100
philippine team study 2
SHADOWS OF PLEASURE
(PROSTITUTION & TOURISM IN
MANILA)
by A. Lin Neuman
"Good evening sir, please come
inside". The tone is alluring and the woman beautiful, but the scene, repeated
thousands of times nightly in the crowded nest of nightclubs in Ermita, the tourist 'belt' of Manila, is indicative of the
clash that often occurs when the people of a poor nation come face to face with
the influx of dollars associated with tourism. It is a multitiered
system in the Philippines; the procurement of women for pleasure,
and the open invitation to the mysteries of a "hospitality girl" is
only the most visible manifestation of a prostitution phenomenon which grows
larger with every percentage growth in tourist arrivals.
Director Lucina Alday of the Bureau of
Women and Minors of the Ministry of Labor estimates that there are as many as
100,000 women employed in the hospitality industry, as she calls it, in Manila . The industry includes, in addition to hostesses who
dispense their favors in cocktail lounges and nightclubs, waitresses (an often
ambiguous term), go-go dancers, and sauna bath attendants. Hospitality is
generally taken to be a loose euphemism for prostitution as the wages paid by
club owners are scarcely liveable and the desire of
tourists and leisure-class Filipinos for available women is well-known. The
100,000 figure may even be misleadingly
101
low as applied to
prostitution per se. Father Toru Nishimoto, a Redemptorist priest who counsels Japanese tourists and has
followed the prostitution problem for years, identifies several categories of
the business in Manila ranging from high-priced call girls, often models and
film actresses, and descending a scale which ends with streetwalkers. Prices
range from as high as $200 to about 50
(?7 = $1) for women desperate enough to be walking the streets Government
statistics account for only those women employed in licensed establishments who
must obtain health permits and undergo periodic venereal disease checks. Call
girls, brothels, and others, of course do not obtain such permits.
Prostitution in the
Philippines has always flourished in places where there is a heavy
concentration of foreigners. The rows of clubs adjacent to the United States
military bases in Angeles and Olongapo give long
standing testament to that fact. The current situation is traceable to the
influx of Japanese and other tourists since the imposition of Martial Law in
1972. In addition, former havens for male relaxation, like Taipei and Seoul,
have become less accessible due to political attitudes and stricter enforcement
of anti-prostitution codes after years of exploitation by Japanese sex tour
operators. It has become a familiar sight in Manila to see bus loads of
Japanese men pull up outside a club, disembark, and go inside to choose a
partner for the evening. This rather indelicate tendency tc
conduct their business in large groups is a source of both irritation and humor
among Manila residents The girls, however, are more frank, "We love the
Japanese," said Malou, an employee of Le Beau, a
club which caters to the Japanese trade, "for their money."
And there is
undoubtedly a lot of money. Philippine Ministry of Tourism figures indicate
that the Japanese are the biggest spenders of all nationalities who visit the
country within 1977 the over 200,000 Japanese visitors spending an average of
nearly $55 a day on food, drink, shopping, and lodging. Nearly 85% of the
Japanese tourists are male and a healthy number of them double the per capita
figure with un-reported Yen spent on the girls. Of course, this astounding
market has been captured and organized by the tour operators, both foreign and
local. Since the banning of prostitution in Japan in 1958 the men have had to
look to their poorer Asian neighbors for the pleasures of the flesh. After
working through Korea, Taiwan, and to some extent Thailand they have come to
roost in the open arms of Manila. The cli-
102
mate could not be
better. Tourism is a major governmental priority here and it has grown from a
negligible dollar earner in the 1960s to the number 4 spot in foreign exchange
earnings in the late 1970s with a 1977 figure in excess of $300 million (an
increase of $262 million since 1972).
In examining the
tour operations, glaring evidence is found of the routine exploitation of women
by operators who see them as commodities to be assigned and dispensed with in
as efficient a manner as possible. Typically, a large operator, like Japan
Travel Bureau in Tokyo, will advertise a 'package tour' to the Philippines in
cooperation with a large Manila agent like Baron Travel Corporation or
Friendship Tours. The deal includes everything from shopping to hotel to women,
who are either chosen from picture books in Japan or selected in person in one
of the large clubs, some employing over 200 women, during the 'night life'
tour.
Sources in the
business report that the men on tour pay
an average of $60 for one night with the women of their short lived dreams.
Very little of the figure
arrives in the hands of the
girls. A rough breakdown looks
like this:.
club
owner… |
$15 |
tour
operator… |
15 |
local
guide… |
10 |
Japanese
guide… |
10 |
hotel
joiner pass… |
10 |
total… |
$60 |
The girls receive between
P30 and P40 from the owner's share. The girls report that often they do not
even get that much because there are numerous fines imposed by the club
management for improper dress, smoking, drinking, tardiness, and other
arbitrary infractions.
When asked how they
survive, the girls at Le Beau said
that they depend on tips. "Usually
the Japanese will give us money or gifts but sometimes," laughed Selya, 18,
"TY only." (TY is thank you
and a common slang in Manila.)
The item under joiner
pass is indicative of the interface between local capitalists and the industry.
In 1976, the Philippine government financed the construction of several new
first class hotels in Manila. The construction was spurred by the IMF
103
convention held here
but it has been widely criticized as in appropriate and the hotels have been
plagued with occupancy problems. Statistics reveal that none of the new hotels
managed any better than 60% occupancy for 1977 and many fell considerably below
that figure. Prostitution and the joiner pass have therefore become reliable
income boosters.
One hotel, the
Manila Midtown Ramada, owned by Chinese industrialist John Gokongwei,
has a typical, if somewhat more extensive procedure for handling the girls. To
begin with, the hotel passes out sheets printed in Japanese and addressed, 'To
our Japanese guests with ladies.' The sheet lays out the system: the girls are
to be admitted after 5pm through the employee's entrance; they are to leave by
8:00 the next morning; they are not to be taken to any of the public areas of
the hotel and all food and drink orders must be by room service. Finally, the
hotel charges a 'joiner's fee' of $10 for the right to take the woman into the
room. One source reported that the Ramada management has admitted to making 40%
of its gross income from the joiner system.
There is no attempt
to hide the business from prying eyes and apparently the hotel operates with
complete protection. It is important to add that this is not a cheap waterfront
dive but a respectable, first-class, government financed accommodation. That
the Manila police are involved is obvious when one observes the exodus of women
in the morning and the presence of several uniformed officers accepting bribes.
Girls who are taken frequently to the Ramada and other hotels report that they
have to pay P10 each per evening to the police for protection.
Of course, the
Ramada is not the only hotel active in the industry. Even the Manila Hotel, the
most luxurious in the city, owned by the Government Service Insurance System,
is said, according to a source, to yield to the tour groups who bring girls
into the hotel. (A group of Italian tourists recently threatened to move their
business away from the hotel in a tiff with the management over the presence of
prostitutes. The hotel gave in.) The source reported that nearly all hotels
acquiesce in the trade. "They don't want to," said a woman, a
marketing specialist in one of the hotels, "but they have to
survive." "Often, the staff of the hotel acts as procurers for the
guests and many times a tourist will be blocked from bringing a girl to his
room only because he did not secure her through
104
hotel channels.
A Philippine
tourism expert, Francisco Quesada, is quoted as saying, "Now we have no less
than 13,000 brand new hotel tourist rooms gathering dust.... A beguiling room
boon snowballed into a quite fashionable gold rush which created a bloated room
demand. An over generous offer of credit and investment by the government lured
almost all the noted chain managements all over the world." The result is
a ready supply of personnel ready to cater
to the whims of the tourist for sex and hotel management which turns the other
cheek and counts the cash receipts from the joiner system.
The Japanese are
not the only nationality lured to the Philippines for the beauty and
availability of its women but they are the largest, accounting for 29% of all
arrivals, and the most visible. Father Nishimoto
explains that the Japanese travel in groups because they want to bring their
culture with them to a foreign country, they feel
secure because groups are an important facet of Japanese society.
"Physically they leave Japan, but mentally they stay home," he said. Nishimoto is concerned with the effect of his countrymen's
presence abroad and his office, located in the Pope Pius XII Center in Manila,
counsels’ visitors and
often the prostitutes with whom they become involved.
Grouping makes it
easier to track the activities of
the Japanese whereas other visitors American, British, Australian -
satisfy their, desires on their own or in smaller numbers. They are seen
haunting the cocktail lounges of Ermita or being
approached by hotel employees or taxi drivers. The lounges are typically small
dingy bars where the beer is cheap and the girls plentiful. A man will enter
the establishment and then either choose or be approached by a girl at his table. If she stays to keep him company he buys her a
'ladies drink ' for about P12 and if he wants to take her out of the club he
pays a 'bar fine' of between P100 and 150. The girls generally get half the
price of the ladies' drinks and half the bar fine. There is no other wage. This
explains the often desperate scene of elaborately costumed women shouting and
grabbing foreigners along the streets of the tourist district to invite them
inside for a drink. The girls in these establishments work long hours and are
dependent on luck and beauty for their income. Although they do not have to
become prostitutes there is usually no other alternative. "I didn't want
to go," said Ching, 26, recounting her first
105
days in the bars,
"but my child needed money and the owner urged me.... Now I like the
money."
The girls are the real
victims in the prostitution expansion. They have come to Manila in much the
same way their sisters have gone to the areas around military -bases seeking
respite from provincial poverty with the availability of foreign dollars. Most
of the girls, although there are no precise figures, come from the southern
Philippine provinces of Leyte, Samar,
and Cebu, all in the Visayan region and all depressed
economically. Karina Constantino-David,
a sociologist from the University of the Philippines, said, "For the
majority of the prostitutes it is a case of being denied access to the goods of
society. They have nowhere else to go." This is true for all but the most
highly paid call girls, who are often well-educated, from wealthy families, and
enter the business for kicks or to support a luxury life-style.
Elenita, 25, with a
daughter and separated from her husband, works at Le Beau. She came to the club
because a friend brought her and she needed the money. She didn't intend to
become a prostitute, "But the men were already there." She admits to
no real plans for the future and says the job, "is OK because I need the
money."
Felisa is 28 and single,
she has been at La Beau for several years. She comes from the Bicol region and is supporting her parents and sending a
brother through school with her earnings. She also supports an 'adopted' baby.
The adoption, she explained, was actually a purchase from another hostess for
P700. "I didn't want to be lonely and I didn't want to ruin my body by
getting pregnant," she said.
Olga, 18, was first
taken by her mother to work in a bar as a go-go dancer when she was 14. Her
beauty was regarded as an asset by a family plagued with poverty in Samar. She lost her virginity the first night of her
employment at Le Beau two years ago. "I am ashamed to work in that place
but I do because of financial reasons."
Gina works on M.H.
del Pilar Street in Ermita at the 'Legs' cocktail lounge. She is
16 and has learned how to hustle customers into the lounge whereas girls at Le
Beau just wait for the Japanese tour buses to arrive. She works every night
from 5pm to 5am. "My boyfriend in the province took me
106
and then
left," she explained, "I was ashamed and we are very poor so I left
with a friend and came here. I send some money to my family. They think I am
just a waitress."
After a time the
stories take on a depressing similarity. Poor girls, usually with a tale of
being jilted or separated or taken advantage of, feel they have nothing to lose
entering the trade. "No, no feelings with the customer, none; I just like
the money," explained a girl on the street. Most are fatalistic with no
plans for the future and despite the relatively high income they have trouble
saving money. Some fall into drugs or just hang on hoping but never finding,
something better. I met one woman who is 33 and has a child entering college.
Another entertainer at Le Beau is 47.
The average income is impossible to determine and, of course, depends on the girl's
sexual desirability. "If you are beautiful you have a customer every
night," said one of the ladies who is very beautiful indeed. Many of the
girls interviewed reported income in the ?1500 to 2000 range. This, in a country where a
sales clerk or factory worker makes a minimum wage of P11 a day, is hard to abandon. The prostitutes are usually poorly educated, untrained, and unmarried -
"What else is there," asked
Felisa, "what else can I do?"
In addition to the
economic factors which pressure the girls into the sordid life is the framework
of Victorian morality which exerts a strong influence in Philippine society.
Veronica Pineda works with Catholic Charities of the Philippines with an
apostolate for the prostitutes. She says, "The minute they lose their
virginity they feel hopeless." Indeed, the tale of lost virtue nearly
always accompanies the girl's story. Director Alday
cites, "the ostracism of these girls by nearly all sectors of
society," as contributing to the problem.
On the government
side, the response has been both slow and inadequate. The chief institutional
agent for the care of women in the hospitality industry is the Bureau of Women
and Minors, under Alday. The bureau is primarily
concerned with enforcement of Presidential Decree 148 which includes
waitresses, hostesses, and sauna bath attendants in the work force and thus
entitles them to the protection and benefits of the labor code. Director Alday says that very few of the women enjoy their benefits
and her office is attempting to educate them on their legal rights. In
addition, the bureau conducts a
107
seminar for girls
applying for license as hospitality girls to protect them from the dangerous
possibilities of the occupation. In other words, the seminar is designed to
keep them out of the illicit bed. Alday sees her work
as falling under the general swell of benefits which accrue to citizens under
the New Society of President/Prime Minister Marcos and the First Lady, Imelda
Marcos. "In this compassionate society which the First Lady has tried to
work for, in this New Society of ours, the improvement of the quality of life
for all citizens is our goal," said Alday as she
affirmed the First Lady's personal concern for the prostitute.
When asked about
the structural link between prostitution and tourism Alday
conceded, "This makes our work quite difficult." She said there is some tension between her office
and the Ministry of Tourism over the issue and added that they are anxious for tourism authorities
to intervene in the situation.
For their part,
officials of the Ministry of Tourism do not admit that there is a problem and
they deny any part in the creation of a prostitution industry in Manila. An
official of the ministry stated, "I really do not know of any connection
between tourism and prostitution. If there is, we do not play it up."
While they may not advertise hookers in promotional brochures, they are
certainly aware of the situation because the ministry has co-sponsored seminars
on venereal disease prevention among club and sauna bath owners in the tourist
district. Officials are hesitant to grant interviews, however, and there is a
general sense of see no evil, hear no evil in the halls of the ministry.
As far as the law
of the land is concerned, prostitution is banned in no uncertain terms. Section
86 of the Hotel Code of 1976 specifically requires owners to report prostitutes
and 'suspicious characters' to the police. It is an ironic contradiction,
therefore, that municipal governments in Metro Manila require all hostesses and
waitresses to undergo regular VD checks by government doctors.
Clearly, despite
Director Alday's assertion that, "The girls turn
to prostitution because of neglect from religious and civic groups and general
misunderstanding," and despite the personal concern of Imelda Marcos,
prostitution in the Philippines is a structural reality caused by the
interacting of poverty with leisure dollars from the industrial world. The
government wants those dollars and it
108
is doubtful that
any significant efforts will be made to stand in the way of the tourist's
pursuit of pleasure.
Therefore the
Philippines, long noted for having beautiful women, is
allowing them to be turned into foreign exchange earners, commodities on the
leisure market of Asia. A Japanese, Mr. Yoshihisa
Hoya, of the Manila Garden Hotel, said, "The Philippines has many
potential tourist attractions, and it is important that these be made known to
foreigners, especially my countrymen. What I regret is that they are coming
here, not for those attractions but for the girls."
Under Martial Law,
there is no free press or public discussion of administrative priorities in the
country. The big drive for tourism is a relatively new priority, begun with the
creation of the Department (now Ministry) of Tourism in 1974 under former
Marcos press agent Jose Aspiras. But despite the holy
water of official sanction tourism is not necessarily viewed as beneficial for
the nation's development. During the parliamentary elections held in April of
this year the opposition party was vigorously opposed to foreign penetration in
the form of tourism and exploitation of women. Of course, no one from the
opposition was elected amid widespread and documented reports of government
cheating. A source in the hotel industry reported that Minister Aspiras called all major hotel owners and tour operators
together during the campaign and pressured them to instruct their employees to
vote for the administration because the opposition would destroy the tourism
industry.
The Philippines
does not have a widespread women's movement and the predominant reaction to
prostitution continues to be focused on the girl's fail from a state of social
grace. There is, however, a small but growing awareness of women as part of a
broader matrix of exploitation in which a male dominated society is more than
willing to see women literally sold to the highest bidder. Prostitution is a
natural foreign exchange earner here because it is endemic in the national
scene as well. Although the focus of this article is tourism, in the course of
the background research it became apparent that the moneyed class of Filipinos
is heavily involved in the procurement of women for personal pleasure. Extra
wives, 'keridas', in Tagalog,
for example, have long been a status symbol among the wealthy. Sociologist David
said in fact that the majority of high-paid call girls cater to
109
the upper classes
here, that low-priced Streetwalkers exist in the lower strata and that only the
middle group (and vast majority in Manila) is for the tourists,
Japanese women's groups have become aware of the image
their men project abroad. Father Nishimoto said the
anti-sex tour drive of Japanese women in the late 1960s was a factor in the
curtailment of the system in Korea and Taiwan. The cut back in those countries,
however, was the result of cooperation with local departments of tourism; here
the Ministry of Tourism refuses even to acknowledge a problem. The movement in
Japan is beginning to focus on the Philippines. A recent full-page
advertisement in a Yokohama paper, inserted by the Women's Association of Asia
in Japan, was headlined, "Lets Stop the Sex Tours;" and referred
specifically to the Philippines.
There is no end in
sight to the rise of prostitution in this country. Calls to individual reform
and acceptance of standard morality miss the mark. It is not a case of girls
falling prey to temptation and sin. The crux of the issue is summed up
repeatedly in interviews with the women themselves, "I hate it but I just
need the money."
With the continued
expansion of tourism and the government's inability (or lack of desire) to deal with the structural dynamics
of prostitution, that money will be there. The girls are poor.. The girls are
beautiful. It is a simple equation and the results can be seen in the glaring
lights of Ermita, the elaborately appointed hotels,
and the beckoning shadows of pleasure.