Nava and the Sugar Industry

Rosalinda C. Mercado

International Context

• Economic Scenario• Industrial Revolution – 1780s to 1850s– Iron making, use of refined coal, machine tools– Steam powered ships and railways– Start of assembly line, factory system, mass

production of products part. Textile in England– Rural peasants uprooted from their farm and

severed ties with land to work in cities for factories as “free” workers; sell their labor power like commodity

• 19th C, the social and economic landscape if iloilo was altered by the market expansions of Europe and US as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

• With the invention of steam engine, railroads and other technologies, the textile mills of england began mass producing cheap cotton clothes which had to find market overseas if it were to be profitable.

• British Vice consul Nicolas Loney arrived in iloilo to begin career as chief agent of British and American textile firms. His chief mission was to promote chief cotton in the country and encourage the production of sugar as return ship cargo.

Hand weaving industry in iloilo

• Prior to introduction of sugar industry handweaving was the chief preoccupation of half the women in iloilo. Even the poorest houses had one or more looms in production making such as pina and sinamay.

• The handweaving industry made of simple apparatus occupied rural women whose wages in 1870s was no more than 75 cents or 1.50$ a month.

Negros plantation• The demise of handweaving strengthened the negros sugar

production with the influx of dislocated labor. • Sugar planters acquired their lands by outright purchases of small

working farms or by committing landless workers to debt bondage wherein planters would advance payment in return for the workers labor of clearing the land and binding the worker into a contract that contained clauses requiring forfeiture of land upon non-payment. The cycle of debt bondage ensures continuing supply of labor until the debt is paid off.

• The negros hacienda worker was a wage or debt slave who owned nothing more than his clothes and cooking utensils. The ilongo plantation hand was paid an inadequate daily wage which left him constantly in debt.

Role of bankers• Capitalization of the sugar industry was dependent on european-

american banks• They advance loans to the plantation owners for 12 to 15% interest

with a guarantee that the sugar produced would be delivered to the loaning firms’ warehouses for sale abroad with an additional 2% commission charge.

• In 1883, the largest american company in manila, Russel and Sturgis opened a branch in iloilo followed by other foreign firms. A british handbook in 1878 listed 42 European-American merchants and professionals in residence and 11 commercial houses or branches.

• In 1881 and 1886 seven anglo-american and one swiss firm controlled all of the port’s sugar exports and anglo-american houses controlled 1.5 million out of iloilo’s 2.2 M tons of sugar exports.

Signs of early Spanish decline and Rise of Anglo-US Powers

• 1934 Opening of manila to world trade. • Freight ships carrying cotton textile traded in Iloilo

and Negros carrying refined sugar on return cargo• Signalled the slow demise of native cloth industry –

pina, sinamay made by women via weaving in their households

• Expansion of sugar plantations and rise of sugar centrals

• Iloilo and Bacolod became internationaL port areas for ship trading

Sugar Industry• Mass production and consumption of sugar started in the 17th

C in French and English colonies in the Caribbean and African slaves work on plantations and operate sugar mills.

• Sugar mill is where they grind the sugar cane, boil the extracted syrup and crystallize into sugar.

• It is associated with extremes in class relations between millers and sugar workers/sacadas

• Sugar production carries social ramifications.• Sugar plantations created a society of rich landowners and

millers living in closed agricultural communities known as haciendas.

• Created close collaboration between native elite and foreign merchants; native elite became dependent on export of sugar and loans from banks.

Rise of Stevedores and Sacadas

• Rich fertile lands were used to satisfy requirements of international market rather than local need.

• Start of cash crop economy and dependence on banks that bankrolled the sugar industry. Sugar landlords became indebted to banks while sugar workers became indebted to landlords in a never ending cycle of debt bondage and peonage.

• Money became the all important form of exchange undermining bayanihan and barter exchange

Beginnings of Imperial Expansion

• Entrenchment of native elite in power, who in collaboration with foreign capitalists ensure perpetuation of the latter without their visible presence.

• Banking and finance became an invisible but tangible reality manipulating how economy would be arranged

• Social stratification became more pronounced. Sugar furthered social ramifications and widened gap of rich and poor.

• Bottom end of the social rung – sacadas and stevedores condemned to a cycle of poverty, misery, insecurity and hand-to-mouth existence,

Rise of Plantations

• Foreign powers dominated export-import trade while chinese traders dominated retail and interisland trade and wholesale economy

• Economy became beholden to the ups and downs of the world market.

• Sugar was a product that can be cultivated everywhere hence not a stable export product which true enough fell on the world market due to oversupply.

Effects of Sugar production

• Decreased rice production in Iloilo after demise of handicrafts; workers would either become stevedores or sacadas.

• Meanwhile negros occidental’s former rice haciendas with its tenant-farmers were converted to sugar plantations

• Creation of a class of landless, migrant workers dependent on sugar production for a living; sold their labor power and created milling and industrial towns; severed from families and from natural relation to the land which were slowly becoming concentrated in the hands of the few through extra legal means, outright landgrabbing or debt bondage forcing them to sell their lands.

Situationer in Iloilo City• Iloilo became the warehouse of sugar

transported by lorchas or sailboats from Negros Occidental. Stevedores would move sugar from the sugar mills and centrals to the sailboats then pile them up to the warehouses for a few months until completion of harvest, then load them to the foreign freighters bound for America, Europe and China. They were paid per piece, out of which a commission is deducted to pay for the cabecilla (labor contractors) and the cabo (foremen).

Situationer in Iloilo• Stevedores were organized like work-gangs

chosen from among those who wait at the dock every morning.

Technological Improvements that led to the demise of Iloilo port

• 1913-1932 saw the rapid expansion of sugar for export• Centrifugal mills or sugar centrals with more than 1K

workers replaced the smaller sugar mills; by 1914-1927, some 820 steam mills were replaces by 17 centrals

• Centrals facilitated rapid unionization as workers got more concentrated. The centrals spawned mills in the heart of the sugar district outside the control of sugar planters. Some conflict ensued between sugar planters and sugar millers (which was exploited by the trade union movement).

• Introduction of tug-and-lighter stevedoring made it possible to load ships direct from Negros coasts, also called direct off-shore loading. Tugboats pull lighters loaded with sugar to coastline; lighters carry the load of sugar to freighters

• But it was the increasing militancy of unions that gave reason for sugar exporters to abandon iloilo as port of entry and move over to negros occ harbor

• The technological changes at the turn of the 20th c shaped the life of stevedores.

• Lorcha sailcrafts each carrying 300 to 400 bags were the main mode of ferrying sugar from negros to Iloilo.

• With the establishment of the Visayan Stevedore Transportation Co or VISTRANCO in iloilo in 1920, it employed the more economical tug-and-lighter system in which steam and later diesel run tugboats towed a string of steel-hulled lighters carrying thousands of sugar bags across negros to iloilo.

• The tug-and-lighter system increased the peak of labor demand and amplified the scale of work gang organizations. Coupled with te introduction of modern ocean going vessels, modern technology enabled off-shore loading along the negros coast.

• Hand in hand with maritime technological changes came the introduction of the sugar centrals employing over a thousand workers and the rise of contractual sugar workers known as sacadas.

Jose Nava

• Fourth son (of 13 children, 10 boys 3 girls) of Mariano Nava y Legaspi of Manila and Estefana Nunal y Carrera of Iloilo city.

• Born on july 31, 1891.• Nationally and internationally famous rifle and pistol expert• Fond of painting, sculpture, writing poetry, plays, operetas

and literature.• At 19 he was considered one of the best actors and singers

in Spanish and the vernaculars.• As a director and dramatist he was second to none during

the golden era of the visayan literature.• He had a collection before the war of medals and trophies

for his paintings and sculptural works.

• From childhood he showed interest in vaudeville group called Progreso Infantil for boys and girls aged 6 to 14. at age 16 he became a member of the Sociedad Lirico-Dramatica and performed in Spanish zarzuelas. He also performed in an English comedy and when he returned in Iloilo from manila in 1914 became one of the principal actors of Valente Cristobal’s theatrical group. He went to Negros on tours.

• His canon include 10 works: Si Luding sarswela in 3 acts, 1912; Si Datu Palaw, sarswela in 3 acts, 1912; Carnaval, one act; Anak Sang Yawa, drama in 3 ac ts; Ang Kulinta nga Saway, drama in two acts; Pasion ni Cristo, drama in 3 acts; Buhi Nga Bangkay6, drama in two acts; Dungug Ka Gugma, radio play; Kulintas Nga Mutya, opera in four acts.

• In 1907, at the age of 16, he led more than one thousand students against the race discrimination of an American teacher who insulted by and action a Filipino student. Nava protested and declared a strike which lasted for three days and was settled in the Court of First Instance of Iloilo thru the intervention of an American, Judge Bates, and after the offender promised not to speak again against Filipino people as a race. The teacher was suspended as demanded by Nava.

• 1915 – began journalistic venture as reporter of a loyal Spanish newspaper “El Tiempo”

• As a newspaperman he sometimes edited 5 daily newspapers, 3 in Spanish, one in English and one in Visayan.

• He published “La Prensa”, “Prensa Libre” “Liberator”, “Kirab”. He was called by Free Press “the fighting editor”

Nava as Labor Leader

• In 1917, reuniting with childhood friend Vicente Ibernas, they organized the first labor organization in Iloilo, the Union Obrera de Iloilo. His becoming a labor reader was providential and accidental. It started when a man with a bandage over one eye came into his office in 1928 sought his help. The man lost the sight of one eye due to accident from work. Nava helped him claim compensation from work from Vistranco. The news spread fast among the other workers. Thus on July 31, 1928 a group of workers from the district of Lapus petitioned Nava to organize a labor union. The Federacion Obrera de Filipinas was born.