JEEPNEYS AND REVOLUTIONS

Jeepneys, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, best represent the Filipinos’ on-the-spot survival instincts conditioned by centuries of desperate situations. Lest we forget, the “people” in People Power are the millions who face the violence of hunger every day, those who barely get the minimum wage. They are the “bakya” crowd, the “masa,” the “ochlos” in the Gospel of Mark. The late Luis Beltran, popular radio political commentator, called them “bubwit.” These are the millions who are underpaid, who are overworked, and who will never get a bank loan approved for a small house, a second-hand car, and yes, a 1.6 million electric jeepney!

These are the masses who patronize the 600,000+ drivers who drive over 200,000 jeepneys throughout the country every single day. Yet, these are the masses who overthrew Marcos and “Erap.” According to Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, and Reynaldo Ileto, the “Revolt of the Masses” that overthrew Spain was exactly that—a revolt of the masses!

“No uprising fails. Each one is a step in the right direction.” Ileto memorializes this famous saying of peasant leader Salud Algabre in his Pasyon and Revolution. Algabre was one of the leaders of the anti-American Sakdal uprising in 1935. For me, what Salud Algabre ultimately does with that short yet profound statement is memorialize all those unnamed legions of freedom fighters that have been victimized by the violence of institutionalized forgetting. These include the indigenous communities of Igorots and Lumads, forcibly driven out of their ancestral domain, in the name of development, that now find themselves displaced in their own homeland. These include rural “messiahs,” like Hermano Pule and Macario Sakay, who led anti-colonial movements against Spain and America yet are marked as bandits and thieves in Filipino and American history books. (Incidentally, if you know your Greek, the “lestes”—rebels or freedom fighters—crucified with Jesus are called bandits and thieves in the English translations.)

And these would include jeepney riders—farmers, fisher-folk, students, women, those whose only hope is God—collectively struggling to dismantle structures of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systemic violence in all its forms.

Since the late 40s, jeepneys have been integral to the lives of many Filipinos who are not full participants in the economic system. Albert Ravenholt’s case study notes that jeepneys “relate so intimately to the daily life of Filipinos throughout the archipelago” yet government and financial institutions do not provide support of any kind to their manufacture and/or sale. Jeepneys are the masses’ response to the ravages of war.  They are the most concrete expressions of a people's capacity to beat swords into plowshares. Unfortunately, the Philippine Government has basically left public mass transportation systems in the hands of the private sector. Jeepneys, tricycles, pedicabs are the masses’ response to the government’s impotence and indifference.

Why is it that there’s practically no traffic in Metro Manila during Holy Week? Because public roads are free of private vehicles that cause all the traffic in the Metropolis. Heck, 80-90% of public roads are used by private vehicles, most of which have one passenger. Why was there heavy traffic during the October 16-17 Nationwide Strike against the jeepney phaseout? Again, because jeepneys do not cause traffic. Private vehicles do. And everyone in the LTO, DOTC, and LTFRB know this as true.

Raveholt continues, without establishment support, manufacturers, which are usually family operations, work on the kumpadre/kumadre system and seal deals with a handshake and palabra de honor. Young people who learn how to drive on jeepneys see jeepney driving as the best option for livelihood, given their very limited opportunities to find work elsewhere. With no credit schemes available from banks, these young Filipinos have no choice but to approach private money lenders who eventually, because of exorbitant interest rates, get to own the jeepneys themselves. Many work as OFWs and, after saving enough, come home to get their own jeepneys.

Ravenholt notes: “Jeepney drivers are so influential as molders of public opinion that successive attempts seeking to bar them from Manila’s main streets have been thwarted…In the twenty years or so that I have been involved in social activism in the Philippines, I have observed that the only thing that can paralyze the country’s business and government infrastructure, literally bringing everything to a halt is a jeepney strike.” 

No. Actually, there are two: a jeepney strike and a “People Power” uprising from the masses that ride jeepneys.

No other public vehicle is better equipped to navigate the Philippines’ narrow and dimly lit streets at night. No other person is better equipped to drive a jeepney at night than a Filipino. The people’s revolt that overthrew the US-supported Marcos dictatorship in 1986 began and ended at night. I was there, with about two million other folks, most of whom ride jeepneys.  Clifford Geertz reminds us: “Some of the greatest revolutions occur in the dark.”

#NoToJeepneyPhaseout