Background – IN THE CLAWS OF A CENTURY WANTING

Manila's Urban Poor Situation

In the Claws of a Century Wanting is set in the historical port district of Tondo, Manila—one of the most densely populated places in the Philippines and the world. With the Manila North Harbor, International Container Terminal, and the Divisoria Market at its heart, Tondo welcomes at its ports thousands upon thousands of peasants and workers migrating from the underdeveloped countryside, who look to find in the vicinity their first jobs in the capital city.

In the gaps and seams of the international port, generations of migrants make do with makeshift housing and precarious living conditions, for as long as they have accessible livelihood while hoping for better chances that often never come. Collectively, they belong to the larger urban poor sector of the Philippines—comprising upwards of forty percent of the country’s urban population—holding on to similar hopes and facing interconnected predicaments.

Like in some of the older urban poor communities in Metro Manila, waves of evictions and demolitions have marked the history of Tondo communities from as early as the post-war period. People’s settlements have perennially been pitted against urban development, city beautification, and in recent years, port expansion and the rehabilitation of the bay area and waterways. Consequently, mass resistance and labor movements have braved against the government and big business-driven policies that seem to see the poor as obstructions for development. But consistently unheard are what people have been demanding for decades—employment, better living and working conditions, adequate housing, and welfare.

Manila's Urban Poor Situation

In the Claws of a Century Wanting is set in the historical port district of Tondo, Manila—one of the most densely populated places in the Philippines and the world. With the Manila North Harbor, International Container Terminal, and the Divisoria Market at its heart, Tondo welcomes at its ports thousands upon thousands of peasants and workers migrating from the underdeveloped countryside, who look to find in the vicinity their first jobs in the capital city.

In the gaps and seams of the international port, generations of migrants make do with makeshift housing and precarious living conditions, for as long as they have accessible livelihood while hoping for better chances that often never come. Collectively, they belong to the larger urban poor sector of the Philippines—comprising upwards of forty percent of the country’s urban population—holding on to similar hopes and facing interconnected predicaments.

Like in some of the older urban poor communities in Metro Manila, waves of evictions and demolitions have marked the history of Tondo communities from as early as the post-war period. People’s settlements have perennially been pitted against urban development, city beautification, and in recent years, port expansion and the rehabilitation of the bay area and waterways. Consequently, mass resistance and labor movements have braved against the government and big business-driven policies that seem to see the poor as obstructions for development. But consistently unheard are what people have been demanding for decades—employment, better living and working conditions, adequate housing, and welfare.

In the 2010s, the government implemented some of the most determined efforts to clear vast areas of Tondo’s waterfront following the privatization and expansion of the port industry. The film witnessed old conditions unfolding under new contexts and within the backdrop of an increasingly liberal international trade.

The port of Tondo became a vein in a new global economic flow, where rules are determined elsewhere under new orders of supremacy. With the same forces changing urban landscapes in the Philippines, systemic imbalances have been aggravated, where vulnerable people remain the most affected by distinct but related issues—urban development and land use, housing crisis, inadequate social services, widening inequality, displacement, and violations of human rights.

The same contexts that outline the complexity of poor communities in Tondo forebode what is to come. Yet, survival being their driving force, people who live under these oppressive conditions plod on, asserting their right to live both in organized resistance and their adaptive ways of living. The film is a window into these lives, and on how these communities navigate the systems that are seemingly built against their existence.

Be Informed

Learn more about the Philippine urban poor situation and the country’s worsening housing crisis:

Urban Poverty in the Philippines

“Slums and squatter communities, existing side by side with urban modernity, serve as a constant reminder of the severe inequalities that characterize the urban system.”

Urban Poor Data and Analysis Vol. 1 No. 1 by the Urban Poor Resource Center