Hi Keith, >>I used to visit friends in Negros in the mid-80's >>and saw how they were trying to cope with the >>changed situation. It was so bad that the Maoist >>New People's Army (NPA) were making inroads into >>the Provincial Capital, Bacolod City. I had friends >>who had sugar farms, and a couple of them were >>involved in armed encounters with the NPA. We used >>to go around Bacolod City packing .45's in a pickup >>truck with 2 or 3 bodyguards armed with M-16's >>sitting in the bed for backup. It was really tense >>then.
>I also had to do that, but I wasn't quite sure just >who it was that should be shot, probably not the NPA. The NPA is the armed group of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), currently led by Jose Maria Sison who is in the Netherlands now. The CPP is an offshoot of the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) which they broke off from in the 60's in a bitter and messy split. That's why I was tense whenever I visited Negros then. :-) My grandfather, Vicente Lava, Sr., studied in New York University in the early 1900's, getting his Ph.D. in Chemistry there. He also joined the Communist Party of America. Upon his return to the Philippines, the PKP was set up and he was one of the earliest Party General Secretaries. During the Japanese Occupation in WWII, their armed group, the HUKBALAHAP (Huks for short) composed of peasants, workers, and intellectuals, controlled large portions of the island of Luzon and enforced a land reform program and the big landlords of the time couldn't visit their properties. When the American Forces returned to the Philippines, and the Cold War was already being hatched, the PKP and the Huks were obviously a nuisance and a threat to them. My Grandfather ran for Senator in 1946 and lost. A brother of his, Jesus, ran for Congressman, won, and was promptly unseated. The PKP was declared illegal and they had to go underground. Vicente died in 1947 and his brothers Jesus and Jose remained with the underground movement. Jose was captured in 1950 in Manila and was incarcerated until 1970. Jesus continued the struggle until his capture in 1964. He was released in 1974 when the PKP and the Philippine Government concluded a political settlement. Jose Maria Sison was recruited into the PKP in the early 60's at a time when the PKP was linking up with the Indonesians and Chinese. My Father (Vicente, Jr.) and his cousins were already involved in the movement during this time. The CPP/NPA was formed, allegedly with the assistance of Senator Benigno Aquino, the late husband of President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, who belongs to one of the biggest landowning families in the Philippines - the Cojuangcos. Aquino was assassinated at the Manila International Airport upon his return from years of exile in the US in August 1983. The split and the political settlement passed on the movement's leadership to the CPP/NPA by default. It's been more than 30 years since the CPP/NPA started and more than 70 years since the PKP was formed and we are still a colony run by a small group of families and their foreign partners. But PO just might change this. :-) >>I was there about 5 years ago and Negros is better >>than it was in the 80's. They have diversified their >>agriculture, and established more commercial and >>manufacturing enterprises. I even know of one who >>is a Fukuoka Farming advocate now. >When I was investigating this in 1983 there were >several local initiatives to get the haciendas to >diversify, including some good organics projects >that were having good results. Most of the hacienda >owners were "farming by radio", staying in the >cities and talking to the farm managers by radio, >never going there for fear of facing the workers >and the hungry, displaced locals - several owners >had had their heads removed with a bolo by then. >Fertile ground for the NPA, if not for sugar. That's exactly how it was. The NPA could be said to have been in control of the Negros countryside at the time. Much like the Huks in Central Luzon 40 years earlier. But then again, like their predecessors, they've seen their influence wane a bit since then. >>I can see them producing ethanol like they do in >>Brazil when we can no longer afford to import fossil >>fuels. >They were producing quite a lot of ethanol in 1983 >(and seriously polluting rivers in the doing). Not >any more? The island of Negros had (and I believe, still have) the highest density of sugar mills in the country. I'd say this was the major source of river pollution. The government's ethanol program, while much hyped at the time, never really got off the ground, and is now just a footnote in our country's history. We're still heavily dependent on imported petroleum. But with the rising oil prices a sustainable way to produce ethanol from sugar cane may well be economically viable at some point. Same with biodiesel from coconuts. :-) Regards. Vin Lava Manila, Philippines P.S. Vicente, Sr. patented a process to extract oil from fresh coconuts in the 30's. The Japanese offered him US$1,000,000.00 at the time for the patent but he refused it, preferring to keep the technology incountry. One of our family's plans for PO is to use this technology in a coconut producing area here. BTW, we also fooled around with gasifiers and coconut oil in the Oil Crunch of the 70's to run our trucks. But that's another story... :-) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
