May I express my dismay over what appears to be the media’s partiality against informal settlers—or “squatters,” as one popular news anchor prefers to call them. While appreciating the flawed resettlement program of the government, media generally project informal settlers as “illegal” and belligerent citizens who refuse to leave their shanties voluntarily, and make their predicament appear as an epidemic rather than as a deeply rooted social problem.
True enough, informal settlers almost always clash with the authorities during court order-backed and/or LGU-negotiated demolitions. “Professional squatters” build their houses along rivers and creeks. “Squatter communities” are the primary source of waste that causes massive flooding in the metropolis during rainy season.
Stubborn, lazy, savage, criminals, call them names, curse them, but who turned them into such “monsters”? The monopoly capitalists. The big landlords. The real estate developers. The land-grabbers. The bureaucrats. The privileged class and their minions who live off the fat of the land even as majority of the people are forced to live in makeshift shanty towns.
While government gives priority to foreign investment, it dilly-dallies in the implementation of a genuine agrarian reform program that would provide sustainable livelihood for Filipinos in the countryside. Interestingly, I have come across in social media a number of arrogant remarks regarding the issue, and it seems that they agree on one thing—informal settlers are to blame for their being poor.
But the “squatters” did not choose to be poor. In the first place, why would they choose to live in such impoverished conditions? The fact is they are victims of an unjust social system that favors the propertied class. Poverty limits their chance to get what some arrogant middle-class think is readily available to everyone—good education.
It is unfortunate that rather than benefiting from the principal purveyor of information about public affairs, the informal settlers have become the object of public scrutiny instead of sympathy.
Poor urban poor!
—DANIEL ALOC, tierra.giya@yahoo