Gelia’s Blog: Resilience or Growth or Both

By: Bob Boyer

Gelia Castillo is an internationally –known and respected Rural Sociologist. She is also a personal friend, although I don’t often get to see her since she resides in Los Banos, a little south and east of Manila. I do see her daughters occasionally. One of them, Gertrudes (Gertie), lives close by in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The other, Nina, lives in the Philippines, close to Gelia, but she visits her sister a couple of times a year, which, of course, requires a Filipiino-style (Big) party. My wife and I have the honor, and the duties, of being godparents to Gertie’s daughter. I have written about Gelia Castillo on at least two occasions. In my book about the Philippines, Sundays in Manila, I devote half a chapter, entitled “The War and Beyond: Two Witnesses” to her. The war in question is World War Two, and Gelia is one of the witnesses; I learned much from her stories as a young school girl during that war when I visited Los Banos. There is even an artist’s sketch of Gelia eating a piece of sugar cane in that chapter, drawn from the stories I recounted. I also wrote about Gelia for this newsmagazine. She was in the first article of a series on “Strong Filipino Women.” Recently. I was pleasantly surprised when Gelia’s daughter Nina forwarded Gelia’s blog on the web site of IRRI, the International Rice Research Institute. The Institute, which is located close to the University of the Philippines Los Banos, is the source of the famed “Green Revolution” of the 1960s through the development of varieties of rice that could grow and flourish practically anywhere in the world and under almost any conditions. Gelia has an office there, where has been a guiding light in its development from the start. Of the two recent articles on Gelia’s blog, the one that caught my eye is “Resilience for the better-off, growth for the poor.” The title—and article—is vintage Gelia: witty, knowledgeable, and no-nonsense. For these reasons, and also because it focuses on the disastrous Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), I knew as soon as I finished it that I needed to write a third piece featuring Gelia. Gelia characteristically begins her essay by quoting the dictionary definition of her central term, resilience: “springing back into shape or position after being stretched, bent, or squeezed” and “recovering strength or good spirits quickly.” Gelia goes on to say that “The Filipino has often been described as being able to recover quickly,” that is as being resilient. She then proceeds to shred this quite empty generalization. Essentially, notes Gelia, the poor have always been “squeezed,” so how do they “spring back into shape” after a disaster like Yolanda. It’s the people who are “better- off” that are in a position to spring back. Gelia is not being a pessimist but rather a realist looking for solutions rather than platitudes. “Good spirits,” she says, “will not last long unless the promise of something good emerges,” that is a plan for change, for growth. “We do not want them to go back to where they were before, which is not much of a ‘Promised Land’”. As an example of a new direction coming out of a disaster, she points to the aftermath of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. That disaster “brought a vibrant sweet potato and feeds processing industry to Tarlac.” The volcano had all but destroyed the area’s agriculture, which was dependent on roots and tubers. Scientists developed a new variety of sweet potato that thrived in the altered soil after the volcanic debris or “lahar deposits slowly washed away.” Now comes Gelia’s surprise. We expect that she will now challenge science once again to come to the rescue and figure out a way to replace the old varieties of coconut trees that were destroyed by Yolanda in Leyte and Samar. She does, but she does much more. “How is science preparing climate change-ready products . . . . How would our prescriptions for variety, crop management, and marketing change in adaptation to climate change? . . . Super-typhoon Yolanda has given us an opportunity to find out.” Having gotten our attention, Gelia jabs us with a rapid-fire series of questions and suggestions about what can and should be done, always keeping the most-needy in mind. She concludes with her best line: “Are we able to help provide these answers so the better- off can be resilient and the less better-off can grow?” Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or <anamericanin