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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Institute Inc.
Introduction: The World Capitalist Transformation of the Philippines as Context for the Progressive Philippine Liberation Theology Movement
The Spanish colonization of the Philippines (1521-1896) had a disintegrating effect on the cultural and political economy. The Spanish disrupted traditional values, communal practices, and social relations by instituting a new class structure that served colonial interests and that undermined the pre-existing power structure. They brought with them a feudalistic production mode that activated the development of capitalism in the islands. Land that was held in common was increasingly privatized (Constantino 1975: 40). This instigated a process of eroding the traditional subsistence base, and created a class of landless peasants. By the 19th century, cash-cropping (sugar plantations, tobacco estates) by expropriating Filipino labor and resources began to change the productive base in a way that allowed the emergence of a small class of landed and entrepreneurial Filipino and Chinese mestizo elites from whom came powerful religious and political leaders. Under these divergent conditions in the relations of production, liberation theology as an integral part of the struggle for national independence emerged.
The onslaught of American colonization (1898-1946) further accelerated the capitalist penetration of the Philippines. The United States kept intact the landlord land ownership system that allowed American corporations to acquire large tracts of land. They developed plantations and expanded mining operations for U.S. industries, while landless peasants were forced to work for them at sub-minimal wages. They sought to win over the Filipinos by promoting public education but they used it as a tool to propagate American export ideology. They included some Filipino elites in their administration but they did so only after they realized that they could not defeat the Filipinos fighting for independence (Cullinane 1971: 13). There was no change in the working conditions on the American colonial estates. In other words, there was not much difference between indentured and free wage labor; U.S. colonialism did not entirely transform the pre-existing feudal economy. Unlike under the Spanish, however, when the plantation system had to ensure the reproduction of its laborers' subsistence needs, the availability of a large pool of surplus labor beyond that of a permanent work crew freed American companies and Filipino elites from providing social security for their workers. Big business did not penetrate everywhere, and subsistence villages around the peripheries were subsumed into the logic of the capitalist reproduction of the economy.
After the Philippines became independent in 1946, the U.S. government sought to ensure its economic control so as to protect its business interests, but under the new neocolonial relationship, it did so indirectly. In exchange for rehabilitation aid to help to rebuild the country after WW II, the Americans manipulated the new republic into accepting unfair trade agreements, like the Bell Trade Act of 1946, which gave full parity rights to U.S. citizens, businesses, and corporations. This act, amended in 1955 as the Laurel-Langley Agreement, virtually assured U.S. control over the Philippine economy by making the Philippines a supplier of cheap raw materials and human resources for U.S.-dominated markets and a receiving ground for U.S.-manufactured goods (Schirmer and Shalom 1987: 90). When the Laurel-Langley Agreement expired in 1974 under the Marcos dictatorship, the United States sought to protect its economic interest mainly by an ideology of export-led growth through foreign investments. The Marcos government adopted an open-door policy for foreign investments and liberalized trade restrictions on transnational corporations in exchange for loan packages from big development agencies like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (Broad 1988).
By the time Corazon Aguino became president in 1987, after the murder of her husband Ninoy Aguino by Marco's military in 1983, which sparked the people's power revolution that overthrew the corrupt dictator, the nation was financially in ruin. In exchange for restructuring the Philippine debt repayments, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies continued to exert a stranglehold over the political economy. President Fidel Ramos (1992-1997) added another U.S. $650 million loan from the United States to the Philippine foreign debt (Chant and McIlwaine 1995: 55). The deployment of overseas contract workers as a strategy for generating foreign currency to help repay the national debt continued into the 21st century. As of 2003, seven million Filipinos (10% of the Filipino population, 20% of the domestic labor force) are estimated to be working in nearly every country around the world. Current remittances from overseas contract workers through banks have reached about $7 billion U.S. (Arnold 2003; Bangko Sentro Pilipinas, 2002, in Weekley 2004: 351). Under these conditions of a disintegrating economy, rebellions and resistance movements, like liberation theology, came to be formed.
Progressive Philippine Liberation Theology
Progressive liberation theology in the Philippines stands in a complex and unclear relationship to Marxism, one more political in practice than in the literature. Practitioners employ Marxist analysis to solve social problems. They are not blindly calling for the overthrow of society through bloodshed and revolution. Rather, they engage in actively non-violent means of protest. Postmodern Marxism refers to non-dogmatic and creative Marxist theories that blossomed in the second half of the last century. As in Latin America and Africa, however, liberation theology in the Philippines is a risky enterprise. Practitioners often push beyond the limits of safety.
Philippine liberation theology acted out through the agencies of Basic Christian Communities can be divided into two theoretical camps: one finds its origins in capitalist modernization theories (e.g., capitalist integration theory), and the other is rooted in post-Marxist development theories (e.g., World System theory; Dependency theory; the Development of Underdevelopment theory). On the one side, some Philippine liberation theologians aim to reform the capitalist system from within by encouraging their constituents to become small entrepreneurs. On the other side, practitioners seek to transform the capitalist system into a new socialist economy by founding self-help...
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