SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Alma Bulawan didn’t say goodbye, shed tears or protest as the last American troops left this former US naval base on Nov. 24, 1992.
“But I was happy they left because I know that without the American soldiers, we prostituted
women will have better economic opportunities than just sell our bodies,” said Bulawan who, five years before the closure of the US bases, quit working in bars and joined the group Buklod to organize women.
“Many were sad, which was understandable because [Subic Naval Base] was the main source of income of the people [in Olongapo City],” she said.
But they learned that there’s life after the bases. Some bar workers, she said, learned sewing and took jobs in garments factories at the naval base-turned-freeport.
To Bulawan’s disappointment, however, the military face of Subic didn’t disappear. Since 1999, US warships and troops freely come and go on short periods for war games that the Visiting Forces Agreement allows.
While there is not much activity in the few flesh joints left in Olongapo City, it is during military exercises when prostitution thrives as women are brought where the troops are.
Converting Subic Naval Base in Zambales and Bataan, Clark Air Base in Pampanga and Tarlac, Camp John Hay in Baguio City, Wallace Air Station in La Union and three other stations in Central Luzon had two faces. One was economic, the other military.
Former Sen. Wigberto Tañada, one of 12 senators who voted to end the 1947 Philippine-US Military Bases Agreement in 1991, said Filipinos are reaping the economic benefits of bases conversion.
“It is not to our interest, however, that the former bases … are being used for war exercises,” said Tañada, author of Resolution No. 1259 that called for nonconcurrence with the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Security proposed by the US in 1991.
The use of the bases for civilian purposes was paved by the decision of the Senate majority. Government got back 14,698 hectares from 250,000 ha in 23 sites that the US had occupied since 1903.
Not even disaster from the June 1991 eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo, or the displacement of over a million residents, convinced the 12 senators to back off.
“Blind, deaf, heartless. They called us by those names and many more. We understand, of course, but the decision was hinged on national sovereignty, security and interest,” Tañada said.
Proof that conversion benefited Filipinos lies on what the bases had turned into.
The scenario anticipated by then US Ambassador Nicholas Platt, that “foreign investment would dry up and economy would collapse if the US bases pulled out,” did not happen.
Nothing of this sort took place although people in Central Luzon, the heartland of Clark and Subic, had difficulty overcoming the bases pullout and lahar rampage, said Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, a former labor lawyer who represented base workers.
He later chaired the Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council (SCADC), which tried to harmonize the development of the two former bases.
Converting the US bases was not ideal and conducive from the start. Conversion did not have the benefit of long years of preparation and began just as bulk of US troops left on Nov. 24, 1992.
What the Philippines had was a University of the Philippines baselands study, Republic Act No. 7227 (Bases Conversion and Development Act of 1992) and the Central Luzon Development Program.
“The Mt. Pinatubo disaster delayed the conversion process in Clark by 10 years,” Pamintuan said.
“Clark was really devastated. There was practically nothing left. Everything was taken out, stolen,” said former Public Works Secretary Jose de Jesus, who was part of the team that assessed the condition of what was then the largest US offshore military air base.
Looting in Subic stopped after it was secured by then Olongapo City Mayor Richard Gordon and an army of 8,000 volunteers.
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