Part 2
The first part of this article introduced David Andrew Sanson, acting representative of sugarcane planters to the Philippine Sugar Board, and how his proposal to diversify within, instead of away from the sugar industry is a both a practical solution and a historical vindication for the first industry in Negros island that made Negrenses into what they are now.
Over the past 39 years since then President Corazon Aquino came to power, the sugar industry was pilloried by public opinion and in history books of American authors as either the symbol of oppression and explotation or as an enabler of the Marcos I government that was judged by mainstream media and the Left as a “dictatorship.”
Too, there are reports of a few planter-cronies of Marcos who benefitted from his dictatorship, notable among them Roberto S. Benedicto and Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. both long dead.
This series does not intend to exculpate the two but, rather, contribute to the current lack of discourse on the industry that was a foundation of our economic past and remains to be vital to the lives and livelihood of millions of Negrenses.
At the very least, the author wants to stimulate a discussion about the future of Negros with the sugar industry and not one without it.
Before that can be done, however, one needs to take a brief look or deeply if one can, into the political and economic history of the country into which the sugar industry is weaved into.
Only then can we, as a people who sucked on its teats and was reared by it, start to seek answers to questions like:
Is the sugar industry truly oppressive and exploitative as the Left describes it? Why was it successful in making even Negrenses believe that it has done nothing for them?
What role did the sugar industry play in shaping the fortunes of the island and its people?
Was it simply a victim of historical inaccuracies and misjudged in its supposed role in bringing about a dictatorship?
Was it a victim of a government wanting to exact revenge for it? Were policies and programs after the Marcos I government designed to kill the industry?
Did a Left-Right conspiracy try to systematically destroy the industry?
These are some of the few questions in my mind as I try to explore answers.
This is only the start.