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OLDER
generations of Manileños remember when Pandacan was the
boondocks.
San
Andres Bukid a mere generation or so ago still hosted
rice paddies and vegetable gardens, hence its rustic
place-name. Meanwhile, Paco referred to the succulent
plants that once thrived in the area’s marshes. Pandacan
lay further to the east of the two districts whose names
translate to English as “St. Andrew in the field” and
“fern.”
Pandacan,
of course, has not changed its geodetic bearings. It is
still there, but a far cry from what it was in the late
1940s and 1950s when the country’s oil companies decided
to make it the common site of their storage facilities.
At the
time, Pandacan was swampy scrubland where the most
valuable produce were kangkong for impoverished cityfolk
and zacate for similarly poor draught animals,
including water buffalos and calesa ponies. The
section of the Pasig River that passed through Pandacan
was wide and deep—ideal for arrastre or the
storage and transshipment of logistics.
This was
why even before the oil companies decided to build their
depot in Pandacan, the area was already hosting the
warehouses of many of the country’s biggest trading
companies.
Oceangoing and interisland ships dropped anchor in
Manila Bay. They disgorged their cargo onto flat-bottom
guevarras. These barges and tankers were then
pulled or pushed up the Pasig by tugboats, which
delivered them to the warehouses and factories that once
teemed on the river’s banks from Del Pan, San Nicolas
and Intramuros on through Paco and Pandacan, and even
further upriver to Mandaluyong, Pasig and Taguig.
Paved
roads and highways were still few and far between at the
time. The precursor of Edsa, Highway 54, was a two-lane
blacktop even though it was already the main east-west
artery of what was then called Greater Manila Area. The
Pasig river and its numerous tributaries were the most
economical routes for transporting everything from
foodstuffs and manufacturing components to fuel in the
nation’s capital and beyond
When
city authorities classified Pandacan as an industrial
zone, they were merely recognizing the fact that the
area already contained many warehouses and factories—and
comparatively few residential structures.
The zone
classification was made at a time when the Philippines
seemed well on its way to industrialization as the
country’s landed gentry attempted to transform
themselves into captains of heavy industry and masters
of light manufacture. Those were promising times,
indeed.
By the
1970s and 1980s, however, the dream of industrialization
was turning into a nightmare as Filipino enterprises
began to fold to the competition posed by cheap imports
and smuggled contraband—and, worse, to the unrelenting
pressure of extortionists disguised as government
officials.
Wholly
owned Filipino companies used to produce everything from
shoes to household appliances; at least two even tried
to build cars from mostly local components. Still, what
Marxists call the national bourgeoisie could not make a
go of their bid to turn the
Philippines
into an industrial—or even an industrializing—economy.
As
Filipinos gave up the ghost of industrialization, the
once vibrant traffic of goods and supplies on the
Pasig slowed down. It did not take too long for the pace of
commerce on the river to turn as sluggish as its
waters—befouled by untreated industrial effluents and,
more so, household refuse and raw sewage.
One by
one, the warehouses and factories on the riverbank were
forced to shut down. Meanwhile, squatters—er, informal
settlers—invaded the city and found shelter in the
shuttered or abandoned industrial plants. Over time, all
evidence of the warehouses and factories that once lined
both sides of the Pasig disappeared.
All that
remained of
Manila’s
bid to become an industrial hub is the 36-hectare oil
depot in Pandacan. Industrialized or no, the country
still needed the gasoline, diesel and other oil products
stored and transshipped through Pandacan. In the
meantime, the shanties that the first migrants built
evolved into more permanent structures as the former
squatters—er, informal settlers—themselves experienced a
measure of prosperity.
From a
pioneering locator in what was once an industrial zone,
the oil depot soon found itself like Gulliver amid a sea
of Lilliputians, a throwback to a bygone era of national
economic vision and, ultimately, frustration.
Unfortunately for the giant, the midgets surrounding it
have what it was in short supply of—the votes that could
swing elections for city officials.
Then
there is the huge money-making potential of the 36
hectares that the oil depot now occupies and will soon
have to vacate—with not a single centavo in compensation
from the state, as stipulated in a recent Supreme Court
ruling.
At a
time when mind-boggling fortunes are being made in the
construction of huge shopping malls and upscale
residential buildings, the site brims with—wink,
wink—financial possibilities.
The High
Court ruled to eject the oil depot on the basis of the
argument that it is a possible terrorist target and/or a
disaster waiting to happen, considering the risk of an
accident that can spark a conflagration. Still, when
city officials ruled to reclassify Pandacan into a
commercial-residential zone, there remain doubts whether
their constituents’ safety was the “primordial concern.”
We will
discover the real score soon enough when the city
announces what it intends to do with the sprawling
property that the oil companies will have to leave
behind.
In the
meantime, expect fuel prices to rise—beyond levels
caused by movements in the world market—as the oil
companies find ways to finance the relocation of their
depot. |
