Real Estate, Rivers, and Shorelines: Development Examined in Two Ernesto Lariosa Stories
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I. Introduction:
Ciudad, Seafront City, and the Nation-State’s Drive to Develop
Motorists
who frequently traverse Gov. M. Cuenco Avenue are all too familiar with a squat
one-story house-like structure designed in a style one can only describe as a hybrid
mix of upper-class colonial meets modern-day bungalow: white coral stone facade,
red Spanish roof tiles, capiz shell windows, all layered over a refurbished
trailer. The structure sits somewhat aloofly on what is perhaps one of only a
few remaining unpaved plots of land along the major thoroughfare, and it’s a
rather curious, if peculiar, sight overshadowed by the IT Park high-rises
looming behind it.
A brief dig into the online news
archives will reveal that both structure and its grassy lot are part of a
larger 2.8-hectare property commonly referred to as the Ciudad project.[1]
According to Cebu Daily News’s Delta
Dyrecha Letigio, plans for the Ciudad project were first discussed in 2005 when
the provincial government, which owns the property, entered into negotiations
with a private real-estate company to develop the land in question in a bid to
“provide jobs for Cebuanos” and thus “boost the economy.”[2]
Over the years, however, said “development” has stalled on account of political
squabbling between the province and Cebu City Hall, which has jurisdiction over
the area.
A more recent issue: throughout much of 2021, a controversial 235.8-hectare reclamation project in the northern Cebu municipality of Consolacion has drawn significant flak from both environmental experts and labor groups consisting of workers from the nearby shipyards. The former argue that the project’s implementation would cause “irreversible” damage to the local biodiversity and threaten the livelihood of local fishers.[3] The latter, meanwhile, who have been ceaselessly protesting for a number of months as of this writing, have raised concerns over the possibility of displacement, as a reclamation in the area would undoubtedly hinder vessels’ access to the aforementioned shipyards.[4]
The Consolacion municipal government, however, by all accounts, seems intent on seeing the venture, known as Seafront City, become a reality. The mayor himself, as cited by Rappler’s John Sitchon, has stressed the need for the naturally mountainous municipality to “expand its foreshore and offshore area” in order to “keep up with the rapid development of neighboring areas like Mandaue City, Cebu City, and Lapu-Lapu City.” As with the Ciudad project, Seafront City, touted as a P20-billion “smart city estate,” is also a public-private venture between the local government and a development company. It is expected to generate at least 57,000 jobs and P600 million annually for Consolacion’s coffers.[5]
Although at times it has proven
irrefutably instrumental in shedding light on overshadowed topics or lending a
voice to under-discussed viewpoints, mainstream media has also simultaneously
exhibited a propensity for describing current notions of development and
economic growth with a certain benevolence and beneficence. Thus, these
concepts—along with corollary terms such as sustainability
or progress—are seldom
interrogated, if not greeted with enthusiasm, by the wider public. To see such
rhetoric at work, one may refer to the February 17, 2021, article on Seafront
City from Sugbo.ph, which describes the reclamation project as one that will
“surely push the people of Consolacion [to] become more optimistic of their
town’s progress in the future.”[6]
The same article also appears to privilege the municipal government’s arguments
concerning job creation and revenue generation, while consequently reducing the
plight of the shipyard workers to a few paragraphs toward the end. Similarly,
much of the discourse surrounding the Ciudad project has been about the
bureaucratic back-and-forth that has perpetually stalled the venture, along
with the number of jobs that could be created should its development push
through. There is, however, virtually no inquiry as to the nature and security
of these jobs. And supposing these are predominantly tech or finance jobs
similar to those found in the neighboring IT Park, labor-concerned individuals
cannot help but ask, for example, whether or not the workers will be properly
compensated, will they be afforded decent benefits, what will their working
conditions be like, and who will be their clientele?
Equally obscured by what Filipino
sociologist Randolf David refers to as the “ideology of developmentalism”[7]
is the ecological cost such “developments” can inflict on local environments. In
her 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism
vs. the Climate, author and activist Naomi Klein refers to this economic
model as “extractivism,” which, she says, originally described economies that
were based on “removing ever more raw materials from the earth, usually for
export to traditional colonial powers, where ‘value’ was added.”[8]
Although this unsustainable model developed under capitalism and expanded with
colonialism, governments all over the world today, irrespective of ideology and
geography, have embraced this “nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship”
with the planet. Besides the reduction of complex ecosystems into “natural
resources” to be profited off of, extractivism may also cover the extraction of
labor from human beings, or even the reduction of bodies into social burden to
be “locked out” or “locked away.”
The sheer scale and breadth of this
problem appears to have alarmed even the highest-ranking officials in some of
the most influential global institutions. In a recent interview he gave for
Vice News, UN Secretary General António Guterres acknowledged the “paradox” of
how a nation’s GDP, the go-to indicator of a country’s economic progress, is
oftentimes contingent on the destruction of a forest or the overfishing of
territorial waters, hence the need for policymakers to formulate a new metrics,
ideally one that is not reliant on extractivist practices, for determining the
success of both national and global economies (“What It’s Like to Lead the UN
in 2021”).
Octavio Paz mentions something of a
similar vein in his essay “Development and Other Mirages,” where he lamented
how twentieth-century notions of development (which obviously carried
themselves over into the present century) have only resulted in “the
destruction of the ecological balance, the contamination of lungs and spirits,
the psychic damage to the young, the abandoning of the elderly, the erosion of
the sensibilities, the corruption of the imagination, the debasement of sex,
the accumulation of wastes, the explosion of hatred.”[9]
Amid all these grim realities, the Mexican Nobel laureate asks, “How can we not
turn away and seek another mode of development,” one that is not defined by a
“mere haste to reach ruin”?
David equally acknowledges the need for new modes of development to be conceptualized and put into practice, but these alternative strands need to keep in mind the rights of the marginalized, the most vulnerable, especially those who have been pushed to the fringes by the nation-state. In its quest to meet current detrimental standards of development, this particular political institution with the greatest “efficacy and legitimacy” in the modern era[10] oftentimes aligns itself with multinational corporations at the expense of its own citizens.
Questions of forging a national identity, according to David, are intertwined with the quest to discover new modes and definitions of development. Such a task, however, can prove especially difficult for Global South nations as conflicts tend to arise between internal and external sources. Internal refers to the marginalized classes and tribal communities whose ways of seeing the world could potentially unlock alternate views rooted in local or native sensibilities which the larger nation-state or region could emulate. These populations, unfortunately, are frequently displaced and disenfranchised by the external pressures emanating from multinational corporations and global financial agencies, which have historically proven more persuasive in the eyes of national governments. Couch all these challenges in centuries of colonialism, which has pillaged these former colonies of their resources, and we have these nations forced to develop within a context “characterized by deformed and disarticulated economic structures and wasted natural resources, not to mention a people so gravely afflicted with a profoundly colonial consciousness.”[11]
It’s not surprising, then, how, over the
years, a significant body of criticism that is wholly dismissive or at the very
least suspicious of current understandings of development has accrued. In Postcolonial Ecocriticism, authors Graham
Huggan and Helen Tiffin enumerate a number of theorists who have elaborated on
the inequities brought on by the modern nation-state’s drive to develop amid a
highly globalized economy. Oswald De Rivero, for example, argues how developmentalism
pressures the less advanced Global South nations to “close the gap” with their
wealthier counterparts in the North, thus coercing the former to “subscribe to
a capitalist growth model that is both demonstrably unequal and carries a
potentially devastating environmental cost.”[12]
Wolfgang Sachs, for his part, refers to development as a form of “strategic
altruism” on the part of the West, while John Knippers Black singles out the
“strategically ambiguous” nature of the term, making development and its corollaries highly adaptable to the language
needs of those who use it, although these definitions are based all too often
on “the enormous cultural assumptions and presumptions of the West.”[13]
Such abstractions, Arturo Escobar says, allow the more prosperous Western or
Global North nations to justify turning citizens in the South into “objects of
knowledge and management,” thus necessitating economic interventions courtesy
of finance institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary
Fund, whose onerous loans leave many Third World nations further indebted and
impoverished.
According to Paz, imagination is
especially vital in the formulation of new modes of development and progress. Writers
thus have a role to play in articulating these alternative viewpoints and
ideas. And indeed, as Huggan and Tiffin point out, many writers, especially
from the Global South, have made valuable contributions to ongoing debates on
what exactly constitutes social and economic development in the formerly
colonized world.[14]
Arundhati Roy is perhaps the most high-profile example. Her essay “The Greater
Common Good” delves into how the construction of dams, particularly in her
native India, is often rationalized by developmentalist discourse and national
interest, completely disregarding the subaltern populations whose lands would
be severely affected by the construction and operation of these dams.
Similarly, Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa has written extensively on how the collusion
between the Shell Petroleum Development Company and his own government has led
to the pollution of farmland and fishing waters traditionally relied on by the
Ogoni, the ethnic group to which Saro-Wiwa belongs, consequently disrupting
local livelihoods and displacing a number of them.[15]
In the Cebuano literary landscape,
fictionist Ernesto Lariosa is perhaps the most noted writer who has
incorporated environmental themes into his works (although fellow luminaries
Gremer Chan Reyes and Temistokles Adlawan have also tackled similar topics). In
her introduction to Lariosa’s 2010 collection Crack Shot and Other Stories, Hope Sabanpan-Yu argues that, through
his fiction, Lariosa has cultivated “an environmental philosophy that seeks to
take on the destructive forms of human domination affecting the natural and
social Cebuano landscape.”[16]
Key to this point is the interconnectedness between the natural and the
social—a relationship or dynamic that has since been warped by accumulative
developmentalist fantasies prioritized by the nation-state. It can thus be
argued, at the onset, that Lariosa’s work embodies the postcolonial axiom of
there being no social justice without ecological justice.
Among the stories in Crack Shot, “The Exchange” (Bugti) and “Simon’s Shore” (Ang Baybayon ni Simon) are the most
explicit in their dealing with developmentalist themes and ostensible progress.
In this paper, I shall describe how such themes—which, given their current
understanding, are contingent on the unchecked extraction of finite raw
materials for profit, the degradation of the environment, the further
disenfranchisement or displacement of native populations, and the erosion of
their sensibilities—are articulated, examined, or even interrogated in the two
stories.
II. Development Interrogated in “The
Exchange”
In “The
Exchange,” protagonist Samuel is a writer and rural property owner whose
barangay is being encroached upon by antagonist Ruben’s company, the
generically named Great Cement Manufacturing Corporation. Samuel and Ruben are
childhood friends whose long-time relationship has since soured on account of
the two men finding themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that transcends
personal interest so as to mirror the greater ideological or thematic conflict
of environmental preservation versus economic prosperity.
The confrontation that opens the
story immediately makes plain the stances of both men. Ruben openly criticizes
Samuel for continuing to live in a “stinking neighborhood”[17]
when he could have otherwise moved out to live in a new home. He describes his
former friend’s opposition to “progress” as “ignorance bordering on insanity,”[18]
and even unfavorably compares Samuel’s stubbornness to the ease with which his
parents readily accepted the hefty amount offered to them by the company, along
with some shares, in exchange for their own property. Ruben also brings up how
the corporation has provided employment for the barangay residents (“Most of
the people in your barangay now have jobs”[19]),
thus creating a source of income where there was none prior. Ruben adds that the
cement plant operated by the corporation he works for has already secured a
clearance to operate and conduct dredging activities from government
regulators, though Samuel, through the narration, silently retorts that
“everyone knew [the government officers] were in collusion with the company.”[20]
Although the corporation’s actions
do appear entirely legal—arguably even considerate—Ruben’s points still operate
within the limited logic of developmentalism. He focuses primarily on the
quantity of jobs created, for example, or the fact that the corporation shelled
out a “just” compensation, but he doesn’t acknowledge the ecological effects of
the cement plant’s extractive activities and its ties to the overall
deterioration of quality of life in the area. It’s highly unlikely that a court
of law, an apparatus of the modern state, will have found any wrongdoing in the
corporation’s actions and thus probably rule that it had satisfied all the
necessary legal requisites. The “collusion” between government officials and
the company that Samuel and the rest of the community are aware of parallels
the public-private relationships local governments enter into with development
corporations to implement profit-driven ventures under the guise of growth.
While these relationships are comparably more aboveboard than the scenario
depicted in the story, they nevertheless illustrate how industry can still find
its “primary political ally” in the nation-state.[21]
Such a dynamic ultimately betrays the role of government as a representative or
voice of the people.
To certain extents, Samuel is able
to look past Ruben’s market-rooted rhetoric and see and articulate the human
and environmental effects the cement plant has wrought on their locality:
migratory birds have since not returned, plant and vegetable growth has
stunted, nearby rivers and the sea have been polluted, and barangay residents
have contracted various inexplicable illnesses. To Samuel, then, this
“progress” that Ruben celebrates and attempts to entice him with constitutes a
break from the past, a disruption of traditions and routines more harmonious
with nature, a “change” in the “flow of his life.”[22]
The aforementioned descriptions essentially also make vivid the “reductive”
quality of an extractivist economy: not only is nature made secondary to
profiteering, but the people, in exchange for some of their labor, are also
concurrently reduced to mere “social burden,” with their illnesses being
disregarded in the name of development.
Besides his perceptiveness, another
positive trait ascribed to Samuel, most evident in his youth, is his
willingness to speak to and associate with pretty much anyone. This openness is
contrasted with the snobbishness exhibited by Ruben, who is a lot choosier
about whom he speaks with.[23]
Considering this trait is mentioned in a flashback scene that takes place
during the two characters’ schooling years, we can say that Lariosa is hinting
at a burgeoning individualism—an ethos that has become all too common in the
era of neoliberal capitalism—brewing within Ruben.
Additionally,
professions like law, medicine, and engineering are largely seen as a hallmark
of success in the Philippine context because they are perceived to be lucrative
in comparison with other lines of work. Ruben and Samuel’s paths also diverge
in this regard. Whereas Ruben becomes a “successful engineer” over time, Samuel
ends up a humble storeowner, consequently rejecting his father’s dream for him
to become a lawyer. Samuel also settles down with a wife, Carmelita, whose
“views and positions on life” very much align with his.[24]
They are by no means wealthy but are definitely happy. Ruben, on the other
hand, is not shown to have any family, nor is his relationship with his
corporate colleagues given any details by Lariosa. Solidarity, then—or at the
very least, a willingness to reach out to others—is a value here intertwined
with environmental concern. This trait serves to counter, or even potentially
remedies, prevailing notions of individualistic success, which base a person’s
“value” on the wealth they’ve accumulated or the positions they’ve attained in
the course of their career.
Samuel’s opting for the simple but
noble life, however, proves it has its limits in a world that encourages excess
and competition when his beloved Carmelita dies, together with their unborn
child, from a failed pregnancy. The fatal incident happens at the doors of a
government hospital no less, with a “foreign doctor” refusing to attend to them,[25]
presumably because he is put off by their poverty. To my mind, this scene
highlights the contradictory nature of developmentalist discourse in the Global
South. How can a country like the Philippines, for example, be designated or
claim to be a “developing” nation when its own state-run hospitals—staffed with
at least one foreign doctor, in the case of the story—cannot even service the
most marginalized? Following the incident, Samuel is compelled to write his
first piece of fiction, “Dream beneath the Dilapidated Bridge,” an allegorical
narrative of the grievances of their community which, after being published in Bisaya, conveys the plight of their
barangay to a wider audience. Samuel thus embodies the role of the writer as an
educator, perhaps even as an activist or advocate, shedding light on an issue that
a wider, literate public would be otherwise unaware of.
However more virtuous he is than
Ruben, Samuel is still not without some questionable qualities. His quick
condemnation of anyone who “exchanges” something of innumerable value for money
is suggestive of a somewhat myopic viewpoint that criticizes the individual
without taking into consideration the sociopolitical realities and economic
circumstances beyond their control. He first exhibits this tendency in his
recollection of his parents, whom he quietly criticizes for being greedy, wasteful,
and short-sighted:
His
parents, too, were greedy for the money that would only be spent like the
spring which dries up during a draught, but the concern for good health meant
the survival of the line. His parents did not understand his opposition. They
only looked at the here-and-now and did not think of the future.[26]
Lariosa tries to couch Samuel’s
views on his awareness of the greenhouse effect, which is exacerbated by carbon
emissions from factories such as those of Ruben’s company. His parents’
“selling out,” so to say, tacitly enables further ecological destruction.
Samuel—and perhaps by extension, Lariosa—does seem, however, to ignore the fact
that large-scale and long-term dangers, such as the depletion of the ozone
layer, will in all probability feel far removed to rural folk such as his
parents, and hence prove a less urgent concern when faced with the opportunity
to be handed monetary earnings. Rather than placing his critique within a
larger context of exploitation and forced assimilation, Samuel still falls into
the trap of blaming individuals for their circumstances. His subtle scorning as
well of women who are “forced to sell their bodies in order to service,”[27]
which somewhat parallels his criticism of his parents, warrants some raised
eyebrows, for it again does not delve deeper into socioeconomic realities, specifically
inquiring as to why these women are forced to sell their bodies in the first
place. In sum, money to Samuel will always represent greed and corruption,
regardless of who obtains it and the contexts in which it is procured. He does
not see any redeeming value in it, not even in the hands of those who
desperately need it: those coerced into participating in an economic system
that is inherently unfair to begin with.
Ironically, however, it is this very
means of exchange, money, by which his life is saved. After losing his
consciousness in a brawl between some co-residents of his and a militia of
corporate goons, the protagonist wakes up in the presence of his supposedly
greedy parents in a private hospital room, presumably paid in part or in whole
by the cash and shares bequeathed to them by the corporation for the sale of
their property. His father relays to him the good news that his “kumpare,” the governor, will try to
persuade the provincial board to give the contested land back to the barangay
residents, as well as file charges against Ruben. It’s not made clear exactly
for what, but one can surmise these charges are in relation to the fraudulent
manner by which Great Cement conducted its business dealings in the area.
On the one hand, it’s easy to see
this ending as an undermining of sorts of the many points of critique raised in
the story, such as how the nation-state, personified by government officials,
colludes with big business to exploit a locality in the name of “development”
and profit, how money arouses greed even among far-flung rural populations, how
modern health care, for all its advances, is still generally inaccessible to
the poorest of citizens. On the other hand, though, Lariosa does acknowledge
the illusory nature of this seemingly happy ending. Despite Samuel having
survived his encounter with the goons, despite the company of his parents, and
despite the tenuous promise of the government to hold Ruben and the corporation
accountable for their actions, there is still an anxiety for the environment
that underpins his recovery. As long as the values critiqued in the story—greed
and short-sightedness—continue to persist, the final lines suggest, then nature
is always under threat.
III. Development as Demarcation in
“Simon’s Shore”
In
“Simon’s Shore,” development comes in the form of a foreign-owned beach resort
situated in a rural town, a not uncommon fixture across the many coastal
municipalities of Cebu. As with “The Exchange,” the protagonist here is faced
with encroachment and enticement. Simon’s shorefront property, which his family
has lived on for generations, is desired by the resort’s Japanese business
owner.
Just like Samuel, Simon is imbued by
Lariosa with a clear rootedness in the past. This past is obviously marked by a
more harmonious relationship between humankind and nature. Nature’s gifts, in
turn, run the risk of no longer being enjoyed by succeeding
generations—represented here by the children, whom Simon fondly watches as they
play on a supposedly “undeveloped” section of the shoreline outside the
resort’s boundaries—because of man’s greed and abuse. Simon is also critical of
his father, though to a lesser degree than Samuel, as he recalls during a
lengthy flashback scene how Tatay Nesio was “against the idea” of him becoming
a fisherman as it is “a livelihood one could not be proud of.”[28]
It’s safe to assume that Tatay Nesio is encouraging of his son to abandon a
generations-old livelihood to search for a more lucrative profession.
Overall, however, Simon’s relationship
with his father is considerably more intimate and nuanced. It is from him,
after all, that Simon learns his first lessons in caring for the
environment—specifically, the consequences of using dynamite and cyanide in
one’s fishing practice, as certain “thick-skinned policemen”[29]
do. The reason why the waters of their town still teem with fish is because the
likes of Tatay Nesio have not resorted to such lethal methods. Tatay Nesio
attributes the employment of such ecologically harmful tactics to the “greed of
men,” which is true to some extent. Such a generalizing statement, though,
besides not being further dissected in the narrative, tends to preclude more
elaborate discussion into why these
local police-slash-fishers have turned to dynamite and cyanide in the first
place. Obviously, it is to increase their yield, but what larger factors
exactly suddenly came into their lives that compelled them to cave to such
pressure?
Tatay Nesio also stresses to his son
the importance of looking at the sea as an entity that is “not always one’s
friend,” and that there are times when one must know when to cooperate with it
and when to “struggle and fight” it.[30]
This sage advice is hinted at early on in the story as Simon observes how “the
waves erode [the children’s] sand houses including their footprints,”[31]
but it also stands in stark contrast to the beach resort’s tall fence and wall,
erected by the Japanese businessman to demarcate the “developed” property from
the rest of “undeveloped” Salagduong. In Simon’s eyes, this demarcation appears
to “imprison nature,” virtually holding the shoreline “hostage.”[32]
Development, Lariosa seems to suggest, does not only corral and alter the natural
landscape but also attempts to subjugate it. Such a sentiment could be
especially relevant nowadays as commercial developers and the media tend to
downplay or occlude the ecological effects of their ventures with terms like
“green spaces” (as with the original plan for Ciudad) and “smart” or
“sustainable” (as Sugbo.ph does with
Seafront City). These vague semantics illustrate the “strategically ambiguous”
nature, to recall Black, that clouds much of the terminology involving
developmentalist discourse. As these terms have a certain benevolence attached
to them (that is, “smart” certainly sounds better than “dumb,” and
“sustainable” is definitely more favorable to “wasteful”), many in the public
automatically assume such undertakings are agreeable with—but these projects
are alterations to nature all the same. It is still the developer, after all,
who decides what flora grows in their development, or how often vegetation is
cut so it doesn’t appear unsightly, thereby ultimately restricting, even imprisoning,
nature.
After his father’s death, Simon
moves to the provincial capital, Cebu City, to earn a living. The urban
landscape, a supposedly more economically prosperous setting—and thus, one
would expect, a dream destination for many in the province—instead makes Simon
long for his beloved Salagduong. Where his hometown is quiet and has clean air,
the city is layered in dust. The birdsong and folksy Cebuano tunes of his
hometown are replaced by the more “dissonant noise” pumping out of karaoke bars,
dance halls, night clubs, and discotheques. Whereas the women in Salagduong are
modest and possessed an “ordinary beauty,” those in the city are “dangerous
because they carried diseases.”[33]
Simon also ends up inextricably associating crime with the city—“killings,
robberies, fraud”—especially when he chances upon a report of the murder of a
Japanese businessman, the same one, we later find out, who owns the resort in
Salagduong. One key plot point in the story even involves Simon intervening in
a snatching incident before the police arrive. Although at risk of also
idealizing the province and overlooking the inequities present there, Lariosa’s
decadent and derogatory descriptions of the urban landscape serve to paint the
latter as less a “place of opportunity” or a “hub of development,” and more of
a cesspool of corruption, disorientation, desperation, and alienation. Lariosa
does not specifically criticize contemporary notions and definitions of what
constitutes “economic prosperity” or “development,” but the careful reader of
these scenes is nevertheless prompted to ask if such aspirations for growth are
truly worth it if these come at society’s expense.
Somewhat ironically, though, it is
this very same city Simon vilifies which also allows him to socioeconomically
“move up” in life, thus eventually allowing him to return home and resist the
resort’s advances. The victim of the aforementioned snatching incident, it
turns out, is a well-off lady who offers Simon a job. The money he earns from
his employment allows him to pay his way through school, graduate with a degree
in commerce, helps him grow the business he works for, and then save up enough
for him to return to Salagduong. Simon effectively ends up excelling in a
system and a locale he was, at least initially, critical or wary of.
When his childhood friend, Eleno,
informs Simon of how his neighbors had sold their property to the Japanese
businessman, thus enabling the construction of the resort, Simon voices his
disappointment at their greed and short-sightedness. “I shook my head
reflecting [on] how there are some people in the world who are just greedy for
money and have no idea of the consequences of their actions,”[34]
he says via the narration. Simon’s quick condemnation of individuals for
selling out and his failure to examine larger systems and factors at work very
much mirrors Samuel’s own shortcomings in the previous story.
The closing scene of “Simon’s Shore” features a meeting between Simon and Mrs. Hiro, the Japanese businessman’s widow and an old flame of his. There are, however, clear enough indications that she is no longer the same person Simon remembers. He constantly refers to her by her married name, for example, and their conversation is punctuated by at least one lingering moment of awkward silence. Mrs. Hiro appears to represent the allures of modernity and development, as seen in the instance where she sidles up closely to Simon and proposes that they be “business partners” in their operation of the resort, which would still necessitate Simon selling off his portion of the shoreline.[35] Simon, who had always maintained a critical eye toward developmentalism (despite benefitting from the extremely accumulative economic system inextricably tied to such discourse), turns her down, thereby reaffirming his position on what Mrs. Hiro represents.
One cannot help but note the temporal nature of the sequence of events that leads Simon to his crucial discussion, almost as if it seems to go backward in time: from his looking at “the two children playing by the rock” (future) to his citing of how local fishermen “also love” the shoreline on which the resort is built (present), to his boldly declaring how he “can’t sell [his] past.”[36] Rejecting development is thus not simply flat-out saying no to change, as many of its adherents would charge, but it also acknowledges that certain aspects about a traditional way of life—such as locals’ attachment to the landscape, or memories of youth where one’s movement was not hindered by fenced-up sections of land—cannot and ought not to be commodified, put a price on, as nature offers these without cost.
IV. Conclusion: Some Critiques and
Takeaways
Based
on these two stories, we can definitively say Lariosa is able to look past the
largely optimistic tone that shrouds developmentalist discourse. In “The
Exchange,” he ably demonstrates how the government—supposedly an entity created
of, by, and for the people—which also vicariously represents the modern
nation-state, betrays its mandate to protect the citizenry by colluding with
corporations in extractivist efforts. We see in this story how legal acts—such
as the giving of supposedly just compensation for land, or providing jobs to affected
populations—can be used to gloss over the detrimental effects of development.
Just because something is legitimized by legality does not mean it is done in
the best interests of the local environment or the population living there,
“The Exchange” seems to say. In “Simon’s Shore,” on the other hand, we see how
development projects—regardless of how aesthetic they may appear, say like a
beach resort—forever alter the natural landscape. Because development requires
demarcation (in order to set apart the “developed” real estate from the rest of
the “undeveloped” land), structures such as fences and walls effectively
imprison the environment, with nature no longer being permitted by the
developer to grow on its own accord.
However virtuous and sympathetic
they are, Lariosa’s two main characters maintain views that don’t quite hold up
as well in an era that has witnessed a slow but steady reassessment of the role
and culpability the individual has truly had in polluting the environment, and
how much of this “guilt-tripping,” so to say, was born out of carefully
tailored corporate strategizing. In a 2019 report titled “The Plastic
Industry’s Long Fight to Blame Pollution on You,” for instance, The Intercept looked into various ways
the plastic industry—and by extension, petrochemical companies, whose oil, gas,
and coal products are essential components in plastic production—has been
“successfully dodging” the issue of plastic pollution for decades:
Through
advertising, public outreach campaigns, lobbying, and partnerships with
non-profits designed to seem “green,” plastic industry organizations have been
blaming “litterbugs” [i.e., the individual plastic user] for the growing menace
and promoting the idea of recycling as the solution, while at the same time
fighting every serious attempt to limit plastic production.[37]
(Brackets mine)
Similarly, in a YouTube collaboration video between the channels Our Changing Climate and Climate Town, presenter Rollie Williams details how the very concept of a “carbon footprint” as a means of addressing climate change was strategically created and popularized by oil company BP as a way to “get people to blame themselves for climate change instead of oil companies.”[38]
While there is some blame attributed
to a corporation in one of the two stories analyzed in this paper, the more
common thread between “The Exchange” and “Simon’s Shore,” unfortunately, is
their respective main characters’ blaming of greediness and short-sightedness on
their individual family members and acquaintances for the ecological damage to
their localities, and not the inescapable ways by which corporations and
capital leave us little to no choice in deciding differently under current
economic conditions. In a cash economy where wealth is heavily concentrated in
the hands of a privileged few, typically based in an urban center, what poor
rural landowner wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to be paid in exchange for
land that, by virtue of being distant from the city, appears devoid of value?
Another slight quibble we can level
at the two stories is the anthropocentric view that seems to pervade their
shared themes. In “The Exchange,” for example, Lariosa mentions how Samuel,
after having published his first story in Bisaya,
“had many stories to write that would discuss the injustice between man and
man and that of man against nature.”[39]
Implicit in this statement is the very idea that man (or the human) is still
separate and apart from nature, thereby perpetuating the western definition of
humanity, which depends “on the presence of the ‘not-human,’ the uncivilised,
the animal and animalistic.”[40]
We see this “hierarchisation of life” even more pronounced in “Simon’s Shore,”
where the titular character’s main motivation for turning down Mrs. Hiro’s
offer is because he does not want his memories to be “destroyed.”[41]
While this may appear to be a noble reason on the surface, an interrogation of
it would yield that it still falls into the trap of placing nature in the service
of, and therefore separate from and subordinate to, the interests of humankind.
These criticisms, though, do not in
any way detract from the values one can glean from the two Lariosa stories.
Greed, for example, is an attribute tied with individual interest, which, in
the hyperindividualism of our late capitalist era, manifests in a number of
perverse ways including but not limited to narcissism, self-aggrandizing, and
unbridled consumerism. A generation weaned on, say, “flex culture” and the
prominence of the individual influencer would do well to look into the
relationship between consumption and environmental degradation.
Another lesson we can learn from
“The Exchange” and “Simon’s Shore” is to be critical of certain buzzwords that
make the rounds in media and are oftentimes touted by governments,
corporations, and other institutions as beneficial or benevolent to society as
a whole. Perhaps the next time we encounter terms such as development or sustainable, it
may be worth asking questions such as “Development for whom?” or “What exactly
do they mean by sustainable?”
Such a critical attitude, I feel,
can be quite relevant for a Cebuano readership, especially since every year
Cebu seems to make it into or manages to top the list of wealthiest provinces
in the Philippines. As per a recent report by Dale Israel of Inquirer.net, 2021 marked the sixth
consecutive year that Cebu retained its spot as “the richest province in the
Philippines,” with assets totaling up to P203.9 billion, according to the
Commission on Audit.[42]
And yet for all our newly constructed or currently under-construction malls,
highways, and bridges that are all used as evidence of a robust economy, there
are still several areas in our cities—particularly poorer neighborhoods—that
are susceptible to flooding even after brief downpours, hillsides in rural
areas that erode because of ceaseless quarrying, and noxious particles that
linger in the air we breathe. Reading Ernesto Lariosa’s stories, then, can prompt
the Cebuano reader to ask, Is Cebu (and more broadly, the rest of the world
that continues to operate under developmentalist ideology) truly getting more
developed, or are we just making things more unequal as we send the planet
hurtling toward irreversible ecological collapse, all in the name of monetary
gains for a select few?
Works Cited
David, Randolf
S. “Nationhood, Democracy, and Development: The Questions of Our Time.” Reflections on Sociology and Philippine
Society. University of the Philippines UP, 2001, pp. 150–158.
During, Simon.
“Literature – Nationalism’s Other? The Case for Revision.” Nation and Narration. Edited by Homi K. Bhabha, Routledge, 1990,
pp. 138–153.
Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin L. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature,
Animals, Environment. Routledge, 2010.
The Intercept. “The Plastic Industry’s
Long Fight to Blame Pollution on You.” YouTube,
4 October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBjhSDQW9RI&t=364s.
Israel, Dale G. “COA: Cebu remains the
richest province in PH.” Inquirer.net, 14
January 2021, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1383692/coa-cebu-remains-the-richest-province-in-ph.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Simon &
Schuster, 2014.
Lariosa, Ernesto D. “The Exchange.” Crack Shot and Other Stories.
Translated by Hope Sabanpan-Yu, USC Press, 2010, pp. 183–191.
----. “Simon’s Shore.” Crack Shot and Other Stories. Translated
by Hope Sabanpan-Yu, USC Press, 2010, pp. 192–202.
Letigio, Delta Dyrecka C. “Garcia’s and
Labella’s administrations eye Ciudad project’s revival.” Cebu Daily News, 25 May 2019,
https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/235864/garcias-and-labellas-administrations-eye-ciudad-projects-revival.
Accessed 3 May 2021.
Maylan, Mark. “Look: The Proposed
‘Seafront City’ in Consolacion.” Sugbo.ph,
17 February 2021, https://sugbo.ph/2021/seafront-city-consolacion. Accessed
6 November 2021.
Mayol, Ador Vincent. “Experts: Cebu
town reclamation to cause ‘irreversible’ damage to ecology.” Cebu Daily News, 1 November 2021, https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/409305/experts-cebu-town-reclamation-to-cause-irreversible-damage-to-ecology.
Accessed 6 November 2021.
----. “Shipyard workers hold rallies
vs. Consolacion reclamation project.” Inquirer.net,
15 September 2021, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1488265/shipyard-workers-hold-rallies-vs-consolacion-reclamation-project.
Accessed 6 November 2021.
Our Changing Climate. “Why Your Carbon
Footprint Is a Scam (ft. Climate Town).” YouTube,
1 January 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehkpFajZ-aM&t=168s.
Paz, Octavio. “Development and Other
Mirages.” The Labyrinth of Solitude and
Other Writings. Grove, 1985, pp. 238–283.
Pineda, Oscar. “Ciudad project stalls
anew.” SunStar, 21 September 2015,
https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/32690?fbclid=IwAR1Rruq6KDJNahp3hCAPAY6uQ5yoBGtJ5HDq1Lxd9FiOG74u2__naD__rA8.
Accessed 3 May 2021.
Sabanpan-Yu, Hope. “Ernesto Lariosa and
Nature in His Works.” Crack Shot and
Other Stories. USC Press, 2010, pp. 11–26.
Sitchon, John. “Cebu town mayors says
‘no turning back’ on controversial reclamation project.” Rappler, 26 October 2021,
https://www.rappler.com/nation/consolacion-mayor-no-turning-back-cebu-reclamation-project.
Accessed 6 November 2021.
VICE News. “What It’s Like to Lead the UN in 2021.” YouTube, interview with UN Secretary General António Guterres, 1 April 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nzi21m2Zc.
Notes
[1] Oscar
Pineda, “Ciudad project stalls anew.”
[2] Delta
Dyrecha Letigio, “Garcia’s and Labella’s administrations eye Ciudad project’s
revival.”
[3] Ador
Vincent Mayol, “Experts: Cebu town reclamation to cause ‘irreversible’ damage
to ecology.”
[4]
Mayol, “Shipyard Workers Hold Rallies vs. Consolacion Reclamation Project.”
[5] John
Sitchon, “Cebu town mayor says ‘no turning back.’”
[6] Mark
Maylan, “Look: The Proposed ‘Seafront City’ in Consolacion.”
[7] Randolf
S. David, “Nationhood,
Democracy, and Development,” 154.
[8]
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, 169.
[9] Octavio
Paz, “Development and Other Mirages,” 261–262.
[10] Simon
During, “Literature – Nationalism’s Other?
The Case for Revision,” 139.
[11] David
156.
[12]
Qtd. in Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial
Ecocriticism, 28.
[13] Qtd.
in Huggan and Tiffin 27.
[14]
Huggan and Tiffin 33.
[15] Such
writings ultimately cost Saro-Wiwa his life.
[16]
Hope Sabanpan-Yu, “Ernesto Lariosa and Nature in His Works,” 14.
[17]
Ernesto Lariosa, “The Exchange,” 183.
[18]
Lariosa 183–184.
[19]
Lariosa 184.
[20]
Lariosa 185.
[21]
Huggan and Tiffin 32.
[22]
Lariosa 184.
[23]
Lariosa 186.
[24]
Lariosa 188.
[25]
Lariosa 188.
[26]
Lariosa 184.
[27]
Lariosa 188.
[28]
Lariosa, “Simon’s Shore,” 193.
[29]
Lariosa 194.
[30]
Lariosa 197.
[31]
Lariosa 193.
[32]
Lariosa 197.
[33] Lariosa
198.
[34]
Lariosa 201–202.
[35]
Lariosa 202.
[36]
Lariosa 202.
[37] YouTube
description of “The Plastic Industry’s Long Fight to Blame Pollution on You,” video
uploaded by The Intercept.
[38] Our
Changing Climate, “Why Your Carbon Footprint Is a Scam.”
[39]
Lariosa 187.
[40]
Plumwood qtd. in Huggan and Tiffin 5.
[41]
Lariosa 202.
[42]
Dale G. Israel, “COA: Cebu remains the richest province in PH.”
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