ANATOMY OF MISFORTUNE
Lolita and Porfirio Bergado did not always lead such desperate lives. Neither did their neighbors in 200 P. de la Cruz. In the 1980s, Mang Peryo remembers, everyone here had jobs. There were several factories nearby and they provided the employment that allowed people to lead fairly decent lives. Mang Peryo himself was a foreman at the nearby Royal Porcelain Co. This was where he met Lolita, then just a teenager working in the finishing section, decorating and polishing plates. When they married in the mid-1970s, life was good. Both of them had jobs and they lived fairly comfortably, as did their neighbors in 200 P. de la Cruz.

	TELEVISION RULES. No matter how small, every home in 200 P. de la Cruz (top photo) has a TV set. The children of the neighborhood (bottom photo) are reared on a diet of television programs. [photos by Sheila S. Coronel]

In 1985, Mang Peryo resigned from Royal Porcelain to try his luck as a forklift operator in Iraq. He borrowed money from his in-laws for the trip. He stayed in Iraq for a year and four months, but was cheated by his recruiter. For six months he didn't get a salary, so he decided to return home. He came back with almost nothing — yet had to pay off a P20,000-loan. He worked as a forklift operator in a sardine company; the job was hard, his hours were from six a.m. to midnight, so he quit. In 1995, he borrowed P120,000 to buy a tricycle. He is still paying P1,000 a month for that loan up to now. Also in 1995, Lolita quit her job at Royal Porcelain, as the company was laying off people and hiring only casual workers. It finally went bankrupt in 2001, leaving 4,000 people jobless.

Today most of the men in 200 P. de la Cruz don't have regular jobs. Mang Peryo estimates that in San Bartolome, once a thriving community of factory workers, 80 percent don't have work. "Maraming istambay (there are many who just loiter around)," he says. "If only we can bring back the past. Times weren't hard then. It was never this bad, it never came to the point that we couldn't pay our electric bills. Now, you feel insecure. Kakaba-kaba ka (you are always worried)."

The malaise is evident everywhere in the community. At 10 a.m., men who should be at work gather round a bottle of Tanduay instead. Unemployed youths turn to shabu. The houses are rundown. The women look old and spent beyond their years, and constantly fret about the future of their children.

"Wowowee" winner Aling Chi, who sent two daughters to college from her sari-sari store earnings, worries that the one who studied to be a midwife is still jobless while the one who finished a computer course is just a saleslady. Both her sons dropped out of high school. One sells fruits in a kariton at the Tutuban market, while the other is unemployed and prefers to hang around with his barkada. If she could win big in "Wowowee" the next time around, she says, she would use the money to provide for her children's future.

The eskinita's other winner, Aling Julieta, has an 18-year-old son who spends most of the day lazing on the sofa his mother bought from her booty. She would have wanted him to go to college, but with a mother ill with cancer and a husband who earns just the minimum wage, there isn't enough money left for the boy's education. If only she could win again, says Aling Julieta, her son can make it to college.

LOLITA'S LAST MOMENTS
Lolita did not seem discouraged by the fact that her neighbors' lives did not really change even after their "Wowowee" windfalls. So long as her family had a chance at having even just a day of no worries, she was more than willing to have a shot at being a contestant, to join the throng at Ultra.

Aling Zenaida remembers that she and Lolita were already safely in the ring of the stadium by early morning of Saturday. "We were alright there, we weren't crammed together, we could even sit down comfortably," she says. "But when they announced that the others wouldn't be let in, the crowd pushed forward. We were crammed tight. There was a man trying to pick Lolit's bag, so I told her to move aside. But then the crowd pushed me to the side and Lolit was left alone in the middle of the mass of people. I don't remember what happened, only being pushed, and when I gained consciousness, I was already in the hospital. I had wounds in my leg and on my shoulder. My glasses and my bag were lost."

Mang Peryo heard the news about the Ultra stampede late that morning, but he didn't think his wife would be among those hurt or killed. When she hadn't come home by afternoon, he thought she may have just gotten lost. Pasig, after all, is a long way from Novaliches and Lolita rarely ventured that far.

At about six p.m, he and his neighbors saw Zenaida on TV, her face flashed along with the others hurt at the stadium. Mang Peryo thought Lolita was just keeping her friend company at the Pasig city hospital where Zenaida had been confined. So he went to search for her, borrowing a vehicle from Lolita's more affluent cousins, who also live on P. de la Cruz. Their search ended at about 9:30 p.m at the Arlington Funeral Homes in Quezon City. They got there just as the TV screen in the funeraria was showing Lolita's body along with those of many others who had perished in the stampede.

"We all screamed," Mang Peryo remembers. "We went to the morgue at Arlington. There were so many corpses there, lined up like fish in the market. We looked at each one. When we finally found her, I wanted to take her in my arms and hug her, but the guard stopped me. The embalmer said all her ribs were broken, her lungs had collapsed. There was no way she could have survived after all those people had trampled on her."

Mang Peryo claimed his wife's body the following morning and held a wake for her at the empty lot next to their house. The wake lasted eight nights before Lolita was finally buried, with the food for the guests eating into the P50,000 that Mang Peryo had received from ABS-CBN, which also paid for the funeral expenses. "We wanted to make her feel how precious she was to us," he says of the extended wake.

With his wife gone, Mang Peryo is at his wit's end. Without Lolita to take care of Joy, who is mentally retarded, he has had to stay home for longer hours. He cannot venture out until one of his sons — three of them also tricycle drivers and the youngest still in school — is home. "I worry if she is left alone," he says of Joy. "The drug addicts might harm her." He is thinking of having her confined in an institution so he could work more.

As it is, he is finding it hard to make ends meet. The Bergado family of 10 consumes 1.5 kilos of rice every meal. That costs P26. Because gas is expensive, they sometimes just buy food instead of cooking — two viands at P40 each from the neighborhood carinderia. One meal alone could already eat up half of Mang Peryo's daily earnings. For lunch the day this writer was visiting P. de la Cruz, Joy and her brothers shared one fried tilapia and leftover rice. "Sometimes, we make do with dried fish or egg or Lucky Me noodles," says Mang Peryo. At least the electricity is back, he says, thanks to the donations at Lolita's wake. He was also able to repair the gate of the house and the sewer. But he wants to save the rest of the money left over from the contributions for emergencies, in case one of the children gets sick or another calamity hits the household.

"WOWOWEE" REBORN
In the past, Lolita and the rest of the women of 200 P. de la Cruz would probably have prayed novenas to Our Lady of Perpetual Help or St. Jude, Patron of the Impossible. They would probably have lit candles in Quiapo Church or walked on their knees in the church's aisle, in the hope that the Black Nazarene would answer their prayers. Today they watch game shows. Lolita may have died trying to join "Wowowee," but the women of this eskinita continue to latch their hopes on TV shows like it.

Even now, after the tragedy, network executives still seem not to see that the range of programming on primetime TV, which is watched by millions of poor Filipinos, does not suffice. The range of programs is very narrow, consisting of game shows, telenovelas, fantaseryes, gag shows, and reality programs. While some of these are very good and provide quality entertainment, it's obvious that most are produced for no other reason than they will rate. There are almost no programs on prime time television that provide for values formation, education, information, much less empowerment. Television provides viewers escape without also providing them the tools to navigate a harsh and complex world.

When "Wowowee" was relaunched on March 11, new rules were put in place, including one that requires contestants to register by text first, so that hopefuls won't queue for hours just to get into the studio. But 100 "walk-ins" will be allowed in during the show, although there are now separate queues for children and the elderly. "Steel stanchions with web harness shall be placed to help the audiences queue more properly," say the new "Wowowee" guidelines. "The elderly and children are to queue nearest the Audience Waiting Shed while the General Audience should line up after the lagoon gate; everyone will receive a number to ensure order. There are prominently placed signs pointing to the queueing areas, portalets, and medic stations." Winners of contests that give big prizes will also get a free training seminar on how to manage their money and venture into "a sustainable means of livelihood."

But "Wowowee" itself remains pretty much the same, opening to noisy, upbeat music and a hyperkinetic Revillame introducing the studio audience and showing the range of places from which they came. Revillame is his usual irrepressible and irreverent self, no hint of the tragedy evident in the way he hosts the relaunched program.

"All of the victims are really bilib kay (believers in) Willie," says Silvestre, the social worker with the 71 Dreams Foundation. "He's such a powerful voice. A lot of them say it wasn't Willie's fault. They put him on a pedestal."

But Willie's help — and "Wowowee's" generosity — are driven by pity. The prizes made people happy for a few days, but they had to face harsh reality soon enough, as Aling Chi and Aling Julieta eventually did. Instead of giving educational messages-like how the poor can avail themselves of public goods, how they can fight for services in the barangay, and how they can assert their rights-"Wowowee" only distracts and entertains them. The poor need information on a range of topics like livelihood, eating balanced meals on shoestring budgets, family planning, etc. yet there is precious little on free TV that educates and empowers them. Willie, with his cult following, could influence audience behavior on such things as the dangers of smoking or unprotected sex. He could provide them useful information such as that anti-TB drugs and family planning pamphlets should be given for free in barangay health centers, and that they can complain if these are not available.

After all, the reach, influence, and prestige of network TV dwarf even that of the government or of the public school system. Children may not be able to recite the "Panatang Makabayan," but they can all sing the "Big Brother" song. Yet TV programming executives do not see that their task is to educate and empower the poor. For the most part, it is profit margins, ratings, and audience share they worry about. The audience that they have created also does not ask much more of them.

Fortunately for them, the poor are forgiving and undemanding. "I am not mad at 'Wowowee' or at Willie," Mang Peryo says quietly. "None of us wanted this to happen. It's fate. It's God's will."

On a table near his wooden bed is a framed photograph of Lolita at age 17. She is smiling in the picture, looking so pretty and so full of promise. "Sometimes, I think I'm crazy," says Mang Peryo. "I talk to her at night. I tell her, why you? So many others could have been killed. Why you? We need you."