Olongapo, a city located just outside the former US naval base at Subic Bay, has long had a reputation in the Philippines as one of the nation's “sin cities.” While Subic served as a logistics and maintenance hub during the Cold War, Olongapo became a playground where US servicemen engaged in “rest and recreation.” During the 1970s and 1980s, American and Philippine scholars and activists pointed to the sex industry's exploitation of young women and girls in places with a large US military presence, like Olongapo. They saw issues of sexual and gendered violence involving US servicemen and Filipinas as a symptom of US imperialism and the inequalities it produced in the Philippines.
In Global Borderlands, Victoria Reyes asks us to rethink this narrative of US exploitation, violence, and power. Where are there moments of resistance? In what ways have Filipinos asserted sovereignty despite the inequalities? How have Filipina sex workers understood their relationships to US servicemen beyond the stereotypical? Global Borderlands draws from multiple methods, including close readings of legal texts, tax records, ethnography, and oral interviews, to shed light on the agency of Filipinos within the broader narrative of US power. Reyes's attention to detail while examining multiple sites of encounters between Filipinos and foreigners, including Americans, Europeans, and East Asians, adds nuance to the complex dynamics between broader structures of power and the way in which those on the ground conceptualize their experiences.
The concept of “global borderlands” proves useful in this endeavor, providing readers with a new analytic through which to contemplate the contingencies of power in “unsettled” spaces (p. 3). According to Reyes, a global borderland is “a place controlled by foreigners and one where the rules that govern socioeconomic life differ from those that are outside its walls” (p. 2). Global borderlands are “legally plural” spaces, meaning that they are ruled by multiple, competing legal systems (p. 3). The important point that Reyes emphasizes is that while global borderlands are spaces of inevitable inequality that work largely in the favor of foreigners, sovereignty is contingent and constantly negotiated (p. 5).
Each of the book's six chapters examines a different spatial location. The first two chapters mine the details of military agreements, tax law, and court cases. Chapter 1 takes readers through the history of US-Philippine military agreements since 1946, demonstrating how Philippine officials curtailed US power and asserted Philippine sovereignty in small but significant ways over time. In this chapter, the question of Philippine sovereignty reappears in places where one might not expect, such as in tax disputes involving American citizens living in Subic Bay. Chapter 2 analyzes two high-profile criminal cases involving US servicemen and Filipinas, a rape in 2005 and a murder in 2015. Reyes's attention to the broader meanings of these cases for Americans and Filipinos, and what was at stake for each, helps to explain why the United States compromised more, giving the Philippine government greater control, in 2015 compared with the previous case in 2005.
The next two chapters take readers into another arena of social life by examining the intimate relationships and families that formed, and fell apart, within Subic Bay. Chapter 3 outlines two contradictory narratives of interracial relationships between US servicemen and Filipinas, as either exploitative or heroic. Chapter 4 turns to the precarity of Amerasians, the children of US military personnel and Filipinas. This chapter shows how place and imaginaries of belonging mattered in the legal interpretations of US and Philippine officials, which ultimately denied Filipino Amerasians recognition as US citizens.
In the final two chapters, readers are again drawn into a different spatial location. Chapter 5 draws from interviews with employees and visitors of Subic Bay Freeport Zone to explore how labor imaginaries have reinforced stereotypes of nationality and have shaped interactions between Filipinos and foreigners. Chapter 6 considers how the physical environment of Subic and “consumption imaginaries” have influenced individuals’ sense of belonging (p. 177). Where individuals spend their leisure time, where they shop for groceries, and what products they buy reinforce the idea of Subic as a modern, global center where people feel safe and are able to participate in modernity. These final chapters allow readers to see Subic from the vantage point of ordinary people who live and work there.
Global Borderlands covers a lot of ground. The book not only explores an understudied place, but also brings a holistic approach to understanding Subic Bay—and the modern Philippines—through its multidimensional analysis. Considering its wide scope, one limitation of the book is its lack of attention to gender and the work of feminist scholars who have also complicated narratives of US hegemony by examining Filipina agency. Anne Lacsamana's Revolutionizing Feminism, Mina Roces's Women's Movements and the Filipina, and the work of Minjeong Kim on Filipina marriage migrants come to mind.
A deeper engagement with the gendered aspects of global borderlands would have added greater cohesion between the chapters and the broader argument. This is especially true considering Reyes's strong critique of feminist approaches in chapter 3, as well as the fact that each chapter is focused on aspects of intimacy between locals and foreigners, whether sexual and romantic relationships or intimate interactions between employers, workers, and those living in Subic Bay. Nonetheless, this is an admirable work of historical and ethnographic sociology that is important for anyone interested in learning about the workings of US imperialism, US military bases, and the modern Philippines. For those interested in ethnography, the book's methodological appendix elaborates on the practical and theoretical issues of fieldwork, focusing on transparency and critical self-reflection.
