On the Exploitation of the Weak
Posted on Tuesday, 21 February 2017
On the Exploitation of the Weak
By
Apolinario Villalobos
Natural resources are gifts and blessings
from the Creator of the universe and as such should be properly and justly
exploited as a show of respect to the Giver. However, the problem in this world
is that, practically, the strong overruns the weak in their greedy effort to
control anything that got to do with survival. Looking back, history is a mute
witness to this desire of powerful nations such as Portugal, Spain, Holland,
England, and later, America, Russia, Germany, China, and Japan. Earlier in the
history of nations, Portugal and Spain, practically divided the world into two
hemispheres for appropriation between the two of them. Later, war was used as
an instrument for the appropriation of the weak nations among the strong ones.
Much later, with the blazed marine trails
that lead to practically all continents, strong nations overran all of them,
with America and her “Manifest Destiny” ideals, leading the pack. Her obsessive
drive was masked with a supposedly noble intention to save the “barbarian” and
“pagan” inhabitants of forcefully occupied lands from their misery of
ignorance, although, beneath it, was the desire to bleed the lands of their
natural resources, and the Philippines was among those that suffered this
harrowing fate. It should be noted that long before the Spaniards colonized the
Philippines, the early inhabitants had a healthy commercial intercourse with
other nations, aside from having their own spiritual leaning which was Mohammedan
or Islamic. The Americans did not “convert” the Filipinos into Christianity, as
when they came, the Spanish colonizers already did it….all they did was turn
the face of the Catholic inhabitants towards Protestantism.
If our forefathers fought for the
preservation of our nation’s patrimonial rights, today, the Philippine
government practically offers it to the highest bidders- whoever they are, if
foreigner, the better because of their dollar. The Philippine Constitution
meanwhile haplessly and practically turned into a doormat, as provisions after
provisions are changed to fit the desires of foreign investors. The apex of
irresponsibility was the passing of a law authored by Gloria Arroyo when she
was yet a senator, allowing foreigners to own the 100% rights over claimed land
intended for mining…this is the root cause of the scandalous mining incidents
in the country that to date, have even claimed lives.
The Philippine Mining Law passed in 1995 is
a glaring example of how lawmakers can be so naïve to the far-reaching effects
of nature-related ventures in the country. They do not seem to understand what
displacement, pollution, cultural debacle, immorality, and corruption mean. All
that they perceive are the dollar and peso, as well as, the glitter of gold…gains
that find their way to the pocket of the corrupt government officials instead
of the inhabitants of the affected lands. From a national point of view,
practically, no significant benefit has ever been “felt”, “observed”, or
“enjoyed”, by the citizens, in case the gains have reached the national coffer.
Tangible projects on which these gains are spent, are hideously pockmarked with
commissions at different levels of transaction….so, what benefit are the greedy
talking about?
Soil erosion and flood are the effect of
the careless exploitation of natural resources while on the part of the
inhabitants, forced displacements that lead to their migration to slums of
urban areas where they eventually succumb to the pummeling of poverty, are the
dismal disheartening results, made more grievous by the wearing down of their
cultural values. Many girls and boys turn to prostitution to help eke out a
living for their starving families. Families live on sidewalks and “mobile
homes” – the pushcart which is the most practical way to carry around collected
junks from garbage dumps. Fathers who turned “barkers” in jeepney terminals are
lured into easy money by big time drug pushers, dangled temptation that they
bit, for which they paid with their life.
Catholic bishops and human rights advocates
kuno wonder how and why the above-mentioned Filipinos became bad, to the extent
of being killed due to their involvement in drug trafficking. These hypocrites
are obviously short-sighted because what they see are just the slums where the
unfortunate victims live. They fail or refuse to look beyond the slums, so that
they will be able to perceive where they came from….and, what made them endure
the hellish life in the city!
Discussion