Legacies of Place and Power: From Military Base to Freeport Zone

Abstract

This article examines the place–making of global borderlands—semiautonomous, foreign–controlled geographical locations geared toward international exchange. I use the case study of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ), Philippines, as an example of a global borderland that resides within a space formerly occupied by a colonial power. I show how elite Filipinos adapted and transformed the spatial boundaries the U.S. military initially erected. The earlier boundaries differentiating Americans from Filipinos and military personnel from civilians helped the native elite to perpetuate familiar patterns of inequality based on nationality, class, and skin color. This differentiation occurs through: (1) the indirect and direct exclusion of the poor vis–à–vis the SBFZ's sociospatial organization and (2) the maintenance of cultural practices (litter, traffic) and moral discourses (of what is “good” and “bad”) formerly associated with the base, so that the SBFZ remains distinct from the surrounding city of Olongapo. Places of power have legacies, structural and spatial residues that continue to influence cultural practices and discourses even after the original uses of a place are transformed.