LIfe of Jose Nava and history of the sugar industry

1. Nava and the Sugar Industry
Rosalinda C. Mercado

2. International Context
• Economic Scenario
• Industrial Revolution – 1780s to 1850s
– Iron making, use of refined coal, machine tools
– Steam powered ships and railways
– Start of assembly line, factory system, mass
production of products part. Textile in England
– Rural peasants uprooted from their farm and
severed ties with land to work in cities for
factories as “free” workers; sell their labor power
like commodity

3. • 19th C, the social and economic landscape if iloilo was
altered by the market expansions of Europe and US as
a result of the Industrial Revolution.
• With the invention of steam engine, railroads and
other technologies, the textile mills of england began
mass producing cheap cotton clothes which had to
find market overseas if it were to be profitable.
• British Vice consul Nicolas Loney arrived in iloilo to
begin career as chief agent of British and American
textile firms. His chief mission was to promote chief
cotton in the country and encourage the production of
sugar as return ship cargo.

4. Hand weaving industry in iloilo
• Prior to introduction of sugar industry
handweaving was the chief preoccupation of
half the women in iloilo. Even the poorest
houses had one or more looms in production
making such as pina and sinamay.
• The handweaving industry made of simple
apparatus occupied rural women whose
wages in 1870s was no more than 75 cents or
1.50$ a month.

5. Negros plantation
• The demise of handweaving strengthened the negros sugar
production with the influx of dislocated labor.
• Sugar planters acquired their lands by outright purchases of
small working farms or by committing landless workers to
debt bondage wherein planters would advance payment in
return for the workers labor of clearing the land and
binding the worker into a contract that contained clauses
requiring forfeiture of land upon non-payment. The cycle
of debt bondage ensures continuing supply of labor until
the debt is paid off.
• The negros hacienda worker was a wage or debt slave who
owned nothing more than his clothes and cooking utensils.
The ilongo plantation hand was paid an inadequate daily
wage which left him constantly in debt.

6. Role of bankers
• Capitalization of the sugar industry was dependent on european-
american banks
• They advance loans to the plantation owners for 12 to 15% interest
with a guarantee that the sugar produced would be delivered to the
loaning firms’ warehouses for sale abroad with an additional 2%
commission charge.
• In 1883, the largest american company in manila, Russel and
Sturgis opened a branch in iloilo followed by other foreign firms. A
british handbook in 1878 listed 42 European-American merchants
and professionals in residence and 11 commercial houses or
branches.
• In 1881 and 1886 seven anglo-american and one swiss firm
controlled all of the port’s sugar exports and anglo-american houses
controlled 1.5 million out of iloilo’s 2.2 M tons of sugar exports.

8. Signs of early Spanish decline and Rise
of Anglo-US Powers
• 1934 Opening of manila to world trade.
• Freight ships carrying cotton textile traded in
Iloilo and Negros carrying refined sugar on return
cargo
• Signalled the slow demise of native cloth industry
– pina, sinamay made by women via weaving in
their households
• Expansion of sugar plantations and rise of sugar
centrals
• Iloilo and Bacolod became internationaL port
areas for ship trading

9. Sugar Industry
• Mass production and consumption of sugar started in the
17th C in French and English colonies in the Caribbean and
African slaves work on plantations and operate sugar mills.
• Sugar mill is where they grind the sugar cane, boil the
extracted syrup and crystallize into sugar.
• It is associated with extremes in class relations between
millers and sugar workers/sacadas
• Sugar production carries social ramifications.
• Sugar plantations created a society of rich landowners and
millers living in closed agricultural communities known as
haciendas.
• Created close collaboration between native elite and
foreign merchants; native elite became dependent on
export of sugar and loans from banks.

10. Rise of Stevedores and Sacadas
• Rich fertile lands were used to satisfy
requirements of international market rather than
local need.
• Start of cash crop economy and dependence on
banks that bankrolled the sugar industry. Sugar
landlords became indebted to banks while sugar
workers became indebted to landlords in a never
ending cycle of debt bondage and peonage.
• Money became the all important form of
exchange undermining bayanihan and barter
exchange

11. Beginnings of Imperial Expansion
• Entrenchment of native elite in power, who in
collaboration with foreign capitalists ensure
perpetuation of the latter without their visible
presence.
• Banking and finance became an invisible but tangible
reality manipulating how economy would be arranged
• Social stratification became more pronounced. Sugar
furthered social ramifications and widened gap of rich
and poor.
• Bottom end of the social rung – sacadas and
stevedores condemned to a cycle of poverty, misery,
insecurity and hand-to-mouth existence,

12. Rise of Plantations
• Foreign powers dominated export-import trade
while chinese traders dominated retail and
interisland trade and wholesale economy
• Economy became beholden to the ups and downs
of the world market.
• Sugar was a product that can be cultivated
everywhere hence not a stable export product
which true enough fell on the world market due
to oversupply.

13. Effects of Sugar production
• Decreased rice production in Iloilo after demise of
handicrafts; workers would either become stevedores or
sacadas.
• Meanwhile negros occidental’s former rice haciendas with
its tenant-farmers were converted to sugar plantations
• Creation of a class of landless, migrant workers dependent
on sugar production for a living; sold their labor power and
created milling and industrial towns; severed from families
and from natural relation to the land which were slowly
becoming concentrated in the hands of the few through
extra legal means, outright landgrabbing or debt bondage
forcing them to sell their lands.

14. Situationer in Iloilo City
• Iloilo became the warehouse of sugar
transported by lorchas or sailboats from Negros
Occidental. Stevedores would move sugar from
the sugar mills and centrals to the sailboats then
pile them up to the warehouses for a few months
until completion of harvest, then load them to
the foreign freighters bound for America, Europe
and China. They were paid per piece, out of
which a commission is deducted to pay for the
cabecilla (labor contractors) and the cabo
(foremen).

15. Situationer in Iloilo
• Stevedores were organized like work-gangs
chosen from among those who wait at the
dock every morning.

16. Technological Improvements that led
to the demise of Iloilo port
• 1913-1932 saw the rapid expansion of sugar for export
• Centrifugal mills or sugar centrals with more than 1K
workers replaced the smaller sugar mills; by 1914-
1927, some 820 steam mills were replaces by 17
centrals
• Centrals facilitated rapid unionization as workers got
more concentrated. The centrals spawned mills in the
heart of the sugar district outside the control of sugar
planters. Some conflict ensued between sugar planters
and sugar millers (which was exploited by the trade
union movement).

17. • Introduction of tug-and-lighter stevedoring made
it possible to load ships direct from Negros
coasts, also called direct off-shore loading.
Tugboats pull lighters loaded with sugar to
coastline; lighters carry the load of sugar to
freighters
• But it was the increasing militancy of unions that
gave reason for sugar exporters to abandon iloilo
as port of entry and move over to negros occ
harbor

18. • The technological changes at the turn of the 20th c
shaped the life of stevedores.
• Lorcha sailcrafts each carrying 300 to 400 bags were
the main mode of ferrying sugar from negros to Iloilo.
• With the establishment of the Visayan Stevedore
Transportation Co or VISTRANCO in iloilo in 1920, it
employed the more economical tug-and-lighter system
in which steam and later diesel run tugboats towed a
string of steel-hulled lighters carrying thousands of
sugar bags across negros to iloilo.

19. • The tug-and-lighter system increased the peak of
labor demand and amplified the scale of work
gang organizations. Coupled with te introduction
of modern ocean going vessels, modern
technology enabled off-shore loading along the
negros coast.
• Hand in hand with maritime technological
changes came the introduction of the sugar
centrals employing over a thousand workers and
the rise of contractual sugar workers known as
sacadas.

20. Jose Nava
• Fourth son (of 13 children, 10 boys 3 girls) of Mariano
Nava y Legaspi of Manila and Estefana Nunal y Carrera
of Iloilo city.
• Born on july 31, 1891.
• Nationally and internationally famous rifle and pistol
expert
• Fond of painting, sculpture, writing poetry, plays,
operetas and literature.
• At 19 he was considered one of the best actors and
singers in Spanish and the vernaculars.
• As a director and dramatist he was second to none
during the golden era of the visayan literature.
• He had a collection before the war of medals and
trophies for his paintings and sculptural works.

21. • From childhood he showed interest in vaudeville group
called Progreso Infantil for boys and girls aged 6 to 14.
at age 16 he became a member of the Sociedad Lirico-
Dramatica and performed in Spanish zarzuelas. He also
performed in an English comedy and when he returned
in Iloilo from manila in 1914 became one of the
principal actors of Valente Cristobal’s theatrical group.
He went to Negros on tours.
• His canon include 10 works: Si Luding sarswela in 3
acts, 1912; Si Datu Palaw, sarswela in 3 acts, 1912;
Carnaval, one act; Anak Sang Yawa, drama in 3 ac ts;
Ang Kulinta nga Saway, drama in two acts; Pasion ni
Cristo, drama in 3 acts; Buhi Nga Bangkay6, drama in
two acts; Dungug Ka Gugma, radio play; Kulintas Nga
Mutya, opera in four acts.

22. • In 1907, at the age of 16, he led more than one
thousand students against the race discrimination
of an American teacher who insulted by and
action a Filipino student. Nava protested and
declared a strike which lasted for three days and
was settled in the Court of First Instance of Iloilo
thru the intervention of an American, Judge
Bates, and after the offender promised not to
speak again against Filipino people as a race. The
teacher was suspended as demanded by Nava.

23. • 1915 – began journalistic venture as reporter
of a loyal Spanish newspaper “El Tiempo”
• As a newspaperman he sometimes edited 5
daily newspapers, 3 in Spanish, one in English
and one in Visayan.
• He published “La Prensa”, “Prensa Libre”
“Liberator”, “Kirab”. He was called by Free
Press “the fighting editor”

24. Nava as Labor Leader
• In 1917, reuniting with childhood friend Vicente
Ibernas, they organized the first labor organization in
Iloilo, the Union Obrera de Iloilo. His becoming a labor
reader was providential and accidental. It started
when a man with a bandage over one eye came into
his office in 1928 sought his help. The man lost the
sight of one eye due to accident from work. Nava
helped him claim compensation from work from
Vistranco. The news spread fast among the other
workers. Thus on July 31, 1928 a group of workers
from the district of Lapus petitioned Nava to organize a
labor union. The Federacion Obrera de Filipinas was
born.