by Patrick Canteros
Among the Filipino diaspora, the common response to the Jeepney Phaseout are folks calling to save the Jeepney as a beloved cultural icon. Posts on social media mourn the loss of this national symbol, while others speak critically about Filipinos losing touch with their history. While the jeepney is called the “King of the Road” for a reason, having combed the Philippines’ streets in the decades after WWII, this framing casts the resistance to the Jeepney Phaseout as just some sort of nostalgia. “You don’t support the phaseout because you can’t let go”, many of those who support the phaseout claim.
What this obscures, however, is the fact that the Jeepney Phaseout is an extremely destructive government program. Hundreds of thousands of Jeepney drivers and their families are poised to lose their livelihoods. For ordinary commuters, and there are millions of them considering only 6% of Filipinos own a car, this “modernization” means worsening traffic conditions and inevitably higher fares, estimated to jump to somewhere around 40-50 pesos from the current 13. (To learn more, check out Inklusibo’s Jeepney Phaseout Primer)
Reading this, it might come as a shock, seeing how the Philippine government has pushed the Jeepney Phaseout, formally known as the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), as a solution to environmental problems and as an upgrade to the country’s embarrassing public transportation system with state of the art “modern jeepneys”. Yet like all things that promise to solve everything, it delivers on none. What it does demonstrate, however, is the violent mechanism of Green Capitalism in action.
Despite the ecological and environmental crisis looming closer than ever, Green Capitalism looks for technological and socio-political approaches to ensure the system continues while ignoring the underlying causes of the crisis. Further, many of its solutions insidiously target underdeveloped countries like the Philippines most directly impacted by climate change with the support of foreign and imperialist interests who look to profit from its implementation – the same interests that drove the climate crisis in the first place.
Thus, it isn’t too far of a stretch to connect the Jeepney Phaseout with the ongoing global violence associated with Green Capitalism. For example, USAID recently greenlit investments in the Philippines to mine minerals used for electrical vehicles like the “modern jeepney”. Is this not concerning knowing how similar mining for electrical vehicles caused the current crisis in the Congo? Or how mining projects here in the Philippines have displaced indigenous communities, leading to the country having the highest murder rate of environmental defenders in the world? This is not to mention the police violence and state repression experienced by those protesting the Jeepney Phaseout. Clearly, Green Capitalism is not the solution, but another hydrahead of this exploitative and extractive system.
What can we do then? Well first, let’s drop the narrative that opposing the Jeepney Phaseout means we can’t let go of a cultural icon. Carry that cultural pride, yes, but also share the ugly truth of the phaseout that the government refuses to admit. More importantly, understand that the resistance is less preoccupied with saving the past and more concerned in shaping a collaborative future.
We all want a transportation sector that is safe and efficient, but we can’t create this better world by leaving behind our jeepney drivers. Instead, let’s push for a modernization that fully includes the perspectives of drivers and doesn’t leave them millions of pesos in debt like the phaseout does. Further, let’s build out a manufacturing industry that can retrofit existing jeepneys to meet emissions standards and build “modern jeepneys” locally rather than rely on cast-offs from Japan or Europe. In pursuing these solutions advocated by Jeepney drivers themselves, we may achieve the dream of an ecologically sustainable country.
To imagine that future, however, we must win now. At this very moment, as I write, our jeepney drivers are on strike to protest the phaseout’s deadline of April 30th. These brave drivers, who are often their family’s breadwinners, are putting everything on the line not just for another delay in implementation but to demand the program be junked entirely. So please, consider 1) donating to the strike fund to ensure drivers can continue their struggle as long as possible and 2) sharing information widely. Whether on social media, at family gatherings, or in occupational and educational settings, information sharing helps widen the base of support for our Jeepney drivers, dispel misinformation, and build political pressure against the PUVMP.
As diasporic Filipinos and allies, let us take the resistance to the Jeepney Phaseout as a point of convergence for our shared struggles and the basis of mutual solidarity to address the climate crisis and our fight against capitalism. In the same spirit of the slogan “Laban ng Tsuper ay Laban ng Komyuter” (The Fight of the Jeepney Driver is the Fight of the Commuter), which connected the struggles of Jeepney drivers with that of the Philippines’ wider commuting public, I urge us to see this struggle as our own. In this way, we may not only save our cultural pasts but pave the road for our collective future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Canteros is a Fulbright researcher focused on urban development in the Philippines during martial law. He is also a volunteer at the Philippine Resource Center for Inclusive Development.