Children of the sugar

Recently, my master’s thesis brought me closer to the vast haciendas of Negros. Not too far from Bacolod City lie the sprawling plantations of tall sugarcane, with tubo shooting up toward the sky in quiet surrender, planted in organized array as far as the eyes can see. In this humid summer air you can smell the gentle odor of fertilizer and sugarcane. In the far distance, wisps of smoke lazily rise from the azucareras, with the pastel blue sky as backdrop.

Spanish writer Jose Genova wrote in 1896 that Negros “will be without doubt the scene of great enterprises.” And he was right, for sugar became the top agricultural export of the Philippines, from the 1700s well up to the 1970s. Negros supplied more than half of the country’s sugar and the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909 accommodated the sale of sugar in the United States at rates above market price.

All this time, Negros to me was just like what the Old South is to America, with the antiquated estates of Virginia and South Carolina, where the fingerprints of the old gentry are faint but still visible. The island has its “Gone With The Wind” charm, and its stories can make for a Lana Del Rey song.

There is much to be said about the opulence of Negros: how it used to have the highest concentration of Cadillacs in the world, how Arabian horses pulled the carriages of the rich, how orchestras were shipped to its parties. There were actual events and there were myths, and in the shadows of history the two have been merged to amuse, annoy, or entertain.

But there is also much to be said about the blood, sweat and tears that enrich Negros soil. As strong and unbending as the sugarcane, the sacadas dot the vast landscape of these haciendas as they toil in labor like their forefathers did. They face the full blows of tiempo muerte, the season between planting and harvesting, which in this time and age seems to be longer than a few months. These days, the perils to the industry have extended far beyond the dead season.

In Bacolod, faded posters denounce Coca-Cola’s use of high fructose corn syrup. Not too long ago, the sugar farmers protested the use of the syrup, saying that its increased import has led to the decline in the price of local sugar, and eventually to losses in revenues and jobs.

Today, the boycott of Coca-Cola products in the province is evident. Bacolod’s established restaurants, cafés, and wineries have ceased all sales. A major event, the Panaad sa Negros Festival, has banned the sale of the products in the venue. We heard that anyone caught selling the stuff would be escorted out.

Nonetheless, it seems like cosmopolitan Bacolod, a city built by sugar, is showing signs that it is moving on from the glorious past of the industry. Real estate developments are slowly easing out sugarcane plantations, and the children of the sugar are slowly shedding the cloak of the industry that has both privileged and oppressed them. The old rich now sit beside new powers and new money; the offspring of former central employees now pursue careers in the arts, finance and technology.

The children of the sugar are not just the sugar barons endlessly stereotyped in our pop culture. The children of the sugar are also those whose futures were secured as a byproduct of the prosperity of the island they inhabited, even if they know nothing about tubo and its current crisis. But most of all, the children of the sugar are also the sugar farmers. They are the children not giving up on the industry just yet.

Tubo is now considered a heritage crop, and the vast fields of sugarcane proposed to become heritage sites. I am in some ways a child of the sugar, an offspring of Negros. But I wonder how many of us have even a small idea about the mechanics of the industry that has fed us, or if we are even aware of the hard labor of those still in the farms. If we become enlightened of this interdependence and our responsibility to other children of the sugar, wouldn’t that be sweet for us all?
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