Sugar

This is a shot of Jovi's mom's sugar cane fields. As far as the eyes can see, it is Rodriguez land. Pretty crazy the whole sugar cane business. It is a six month a year job, for Jovi's brother. According to him, his workload is six months out of the year,four days a month, (every saturday), four hours a day, of which two hours is spent driving back and forth to the fields and two hours is spent walking the fields. Imagine that. the following six months is just pretty much doing nothing, and he is the loaded brother in the family.

The business was actually booming up until the 1980s, when the sugar market collapsed under the monopoly set up by Marcos. I was able to get a story from Tita Chita, Jovi's dad's wife whom we laid to rest, about the whole business from her perspective. You see her family ran pawn shops and jewelry stores in Bacolod. At the end of the harvest season, the farmers were issued certifcates A, B, and C. A for Export, B for local, and C for whatever, according to her. The C certifcates were almost always given to the wives of the landowners, who would proceed to purchase jewelry from Tita Chita. The thing was, at the beginning of each season, the husbands would demand that the wives pawn their jewelry so they can begin a new crop, so Chita put on her pawn shop hat and would proceed to purchase the jewelry that she sold them at the end of theseason for half of what she sold it to them, give or take. The cycle went on and on for years until Chita was involved in a holdup at the jewelry store that I believe killed her father. Not sure if that is true or not though. That was in the 70s, so her mom packed up the kids and moved them to the States.

It was quite an interesting story that she told me, because I really enjoyed hearing it. I enjoy hearing all kinds of stories about the Philippines, especially ones that discuss the history of sorts. Chita told me just her little part of the sugar history of bacolod. I only wish that I could have heard more stories from her like that.