, the campaign did not last long, and Nino Aquino was arrested and imprisoned, and he was accused of "subversion of the country" and became a prisoner.
After years in prison and three years away from the Philippines, Nino Aquino decided to return to the Philippines, and before getting on the plane, he said to those around him:
"All the cameras have to be turned on, because something can happen between the electric flint and after that, I can't speak anymore."
(Mr. and Mrs. Max)
Nino Aquino predicted his end very accurately, and he was shot dead when he arrived in the Philippines to get off the plane.
The angry Filipino people stormed the presidential palace, and a panicked Max fled to the mansion he had purchased in the Hawaiian Islands, where he lived his life happily.
However, the Philippines is mired in never-ending riots: gun violence, drug trade, human trafficking... The leaderless Filipino people slipped step by step into the abyss.
Walking through the streets of the Philippines is like being in the middle of a battlefield, where bullets whistling are ready to greet you.
In this way, the Philippines eventually changed from a rich and powerful country in the 50s to a super weak country with 70% of the population now trapped in poverty.
In Manila, more than 4 million poor people struggle below the subsistence line, unable to find peace in the midst of this chaos.
Will tomorrow be better in the Philippines?
3. Can there be hope for tomorrow in the Philippines?
(Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos)
Tomorrow in the Philippines, it seems that the sun will still not be seen.
In May 2022, the youngest son of the Max family, Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos, was successfully elected as the 17th president of the Philippines.
This is an ending that everyone expected, but it makes sense.
"Unexpectedly" means that after the Filipino people expelled Max by force, they went around for so long, and in the end, it was still the Max family who held the power of the country, and it became a strange circle that could not be escaped.
"Reasonably" means that this presidential election was doomed a few years ago, although Max fled to the Hawaiian Islands in the United States, his henchmen in the Philippines were not eliminated, and his wife Imelda was even more clean with him, and was still the "mother of the nation" who was supported.
But few people know that the "mother of the nation", trusted by the people, is an upstart who is crazy and obsessed with luxury.
(Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos)
Therefore, it is not surprising that the people of the Max family are re-elected president.
After Max was elected president, the reaction of rich and poor in the Philippines was very different.
In the CBD Tower in the middle of Manila, a huge portrait of Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos is hung on a tall building, expressing the reverence of the elite;
On the streets of Manila, on the outskirts of Manila, unrest is spreading.
Manila paupers attacked upper-class cars with stones they picked up, even foreign tourists were attacked indiscriminately, and Manila's hospitals were overcrowded.
Using the suburbs as their "base," the people marched step by step towards the center of the city, burning the national flag on the side of the street and breaking all visible glass with water bottles every 100 meters.
In order to suppress the unrest, Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos sent police to carry out violent suppression, and these police, who did not speak out to appease the population, but resolutely carried out the president's orders and directly attacked the population with tear gas.
(Filipinos and police confrontation)
After several confrontations, both sides can be said to have lost both.
At the beginning of 2023, a rather magical phenomenon appeared on the streets of Manila - a large number of bricks appeared on the street.
The red bricks seem to be deliberately placed on the ground, one or two every few meters, but there is no civil engineering work under construction in Manila.
When riots break out, people pick up stones from the side of the street and throw them at the police, escalating bloodshed.
But Ferdinand Romuldez Marcos has been busy whitewashing the peace and portraying a "harmonious and happy" Philippines to the people of the world.
(Real Filipino streets)
From 2019 to 2023, a social media Facebook posted that there were thousands of "fake news" accounts of the Max family on Facebook, which described the fake as true, and described the people's protests as songs and dances, fooling people in other countries.
For a hundred years, the Max family has been like a lingering curse, binding the Filipino people and making people question: Will the Philippines really usher in hope tomorrow?
Epilogue:
For the Philippines, history is firmly established, but the future is not bright.
In the Philippines today, more than 60% of newborns are not adequately fed, clothed and warm, and more than 40% of children suffer from malnutrition.
These children have been trapped in this world since birth, shrouded in the curse of the Max family. Poverty has become a label that they cannot tear off.
The prosperity on the surface of the Philippines is, after all, the mirror flower, and the bubble is extinguished.
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CHEN Hongyu. Political Development in the Philippines[M].Taipei:Taiwan Commercial Press,1980.
Harold D. Lasswell. Political science - who gets what? When and how to get it? Yang Changyu, trans. Beijing:Commercial Press, 1992.
JIN Yingxi. History of the Philippines[M].Zhengzhou:Henan University Press,1990.]
GAO Wen. The Legitimacy Construction and Maintenance of Modern Family Politics in Asia: Based on the Study of the Philippines, India, Japan and North Korea[D].Hangzhou:Zhejiang University,2018.)
HU Hengfu,CUI Yunwu. On Party Politics in the Philippines[J].Ideological Front,1998(9).
JIANG Shilin. Family rule is ruined, autocracy and corruption end sadly——Former Philippine President Marcos and his wife embezzled huge amounts of money (Part I)[J].Party Style and Clean Government,2001(2).