Economy
The Woman Who Brought Water, Then Jobs, to a Manila Slum
When Patricia Herrera got a water hookup for the community of Farola, it was only the beginning.
MANILA—In this city's slums, you don't get anything without a fight.
Patricia Herrera moved into a Manila slum called Farola in 1965, when she was eight years old. 150 families live here, squeezed into the strip of land between an industrial estuary and the high outside wall of a Philippine Coast Guard barracks. Their homes, haphazardly filling every bit of space, are made of crumbling cement blocks or cobbled together from found materials: flimsy plywood board, bamboo rods, tarpaulin, corrugated tin.