“Your heart will tell you that you can’t let it go and that you have to challenge the oppressor.” Pura Velasco, Toronto Star, April 3, 2009
Her face dominated the front page of the Toronto Star on April 3, 2009 as she expressed her jubilation over the announcement that the Ontario Government is going to introduce legislation to curb the exploitation of foreign caregivers.
The issue had been the subject of investigations for several months by the Toronto Star and findings show blatant abuses of some recruitment agencies that amount to slavery and human trafficking of mostly Filipino caregivers who hope for a better life here in Canada.
The task that Pura Velasco has undertaken is not an easy one. This diminutive dynamo of tireless energy has been at the forefront of these issues for almost three decades. She is not alone in this fight. Individuals and groups have worked, sometimes on their own and now and then, together to push for changes in government policies not only for caregivers but also for all migrant workers. Little victories have been gained along the way like the Live In Caregiver Program wherein the right to apply for permanent residence is granted at the end of the two-year contract with employers.
But this program has been taken advantage of by unscrupulous recruiters, who charge thousands of dollars from applicants with the promise of jobs that were later on found to be non-existent,
Pura Velasco is right when she said that this is oppression. But where did the oppression originate? We have to look at our history as a people to trace the roots of this oppression.
To begin with – what is oppression? Nora Angeles of the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative clinic led the discussion held two weeks ago on the subject in an – in service education for interpreters for women victims of domestic violence. Participants in the discussion agreed that oppression is a form of control, an assertion of power over the weak and the vulnerable. Individuals or groups can exert oppression.
Oppression of Filipinos started in 1565 with the establishment of the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines. That oppression was supposed to have ended in 1898, after 333 years of fighting for freedom from those first colonists. But that was such a short-lived victory.
A close inspection of the records of our history would show that oppression did not occur only between the colonizers and the colonized. There was also oppression between the groups of Filipino leaders. In a dissertation by Renato Constantino (Roots of Subservience, Graphic, June 18, 1969) he examined how the plebeians led by Andres Bonifacio were overcome by the ilustrados led by Emilio Aguinaldo. This was the oppression of the poor and uneducated by the rich and schooled.
The conquest of the Philippines by the Americans and the ushering in of another almost half a century of foreign domination perpetrated not only the oppression by another nation but by the well-to-do Filipinos who owned vast tracts of lands – the hacienderos who continued the feudalistic practices started during the Spanish Regime. To this day, these landlords have economic, political and social control over those people who work in their sugar, rice and coconut plantations.
Believing that education is a road to escape from oppression, parents slave themselves and sell whatever little property they have to send their children to school. But the Philippines do not have a job market that can utilize the thousands of university graduates it produces every year. So these highly educated people have become the countries most important export. Here are the children of oppressed parents who try to free their children from the oppression they suffer from, through education, and become victims of oppression themselves when they cannot find employment to use the skills they have gained.
Why can the Philippines not generate industries and employment to utilize the skills of its people? It cannot use small land areas and large population as an excuse. Japan is also a small country with a large population but is a very progressive nation. Several other nations in Asia are becoming powers in the world to be reckoned with but the Philippines is not one of them. The Filipinos seem doomed to be a country of the oppressed not directly by foreign powers but by its own leaders who, once they gain power, would use every means to remain in control at the expense of the powerless masses. Power in the Philippines is in the hands of the politicians who are support4ed by the immensely rich landowners and power brokers. These politicians got elected because of these rich supporters whom they have to repay with all kinds of privileges once they get into power. They have to keep those supporters satisfied, to remain in power. Power supported by power feeding on the sweat, labour and even blood of the oppressed.
Most of us who are outside the Philippines are escapees from that oppression, mostly economic, others political. We have not really completely freed ourselves from oppression. Becoming victims of discrimination is a form of oppression. Being underemployed is oppression. We feel powerless in trying to overcome these barriers. But we find that there are some more unfortunate than we. We see these victims of their dreams for a better life taken advantage of, by false promises. What is even sadder is the rumour (or is it reality) that some of the opportunists are among us.
Filipinos do not have a monopoly of oppression. Oppression is everywhere, wherever there are rich and poor, educated and uneducated, strong and weak. There is also oppression based on sexual orientation. One kind of oppression that has recently been the subject of much attention, as it should, is oppression in the family, which is often, manifested by domestic violence.
While we cannot totally get rid of oppression in this world each of us can help in minimizing it. As Cora Angeles, was able to lead the participants in the discussion I mentioned in the first part of this article, an understanding of ourselves is the key. Are we ourselves guilty of oppression? Are we as a parent an instrument of oppression in mandating what our children should take as a career, who their friends should be, what they should or should not do? Guiding our offspring in one thing, controlling them because we support them is another.
We, in one way or another have some advantage over another, as an individual or as a leader of a group. Do we use that advantage as power to control or manipulate others for our own gain, or do we use it to assist the weak or the vulnerable?
Oppression in the Philippines has been a vicious circle that seems to find no way to slow down or lessen. Where can we come in to make our concern felt or shall we just remain resigned that this is a situation that we can never change?