Before he was gunned down, Ronnie Montoya tried to build a house. Like most of the people in the Manila suburb of Tondo, he had no money. The family had a shed – a tiny foothold in the fetid labyrinth of the slums. With materials scrounged from building sites and rubbish dumps, he added two storeys – the stairways between them crooked and treacherous, composed of a dozen different kinds of scrap timber. The ceilings were so low that the occupants had to sit or lie down.