Justice’s two voices

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Most people I talked with appreciated Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle’s impassioned critique of the pork barrel scam and his low-key presence at the Aug. 26 Luneta rally. His actions raise once again the question of how the Catholic Church should address the problems facing people in society today, especially the problems of social justice. To whom should it speak? What response should it ask? To whom should we all speak and with whom should we work?

Traditionally the Church has responded to injustice in two ways. In the first, the road more traveled, the Church describes the problem it wishes to solve, and then calls on the heads of state, the rich and the powerful, to solve the problem. The approach presumes that change in society comes from the top and that the powerful can solve the problems. The second approach has been taken by Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and many other Church leaders. They realize basic change in society regularly involves a confrontation between the powerful and the powerless. And they choose to speak in the name of the victims, and have the sufferings of the poor and the powerless front and center in their minds. They end by calling on all men and women of good will to oppose the unjust ways of the powerful.

The first approach may have worked in the Middle Ages, when the popes had real power over kings and emperors, and they in turn had near total power over their subjects. But the approach hardly works now: the people of the world have become democrats in their hearts, even if their governments are still authoritarian.

The first approach reechoes the more conservative priestly tradition of the Old Testament; the Cardinal Sin-Archbishop Romero approach continues the prophetic tradition. The second is effective when the Church not only speaks out for the good of the ordinary people but also involves the people in solving the problem. The Church gives a voice to those who are voiceless and calls on the people to take part in the solution. The prophetic voice arises from the suffering heart of the poor, and engages the poor in working out a solution.

This discussion so far is somewhat theoretical. Luckily we have an example of how the two approaches might work out in practice. This example is found in Pope Paul VI’s visit to Tondo in November 1970.

The pope arrived at the Don Bosco school in Barrio Magsaysay on a Sunday afternoon, and almost immediately gave a rather routine greeting and a talk on moral guidance to the mostly urban crowds gathered on the soccer field there. He spoke in Latin, which was translated by a young Salesian priest. The speech, written by the Vatican Curia, was, in general outline, the speech he delivered in the urban poor areas he visited around the world. It was polite. It didn’t speak of the land problem that raged in Tondo. Toward the end of the speech the pope asked the president to help the poor people, little realizing the president was the cause of the land problem.

Chances are the pope didn’t know of the problem. It was created by President Ferdinand Marcos’ desire to evict 180,000 poor people from Tondo to turn the area into an upscale housing and business center. The poor opposed the plan at a very visceral level. The poor people of the Zone One Tondo Organization were there in big numbers in the hope of hearing the pope support their rights to land tenure security.

Then the pope walked through the muddy streets of Tondo—there had just been a major typhoon—to the run-down shack of a poor family. He stayed there longer than expected and, when he returned to Don Bosco, he seemed stunned by the poverty he had seen. He didn’t speak to the officials and priests around him, but held tightly to the hand of a Franciscan Missionary of Mary sister who was just a few feet from me. He looked sad as if someone had died. He looked around and seemed to see the poor people in the soccer field for the first time.

I thought, maybe the poor family he visited had explained the land problem to him. I thought, he may have regretted the inadequacy of his earlier words. Maybe, I thought, he will call for the microphone and speak from his heart about the poverty he had seen and demand that the president settle the problem in a fair and just manner. I thought we might see a pope speak for justice from his heart, with compassion and righteous anger and with all the power of his office.

As everyone knows the pope didn’t. If he had, the history of our Church would be different. Maybe our secular history would also be very different.

Pope Paul’s talk was a good example of the first way the Church has used to approach problems of injustice. His extempore speech would have been an example of the second manner of approach.

* * *

When actor Martin Sheen was here in 1997 to help promote better housing for the poor, he was interviewed by Dong Puno on TV. Puno began by asking Sheen why he was in Manila. Sheen said, “Because I am a Catholic.” He explained that he had been raised to believe that as a Catholic his job in the world was to help the poor and lessen injustice. When he was asked to come to Manila to help, he said he couldn’t refuse.

We may believe we are not qualified to speak about injustice, but then we should read again the early chapters of the Book of Exodus.

Moses said to God when asked to go to the Pharaoh and speak for the Hebrews: “If you please, Lord, I have never been eloquent…. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

God answered: “Who gives one man speech and makes another deaf and dumb… It is I who will assist you in speaking and will teach you all to say.” (Exodus 4:10-12)

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].

David Balondo of Tondo (1922-1988)

Commentary : David Balondo of Tondo (1922-1988)

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: August 25, 2008

MANILA, Philippines - Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino led an army of rich and poor heroes who were willing to give their lives for their people during the night of martial law. One of the lesser known persons was David Balondo of Tondo who was once a guerrilla in Samar against the Japanese, once a fisherman in Isla Puting Bato, Tondo and for a long time the vice president of the Zone One Tondo Organization (Zoto).

Twenty years ago when he was 66, Balondo was shot dead by young radicals in front of his new house in the Dagat-Dagatan Relocation Area of Navotas. It was a mindless decision to kill the old man. His wife heard noises in the street; as she ran out expecting trouble she heard shots, and then she found her husband on the ground dying of wounds to his head. Two young gunmen stood around and announced they were NPA. They looked nervously at the old woman and her dying husband and then ran off.

From the 1960s on, Balondo led the people's efforts to resist government attempts to throw them off the Tondo Foreshore land. In the end the people succeeded. The original government plan called for all 30,000 families in the Foreshore area to be relocated to some far off place like Sapang Palay. The Tondo land was planned to be a commercial, up-scale housing area and support zone for the new international container terminal. Instead, after a long struggle with the help of the World Bank and the German government, only 10,000 families had to move and these were relocated only a few kilometers north to Navotas; the other 20,000 families had their land upgraded and titled.

It didnít come easily. Hundreds of Zoto people went to jail; a number were tortured, including ìTriningî Herrera, the Zoto president. Balondo was arrested five times. Despite all this they struggled through the 1970s and won.

In Dagat-Dagatan they received a 96-sq m lot with toilet, light, water and a cement platform for their house. They paid P1 per sq m each month for 25 years and then they owned the land. Most importantly, they were only five minutes from their jobs. One day in Dagat-Dagatan I asked a Zoto woman leader how she liked her new house. ìIím in Paradise,î she told me.

Balondo never had the chance to grow old peacefully, with time to sit around chatting with the other old men and women and watch the children playing in the street, as the Prophet Zechariah promised the faithful would do one day in the future. (Zechariah 8:4-5)

He was happy in his new home in Dagat-Dagatan. I doubt if anyone now remembers the specific incident that caused the assassination, and it doesnít matteróhe didnít deserve to die like that. Nor did he deserve the movie made of his life, starring Ramon Revilla. It made Balondo a swashbuckling action star with a special agimat. His devout Methodist wife became a starlet in a miniskirt. Instead, he deserves the gratitude and respect of people because of his contribution to solving the problems of the poor in peaceful ways.

There were leftist influences on Zoto as there were on nearly all social action groups in those days, but Balondo was more interested in the concrete issues of the poor more than ideology. He was a simple man who talked slowly as if words themselves were very valuable. He always looked worn out and weary.

One night at a Mass said by the late Archbishop Mariano Gaviola, I was with the German government official in charge of overseas funding. We were in the back of a huge crowd. Balondo came over to us and the three of us talked while the bishop gave his homily. Later the German said to me, “He was like Job.” That night Balondo even had boils on his face as Job had.

He was Protestant and the most honest of all the people involved in Zoto, including the other officers, the organizers and the priests and Protestant ministers who helped the organization, the late Jesuit Fr. Joe Blanco, who was part of the Zoto organizing team for several months, once said.

Everything about the long struggle of the Tondo people, except the prison and torture, has lessons for today. People must always struggle together for what they consider their vital necessities in life. There is no other way. The government of President Ferdinand Marcos realized after years of hostility to Zoto that it was easier and more productive to negotiate with peopleís groups than to insist on fighting them. In the final years of the 1970s the government did negotiate and compromise. The value of genuine negotiation still has to be learned by many in government today.

Finally the World Bank and the German government chose the good of the poor of Tondo and not the plans of government as their priority. They told the martial law government that they would fund the development of the container terminal and harbor but only if the people were treated fairly. Such a stand on conviction is seldom seen these days.

Every group needs courage; the poor need the determination of a David Balondo to struggle. The government needs courage to slow down and negotiate: the officials who do so will be criticized by hard-liners inside and outside government. Finally the multinational and national donors need courage to prioritize the good of the poor, since the good results of such choices often take years to become visible.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

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