Rosario, Cavite
A basic mass integration with one fishing community facing the harmful effects of dredging and reclamation.
Hello, dear friends and readers.
I’m reflecting on my weekend in Cavite with YACAP, in which I joined members of the alliance integrating with a fishing community. The purpose of the trip was to learn about the community’s lives amidst climate disasters and developmental threats, to immerse ourselves in their struggle and unify ourselves with their resistance.
For those of us who were spending the night in the community, we were told to expect poor living conditions. Despite this, I was still shocked when I witnessed the community.
To get to the coastline, we walked through a typical Filipino neighborhood: concrete roads, gated houses, and children playing outside. At the end of the road where the last house stood, the path opened up to a black sand beach. The farther we walked down the beach, the more clear the difference was between this community and the neighborhood we were just in. For one, there were no roads, just sand mixed with rocks and all manner of trash. Another thing was the smell: ocean breeze and waste.
As we trailed through the area, we entered a narrower path hugged by walls of wood, scrap metal, and flowery shrubs. To our left, we were ushered into a kubo with a roof of patched corrugated metal and walls of old bed springs. This was a detail that stuck with me long after the weekend. What used to be a bed now was a wall that one could see through.
Flies tickled our legs as we waited inside the kubo to meet a few members of the community. One of them was ‘Nay (Mother) Carmen, a warm and boisterous woman. She ushered us into her home to put down our things and declared to the community members, “Mga bisita ko!” (Here are my visitors!) Then we were brought to the beach, where we watched the sky turn pink at sunset and listened to community organizers describe the current struggle.
We learned how their fishing catches had been slashed by 80% due to ongoing dredging operations, in which foreign-backed vessels dig and carry away sand from the bottom of the ocean for reclamation projects and industrial development. Before the dredging started in 2021, their catch was bountiful, practically overflowing with fish. After two years, however, many fishermen have been forced to sell their boats and find other jobs.
Ka Aryana, an organizer from Pamalakaya, said that there were over 300,000 fisherfolk in Cavite whose livelihoods and homes were being affected by the dredging. The community not only faces the harm of dredging, but numerous development projects in the pipeline which threatened to relocate them from their home. One such project is a remnant from the Duterte administration’s Build Build Build program, a plan to create a 32 kilometer bridge over Manila Bay, from Bataan to Cavite. Should it be completed, this would be the longest bridge in the Philippines.
The community already had so little. Surviving on the scraps of society, they made a home for themselves by the coastline and stewarded the sea. Whether fisherman, producer, mother or child, these people loved the ocean. Imagining their forced relocation for the sake of “development” made me sick.
Years from now, perhaps Filipinos will look back and cite the Bataan-Cavite Interlink bridge as a sign of progress, much like a different bridge from a different era: Ferdinand Marcos’ San Juanico bridge – the name of which inspired a torture method during Martial Law.
How many backs have bent and broken for these bridges? How many communities have been erased to erect condominiums and foreign high-rises? Millionaires displace people to create infrastructure that most cannot afford. Where do the displaced go? Where can they go?
‘Nay Carmen cooked for all 15 of us that evening, a hearty dinner of shrimp, mussels, and fish. With paper plates piled with rice and seafood, none of us went hungry. Despite having little, ‘Nay Carmen joyfully shared what she had with us.
By the end of our day-and-a-half stay, I gave ‘Nay Carmen some Laksa, my favorite noodles from Singapore. She was so touched she said “I love you!” I said the same.
There is not much else to say that hasn’t already been said. Knowing what we know about fishing communities in Cavite, what do we do? We organize. We create self-reliant communities. We fight the foreign and State powers that seek to displace our environmental stewards and erase our ways of life. What we must do is the same everywhere, in every community we unite with.