OLONGAPO CITY, PHILIPPINES -- In this honky-tonk hometown of the U.S. 7th Fleet, one of the longest-running shows is the battle between a crusading Irish priest and the city's political boss over bars, brothels and the impact of the American base.
The dispute has been neither priestly nor gentlemanly.
"There is operating in this city an evil force," says the priest, the Rev. Shay Cullen. "Here, it's rule by dynasty -- and harassment, and intimidation."
Replies the boss, Olongapo Mayor Richard Gordon: "He will lie, and he will twist facts. He's a priest, but he's a liar. That is why the community and I hate Shay Cullen."
Behind such accusations, strong even by the raucous standards of Philippine political feuds, is the local, more personal side of one of the Philippines' most divisive issues: the presence in this country of more than 16,000 U.S. troops at bases such as the Subic Bay Naval Station here.
The battle over U.S. bases in the Philippines makes news in Washington and Manila as a political and military topic, fought in terms of U.S. strategic needs and Philippine nationalism. But in Olongapo City, Cullen and Gordon argue the matter on a different basis: whether the Americans' presence is good or bad for people here.
Cullen is an outspoken critic of the American presence -- a position that puts him at odds with most residents of a town heavily dependent on the base for survival.
He came from Dublin in 1969 as a missionary priest to do routine parish work. But, as a main recreation station for U.S. troops in Vietnam, the base had brought Olongapo a plague of social evils: prostitution, venereal disease, pornography, child abuse, drug addiction and homeless Amerasian children fathered by U.S. soldiers.
"After six months of hearing amazing confessions," Cullen recalls, "I decided to get out of the box and do something about it." He built a drug center that now serves 20 recovering addicts and offers poor residents work making baskets and other handicrafts for export to seven countries. He shelters 16 abandoned street children.
At a Senate hearing on the bases held in Olongapo late last year, Cullen was the lone person to speak against the base. When he left, an angry crowd surrounded the priest and pelted him with stones.
Cullen decries the problems that he identifies with the base. He keeps files -- two decades' worth of reports and newspaper clippings that tell horrendous tales of U.S. servicemen sexually assaulting children as young as 9, of women selling themselves and their children into prostitution for the pleasure of sailors on liberty.
"Everybody's shocked about it, but it still goes on," says Cullen, a lanky six-footer whose Irish brogue is now peppered with a dash of Filipino-accented English. "Free choice doesn't exist here," he said. "These women are so abused and exploited. . . . Do you ever go to the slum areas behind the neon lights? They have to live in such a life with no hope, no escape."
Nonsense, says Mayor Gordon, whose ancestry is part American. He contends the impact of the base is "more positive than negative," since the U.S. facility provides badly needed jobs in industries as wide-ranging as construction and handicrafts -- not to mention income for the 6,000 licensed "bar girls," the Philippine euphemism for prostitutes.
The social costs that Cullen regularly crusades against are, in Gordon's view, just one small part of the city's life.
The cases of sexual abuse involving U.S. servicemen and Filipino children are the exceptions, not the rule, he argues. Cullen "shows one facet of Olongapo, and makes it seem as if that is Olongapo," Gordon said. "He stultifies the ability of the people to dream that they can be better."
The Gordon family has been associated with politics in Olongapo since 1959, when the American military conceded home rule. Both his father and mother served as mayor; his father was assassinated in office in 1967.
Gordon, a lawyer, first became mayor in 1980. Now, his wife is the congresswoman for this district -- leading to accusations that he is a political boss presiding over a family dynasty. Gordon is widely believed to harbor presidential ambitions. He says his city, with its efficient transportation system, timely garbage collection, and relatively low crime rate, could serve as a model for the national government.
Gordon and others blame Cullen for spreading a bad image of Olongapo as "Sin City," in part through a newspaper column he writes. Residents here angrily blamed Cullen for an article last November in the San Diego Union that stated: "In Olongapo, one in every five females -- women and girls -- is a prostitute." A group of Olongapo business and community leaders filed a petition with the government demanding Cullen's expulsion from the country for insulting Filipino "dignity and honor" and for feeding "unsavory" articles about Olongapo to the foreign press.
Gordon says he prefers to concentrate on the more positive aspects of Olongapo. He takes pride in having shut down the seedier aspects of Olongapo's nightlife. Gone are the live shows, the striptease, the lady mud-wrestling, the on-stage pornography. Instead, Olongapo bars are by Philippine standard quite tame, the girls always clothed -- in bikinis at least -- and the city's streets well-policed.
Gordon also is proud of his campaigns to boost morale and civic-mindedness, such as his plan for color-coded taxis, uniforms for street vendors and his ever-present slogan, "Aim High, Olongapo," emblazoned on buildings and the sides of public vehicles.
"I don't like foreign bases. Nobody likes foreign bases," Gordon says. "But weighing the costs, then you come up with the pluses and minuses."
Cullen argues that Gordon's policy of allowing "controlled" prostitution is merely a concession to the U.S. base establishment and to the city's powerful nightclub owners. "An evil empire here is not something I want to compromise with," Cullen says. "I'm not a moral crusader. I'm just working for justice."