Posts Tagged ‘Mary Racelis’

Manny Villar would like voters to believe, his family was almost desperately poor, judging from the songs, rhetoric and political ads that have formed the main narrative of his political campaign.

Contrary to Villar’s claims of being dirt-poor, spending Christmas in the streets, swimming in a sea of garbage and not being able to afford medicine to save his brother’s life, GMANEWS concludes Villar’s Tondo roots were definitely middle class.

Manny Villar’s father, Manuel Villar Sr., was a US-educated Philippine government budget officer and his mother was an enterprising fish dealer, with a choice stall in Divisoria market, one of Manila’s busiest.

• In 1957, when they were very poor , Villar’s father was earning P3,960 a year, four times more than the average annual income of P924.
• In 1961, Villar’s father was earning P448/month, equivalent today to about P35,392/month.
• But the bigger income was probably from Villar mother’s business, from which she earned P80 to P600/day (equivalent to P6,320 to P47,400 PER DAY in 2010).

The Villar family’s conviction about their own poverty in the 1950s and 1960s could simply highlight the different definitions people have of being poor. Having nine children, with one dying of disease, could have left an imprint of hardship on their memories.

Dr. Cielito Habito, an economist at Ateneo de Manila University and a former head of the National Economic and Development Authority, or NEDA said: “They were definitely middle class.“  Habito who helped GMANews.TV convert the elder Villar’s income to today’s money.

Dr. Mary Racelis, an urban anthropologist who did poverty studies in Tondo in the 1960s, says poverty cannot be measured by income alone. Racelis said “There was no way they were poor in Tondo.“  She also said:

• “Housing is a very strong indicator of poverty … They (the Villars) were renters of a home made of strong materials. That does not make them poor.“
• “The really poor in Tondo lived in ramshackle homes of nipa and straw.“
• According to the poor: “the poverty threshold is having three regular meals a day. That’s the threshold in Tondo to this day..”
• “The Villars had a double income, the father was a regular wage earner, they eventually owned a piece of land. They were in the formal sector – they could have been in the upper 10 percent. “

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Villar’s Tondo roots were ‘definitely middle class’