Terrain and weather

The Sona is over but the rains and floods are just starting. From a special report card day with a lot of clapping and cheering, it is back to the streets – and the streets are very wet.

I used to remember as a kid that we had longer rain months 70 years ago versus today. It’s either the La Niña phenomenon was occurring quite often then, or global warming has generally shortened the annual periods of rain. Because of that memory in the 50s and 60s, I am less worried about the frequent rains than I am with the longer hot months.

Pagasa today would describe our climate as 6 months wet and six months dry. This ratio is not at all when I remember, and not also how our climate was described decades before. Maybe Wikipedia has a better description that Pagasa, maybe because it can trace global climate records further back in time. Wikipedia claims we have three seasons instead of two, and I think I understand and accept why.

The three seasons are: a hot dry season from March to May, a rainy season from June to November, and a cool dry season from December to February. If I recall correctly, a powerful typhoon visited my hometown one early December in 1951 and devastated Bacolod City among other cities and towns in Central Visayas. The whole roof was blown away and we had to abandon that house.

I do not need to recall the names of other typhoons that hit the Philippines on Decembers, Januarys and Februarys. That means the cool dry season described by Wikipedia is too often visited by not only rain but strong typhoons. Perhaps, because of my later advocacy against poverty, I had personally participated in relief and rehabilitation work when typhoons hit from December to February (mostly in the Visayas and Mindanao).

In historical warfare, terrain and weather are the most critical factors. They are matters of life and death that can cause victories or great defeats. But they remain critical factors in our daily lives as Filipinos as well. Between El Niño and La Niña and the pattern of typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions we experience, I am puzzled why our national and local governance do not give terrain and weather the importance they hold over our daily lives.

It is no surprise, then, that we go through the same consequences of disasters that are already part of our national cycle. If we do not put terrain and weather front and center in our daily and annual planning, we are going to get hurt – not the terrain and weather. And it is the poor among us, many more than the official numbers used by the government, that suffer the most.

Since this pattern has been happening since our independence from the USA, the cumulative damage to lives, property, and our way of life is shocking. More than that, it is almost criminal negligence by both national and local governments. Most actions have been reactive, ending up as band aid solutions to recurring threats. I have seen many sea walls put up over the last several decades, standing there as evidence of what appears to be more than just short-term interventions.

It is sad to say but I just have to, not as a way of putting blame on the elite, that the rulers of the country, including the government, never cared enough for the poor majority. The evidence is how we treat the victims of disaster, not just after a calamity, but thereafter as well.

Landlessness was a root problem because of this elitist consciousness in society, as though there was no recognition and appreciation of a divine plan that created a sacred relationship between man and land. For such a God-fearing people, or so claimed by many, a fundamental mandate of survival was belittled, as though the vast majority without wealth or influence can live like birds on a tree or fish in the water.

Man is a mammal, and from a scientific point of view, man is also a mammal that is part of the animal kingdom of the species Homo sapiens. In other words, man needs land and cannot exist without that land as part of his environment. He needs water and air, too, of course, but so far, it is his need for land to survive and develop as a human being that is most threatened, restricted, or denied.

The Filipino poor in my lifetime, or since operational independence in 1946, has been so undervalued that control and free use of land had been denied him. Most Filipinos were squatters, unable to get titles to land where their own ancestors had been born, lived, tilled, and died for centuries. A document overtook the value of human beings, disregarded their natural rights to their ancestral lands, because others a century or more later titled lands they never originally possessed.

As a result of modernization, when those with land titles began to find greater value as real estate rather than producers of agricultural products, millions of Filipinos were restricted or evicted from lands where they and their ancestors had lived. Displaced Filipinos had to go to seashores that stayed valueless, to upland slopes where the rich had no interest, and riverbanks and canals deemed unbuildable areas.

Then came the storms, the floods, the droughts, the earthquakes, and the volcanic eruptions. Those living along seashores and upland slopes were forced by hunger to move to urbanized areas in town centers and cities where they could beg or find menial work. Because of the terrain and the climate, plus the shortsightedness of greedy businessmen and corrupt government officials, Metro Manila and similar cities absorbed refugees from calamities and witnessed slums grow.

We pay for disregarding natural and social laws, for violating our higher cultural values and norms, succumbing to personal interests over the common good.

Yes, the Sona is over and Typhoon Carina just jolted us back to reality.