The Man, the Pit,
and the Dismantling
of Metro Manila
Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon
FIRST IT WAS one drop, square on his cheek. It didn’t slide down as quickly as a raindrop would, because it was thick and sticky and oddly warm. And then more drops came as the moments passed, plopping onto his face and shoulders without any discernible rhythm—sometimes one drop, sometimes a few in quick succession, sometimes several fat drops all at once. He touched his face carefully, then stared at the red smeared all over his fingers. There they go. The Project was underway.
He looked up through the thick canopy of weeds, his eyes crawling up the coarse concrete wall six stories high, and saw people spilling out of the MRT through broken windows, getting sliced by the jagged glass; people clinging o
