Coping with fears: Urban struggles in the Greater Manila amid COVID-19 and beyond

Abstract

In this conversation, the Manila-based housing activist Michael Beltran discusses with our editors (Hung-Ying and Ana) how political oppressions intensified during the pandemic and melded with the ongoing eviction, food, and public health crises. Michael shares with us how the pandemic changed ways of grassroots organizing and enabled the government to seize political opportunities to increase political crackdown and expand infrastructural projects. Michael also shares how people develop their voices and communal alternatives amid compounded crises of eviction, food, public health, and democracy.

Density and pandemic urbanism: Exposure and networked density in Manila and Taipei

“…One community activist has described how poor urban families were given a bag of rice and told it was ‘help’: ‘They closed all markets last year, except supermarkets. And they encouraged people to stock up on food…How is one going to stock on food if one doesn’t even have a fridge?’ (Beltran et al, 2021: 38).…”

“…Exposure density is as much about what the state did as what it did not do. Restrictions were implemented nationwide with no regard to the heterogeneous socio-spatial conditions of the households in barangays (Beltran et al, 2021). During a period of the tightest restrictions, one resident argued that it was simply impossible to comply with the rules of physical distancing because the housing infrastructures in poor, dense neighbourhoods require the extension of household lives outside:…”

“…While not all municipal staff were complicit in state neglect and authoritarianism – indeed, in poorer barangays, some suffered burnout from struggling to provide for those in need (Beltran et al, 2021) – there were voices who argued that the state ought to have gone further. Remarkably, given the militaristic nature of pandemic governance in the Philippines, one planner argued that the state should have been more aggressive, and pointed to elements of what he saw as the ‘Chinese model’, including sending teams into poorer areas to carry out forced testing.…”

“…Exposure density is as much about what the state did as what it did not do. Restrictions were implemented nationwide with no regard to the heterogeneous socio-spatial conditions of the households in barangays (Beltran et al, 2021). During a period of the tightest restrictions, one resident argued that it was simply impossible to comply with the rules of physical distancing because the housing infrastructures in poor, dense neighbourhoods require the extension of household lives outside: You want to do physical distancing, but you can’t go outside to breathe in fresh air as it would be against the quarantine laws…Wherever we go in city the houses are about a few metres only to about four by four or two by two, it is really small, then that’s just all the area, the area where they eat, where they sleep in…all people of the household are in here.…”