Filipinos Bet On Dreams, But Illegally (Published 1987) (2024)

A dog is 12, a cat is 26, a snake is 14. Whatever you dream about, the local collector can tell you its number and you can place your bet in the country's most popular illegal lottery, a game called jueteng.

Three times a day, the men who trade in dreams of wealth make the rounds of barber shops, bus stops, even city hall and the local schools, offering jackpots of 400 pesos, or $20 dollars - five times the minimum wage - on a one-peso bet.

On many millions of bets large and small, the Government estimates, gambling syndicates earn $2.5 million a day nationwide.

Several proposals are pending in Congress to investigate the racket, which a leading leftist organizer, Lorenzo Tanada, recently called one of the country's three main problems, along with corruption and American influence. Aquino Urges Crackdown

President Corazon C. Aquino and the powerful Roman Catholic church have voiced their opposition to gambling, although the Government operates a lottery and licenses a limited number of legal casinos.

Mrs. Aquino recently called for a crackdown on illegal gambling, which she termed ''the sickness of Filipino youth.''

But few people here, in the hometown of one of the reputed kingpins of jueteng, think investigations and crackdowns will get very far.

''I will challenge anybody who will say I can stop it,'' said Gen. Eduardo Taduran, until recently the regional military commander in nearby San Fernando. ''If I will be allowed to shoot perhaps the operator, that will stop it. It cannot be stopped by laws or moral suasion.''

''It's very silent and very lucrative,'' he said. ''It has a very high degree of corruptibility.''

''I cannot tell you the offers that have been made to me by these men,'' the general said. ''Ask anything. It will be given.''

Chito Roque, who heads the Government's Task Force Anti-Gambling, told a House committee, ''It is impossible to believe that illegal gambling could exist in a town without the knowledge of the mayor and chief of police.'' Kingpin Heavily Guarded

One of the men identified at a recent Senate hearing as a jueteng kingpin, Bong Pineda, lives in a walled and fortified compound at the edge of the ricefields that surround Lubao.

Approached by a reporter, an armed guard at the heavy iron gate called down from a 20-foot watchtower that Mr. Pineda was not there.

''He is a godfather-type figure,'' said the local priest, the Rev. Jose Lacap, who said Mr. Pineda had donated funds and labor for improvements to the church. ''He's very kind, you know, and if you see him, he talks in a very low voice and you can hardly hear him.''

But he added: ''If you go to his home, the first thing you would find is armed men around him. I get kind of scared when I go there.''

According to residents' accounts, Mr. Pineda has become increasingly involved in local politics, and he is said to have paid for two police jeeps and a police outpost near his home.

Gil Baluyut, who is filling in as mayor during elections, said, ''The police, the mayor and high-ranking military officers are all on the take.'' As a result, he said, ''I think some officials might develop poor vision.'' 'People Are Getting Poor'

''In our town, a lot of people are getting rich from jueteng,'' he said. ''But a lot more people are getting poor.''

In the mayor's anteroom and outside the courtroom down the hall, idlers waited for the jueteng collector to make his midday rounds.

In the form popular in Lubao, jueteng bettors select two numbers between 1 and 37 based on anything from the license plates of cars involved in accidents to the numbers of candidates running in elections to the configurations of spider webs.

A copy editor at a Manila newspaper once bet the death toll in a typhoon and won. ''He felt so guilty about it,'' a colleague said.

Various numerical superstitions also come into play, bettors say. Astrological charts are consulted, and lucky numbers are called upon. Interpretation of Dreams

But dreams are the most popular source of numbers, and have given jueteng a mystique that goes beyond simple gambling.

Jueteng collectors become experts at dream interpretation, and some carry anatomical charts with numbers assigned to parts of the body that might appear in dreams.

In schools in nearby Nueva Ecija, parents there say, teachers have taken to asking the students about their dreams each morning, then hurrying from the classroom to bet.

A man who underwent abdominal surgery said the last thing he remembered hearing as the anesthesia took effect was the doctor and nurses discussing the morning's numbers.

When he woke up, he said, they asked him if he had had any dreams.