Surviving Tiempo Muerto: On Bungkalan and Peasant Resistance in the Philippines
The island of Negros is known as “the sugar bowl of the Philippines.” But such romantic imagery obscures a dark reality: during tiempo muerto—the “dead time” between sowing and harvesting cane—farm laborers there go without wages and food. “It is death built into the clockwork mandate of the sugar plantation,” write Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho in their Artist Op-Ed.