It’s the only place in Metro Manila where you could find a beach, where land is available to those who want it, where human kidneys are a commodity, and where most men walk around without their shirts on. Actually, the Baseco Compound is a 45,000-people community where homes stand on stilts.
Out-of-this-world it may seem, but you are right in the middle of the South Harbor district of Manila’s Port Area.
Despite its size, this squatter colony, the first to battle the typhoons hitting the metropolis, is easily overlooked and hard to find by the inexperienced traveler. This is worsened by the fact that it is accessible only by a narrow dilapidated bridge that can be reached after a hazardous encounter with so many trucks in the South Harbor.
Even the government offices supposed to exercise jurisdiction, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) and the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) know very little or would rather not talk about Baseco.
"Ayaw naming pakialaman yan, parang kumuha kami ng bato na ipupukpok sa ulo namin, said a friendly, yet little-informed public relations official of the PPA. By PPA’s estimate, only 5,000 squatters live in what used to be a few square meters of private property.
It was only when the world was gearing up in 1999 to welcome the new millennium that Baseco got full electrification. And as the world celebrated the birth of third-generation cellular phones some months ago, Baseco just had its first telephone landline.
The compound, originally named National Shipyard and Steel Corp. before its appropriation by the Romualdez family during the Marcos regime, was sequestered during the Corazon Aquino years. It is actually an extension of the Baseco head office in Bataan.
Despite this, the land has expanded rapidly since 1991, when the settlers began coming in, both by government reclamation and by the garbage dumped into Manila Bay by the residents themselves. The original, solid-ground Baseco now designated as "Block 40" by the residents, spawned 39 other "blocks" out of the bay.
Ian Camacho, barangay secretary, is among the early settlers. He said he was only 12 years old when his father brought him, his mother and four siblings to the deserted compound in 1991. They came from Iloilo.
"My father worked in a barge, and when he came upon this place he brought us here to settle," he added. The Camacho family’s odyssey is the same for many other Visayan residents of the community.
Camacho said diverse cultures and religious denominations have also found their way into Baseco. "Here, we have almost all religious groups – Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Iglesia ni Cristo – and we all live harmoniously," he said.
In Baseco, one can find concrete churches for Catholics and Iglesia ni Cristo faithfuls, a talipapa, basketball courts, an elementary school, a sprawling barangay hall, a day-care center, several sari-sari stores and, recently, billiards and videoke halls.
"Though the main source of livelihood is stevedoring, we have all kinds of people here, even professionals," Camacho said.
All these when access deep inside the place is even more difficult. Travelling into the inner portions of Baseco – from Block 40 to the beach in the farthest, Block 1 – is exclusively through an animal feces-strewn breakwater.
The breakwater, which serves as the main road, is where children as young as two years old, or so, jump off to frolic in the greasy waters of Manila Bay. They rule this breakwater and a first-time traveller of the uneven, narrow and winding "road" has to be alert not to trip of them.
"Here, when a child is drowning, another child dives in to make the rescue," boasted a barangay tanod who showed The STAR around.
It is only through this "road" that the residents can go around the place to meet each other, attend church or conduct meetings with their 40 block leaders or coordinators, one of the community’s innovations to manage its huge population.
The self-evolving community has taken upon itself to further extend the Local Government Code’s hierarchy. Here, the block coordinator instead of the barangay kagawad is the lowest government official, chosen by the residents of each of the 40 blocks as their conduit to the barangay.
One of these coordinators is Teresita Paje, a store owner. Paje came to Manila from Surigao in 1991 to work as a factory worker and, like the others, has come to love and learned to survive in the swampy community that offered her and her husband land on which to build their home.
"At least here we have a home and that is more than enough for us," she said.
Paje’s store is an enviable source of income considering the more popular and accepted alternative of her desperate neighbors – selling their kidneys.
A moment of richness,
a lifetime of pain
It has been more than a year since the community and its residents gained greater notoriety, locally as well as abroad, for making merchandise out of their own kidneys. But as television appearance came as an unexpected bonus to the "donors," so did the lifetime side effects.
Many of those who sold their kidneys have since reportedly died, one after the other, and those who are still alive have only regret to share.
Thirty-year-old Norberto Papa, who has four children with the eldest, nine years old, was among the first residents to sell his biologically dispensable other kidney. He got P70,000 for it.
"I was able to buy myself wood to construct my house, a television set, a VHS, and a karaoke. It was a lot of money," he said.
But that is only half his story.
Later, the home constructed by Papa was washed away by a storm. And as for his appliances and money?
"I ended up selling them one by one. I was told (by doctors) to rest a while after my operation but when I tried applying for a job later on, the companies all turned me down because I failed the medical test due to the fact that I have only one kidney. I could not get a good job. I eventually lost all the money I was paid," he said.
Papa said he also often experiences weakness. He admits he is no longer as strong as he used to be.
Jeepney driver Rolando Roldan, 40, another kidney "donor," has also his own sad tale to tell. "Whenever the weather is cold as I drive, I have to wrap the part that was sliced open with a towel, it (surgical scar) hurts when it is cold," he said while pointing to his scar which is very noticeable in the absence of his shirt.
Roldan, a father of four, said he has no vice but has felt weaker since his operation.
"Before I could carry two sacks of rice at once, now I can carry only one," he said. That of course made him less efficient as a stevedore, a job a Baseco resident gets each time a cargo ship docks.
Roldan revealed that many of his neighbors who underwent kidney extraction like him have died, including one who was boxed in the abdomen, hitting his scar.
The dead donor, whose name Roldan could not recall, was punched after he was caught in one of the docked ships trying to steal wooden planks used as braces for ship cargoes. Most of the homes in Baseco are made of the same disposable wooden cargo braces.
The jeepney driver could not be certain about it, but by his estimate, four have died from about a dozen of his fellow donors who were first interviewed on television by a local channel.
The sale of kidneys reportedly continues to this day as confirmed by the earlier donors themselves, who later became agents between sellers and recipients.
News of the persistence of the lucrative kidney business in the community is just one of the latest reputation woes plaguing the community, aside from its long-held distinction as a haven of criminals.
However, the newly-appointed sub-station commander of the community, Insp. Virgilio Obar, disagrees.
"It is not that bad. While there is the impression that many people die here, our most common (criminal) cases are only physical injuries," said Obar. The police station, like the elegant Baseco barangay hall, is located on Block 40 of the extra-large barangay.
"The people are very respectful of policemen assigned here. Although one thing I noticed about them (residents) is that they are usually tight-lipped about many things," said the police official.
He cited one instance when somebody shot a resident’s water pipe. Despite the fact that in Baseco one knows almost everybody, nobody reported the incident officially, much less complained.
All utilities in Baseco are managed and centralized in the barangay hall, partly because bill collectors could not be expected to travel deep into Block 1.
The Baseco police sub-station had only 13 members working in three shifts when The STAR last checked, but has a 20-man civilian augmentation team in the day-time. Still, Obar admits that drug-dealing activities persist in the community.
The latest episode in Baseco’s violent facet of life is the ambush-killing of its barangay captain last year by heavily armed men. The case remains unsolved.
Many of the residents, too, took part in the violent May 1 Malacañang siege and former President Joseph Estrada’s EDSA III.
During the last election, all of Estrada’s senatorial candidates won overwhelmingly, taunting President Arroyo’s 13-0 campaign.
"Nobody among the administration candidates dared to campaign here except for [elected Senator] Manny Villar, whose campaigners put-up streamers and posters in the compound. The people did not bother the campaigners but the following morning, the streamers and posters disappeared," said Camacho.
Recently, President Arroyo paid the neighborhood a visit, the first time a President has ever set foot in the area. To the resident’s delight, the President reportedly promised to award them the titles to their watery lands.
Still, not many are raising their hopes for a better life to come. This is Baseco compound after all, or are you lost?