Concertina Wire Country

In our minds, we Filipinos like to believe that we are a friendly and hospitable people capable of great things and achievements.

But what does it tell about us when just by looking around, we see that barbed wires are a common sight used to protect property and even just the plants along the sidewalks?

What kind of people are we or what kind of society do we have that we have accepted the unfriendly and hostile sight of barbed wires as a normal part of our environment?

Barbed wires in the city give an impression that we are a people living under occupation. But then if we think about the great and still growing disparity of wealth between the mass of people who are poor in our country and the few rich who own virtually the entire country if not its best parts, we could well be living in a virtual occupation regime of elites who impose a system of unjust social order on us.

At any rate, barbed wires remind us of a negligent government incapable of creating a kind and gentle city or maybe a people who have come to accept social inequity as a way of life... until maybe their seething resentment reaches a critical mass. And then they explode.