The 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

CITATION for Pablo Torres Tapia

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
31 August 1964, Manila, Philippines

In Tanauan, Batangas, where economic progress formerly was stifled by usury, PABLO TAPIA has shown that perceptive and patient use of credit can unlock great potentialities. Today farmers raising bountiful and diversified crops and merchants with thriving stalls all demonstrate the results that can be achieved. This growing prosperity is not limited to the few but is shared by an ever widening proportion of citizens.

Tanauan suffered cruelly during World War II and, amidst the chaos following liberation and independence, the community's needs seemed limitless. To rebuild their homes, replace their carabao or market wares many Filipinos had nowhere to turn but to moneylenders whose interest rate on loans often reached ten per cent per week. Yet, savings others accumulated in bamboo tubes and tin cans were idle and frequently lost.

Arraying themselves in battle against these practices that were sapping the town's vitality, PABLO TAPIA and a small group of like-minded citizens, in 1947, reestablished the Square Deal Savings and Loan Association. Founded in 1926 by a beloved Tanaueño, Juan V. Pagaspas, this institution had been destroyed during the fighting that also cost the life of its champion. Now TAPIA and his associates walked from house to house in the barrios and in the poblacion, persuading farmers and townspeople to deposit five or ten pesos each month. Basilisa Carandang, a fellow lawyer who later became his wife, set up books and provided rent-free premises in her home.

Within three years, the Association had capital and deposits totalling P300,000.00. An inveterate horticulturist by avocation, TAPIA used these funds productively in loans for seed, fertilizer, water tanks and the like. Local industries were financed, such as tailoring of remnants into inexpensive clothing. Showing faith in the small farmer and merchant, character loans often were given. In effect, TAPIA supervised the credit, constantly visiting farms and markets to suggest ways of increasing income. He started a monthly newspaper, Tinig ng Tanauan, to give depositors helpful information on farming and community affairs.

In 1951, to cope with increasing demands for small credit, the Association was converted to the Square Deal Banking Corporation with the help of the late Senator Jose P. Laurel and Vicente Sabalvaro, who had been associated with the pre-war institution. The farmers' cooperative, also reactivated by TAPIA and his colleagues in 1948 as a sister organization of the Association, was expanded to sell agricultural chemicals, fertilizer, poultry feeds and hardware, as well as general merchandise. A warehouse, rice mill, corn dryer and lumber mill were added. Specialists from the College of Agriculture at Los Baños were encouraged to demonstrate new techniques in Tanauan, and TAPIA took truckloads of farmers to the college to learn.

In 1957, with the volume of business exceeding two million pesos, the bank was helped by the late Alfredo L. Yatco, Teodoro F. Valencia and again by Senator Laurel to reorganize as the Philippine Banking Corporation with headquarters in Manila to avail itself of greater capital resources. TAPIA, who transferred to Manila in 1960 as Vice-President in charge of the branch banking he knows so well, still commutes to meet his farmer and merchant clients in Tanauan every Sunday, which is the heaviest banking day.

In electing PABLO TORRES TAPIA to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his steadfast determination in mobilizing the savings of his community to provide workable credit facilities for its productive needs.