Purgatory on earth

We are reposting this article published on April 15, 2014 about the challenges being faced by the sugar industry in Negros Occidental.

CUARESMA or Holy Week is the time when Filipinos reflect on the agony of Jesus Christ. It is also the time when the mamumugon — the workers in the vast haciendas or plantations of Negros Occidental — slip into a suspended state between life and death, a seeming purgatory on earth.

This is Tiempo Muerto, the dead season in the Philippines’ sugar bowl, a period between the planting and harvesting of sugarcane. It lasts from April until August, and is a season that the sugar plantation workers dread more than the typhoons that enter the country also around this period.

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NENE ROBATON studies at night using an improvised kerosene lamp as her source of light. Nene lives with her family in a hacienda. She hopes to become a teacher someday | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

View the accompanying video to this article on our Youtube Channel.