Exclusive: Women in borders

SATURDAY, 03 MARCH 2012 19:35 DENNIS D. ESTOPACE / REPORTER

MAGNIFIQUE!

That was the only French word that escaped Filipino lips when the dark-skinned captain—in white ball cap, basketball jersey over a white shirt, and dark sunglasses—cut off the engine of the motorized catamaran as it nosed starboard over the blue-green water to Puerto Galera.

It’s just a minute past noon and mist still lingered over the bay—one of the world’s best, as if wistful over its old image as a haven for über-Bacchanalian desires, especially for foreigners.

“But that’s unfair,” said six-foot Frenchman Hubert D’Aboville, host of this overnight trip to a bay only 130 kilometers south of Manila.

Sitting in one of the cabanas in his 20,000-hectare home, D’Aboville said there are other tourist areas also known for prostitution, pedophiles and other unwholesome activities, which have marked Puerto Galera in the past.

“But these [activities] are not unique to Puerto Galera,” said the chief executive of Paris Manila Technology Corp. who has made this mountaintop place his home for nearly three decades.

His friend and current mayor, Hubbert A. Dolor, agrees and becomes adamant when asked about the reputation of his municipality that is home to 28,035 people, or nearly 4 percent of Oriental Mindoro province’s total 735,769 population.

“I feel embarrassed with that [question]. Name a tourist area that doesn’t have that. It’s hard to accept that Puerto Galera is the only place in the industry that has prostitution,” Dolor, in yellow short-sleeved shirt, told BusinessMirror at his office in poblacion, about 15 minutes from D’Aboville’s residence.

Dolor, a medical doctor by profession, added that he has been “to other places in the world where there are other areas catering to similar girlie bars even worse than ours.” Like Paris, D’Aboville interjected.

“[Prostitution is a] very wrong word to use,” Dolor said.

“To call Puerto Galera a haven for prostitution is wrong.”

To call Puerto Galera a haven, period, is right.

Established as a waiting post for sailors by Spanish colonizers, this town was so lush it was declared in the 1970s by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) as a Biosphere Reserve.

The rainforest of Mount Malasimbo, where D’Aboville maintains his home, was considered a major habitat.

“However, after the boom of tourism at the end of the 1970s, the service sector became more and more important. Today, the rapid and unregulated development of the tourist sector, which also led to population and economic growth, is the biggest problem of Puerto Galera,” the Unesco said.

The highest-percentile group are those aged 18 and over at 16,091, according to data from the National Statistics Office. Men outnumber women by a thousand at 14,301 at all ages and even at the 18-and-over percentile at 8,097. Females number about 13,696 with 7,994 at 18 and over of age.

Dolor estimates about 500 foreigners have settled in his municipality, majority of them using Puerto Galera as their main residence.

“Those who are really residing here now are married to Filipinas or married to other foreigners but opted to stay. They have a small condo unit or townhouse in Manila but they place Puerto Galera as their residence.”

In a paper titled “The Orchidaceous Plant Species of Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines [With Comments on Illegal Logging and Deforestation in Puerto Galera in General],” Mario Lutz and Ravan Schneider wrote that the municipality’s popularity as a tourist haven stems from its beaches.

“Puerto Galera’s coast is 42 kilometers long, consisting of irregular shorelines rimmed with dazzling white beaches, coconut plantations and delightful scenery.”

Hence, Dolor’s feeling that it’s “unjust” to label Puerto Galera as a haven for sex tourism.

Dolor’s pain in the painting of his province as a hub of sex tourists intensified with the release last year of two confidential memoranda of the US embassy—05MANILA5137 and 05MANILA5606—via WikiLeaks.

The memos, addressed to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Eric John and Ambassador-at-large John Miller, noted the flourishing sex tourism industry in the country contributes to the human trafficking in the Philippines.

The memo even cited “the coastal resort town of Sabang Beach, Puerto Galera,” as “a well-known sex tourism destination in the province of Mindoro Oriental.”

Sabang is a village of 2,702 people, which is a mere 15-minute walk from the town hall, is the key to Dolor’s plan to promote a new image of Puerto Galera: confining adult entertainment there.

“It’s confined to one place, Sabang only. I don’t allow videoke outside of it. If you want that, you go to Sabang, which is far away from the poblacion.”

Dolor acknowledged, however, that there may have been cases of child trafficking.

“Maybe before, yes, but not this time. [I dare you to] name the year that was last reported. And maybe you have but that’s 10 years ago. That’s why we need you people [journalists] to say that Puerto Galera is not a haven of prostitution.”

Indeed, it was in 2003 when the NGO of Columban priest, Fr. Shay Cullen, People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development Assistance or Preda reported the case involving 61-year-old German Rainer Fahrenhorst and American Paul Jeffery Anderson who engaged in the crimes of pedophilia against eight- to 11-year-old children in the village of San Isidro, one of 13, in Puerto Galera.

Dolor said he feels he’s fighting a juggernaut.

“I’ve only been mayor in 2007; what’s happening in Sabang has been going on for the past three decades. We cannot really get away with this old concept or mind frame of people who have been used to doing something they’ve been doing 20, 30 years ago.”

It’s like I’m David trying to slay Goliath, he added.

The prophet David may approve of Dolor’s belief that he can make sex tourism a footnote in Puerto Galera’s history.

He told the BusinessMirror that he wants to improve the municipality’s “level of service.”

“The important thing is to improve every day the level of service our frontliners are giving; the services that are tourism-related such as bartending, utilities, front-desk management, massage therapy—things like that.”

He added he wants to improve the tourism service training curriculum undertaken by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority “so that our students become more skillful even before graduating.”

Dolor said his office also plans to come up with accreditation schemes “to be able to identify which is the best resort [here] to help tourists make decisions.”

He cited as example Triple-A accredited hotels can be allowed to charge higher fees while those below this level would only be allowed to charge at a certain level.

Dolor also said they are on track to meeting the requirement of the Philippine Retirement Authority so that Puerto Galera can host retirees’ villages.

This would enable us to have full activities catering to expatriates, he said.

Dolor said the construction of the 50-bed hospital with private rooms has started and he is expecting inauguration by December or early January next year.

“For the first year, at least we can attract 1,000 expats.”

For sex tourism, Dolor said he would impose strict control so that activities would be only within the village of Sabang.

He said he “even ordered women walking around in Sabang not to wear short shorts, especially when they are with foreigners.”

Dolor said he issued that order because of the cultural “influence they [create among] the children who may not become aware anymore of what is right or wrong.”

“I told them to dress in something proper if you’re with a foreigner. We started this last year, and hopefully it’s much better [implementing] this year.”

Dolor added that he is also thinking of moving adult entertainment to the mountains, “far from the eyes of children.”

“So if they want these types of activities, they still have the option. It’s just that they have to climb the mountain.”

Prof. Fe Atanacio of the Far Eastern University believes Dolor’s move is rational.

Atanacio, who is on leave from teaching sociology for her doctoral degree studies at the Ateneo de Manila University, told the BusinessMirror that while “prostitution is considered out of norm or deviant behavior...society tolerates it.”

“[But] sex is still strongly upheld and accepted in the institution of marriage between man and woman. Therefore, there are only zones where sex is traded outside of the institutionalized norm and this is normally seen on a hub where tourists normally spend vacations. For every business, there should be viable market.”

However, feminist Nena Fernandez said that confining sex tourism wouldn’t resolve the problems of women “who were led into such exploitative situation.”

Fernandez, board member of nongovernmental group Kanlungan Center Foundation for Migrant Women, pointed to such places as Geylang Road of Singapore and Patpong of Thailand “that have placed women in a gilded cage but remains a shackle to their growth as persons.”

“What would happen to women who reach old age while confined in such a settlement as Sabang, Geylang Road, or Patpong? Would their future become part of the whole community’s growth?”

Fernandez told the BusinessMirror that while local government units like Puerto Galera may reap monetary and nonmonetary benefits from activities in sex tourism settlements, “there appears no alternative means of livelihood for those wanting out of that system.”

The commodification of Filipino women have contributed to the consideration of places like Puerto Galera as “havens” for foreigners, Fernandez said.

“Patriarchy does that: mutilating a paradise for the enjoyment of many toward a haven of exploiters.”

Dolor, for his part, has high hopes his dreams for Puerto Galera can be achieved.

He and D’Aboville have been introducing tourism activities away from the beach and more cultural.

The Frenchman, in particular, has launched the second of his music-and-arts festival which he began in 2011. It involves serious musicians and artists on a three-day cultural exchange in his compound.

“Tourists can still get tan on the beach but we’re saying, ‘Hey, before you get sunburned or leave, visit this part of Puerto Galera, connect with the members of the indigenous Mangyan tribe, so that you can bring something more profound and lasting than a tan,” D’Aboville said.

He and Dolor said they share the same vision of seeing Puerto Galera recognized as the “Heart of Asia” by 2020, and not the “navel of sexploitation.”

It is hoped that the women of Sabang village would also be able to share in such magnificence.