From Necessary Visions: Richard Sennett’s Levinasian Neighbor in Pre- and Post-War Manila, by Philip Z. Peckson and Dean A. Mejos in Kritike, Volume 18, Number 3, January 2025, Special Issue, the official open access (OA) journal of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), Manila, Philippines.
However, gated-ness is not fate. Before the 1950s, there were no gated communities in Metro Manila, with the very first, Philam Life Homes, built amidst elite fear of the Hukbalahaps, a communist peasant rebellion popularly known as the Huks.44 In 1949, President Manuel Quezon’s widow, the former first lady Aurora Quezon, was killed with her daughter, her son-in-law, the mayor of Quezon City, and eleven others in an ambush on the road to Baler from Nueva Ecija, which was blamed on the Huks by the sitting President Elpidio Quirino.45 Three years later, Quirino presided over a meeting that would lead to the sale of public land intended for social housing for the building of Philam Life Homes.46
44 See Pante, “Modern Living in Third-World Suburbia,” 28–29.
45 See “The Philippines: Murder in the Mountains,” Time (9 May 1949). <https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,800220,00.html>.
46 See Pante, “Modern Living in Third-World Suburbia,” 29.
