Interview with a family friend- Ronnie

Born on June 5^th, 1952, at the age of 53, living in a comfortable home in Glendale, CA, the young spirited Ronnie Teehankee remembers her days in the Philippines during Ferdinand Marcos’ Reign.  Experiencing life on the streets and knowledge of her home country, she gives detailed facts on her experience during the time.  With her fresh memories of her past, she tells us her story.

Well, when I was at the Philippines, it was corrupted because of Ferdinand Marcos and his idea on martial law; which he strictly practiced. And many things weren’t as they are here in America. 

Martial law started, or I this should say declared, by Marcos in 1972; thirty years after I was born; and ended nine years later.  Before that, he was the President of the Philippines for almost fifteen years, if I'm not mistaken. 

I was in college, (during the time of martial law), a private college.  And education there didn’t seem any different that education here in the U.S.  We were taught all the subjects you have in your school but in addition to that, we always had, in college of course, theology, which is a religion being taught from grade one to fourth year high school, we also had to learn the national language of the Philippines which is Tagalog.

The Philippines is predominantly a catholic country, especially in the city; there’s a lot of Catholics and Marcos himself was catholic.  We did have the freedom to worship who or whatever we wanted.  Whether you’re a catholic or not, if your Buddhist or Muslim, you had the freedom to worship and believe what you wanted.

Except for the fact that the media could not talk bad about Marcos, everything else was the same.  They are just not allowed to criticize Marcos, or basically, his government.  If they did, they would be forced to shut down.  There weren’t really any newspapers, television programs, or radio stations owned by the government.  Maybe one or two radio stations.  But every other station was privately owned. 

Work.  Well ok, depending on what kind of work you’re talking about.  I mean like in the city, usually the privileged people, or people that come from middle class and let’s just say their parents knew somebody or you know somebody in that company or whatever, they could easily could get work.  Or if you’re really intelligent, then you could easily get work.  But if you come from the poor sector, work wasn’t that easy.  In fact, in the province, where there’s a lot of poor people, they would go to the city and seek employment in houses as servants, maids, houseboys, or even as drivers and drivers, by the way, get paid more than maids.

Again, finding a job depended on your social standing. In the province, work was hard which was why a lot of poor people went to the city to get jobs.  If they worked as maids, then their housing would be free and their food was free.  Whatever they earned they could buy some things for themselves.  Most of the time, they would send the money to the province to be given to their parents.  We also had people in the streets, usually children that beg.  You could say that life was extreme.  You have the very rich, and you have the very poor.  Of course you have those in the middle.  But you can see people begging in the streets and food was getting more expensive during the martial law.

Farms continued to do what they did.  One bad thing about farming though is that in the Philippines, there’s a lot of rain. It’s not just regular rain. You have typhoons and they are frequent so you know that could lead to bad crops.  So it was hard in the Philippines for the people that lived in the province.

It’s not the kind of child labor that we have. You don’t have children working in factories.  You could have underage kids, children, or teenagers working as house girls or house boys but that wasn’t a big thing; It wasn’t considered child labor.  In the Philippines it’s not like that wasn’t considered as child labor. 

No, it wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t because you could see kids selling newspapers and that’s not illegal, or in some houses, maids that are below sixteen. 

Well, legally, I guess the minimum age for working would be eighteen. It wasn’t like it was enforced. In companies, in department stores, you cant have somebody younger than eighteen working in a department store but in a house, you could have somebody younger than eighteen working as a house servant.  For them, that was an easier life than being in the province where food was very scarce.  So they like it because if they work in a house, in a city, they had, as I said free housing, free food, and you could even watch TV.  They don’t have television in the province.  So you know, these people like going to the city and working as maids. 

Sixty years old was the retirement age.  So more or less, it’s the same as here.

The police, in the Philippines are known for caring more about their stomachs. It’s easy to bribe the police.  Just as an example,   when it’s near lunch time or dinner time, they would most likely catch anybody for the smallest offense, but  not because they wanna give that person a ticket. It’s more because they could ask for money. Lets say I was speeding a little.  I could easily give the police officer twenty pesos (currency of the Philippines), and he will just say next time don’t speed.  That’s how the police, in majority, are known for.  I’m not saying that every police officer did that, but you know. Here you can’t do that.                                                   

I would say the court system is fair, but then again, it would depend on who your lawyer is.  In the Philippines, people don’t just sue each other, as easily as here.  But we did have justice. 

Interview by Denvin Robles