Abbreviations

FIGURE 1.The Philippines

FIGURE 2.Metro Manila

1

INTRODUCING INTIMACY, VIOLENCE, AND SUBALTERN POLITICS

About one year into the Philippine war on drugs August 2017, we received the following Facebook post from Maria, a longtime friend. It had been posted by the children of her deceased neighbors:

To my parents, rest in peace. Thank you for everything that you have done to raise us. I am sorry I was not able to do anything when you were targeted. The people in the adjacent house were the target. It is very painful especially when I heard my parents screaming as they were shot. The police did not stop there; they also threw a grenade on them. My parents were good people; they did not cross anyone. Why did you have to kill them even if they were not your targets?! What you did was unbelievable. You even told the media that my parents transacted with you [the police] at around 2 a.m. Are you stupid? You broke into our house, destroyed our gate. And the grenade, you sons of bitches, you ran away before you threw it and you did not let us out of the room. You also did not allow the media to talk to our neighbors so that they will not tell about the crimes you have committed. Justice please! (Facebook post translated by Karl Hapal, August 18, 2017)

This was not the first post Maria shared with us from our field site in Bagong Silang, a huge urban area in the northern part of Metro Manila. Areas such as this had become the epicenters of the war. The social media update alludes to many of the war’s hallmarks: accusations of drug dealing and overwhelming violence and assertions of police acting in self-defense when arresting people to avoid discussions of responsibility. In the following days, residents of the community shared pictures of the deceased victims and discussions ensued as to the legitimacy of the killings. While many focused on the brutality and on the innocence and virtue of the victims, others commented that the family was indeed involved through two children who sold drugs (not the adjacent family mentioned in the post). Maria embodied these torturous discussions. She was horrified about the brutality while at the same time noting that the police had targeted the wrong people and, by implication, that killing the child drug-dealers would somehow have been legitimate. Scenes like this became a staple of media reports across the Philippines as thousands lost their lives, resulting in haunting discussions of the legitimacy of the war, who should live, and the impact of the war on social relations from the national to the local level.

The war on drugs and the ensuing violence began as Rodrigo Duterte assumed the presidency of the Philippines after a comfortable victory in June 2016. Duterte had won the elections on a promise to conduct a war on drugs and so-called drug personalities—dealers and addicts—who were said to undermine and destroy Philippine society. This book sets out to explore three interrelated questions: How did violent conflict over drugs become so omnipresent? How will the drug war end and with what consequences? Why was it exactly that poor, urban areas in the Manila area like Bagong Silang came to dominate in the numbers of dead? In regard to the first question, many observers agree that it was the election of Duterte that enabled a rise in drug-related violence and killings by police.