The Shelf Life of Maritime Futures

A car drops me off on Gov. A. Pascual Street in Navotas City. As I wait to meet Terence Repelente, a fisherfolk rights organizer, a glimmering object catches my eye. A red San Miguel Pilsen bottle cap lies discarded on the ground. I bend to pick it up. Stamped over its logo, the same coat of arms bestowed to the city of Manila by Philip II of Spain, is a date: 05JAN26.

“Our mussels were the sweetest and most delicate in the Philippines.” Ate¹ Gina rubs my arm, interlinked with hers, as she guides me through the narrow streets of Navotas. Terence leads us from a distance, just out of sight. The tight thoroughfares end at the harbor’s edge, and we step out onto the concrete breakwater. She points out to Manila Bay: “We had to watch the excavators uproot our tahungan.”² Ate Gina presses my hand, “We can rebuild our mussel farms. But then they started dredging the seabed. Everything is dying.”

Navotas was the historic fishing capital of the Philippines. For generations, fisherfolk in this northern Metro Manila city—over seventy percent of its inhabitants—derived their livelihoods from the fertile eastern shores of Manila Bay. Many households inherited their trades through an unbroken lineage of maritime traditions. These practices encompass the entirety of the fishing trade: from mussel farming and net mending to seafood harvesting and the production of local staples, notably fish sauce (patis) and shrimp paste (bagoóng). “We were fishermen since we were born,” mourned Ate Gina, “It’s our culture. We don’t know how to do anything else.”

In February 2024, the local government handed removal notices to Navotas mussel farmers, clearing the area for the San Miguel Corporation’s Navotas Coastal Bay Reclamation Project (NCBRP). Fisherfolk were issued a seven-day ultimatum to self-demolish their tahungan before demolition crews from NCBRP razed their farms. “They were only given one week to harvest an entire season of mussels or risk losing ninety percent of their income,” Terence said bitterly, “One community member died from the stress.” The eviction order took effect during Holy Week, the peak season for harvesting. All mussel farms were destroyed. Navotas fisherfolk received no compensation.

The NCBRP is part of a larger infrastructure of reclamation projects in Manila Bay that will cover approximately 30,000 hectares, nearly half the size of Metro Manila, affecting an estimated ten million families and innumerable biodiverse areas. It is spearheaded by the San Miguel Corporation, one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines and responsible for many public-private development projects in Manila, including the New Manila International Airport. The NCBRP will connect the airport to the city center with a mega-expressway cutting through Navotas waters. But its flagship product is San Miguel Beer, one of the best-selling beers in the world.

Ate Gina and I retrace our steps from the breakwater into Navotas City. Even as she steers me over puddles and stairwells, the landscape is defined by the San Miguel Corporation. Stacks of beer crates, stray bottles, and faded San Miguel food wrappers serve as a constant visual reminder of the conglomerate’s reach.³

“What is this all for?” Terence asks when we reach the headquarters of Pamalakaya-Navotas, a collective advocating for genuine fisheries reform. The Pamalakaya office is a stilt structure decorated with protest signs in the shape of mussel shells. One sign declares: SAN MIGUEL PAHIRAP SA MANGINGISDA (“San Miguel, Torment for Fishermen”). I look out the window and see backhoes and construction cranes framing the horizon. “The airport is set to sink in thirty years,” Terence quips, then pauses, “We are losing our homes, economies, recipes, and ecosystems for a project that’s not even long-term.”

That night, I turn the San Miguel bottle cap in my hand as I walk home. “Our lives stopped entirely,” Ate Gina told me as I left Navotas, “we can’t afford my son’s school tuition.” I think of the definitive foreclosure of futures in the Navotas littoral zone, where generations of maritime life-worlds are being erased by the San Miguel Corporation. I think of the inescapable ubiquity of San Miguel products and how the fisherfolk of Navotas have no alternative but to ingest their own destruction.

I flick the bottle cap into a garbage can nearby.