Territorial Ecology

The broader historical and colonial context of the United States, Spain, Cuba and the Philippines sets the contemporary geopolitical stage for the United States’ intended ‘Pacific Pivot’ in the South Pacific region. 

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However, the ousting of the US military presence in the Philippines in 1991 has marked an opportunistic shift in power structure. While anticipation of the fall of the US Empire invites other capitalistic agents to fill in, we explored strategies for marginalized labor groups to take a stand for their own economic autonomy instead. Historically, US military operations worldwide have enlisted Filipino laborers in bases located within the Philippines as well as in GITMO to further their agendas.Military bases in turn produce a type of infrastruc tural template that simultaneously encourages economic activities such as extractives operations, urban development, and agricultural practice. 

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Military bases in turn produce a type of infrastructural template that simultaneously encourages economic activities such as extractives operations, urban development, and agricultural practice. By rooting each of our four projects in a previous or current US military base — Clark, Bautista, Subic Bay and Guantanamo — we deploy this template on the behalf of the marginalized Filipinos.

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The ex-US military base Bautista seeks to reopen its operations on Palawan island due to its closeness to 11% of the world’s nickel mining extraction. Such extractivist is fostered by local government and global trade, causing the displacement and vulneration of indigenous people’s rights. In this context, we choose to empower those communities through phytomining and phytodetection as metabolic strategies that subvert the development phase of mining.