Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora – The Magazine

When the Youngest Manong Becomes the Elder

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:50:17 +0000

Positively Filipino publisher Mona Lisa Yuchengco (left) with 2024 Manong and Manang Honorees: Velma Veloria, Rozita lee, Vangie Buell, emcee Lloyd LaCuesta, Peter Jamero, Joe Bataan, Dorothy Cordova and Alex Fabros, Jr. (Photo by Minerva Amistoso)

When the first group of manongs and manangs was honored by Positively Filipino in 2024, I stood on the stage as the youngest person among them. I remember looking out at that gathering and seeing men and women whose lives had spanned decades of service, struggle, sacrifice, and achievement. At that moment, I still thought of myself as the younger one—the person who had more time behind him than ahead, perhaps, but who had not yet become one of the elders in the room.

Life has a way of changing that perspective.

When the third group of manongs and manangs is honored on August 8, I will be sitting in the audience as their names are called and their accomplishments are recognized. Yet this time, I will be older than many of the people standing on the stage. The youngest manong from the first group will have become, in the quiet arithmetic of time, one of the elders watching the next group receive its honor.

That realization carries both humor and meaning. Age arrives gradually. We do not always notice it while we are busy living, working, raising families, serving our country, building careers, and trying to contribute something of lasting value. Then one day we look around and discover that the people being honored as elders are younger than we are.

Two of the men in this third group are connected to important chapters in my own life. One was a childhood and high school friend. We knew each other before careers, ranks, titles, and accomplishments separated our paths. We knew each other when the future was still uncertain and when ambition was measured more by hope than by achievement.

Another I met as we began our military careers in armor. At that point, none of us could know where the road would lead. Military service has its own hierarchy of goals, tests, sacrifices, and expectations. Some men advance through command, responsibility, and rank. They earned their generals‘ stars. My own path eventually turned toward scholarship, history, teaching, and research, and I earned a Ph.D.

Fabros and Daniel Phil Gonzales (Photo by Minerva Amistoso)

Our careers did not develop as we may have imagined once. Life interrupted plans, redirected ambitions, and opened doors that we had not expected to enter. Some of us wore stars on our uniforms. Others earned academic degrees and spent their lives recovering histories that might otherwise have been forgotten. The paths were different, but the principle was the same: we continued forward.

Life has a way of altering our career goals. Very few people arrive exactly where they expected to be when they began. Circumstances intervene. Families need us. Wars change us. Institutions redirect us. Illness, opportunity, duty, and chance all play their parts. Yet success is not measured only by whether we reached the destination we first imagined. It is also measured by whether we adapted, persevered, and made something meaningful from the road we were given.

In the end, we succeeded.

The annual manong and manang honors created by Mona Lisa Yuchengco recognize that kind of success. She is a wonderful person whose commitment to Filipino and Filipino American history continues year after year. Through Positively Filipino and the annual honors, she brings attention to individuals whose contributions might otherwise remain known only within their families, professions, military units, universities, or local communities.

This work is important because Filipino American history has too often been overlooked, fragmented, or treated as a collection of isolated accomplishments. The manong and manang honors bring those lives together. They show that our history was built not by a single profession or generation, but by soldiers, educators, scientists, writers, physicians, public servants, community organizers, business leaders, and advocates.

These honorees did more than succeed personally. They contributed to the Filipino American presence in the United States. They opened institutions, entered professions from which Filipinos had once been excluded, served in the armed forces, built community organizations, preserved culture, and made the path wider for those who came after them.

Mona Lisa Yuchengco understands that honoring people is also a form of historical preservation. A name spoken publicly does not disappear as easily. A life recorded becomes part of the community’s memory. An achievement placed beside other achievements begins to reveal the larger history of a people.

Fabros giving his acceptance speech (Photo by Minerva Amistoso)

As I sit in the audience on August 8, I will watch old friends and fellow veterans receive recognition they have earned. I will remember when we were young and when none of us could predict where our lives would lead. I will think about the generals who earned their stars and about the scholar who earned his doctorate. I will also think about the strange movement of time: how the youngest man on one stage becomes older than the honorees on the next.

There is no sadness in that realization. There is gratitude.

The youngest manong from the first group will have become, in the quiet arithmetic of time, one of the elders watching the next group receive its honor.

We lived long enough to see our work recognized. We lived long enough to see our friends honored. We lived long enough to understand that success takes many forms and that no two lives follow the same road.
The stage changes. The audience changes. The names change. But the purpose remains: to honor those Filipinos and Filipino Americans who gave something of themselves to their country, their professions, their communities, and their history.
Through the annual manong and manang honors, Mona Lisa Yuchengco ensures that these lives are not forgotten. She reminds us that our stories belong not only to us but also to those who will follow. And as one generation watches another take the stage, we see that history is not merely something behind us.
It is still being made.

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. is a retired Philippine American Military History professor.

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Trans Man and Trans Woman Tie Knot in PH Catholic Church

Rene Astudillo — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:50:05 +0000

Ronnie (seated) and Tish (standing) (Source: Tisha Marie Amal Enderez’s Facebook page)

In a historic first in the Philippines, a transgender man and a transgender woman legally and religiously wed in a Catholic Church on July 4, 2026. The wedding between Tisha Marie Amal (31, a trans man) and Ronnie Enderez (26, a trans woman) took place at Saint James the Greater Parish in Dapitan City, Zamboanga del Norte.
The ceremony was presided over by Rev. Msgr. John Warren B. Maratas, who expressed full support for the couple, stating that “love knows no boundaries.” The marriage process reportedly involved extensive consultations and compliance with both civil and ecclesiastical requirements before the wedding was approved and solemnized.
Guess Who Wore the Gown?
Tisha explained that they went through the normal registration process and attended the required seminar at the local government office before their wedding. He said there were no problems from the church leadership, though they were simply asked that Tisha wear the gown and Ronnie wear the barong.
Ronnie and Tisha did not hesitate to comply with the church's request. Ronnie, who is the more quiet on social media between the two, added that she actually wanted to see Tisha in a gown, so she was delighted when her spouse walked down the aisle in a wedding gown.
Translation? The transgender man wore the gown!

Tish and Ronnie’s wedding day (Source: TishA Marie Amal Enderez’s Facebook page)

The Couple
Tisha, a veteran of local lesbian pageants (That’s My Tomboy – TMT 2021 and 2024) is a barista in a local coffee shop while Ronnie does online work. Both admitted to having transitioned through their respective hormone therapies. The newlyweds met online through a common friend, maintaining their relationship for five years before getting married.
While Ronnie is officially the “husband” in the civil and church wedding documents, it is the other way around in their daily life. Tisha has taken Ronnie’s surname.
Tisha says both of them are devout Catholics and “leave it to the Lord” if blessed with children — not adopted, but their own.
Social Media Erupts
Predictably, social media erupted. Progressives hailed it as a revolutionary breakthrough. Traditionalists condemned it as proof that the Church had abandoned its doctrine. Both sides, however, may have been arguing against a version of events that never existed.
Contrary to the headlines and the online theatrics, this was not a same-sex marriage solemnized by the Catholic Church. Neither was it a dramatic rewriting of Canon law. It was, in fact, the application of the very rules that have governed Catholic marriage for centuries.

Tish and Ronnie (Source: TishA Marie Amal Enderez’s Facebook page)

The Church has consistently maintained that marriage is between one biological man and one biological woman. It does not recognize gender transition as changing a person’s sex for purposes of the sacrament. Philippine civil law likewise continues to define marriage in terms of a male and a female. Whether one agrees with those standards is beside the point. The law is the law, and Canon law is Canon law.
In this case, one spouse was biologically male and the other biologically female. That reality satisfied both civil law and Canon law. No legal loophole was exploited. No doctrine was suspended. No exception was invented simply to accommodate the couple. If anything, the Church authorities involved appear to have been meticulous in ensuring that the marriage complied with existing legal and canonical requirements.
What is remarkable is not the wedding itself but the public reaction to it. We have become so conditioned to viewing every issue through the lens of ideology that facts have become secondary. Some insisted the Church had finally embraced gender identity as determinative for marriage. Others proclaimed the Vatican had surrendered to modern culture. Neither claim withstands even a basic reading of the law governing Catholic marriage.
The loudest voices are often the least interested in precision. Outrage has become more fashionable than understanding. A viral post is given more weight than an informed explanation. The result is a public discourse driven less by truth than by tribal allegiance.
People are free to support or oppose the Church’s teachings. They are equally free to campaign for changes in Philippine marriage laws. But disagreement should begin with an accurate understanding of the facts—not with assumptions crafted to fit one’s preferred narrative.
This wedding did not rewrite Catholic doctrine. It did not redefine marriage. If anything, it reaffirmed that the Church continues to apply its longstanding understanding of marriage, even in cases that generate intense public attention.

Predictably, social media erupted. Progressives hailed it as a revolutionary breakthrough. Traditionalists condemned it as proof that the Church had abandoned its doctrine.

Before declaring victory or defeat in the culture wars, perhaps the wiser course is to understand the rules before arguing about them. In an era where symbolism often overshadows substance, the most important lesson from this wedding may be that facts, law, and doctrine still matter.
For Tisha and Ronnie, their sanctioned marriage is but an affirmation of their love relationship and the unequivocable support both have received from their families and friends. No one who believes that marriage is only between one man and one woman can argue against what the couple decided to do in their life together.

Rene Astudillo is a writer, book author and blogger and has recently retired from more than two decades of nonprofit community work in the Bay Area. He spends his time between California and the Philippines.

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‘Subsaharan Mindanao’ to the World

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:49:51 +0000

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale, founder of Operation Ink Publishing House, presents her independently published zines at the Himalayan Literature Festival in Kathmandu, Nepal. Through her work, the Afro-Filipina writer continues to bring stories from Subsaharan Mindanao to an international literary audience.

When a political strategist claimed that Mindanao had “Sub-Saharan African” levels of the Human Development Index, the term “Subsaharan Mindanao” was born. Initially, the phrase was used to diminish and dehumanize an entire tapestry of rich cultural traditions that flourish in the southern Philippines. Some reacted to the description with outrage, some with humor, and others with advocacy.
I was among those who chose a different path: reclamation.
On Philippine Independence Day, only a week before Juneteenth and three months after the term "Subsaharan Mindanao" was deployed as an insult on international airwaves, I opened the first literary café in my small hometown in Mindanao: Edaya's Star Terrace Café.

Members of Edaya's Star Terrace Team and Operation Merienda participate in a collaborative earthquake relief mission with Project PHIL and the Rotary Club of Koronadal, South Cotabato. (The cute nine-year old in a green dress is my daughter Stella.)

My outrage manifested itself in a literary haven for the so-called “Subsaharan Mindanao” creatives and intellectuals. My humble café carries the tagline, "A Library Café Where Subsaharan Mindanao Creatives Gather." It was both an invitation and a declaration. By embracing a phrase that had been intended to diminish Mindanao, I hoped to transform it into a space of imagination, possibility, and cultural pride.
My goal was to make Mindanao a site of global conversation.
Furthermore, the reclamation was deeply personal to me. I am a writer descended from both Liberian and Hiligaynon traditions. On one side of my family history stands Liberia, the first modern African republic founded by formerly enslaved people who transformed the experience of displacement and bondage into a project of nation-building and self-determination. On the other side of my identity stand the Hiligaynon people, whose own history demonstrates the power of creativity as resistance.
When Edaya’s Star Terrace Café was born, it represented the culmination of both ancestral lineages converging to announce the future of “Subsaharan Mindanao.”

Representatives of Edaya's Star Terrace Team and Operation Merienda stand alongside volunteers during a humanitarian relief mission conducted in partnership with Project Phil and the Rotary Club of Koronadal, delivering emergency aid to communities affected by the Mindanao earthquake.

History of Creative Resistance
On November 7, 1898, during the Negros Revolution, Hiligaynon-speaking revolutionaries of the Common Negrenses famously painted nipa stalks to resemble rifles and fashioned bamboo to look like cannons. Through ingenuity and performance as much as force, they convinced Spanish Governor Isidro de Castro that they possessed a formidable army, leading to his surrender. In its wake, the Republic of Negros was established. One of the lasting historical anecdotes attributed to my people remains one of the most remarkable examples of creative resistance in Philippine history.
I often think about that legacy when I reflect on how I am leveraging the concept of Subsaharan Mindanao on the international stage. Imagine the labor involved in transforming a phrase that was intended to suggest poverty, backwardness, and a lack of intelligence. Yet both the Liberian and Hiligaynon ancestral histories that shaped me teach a different lesson: communities are capable of transforming what others perceive as weakness into strength, and what others dismiss as insignificant into something worthy of international pride.
Incantata: A Subsaharan Mindanao Artifact
The Himalayan Literature Festival was the first time I publicly performed poetry that moved between Ilonggo and English.
In my recent zine release, I included the poems Ginhigugma Ko Ikaw (I Loved You) and Orasyon Orasyon Para Sa Manuglaon (A Spell for the Unwanted Woman). My poems are a lyrical dance, a call-and-response between the two languages.
When I performed my incantata in Kathmandu, I realized I was attempting to give shape to something I had been carrying for much of my life. Every performance felt like an expression of what W.E.B. Du Bois called "double consciousness," the experience of navigating multiple worlds at once.

Author and publisher Elaine Joy Edaya Degale teaching a poetry workshop through feminist lens in Aksharaa School in Kathmandu, Nepal

As children of the diaspora, we think, dream, grieve, remember, and love across more than one language.
And so I have decided to give a name to this English-Ilonggo dialogic style of poetry: the Incantata. This name emerged from happy literary happenstance. One of the festival's featured poets was Paul Muldoon, whose celebrated poem Incantata helped me think more deeply about language, memory, and musicality. The word itself evokes the Latin incantare, which means to enchant through song or chant.
By my definition, an incantata is poetry in which English and Ilonggo dance through interpretation. Sometimes one language echoes the other. Sometimes it expands, questions, or transforms what came before. The poem is completed not by either language alone, but by the movement between them.
Perhaps this is also what the Subsaharan Mindanao movement seeks to explore: the spaces where African and Filipino histories, identities, and diasporas intersect, collide, and bloom within the double-conscious imagination first articulated by W. E. B. Du Bois, the father of Pan-Africanism. These are spaces of tension, certainly, but also of reflexive creativity, transformation, and possibility.
The conversation also raises a larger question about how we define Philippine literature. Too often, works produced in Manila are treated as "national," while works written in Hiligaynon and other Philippine languages south of the capital are relegated to the category of "regional," as if geography determines literary value.
Edaya Family Legacy
The movement from Subsaharan Mindanao to the world has never been purely theoretical for me. It has always been rooted in practice. Stewardship and generosity were the foundations instilled in me by my mother, Jocelyn Edaya Degale.
Through Operation Merienda, we fed frontline workers across twenty clinics and hospitals in Region XII during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through Edaya's Star Terrace Café, we established the first literary third space in my hometown of Sto. Niño, South Cotabato, a community that previously had little public access to books and literary programming. Through Operation Ink, we have worked toward building a public library, establishing an independent publishing house, and creating opportunities for writers whose voices are often overlooked by traditional centers of cultural power.
In April 2026, Operation Ink launched its first collection of zines at Diwang Mindanao at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan. A month later, those same zines traveled to Kathmandu for the Himalayan Literature Festival and Writers Workshop. The journey felt symbolic. What began in a small agricultural town in Mindanao crossed oceans and entered an international literary conversation.

Author and publisher Elaine Joy Edaya Degale in Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan, signing her inaugural collection of literary zines under Operation Ink Publishing House. She is joined by Associate Professor Dr. Cathy Adajar, Xavier University Press Director Dr. Arlene Yandug, and Mindanao Daily journalist Mike Baños

Too often, works produced in Manila are treated as "national," while works written in Hiligaynon and other Philippine languages south of the capital are relegated to the category of "regional.”

The same commitment guides my work in film. My screenplay The Dreamweaver, which incorporates Hiligaynon language and Indigenous folklore, received Best Screenwriting honors at the Asian American Film Lab's 72-Hour Shootout. Another film I directed in Hiligaynon, English, and Filipino received an Honorable Mention at the International Film Festival Manhattan and was screened in New York. These projects are part of a larger effort to demonstrate that Hiligaynon stories are not confined to a single province, island, or audience.
For generations, literature written in Philippine languages outside the capital has been described as regional. Yet the moment a poem written in Hiligaynon is read in Kathmandu, a film containing Ilonggo dialogue is screened in New York, or a zine produced in Mindanao enters an international literary festival, the limits of that designation begin to collapse.

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale was invited to serve as a facilitator at Aksharaa School's International Poetry Workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she joined an international panel of writers and educators representing Ireland, India, the United States, and the Philippines.

The question is no longer whether Hiligaynon belongs in the world.
From Mindanao to Nepal, from literary festivals to global publications, I have brought Hiligaynon stories, zines, and perspectives into conversations far beyond the Philippines. In doing so, I hope to challenge the notion that Hiligaynon literature is merely regional. A language spoken by millions and carried across continents is not regional. It is global. If Subsaharan Mindanao is my literary geography, then Hiligaynon is one of the languages through which I invite the world to enter it.

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale is a Black-Filipina writer and lecturer at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY), and has an Ed.M. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College where she studied International Relations and Development, and continues to support literacy and food programming efforts in indigenous communities through her Community-Based organization, OperationMerienda.org.

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He Danced Before He Knew Why

Lani Domaloy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:49:38 +0000

Alvin Erasga Tolentino

In June 2023, I walked into the Bayanihan Community Centre in Victoria, British Columbia, curious about MigARTion, a community arts program initiated by Alvin Erasga Tolentino and Co.ERASGA. It was the final stop of a Canada-wide tour, and because it offered intensive workshops in dance, visual arts, music, creative writing, and theatre, I made sure I did not miss it.
What I did not expect was to leave having discovered something.
Alvin led the dance workshop himself. He met us exactly where we were, and what unfolded felt less like instruction and more like permission. The shy, hidden parts of me that don't usually show up in a room full of people, showed up. I wrote afterwards that we had "the privilege to express and also discover more of our budding gifts." I meant every word.
That is the gift of Alvin Erasga Tolentino. He makes space for what you didn't know you were carrying.

During the Victoria MigARTion in 2023 at the Bayanihan Community Centre. (Photos from Alvin’s archives MigARTion 2023)

A Boy Who Moved Before He Knew Why
Alvin was born in 1969 in Quezon City and spent his first twelve years in the Philippines before immigrating to Canada in 1983. He settled in Vancouver on the unceded, ancestral, traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples: the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations — where he has lived and worked ever since.
I asked Alvin if there was a specific moment–a performance, a person, a place–that made him know this was his path.
He smiled at the question, at least that is how I imagined his reaction.
"I only recall my mom telling me that when I was three or four, I would hold onto a wall and shake my body whenever I heard music or a beat from the radio. I had an innate affinity for moving to the rhythm. It was something I did naturally." He continued, "I didn't choose dance. Dance chose me."
At fifteen or sixteen, he discovered modern dance and was hooked. By twenty-one he had entered a professional career. More than three decades later, he is still dancing, still surrendering fully to the form. His training took him through The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, York University, SUNY Purchase, and the Limon Institute. The Georgia Straight once called his work "contemporary, progressive, and provocative." Mel Tobias of The Philippine Chronicle of Vancouver described him as a daring virtuoso dancer with originality, exuberance, technical brilliance, and powerful grace — a quote that lives on his own bio page to this day.

Alvin being honored for his contribution in dance at the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards in 2010
(Photos by Todd Wong)

Building Something That Lasts
In 2000, Alvin founded Co.ERASGA, a Vancouver-based contemporary dance company dedicated to research, creation, and the presentation of dance rooted in cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration. It was an act of faith in a field that had not always made space for artists like him.
Co.ERASGA has toured across Canada and performed in Japan, Belgium, France, the Philippines, Switzerland, Singapore, Venezuela, the UK, Thailand, China, Uruguay, and Germany, among others.
Recognition has followed the work. His filmed solo SOLA earned a nomination at the 2000 BC Leo Awards and Canada's 2001 Gemini Awards, then won the 2002 Grand Prix International Video Dance Competition for UNESCO in Paris. In 2010, he received the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Dance. In 2018, the ExploreAsian Pan Asian Award recognized his contributions to the arts and multiculturalism.
In 2025, he was named among the Outstanding Filipinos in Canada by Canadianfilipinonet. And just recently, The Dance Centre awarded him the Isadora Award, one of BC's highest honours for dance professionals. He is also the only Filipino Canadian artist included in Voices Rising by Xiaoping Li, the landmark book on Asian Canadian cultural activism.
But perhaps the most telling recognition is the one he created himself. In 2014, Alvin founded the AET Koreograpiya Award, a biennial prize funded from his own resources to support an emerging Filipino contemporary choreographer living in the Philippines. A man who fought for space in the art world now builds that space for others.
The Body as Archive
I wanted to know how his Filipino heritage actually shows up in his work — not just in identity, but in the movement itself, the stories he chooses, the way he works with dancers.
"As an adult, I came to appreciate the significance of my Filipino heritage as a powerful means of self-expression," he remarked, "reflecting my life circumstances and observations as an immigrant living in the West."
His work delves into ancestral tracing, memory, climate justice, and the enduring impact of colonization — in synergy with indigenous knowledge and the everyday realities of Filipino life. Field is a tribute to rice and the stories of his ancestral families. Colonial confronts the wounds of colonization and asks how we find a decolonial path to free the Filipino spirit. Tracing Malong holds textiles as living repositories of memory.

An expression of heritage, not just in identity but in body movement (Photos from Alvin’s archives, Sanka Dee Photography, Erica Marquez Jacinto, and Martin Inthamoussu)

"I've focused on the body and movement as the core of my inquiries," he explained. "My goal isn't to find answers or solutions, but to express things words can't capture."
The body knows things the mind hasn't caught up to yet. His art trusts that.
Art as Belonging
Building a career in dance as a Filipino outside the Philippines was not without its costs, and he did not shy away from saying so.
"Being Filipino working in the West meant facing challenges: discrimination, colonial mentality, systemic barriers, and underrepresentation, especially in my early years as an independent artist in the 90s."
But he kept going. "I persevered, doing my dedicated art works until my community could appreciate my contributions."
What hasn't surprised him, he recalls, is the undeniable truth that art transforms people. "The arts and culture are essential to everyone's lives. They have the incredible power to transform children, youth, adults, and seniors, fostering a sense of community as we gather to share our stories."

"I only recall my mom telling me that when I was three or four, I would hold onto a wall and shake my body whenever I heard music or a beat from the radio.”

Beyond the stage, Alvin has built programs that reach people most often left outside the arts. MigARTion now extends beyond British Columbia to Toronto, and Montreal, offering racially marginalized migrants access to the arts. This summer, he returns to the national tour of Accumulation, Co.ERASGA's production centered on climate action stewardship, touring across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao with performances, workshops, and public dialogues. He also recently curated Undivided Colours, a showcase celebrating Asian Heritage Month featuring Asian Canadian artists working across modern dance, Bharatanatyam, Filipino, and flamenco traditions.
I think about the Bayanihan Community Centre. The word itself means coming together — a community carrying a shared load. Alvin has been doing that his whole career, one body, one story at a time.
He is one of the finest Filipino Canadian artists of his generation. And I am grateful that in June 2023, on those two days in Victoria, his art found me too.

Lani Domaloy is a Filipino-Canadian writer, poet, and photographer living on Vancouver Island in Canada. She draws her creative inspiration primarily from her love for the outdoors, nature, traveling, and the arts.

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FilAms Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 80

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:55:45 +0000

Filipinos have been in the United States since the 16th century, yet many of their stories remain untold. For the past years, Positively Filipino has been running a series on notable Filipino Americans who have made their marks in this country. There are hundreds, or maybe even thousands more, that need to be added to this story, and we need your help. If you know of a Filipino American who deserves to be included in this line-up, please send us their names and any supporting documents you may have to pfpublisher@yahoo.com. For now, we are including only those who are currently active and visible in the media and the community, regardless of their religious, sexual or political orientation. Thank you.
Christine Sarmiento, Nurse, Candidate for Governor

Christine Sarmiento (Source: Facebook)

Sarmiento, a Filipino American public health nurse and operations manager, entered the race for governor of California, positioning herself as an independent candidate focused on affordability, accountability, and community health. Running with no party affiliation, the El Monte–based nurse argues that California’s most urgent challenges are “too important to be filtered through party politics.”
Her candidacy drew heavily on personal experience. Born and raised in poverty in Cavite, a province in the Philippines, Sarmiento was 12 when her mother died. With no adults in the home, she and her siblings—then 13 and 14, raised themselves. She assumed responsibility for managing the household budget, a role she said shaped her discipline and resilience. At 18, she immigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles, where she has lived for 25 years. A single mother of two young sons, she earned her registered nurse license in 2010 through Pasadena City College while working full time. She joined her current employer in 2007 and advanced to operations manager, overseeing teams of up to 400 people.
After three and a half years, Sarmiento accepted a permanent position as a public health nurse with the department, serving downtown Los Angeles, where she continues to work.
A first-time candidate, Sarmiento said she is running because she believes California “deserves leadership that has actually lived what everyday Californians are going through.”
“For too long, politicians have promised to speak for the working class—but their words have never matched their actions,” she said. “I have held the hands of scared patients. I have served meals in Skid Row. I have vaccinated children who crossed the border alone. I have sat with families who cannot make ends meet in one of the wealthiest states in the country. California does not need more politicians. It needs leadership that has actually been there.”
Mel Red Recana, Judge

Judge Mel Red Recana (Source: Instagram)

In 1981, Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana became the first Filipino American appointed as a judge in the U.S. He served on the bench for more than 40 years. Growing up in the Philippines, where he says his father was a town police officer with a third-grade education, Recana was dissuaded by his father from becoming an Army general or an actor. He loved watching movies with jury trials. He completed his pre-law studies at Aquinas University in Legazpi City and earned his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of the East in Manila. He practiced law in Manila for a few years before moving to California.
In 1974, Judge Recana was admitted to the California Bar. Prior to commencing his judicial career, he was in private practice, except for the period from 1977 to 1980, when he served as a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney. He was the first Filipino American to serve as a deputy district attorney. He served on the Municipal Court for more than 18 years. From 1994 to 1995, he served as the Los Angeles Municipal Court Assistant Presiding Judge and Supervising Judge of all civil operations. From 1996 to 1997, he served as the Presiding Judge. In 1999, Judge Recana served as Chair of the Los Angeles County Municipal Court Judges’ Association and President of the California Asian Judges Association.
Judge Recana took temporary leave from the Municipal Court to further his education. In 1993, he earned a master’s in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. To attend Harvard, he drafted and successfully secured the passage of the Judges’ Sabbatical Leave Act (Gov. Code § 68554), the first statute of its kind in the country. In addition, in 1996, he graduated as valedictorian from the Institute for Court Management at the National Center for State Courts in Virginia. In January 2000, following the unification of the Municipal and Superior Courts, Judge Recana was elevated to the Superior Court. He retired in January 2025.
Julian Recana, Judge

Judge Julian Recana (Source: LinkedIn)

Julian Recana, son of Judge Mel Red Recana, is a judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California. Governor Jerry Brown appointed him in 2015, and his current term ends on January 8, 2029. He won re-election to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County outright in the primary on June 7, 2022, after the primary and general election were canceled. Recana received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
"I really do owe everything to him for this one. I really wouldn't be here because of him. He was the big dreamer," said Judge Julian Recana of his father. "He put in the idea that I could also become a judge or become an attorney. I never thought I couldn't be that because I had him as a father."
The Filipino American Lawyers of Orange County (FLOC) honored Judge Julian Recana as the 2025 Judge of the Year at its 8th Annual Gala. “Judge Recana’s commitment to justice, mentorship, and community outreach reflects the mission of FLOC.”
Rafael Bitanga, Storyteller

Rafael Bitanga (Source: LinkedIn)

Bitanga is a Filipino Alaskan who empowers youth in rural and under-resourced communities through digital storytelling. After immigrating to Alaska at the age of eight, Rafael confronted Western educational systems that marginalized oral traditions, sparking his passion for alternative pathways to academic achievement and cultural preservation. Discovering filmmaking in middle school, he founded Bitanga Productions in high school to document the stories of underrepresented communities. He graduated magna cum laude from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration with minors in Education and Leadership.
He works with the nonprofit organization See Stories, implementing digital storytelling curricula in Alaskan schools and reaching more than 6,000 students and educators. The Center for Asian American Media recognized Bitanga’s independent documentary film, Bridging Our Stories, naming him a 2024 Fellow and Pitch Winner funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
He traveled back to the Philippines after living in the U.S. for 15 years to film communities his parents had once called “dangerous.” The experience transformed his understanding of his dual identity and strengthened his commitment to breaking down barriers of fear and misunderstanding. At Stanford University, where he studies Design and Technology, Bitanga wants to develop edtech platforms that integrate visual, oral, and written storytelling to help students document their communities' stories. By honoring diverse knowledge transmission systems, Bitanga transforms classrooms into environments where students learn about their culture, excel academically, and develop a sense of belonging.
Alma Manabat Parker, Health Equity Coordinator

Alma Manabat Parker (Source: Rasmunson Foundation)

As a first-generation immigrant and longtime resident of Ketchikan, Alaska, where she has lived for more than 40 years, Parker has experienced the struggle of embracing her Filipino identity and cultural heritage while still yearning for acceptance by non-Filipinos. She uses the art of folk dance and music to create connections between Filipino elders and young people. Parker hopes to revitalize a once vibrant and prominent local cultural dance group in Ketchikan to amplify multicultural influences and create a positive sense of belonging.
Parker is active in Ketchikan’s dance community as head coach of the Ketchikan High School Dance Team, as well as head instructor and owner of studioMAX, a local dance and fitness studio. By adding Filipino folk-dance instruction to her repertoire, she diversifies her training, allowing more students to have a wider variety of dance opportunities within their community.
“My mom also encouraged us to connect to our roots by sending us to weekly Filipino folk-dance practices on Sundays. This is where we would learn traditional dances with fellow Filipino youth. We would practice, then perform at our local church, for the Fourth of July, and at other special events throughout the year. This was the time when you could really feel a vibrant and strong Filipino presence in the community—a stronger sense of belonging and cultural pride!”
In 2021, she was recruited as the health equity coordinator to help Filipino Alaskans improve their health care and access to health services. “Health equity is culture. Culture is our medicine. We need it to feed us, to teach us, to bring health to our whole beings.”
Leorey Saligan, Vice Dean of Research and Professor

Dr. Leorey Saligan (Source: Rutgers School of Nursing)

In 2026, Dr. Saligan was inducted into Sigma’s International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals whose contributions demonstrate not only academic excellence but also sustained influence on health care systems and patient care globally. For Dr. Saligan, this induction represents the culmination of more than three decades of work that has consistently pushed the boundaries of what nursing research can achieve.
Currently serving as Vice Dean of Research and Professor at the Rutgers School of Nursing, Dr. Saligan has built a career that bridges clinical practice and advanced scientific inquiry. His research is anchored in biobehavioral and omics integration, an emerging field that examines how biological, behavioral, and environmental factors interact to influence health outcomes.
This focus has positioned him at the forefront of symptom science, particularly in understanding complex and often underrecognized conditions such as fatigue, pain, and cognitive dysfunction. Through more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, he has contributed to a growing body of evidence that informs both clinical decision-making and patient-centered care.
Dr. Saligan’s journey began in the Philippines, where he completed his undergraduate education in nursing and medical technology. In the U.S., he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Hampton University. As a Filipino American nurse researcher, Dr. Saligan’s induction into the Hall of Fame carries symbolic weight. It challenges longstanding perceptions that position Filipino nurses primarily in clinical roles and highlights their growing presence in research leadership. In doing so, he opens pathways for future generations of Filipino nurses to pursue careers in science, academia, and innovation to transform care. And for Filipino nurses worldwide, it is a source of pride and inspiration—a testament to what is possible when expertise, perseverance, and purpose align.
Eleanor Valentin, U.S. Navy Admiral

Rear Adm. Eleanor Valentin (Source: Wikipedia)

Rear Admiral Eleanor V. Valentin, U.S. Navy (Ret.), was nominated in 2009 to the rank of Rear Admiral and became the 16th Director of the Medical Service Corps, making her the first female Medical Service Corps officer to attain flag rank, as well as the first woman to serve as Director of the Navy Medical Service Corps. She was the second Filipino American woman to achieve the rank of Rear Admiral.
Valentin is a native of Seattle. After receiving bachelor's degrees in Zoology and Psychology from the University of Washington, she completed a Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Planning and a Master of Science degree in Public Health (Biostatistics) at the University of Hawaii.
Valentin has achieved fellow status in the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Academy of Healthcare Management. Her personal decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (three awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (three awards), the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (three awards), and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
John Estalilla, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader

John Estalilla (Source: City of San Mateo)

Estalilla is an entrepreneur, civic leader, and creative economy advocate serving District 2 on the San Mateo County Arts Commission. He brings more than two decades of leadership experience to advancing cultural equity, elevating diverse voices, and strengthening community connections through the arts.
As founder of Sfventures, he has spent his career at the intersection of global media, technology, and human-centered design. His work includes leadership roles at Amazon, Hearst, and Federated Media, where he helped shape brand and video strategy during the rise of the creator economy. He is dedicated to ensuring that all San Mateo County residents have access to meaningful, high-quality arts experiences. Estalilla is a graduate of San Francisco State University and an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chris Johnson, Football Player

Chris Johnson (Source: Facebook)

Professional football cornerback Johnson was selected by the Miami Dolphins with the 27th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, making history as the first Filipino American selected in the first round. The San Diego State standout became one of the highest-drafted Filipino American players in NFL history, continuing a legacy that includes Roman Gabriel, the 1969 NFL MVP, and Tyler Allgeier. Johnson’s rise followed an impressive college career that earned him All-American honors and recognition as one of the top defensive backs in the country. Another huge win for Filipino representation in sports.
Rosel Joy Sison Dalisay, Special Education Teacher

Rosel Joy Sison Dalisay (Source: Global Filipino Magazine/Facebook)

Dalisay teaches special education at Crow Agency Public School in Montana, a campus situated within the Crow Reservation, one of the largest Native American reservations in the United States. In 2026, she received the Rising Star Award before an international gathering of special education professionals at the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Convention and Expo. The award recognizes emerging leaders in special education who demonstrate outstanding promise and contributions to the field.
Her presentation, “Building Relationships as the Foundation of Behavior Management,” details a philosophy she developed not from theory alone but from daily practice with students whose behavioral challenges often had roots far deeper than the classroom.
“Before addressing behavior, I focus on building trust and understanding each student’s background, emotions, and needs,” she explains. “This means spending time listening, being consistent, and showing students that they are seen and valued.”
Her message to Filipino educators considering a similar path is less about logistics than about identity. “Never underestimate the value of what you bring to the world. Our strength lies not only in our skills but in our heart—our malasakit (genuine concern for others) and pagmamahal sa bata (love for children),” two Filipino concepts that are the very foundation of her teaching and the reason a student in Montana began to trust, participate, and grow.

Easy Like Sunday Afternoon

Rosario A. Garcellano — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:55:36 +0000

Stall offering food and drink for the famished. (Photo by Liana Garcellano)

The woman has apparently just risen from her wheelchair, and her companions seem to be urging her to take a few steps forward. But ever so gently: You feel love pervading the tight little scene as you walk past it on this Sunday afternoon at the UP [academic] oval late in January, when the sun’s rays slant through gaps in the canopy of trees preparatory to its setting, the amihan administering a soothing touch.
Of such vignettes are late Sunday afternoons made on this estimated 2.2-kilometer stretch of land on campus on which converge runners, walkers, lovers, besties, whole families, along with couples bearing their toddlers or fur babies, gray-haired folks on a constitutional, stroke survivors and their caregivers. You blend in from a side street after parking the car somewhere far. You go with the flow, but keep alert against photobombing those recording their steps or their thrill at being back in the university (you’ll recognize balikbayan anywhere), and, as in the scene just past—a woman apparently recovering from illness, likely a stroke, her husband and two sons anxious for her to walk on her own steam again, her nurse pushing the wheelchair out of her path—are mindful not to stare and intrude into their moment between the Engineering building and the Beta Way.
Mortality
Still you mentally wade into their privacy as you walk away from them and hit your stride. You wonder about their circumstances: perhaps a worry-free past upended by present realities and a future made uncertain by health issues. You realize she is not a young woman wearing a loose dress and a brace on her left leg, and neither as youthful is the man who appears to be her husband. Therefore, you surmise, keen on arranging details coherently in your mind’s eye, the two boys barely in their teens are their grandsons, by their body language bewildered by an early signal of mortality in a loved one and determined to reset.
You recall another apparent stroke survivor, by his crew cut and his bearing, possibly a military man, walking arm in arm with a woman dressed in scrubs, a backpack slung on her right shoulder. You saw them often in 2023—once observed them in the parking area, with him getting into the driver’s seat of his car (a bright note in the scenario, you thought, indicating that he had not entirely lost control of his mobility)—but not yet in this new year. You beam up a thought of hope: that the Sunday walk has merely lost its urgency and been stricken off his to-do list.
But not everything is a cause for concern in this Sunday ritual. Good old “Pop-Pop” (your code for the stocky elderly gentleman who makes a regular appearance walking briskly on the center line) is now grumpily coming at you on counterflow. Children testing newly discovered footing are underfoot, their tickled parents capturing their progress on vid. Other kids no longer wobbly are sallying forth on tiny bikes; a boy maybe only four years old makes like a future Evel Knievel (not that their young parents even know of that long-ago daredevil who constantly challenged gravity).
The runners—male, female, non-binary—are admirable whether whizzing by or modestly jogging, quickly receding from view as you, distracted, note the stalls offering chichiria near the UP Theater. The patrons are many, from their behavior quite appreciative; two men who stopped to check out the merch resume their fast walk bearing their loot: fishballs drenched in spicy sauce.
You muse on the contradictions offered by the ubiquity of junk comestibles in a supposed wellness routine but are careful not to gawk at the gleefully munching crowd. Careful, too, to avert your eyes from strolling couples whose clasped hands and mingled auras announce their happiness at being present each to each in the here and now—the object of songwriters at every time and place: “I’ve never been in love before/ I thought my heart was safe/ I thought I knew the score/ But this is wine/ That’s all too strange and strong/ I’m full of foolish song/ And out my song must pour…” You give them proper distance. As you give respectful leeway to a slow-moving old lady and her nurse as you turn the corner, throw a backward glance at Plaridel Hall, and head toward the Admin, where the Oblation is decked out in a not-immediately-comprehensible protest artwork and thronged by visitors in various stages of photo ops.
Marshals stand at strategic points. They block adult bikers unaware (or maybe not) that like motor vehicles they are banned from the Oval on weekends and, with an outstretched arm, direct the parties to the next available turn from the area. Or, on patrol on motorbikes, they track down dog walkers and point them and their wards to the sidewalks. (You did not know this, and now make a mental note that all fur babies, whether Fifi the French poodle or Rambo the Great Dane, may enjoy the afternoon on their designated route.) These, or at least the incidents you have witnessed, are no big deals, resolved quietly and courteously, minus the spectacle attendant to bigwig recalcitrants on public roads.
The sun is fading as you pass the Faculty Center. From the looks of it, the building is almost fully rebuilt from the ruins to which it was brought by a Task Force Alpha fire on April 1, 2016. But for each and every one forced to endure it, the collective loss is doubtless still inconceivable in its immensity.

Ground art in front of the AS Steps (Photo by Liana Garcellano)

You quicken your pace past Palma Hall’s famed AS Steps, which are besieged by trippers who will shortly flood IG with their memories. While sidestepping the merrymakers and measuring your breath—inhale calm, exhale (hah!) anxiety; repeat—you espy someone with the build, the stance, and the tilt of the head of an old flame. Oh, man, you address the indifferent Universe, not now, not when it’s uncertain if he, like yourself, is still crazy after all these years. You hurry past [the former] Business Ad, trot past Education and toward Vinzons’ in an effort to put a bit of distance between you and the scene of an early crime, when your idea of resolving a problem was to take angry flight.

A soccer match in progress on the sunken garden (Photo by Liana Garcellano)

Meanwhile, the sunken garden is in the throes of a soccer match, and families are encamped on the elevated areas with food, drink and loud music.
Disengagement
It’s said that a salutary way to engage in walking is to literally disengage: to empty your mind of all thoughts and focus only on your breathing, the necessity of it, the rhythm of inhaling through the nose, filling the lungs with air, holding till a certain count, and then exhaling gradually through the pursed mouth. Easy this Sunday afternoon, having quickly recovered from a flustered moment, you think you are getting better at concentrating on breathing and unfocusing your gaze. But past the Law building and off the Main Library you recognize the woman’s husband holding her leg brace and walking toward you on counterflow with one of his boys, apparently homeward bound; he looks unhappy. Somewhere behind him, dodging clumps of runners, walkers, snackers and slackers, bobbing in and out of your vision through a man’s treasure of balloons on sale, the woman advances seated on the wheelchair pushed by her nurse. Her grandson walks alongside her, holding her hand.

Meanwhile, the sunken garden is in the throes of a soccer match, and families are encamped on the elevated areas with food, drink and loud music.

Suddenly exhausted, you decide to call it a day. What was it Bernard Malamud said? “Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.”
Reposted with the author’s permission from coverstory.ph, February 2, 2026.

Journalist Rosario A. Garcellano retired in June from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where she notched 32 years. She is now involved in the news website CoverStory.ph, in which this piece was originally run.

More articles from Rosario A. Garcellano

What Happened to Filipiniana Fashion Brand VINTA?

Caroline Mangosing — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:55:22 +0000

Classic Pechera Barong (Source: vintagallery/Instagram)

So many people who were VINTA fans and customers and both were puzzled why we closed the brand to the North American market. Although many people could guess that it was because of the trade war that Donald Trump and the American government started and continues to wage, I thought I would elaborate on what really happened and how we got here. So much has happened since we publicly announced that VINTA was closing on November 1, 2025, I thought I’d start from the beginning. Well, the beginning of the end, anyway.

VINTA had peaked in terms of revenue as an e-commerce business in 2021-2022. Post pandemic. When everyone had lots of money to spend after being on lockdown and inadvertently sitting on some extra discretionary budgets. I want to be transparent about this, because often people forget that this is a business that requires revenue to sustain the lives of the humans creating our products.

Arched Neckline Mermaid Terno Gown (Source: vintagallery/Instagram)

Since we were doing so well, I thought we should open up a customer-facing presence in Los Angeles, California, where a high percentage of our sales were coming from. So in 2022, we opened our showroom in LA. The community in LA was so incredibly welcoming, we regretted spending so much money on PR! People already knew us, and we were being approached and appreciated for coming. We dressed so many people for Hollywood galas. But as some of you know the way the system works; we often loaned out garments that were custom made for those people, and they would just return them, without paying. Big corporate conglomerate fashion houses do this, but we are just a small independent Filipino owned business in North America. So we took a hit.
Ultimately, we got some clout, but it didn’t match the revenue. In retrospect, it was because the initial “high” of Filipiniana fashion plateaued, and so did e-commerce sales post-pandemic. And yes, so many new brands came up and started copying the vibe and looks we created, at a much lower price point. Yes, even Temu got into the business of Filipiniana. That was the price point we ultimately lost to. The value of sustainable living wages of our Philippine based artisans, and the unparalleled quality of what we created wasn’t enough, unfortunately. I always knew that would happen, let’s be real. But my goal was always to make Filipiniana fashionable again. I definitely reached that goal, but the reality that comes with that is something else to grapple with. Our sales were on a steady decline. And it was getting hard to maintain the showroom.

Caroline Mangosing (Photo courtesy of Caroline Mangosing)

The vision I had from the beginning was to bring Filipiniana to the global stage. And not just Filipinos either. Because if Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier can rip off the Barong Tagalog and the terno and sell it to non-Filipinos, why couldn’t I —a Filipina, and bring it to the world and pay our own people ethical wages for perpetuating the craft?
I always had non-Filipinos telling me that my designs were gorgeous, and they wish they could wear it, and I would tell them they absolutely could. But many feared being called out for cultural appropriation…meanwhile Valentino, Chanel, JPG could make it and sell it to non-Filipinos, and they got away with it. I even saw local Filipino people applauding these designers for appropriating our traditional garments (UGH, colonial mentality/white validation is a bitch tho amirite??). Granted this was in the 2010s and I think things have definitely changed especially with so many cool younger content creators who are looking at fashion with a much more critical lens. Thank goodness!

Inaul Black Tube Dress (Source: vintagallery/Instagram)

One of the brands that was on my inspiration board in the very beginning was Shanghai Tang. What started as a custom atelier making traditional Chinese garments, they evolved into a quintessentially Chinese luxury lifestyle brand that included contemporary interpretations of tradition, and more traditional designs. Perhaps it is easier done by a Chinese brand, because the whole world already knows the Chinese aesthetic. A much taller order for us Filipinos back in the 2010s, when there was no social media.
Anyway, I digress.

Black Ruffle Barong (Source: vintagallery/Instagram)

In late 2022 we were working toward creating a new brand that was Filipino inspired in some ways, but primarily contemporary women’s fashion. This was the beginning of REGALO Studios. As the sole designer in the company, the pressure on me was high. My investor wanted to focus on the new brand which can be scaled. We worked towards pivoting VINTA to the Philippine market. With the trade wars and the actual war happening in the world, going hyper-local is really the move. Our tiny and mighty team really had a lot on our plate. So we needed to put the pivot on hold, but not without creating a pathway for the atelier to sustain itself without the VINTA orders, and the reduced (in comparison) REGALO orders. Bernadette, our COO at the atelier, still had a network of contacts and she was able to secure local orders manufacturing white labeled children’s dresses.

Yes, even Temu got into the business of Filipiniana. That was the price point we ultimately lost to.

The outpouring of support from everyone on our social [media] and on email after we announced the closing of VINTA was so uplifting and encouraging. It really meant a lot to me and to the whole team. The IRL archive sale we had at the atelier in April was even attended by FilAm balikbayans who happened to be in Manila at the time!
All that to say, we are currently rebuilding a website so that our VINTA Lovers from the US and Canada and around the world can access VINTA designs again.

Custom Bronze Terno Gown (Source: vintagallery/Instagram)

That includes what is left of our ready-to-wear inventory, as well as made-to-measure pieces. Once I am ready, we will be opening up couture special occasion and wedding orders again. If you’d like to get in queue for a wedding/special occasion order in the next 12 months, you can already email us: customerservice@vintagallery.com. And the good news is, the tariffs from the Philippines is much less than if items are shipped from Canada.
We are essentially starting from scratch. Back to slow and intentional. We hope you can stay with us on this journey. I will announce here when we go live with the new website! So much more very soon.
This article was originally published in the author’s Substack page: https://substack.com/@vintagallery

Caroline Mangosing is a serial founder + creative director based in Toronto.

Alone Amid the Haters on the Fourth of July

Trish Muyco-Tobin — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:55:22 +0000

Roswell Encina

You could say Roswell Encina had been readying for America’s semiquincentennial for years. As president and CEO of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and a former staffer of the Library of Congress, preparing for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been top of mind for him in the past decade.
“As you can imagine, the Declaration has been at the forefront – it’s all we’ve been talking about. Those first sentences, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…nowadays, it feels a bit of a challenge,” Encina said. “I feel like each generation has been challenged to try to achieve that, whether it’s the passage of women’s suffrage, to the 13th and 14th amendments, to the Voting Rights Act, to the Civil Rights Act, to the passage of LGBTQ rights.”
With the multitude of events across the country marking the semiquincentennial, Encina hoped that in addition to celebrating how far the nation has come, Americans also took the time to reflect on the work that has yet to be done. But there was no way he could predict how the Fourth of July at the nation’s capital would unfold; much less, how he would find himself central to the events of the day.
Encina unwittingly made international headlines when his image – surrounded by a large group of masked men later revealed to be members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front – was captured by a Getty photographer on the Metro. (to view the photo go to https://www.instagram.com/p/DaaZFliERY6/?img_index=1)

Roswell Encina (Photo courtesy of Bruce Gutherie)

The day began with rising anticipation and fanfare, with people decked out in red, white, and blue milling about. Encina, who hopped on the train from Dupont Circle, was on his way to a Fourth of July party in Maryland.
“It was good to see all these families and all these people being very patriotic and Americana and honestly, just being happy, especially when we live in such polarizing and divided times. So, that really put me in a good mood,” Encina said, adding that most of the passengers were tourists who got off at stops near the National Mall and the Capitol.
“When the Metro was slowing down at the next stop, I noticed a big group of men wearing masks and sunglasses and hats that were about to board our Metro cars. As you can imagine, I thought, ‘What the heck is happening?’”
The only thing that gave him a modicum of comfort, Encina said, was the presence of the Getty photographer – later identified as Finn Gomez – in the same car. Encina also managed to discreetly text his friends to let them know what was happening.
“[The photographer] was very obvious with his lanyards and identification, and he had a camera in his hand,” he said. “So, if anything went haywire, at least I know it would be documented. Because as I was texting my friends, I was thinking if any one of these guys punched or stabbed me, I wouldn’t be able to identify the person. Describing one would be describing 400 others.”
Encina managed to remain alert and maintain his composure for the approximately 25-minute ride to the train’s last stop in Prince George’s County. It was only when the passengers alighted that Encina realized the enormousness of the group’s size.

Roswell Encina (Photo courtesy of Tony Powell)

“At first, I thought it was just 50, 75 people. It didn’t dawn on me how many until we got off,” he said. “We got off and you see a flood of these men in almost military precision, single file on the escalator. Some of them reminded me of platoon leaders. They were barking orders for the men to be organized.”
It took days for Encina to fully process his experience and put it into context.
“History is not pretty. People need to understand that the country has always been divided, from the Revolutionary War up to now. You have to look at history as a whole, the achievements and the successes but also the violence and the prejudice,” he said.
The son of a U.S. Navy officer stationed in Connecticut, Encina first came to America at age one. His parents, Rodolfo and Fe, hailed from Santa Rosa, Laguna, where they settled after Rodolfo was assigned to the U.S. Naval Base at Subic Bay. In the years ensuing, the family of three moved back and forth between the States and the Philippines. Encina completed his primary and secondary education at Canossa School in Santa Rosa and graduated from De La Salle University in Manila at age 19.
The family later moved to Virginia, where Encina went back to school to pursue broadcast journalism at nearby Salisbury University in Maryland. For the next 14 years, he worked as a TV reporter for local news, garnering storytelling experience that later transitioned into overseeing communications for public libraries in Baltimore and later, for the Library of Congress.
“Libraries are great equalizers – rich, poor, Black, white, gay, straight…they’re all welcome,” he said. “I’m very proud of the work public libraries are doing. Through that work, I saw how very important stories are. My first job was telling stories; this time, I was sharing stories.”
Shared stories and a knowledge of history are part of what fosters an “informed patriotism,” something that Encina emphasizes at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.
“We want to make sure that people are civics-oriented and how understanding the past when it comes to how Congress works and how democracy works will help us move forward,” he explained. “People need to be properly informed.”
Encina’s enthusiasm for civic responsibility and advocating for the role everyday citizens play was instilled in him early on.
“My father and mother were always civic-minded. They were very active, whether it’s with the Jaycees, the homeowners’ association or any other kind of civic group – and all their friends were like that,” he said.

“History is not pretty,” says Roswell Encina. “People need to understand that the country has always been divided, from the Revolutionary War up to now.

Encina recalls casting his first vote at 18 at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines.
“It was the 1988 presidential elections in the States. My father said, ‘We’re going to the U.S. Embassy and you’re going to vote.’ I still remember that day, how excited I was, walking into the embassy, getting our ballot and voting,” he said. “I felt a sense of pride voting for the first time. I think I’ve only missed one or two elections since because of all the moving, but I’ve always believed in the value of voting.”
Voting provides the citizenry with a voice, much like the individual stories Encina cultivates at his current role.
“I’m proud to be an American, and I understand the situation I was put in [on the Fourth of July]. And what makes me proud is that people may have never expected that the person leading the U.S. Capitol Historical Society is the son of an immigrant, a Filipino American, and that’s what makes it really incredible. America does offer these opportunities,” he said.
“Whether you’re an immigrant from Ireland or Honduras or Mexico or the Philippines or China, we all share the same story and shared history with American-born citizens. Together, we’re all part of the country.”

Award-winning journalist Trish Muyco-Tobin has a combined 30 years of experience in TV, radio and print as an editor, reporter, news anchor and producer. She is a member of the faculty at the School of Communications at Webster University in St. Louis, where she also serves as adviser for student publications, including the Webster Journal and Ampersand magazine.

More from Trish Muyco-Tobin

I Called Him Kuya Vijoe

Rudy D. Liporada — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:55:16 +0000
Scouting had become the compass of my youth—toward adulthood, and life.
I was in Grade VI when it happened.
At that age, the world is still mostly local, measured in school days, familiar streets, and the quiet hierarchy of those you look up to without quite knowing why. In Baguio, the hills shaped everything, and somewhere along those slopes moved my Kuya, Victor Oteyza de Guia Jr.—Vijoe.

Victor de Guia aka Kuya Vijoe

Before he became part of history, he was simply present in my small world.
I remember him going to the office of his Uncle Bucky at Strike and Spare Lanes. I remember how he was always friendly to me—never distant, never too busy to acknowledge a younger boy watching from the edges. And I remember, most of all, his uniform.
It was not just worn. It was resplendent.
The neckerchief sat cleanly at his collar, held by its slide with quiet precision. The knots—square, taut, exact—spoke of a discipline I did not yet understand but instinctively respected. Every piece of paraphernalia seemed to belong exactly where it should be. Nothing was careless. Nothing was merely decorative. It all meant something.
To a boy in Grade VI, it was a vision of order and purpose.
He was the reason I carried on in the Boy Scouts, eventually becoming an Explorer Scout.

Author Rudy D. Liporada as Scout Boy Mayor of Baguio City during the Boy Scout Week in October, 1967. He was the president of the Saint Louis University Scouting Family and graduated in high school as a Gerry Roxas Leadership Scholarship Awardee.

What began as admiration became practice, then habit, then something like a quiet code. The neckerchief I wore, the knots I learned, the compass I drew with the Scout's motto, oath, and the Explorers' line—"Your best today for a better tomorrow”-- these were not small things. They were ways of holding direction.

His last photo sent to a friend

Then came the news that stretched the world beyond Baguio.
He had been chosen—one of the country's finest young Scouts, selected to represent the Philippines at the 11th World Scout Jamboree in Marathon, Greece. Their journey would take them far—Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bombay, onward to Cairo, then Greece. It was more than travel. It was passage.

De Guia is on the top row, 4th from left.

He never arrived.
On July 28, 1963, the aircraft carrying him and the delegation—United Arab Airlines Flight 869—crashed in the Arabian Sea near Bombay during a storm, just as it was approaching landing. All sixty-three aboard were lost, including twenty-four Filipino Boy Scouts.
I did not yet have the language for tragedy.
Only that someone I had seen, spoken to, admired—someone who had stood before me in that uniform—was suddenly, irretrievably gone.
And then, he returned.
At Loakan Airport, we waited.
I remember the line of Boy Scouts in full parade dress along the tarmac—still, straight, almost impossibly composed for boys our age. The neckerchiefs were in place, the slides centered, the uniforms exact. Even in grief, the discipline held. Or perhaps it was because of it.
The plane arrived not with spectacle, but with a kind of finality.

He had been chosen—one of the country's finest young Scouts, selected to represent the Philippines at the 11th World Scout Jamboree in Marathon, Greece.

We received him there.
And we kept vigil—at City Hall, at Baden-Powell Hall.
Until the procession began—the city moved with him.
From Baden-Powell Hall, his coffin was brought out and tied with ropes. It was not simply carried, it was drawn, pulled by many hands. There was effort in it, shared and visible, as if grief itself required labor.
It was then that the tom-toms began.
Slow. Steady. Solemn.

Rudy D. Liporada was a feature writing instructor in Zambia, Africa before he moved to the US and became a freelance writer/novelist/columnist ("As the Bamboos Sway"). He graduated from the University of the Philippines, majoring in economics.

More articles from Rudy D. Liporada

2026 In Memoriam (Second Quarter)

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:55:06 +0000

MARCH
Diana Isabel Colvin, 74, former Councilmember of the City of Colma, due to cancer, on March 1, in Colma, California.

Diana Isabel Colvin (Source: Instagram/Colma Police)

J. Ramon Faustman, 78, former band member of the 1960s Kingsmen Band and foremost architect restoring and recreating heritage structures, on March 22, in Florida, U.S.A.

J. Ramon Faustmann (Source: Facebook)

Photojournalists Rodolfo Ong Tan and Neil Clark Ongchangco both of Baguio City, died after their vehicle was swept away by a river in Itogon, Benguet, Philippines after attending a graduation photoshoot at a nearby elementary school and as they were attempting to cross the river, on March 28.

Rodolfo Ong Tan and Neil Clark Ongchangco (Source: facebook)

APRIL
Valentin Flores Dagani, Jr., 81, lawyer, entrepreneur and longtime pillar of the Central Florida Filipino American and Asian American communities on April 4, in Kissimmee, Florida, U.S.A.

Valentin Flores Dagani, Jr. (Source: OSCEOLA Memory Gardens)

Marina Feleo-Gonzalez, 95, screenwriter of the 1970s during the Martial Law years when women writers were rare and politically themed work was censored; known for the classic film Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo, and the stage play A Song for Manong about Filipino labor and the diaspora in the U.S., on April 6, in New York, U.S.A.

Marina Feleo-Gonzalez

Pablo M. Olarte, 97, cherished member of the Stockton Filipino community and in the Filipino organization Bayanihan helping countless members of the Filipino community reunite with their families and build better lives in the U.S., on April 6, in Stockton, California, U.S.A.

Pablo M. Olarte (Source: Stockton Obituary)

Sue M. Prado, 44, actor who embodied grounded, socially resonant characters in indie/mainstream hits earning industry respect for her emotional depth, due to cardiac arrest, on April 14, in Manila, Philippines.

Sue M. Prado (Source: Sunstar)

Atty. Renato Zosimo Bilog Evangelista, 53, the first and only Mangyan lawyer, President of The Mangyan Heritage Center and fierce advocate in upholding and safeguarding the traditions and identity of his fellow Mangyans, on April 14, after suffering a stroke, in Manila, Philippines.

Atty. Renato Zosimo Bilog Evangelista (Source: Facebook)

Sr. Eva Fidela Maamo, 85, nun, surgeon, missionary, tireless servant of the poor and The Ramon Magsaysay Awardee 1997, on April 14, in Manila, Philippines.

Sr. Eva Fidela Maamo (Source: facebook)

University of the Philippines student Alyssa Alano, community journalist RJ Ledesma, land rights activists Maureen Keil Santuyo and Errol Wendel, and Filipino American activists Lyle Prijoles, 40, from San Diego, California and Kai Sorem, were among the 19 victims of the 79th Infantry Battalion military operations in Toboso, Negros Occidental, on April 20.

Alyssa Alano (Source: Facebook)

RJ Ledesma (Source: Facebook)

Maureen Keil Santuyo (Source: Facebook)

Errol Wendell (source: Facebook)

Lyle Prijoles (Source: Dignity Memorial

Kai Sorem (Source: Instagram)

Robert “Bob” Rivas, 78, former mayor of Bergenfield, New Jersey and first Filipino American to occupy the position, cause unknown, on April 23, in New Jersey, U.S.A.

Robert “Bob” Rivas (Source: The FilAm)

Ramon “Chino” Bolipata, solo cellist who performed with leading ensembles known for his discipline, artistry and commitment to his craft, on April 25, in Manila, Philippines.

Ramon “Chino” Bolipata (Photo by Elmer Borlongan/Flickr)

Lee C. Chipongian, 56, business journalist known for her rigor and independence, on April 26, in Manila, Philippines.

Lee C. Chipongian (Source: Facebook)

Dempsey Cyden Reyes, 29, Inquirer reporter, due to a respiratory failure following a brain hemorrhage, on April 26, in Manila, Philippines.

Dempsey Cyden Reyes (Source: Inquirer.net)

Danny Vibas, 71, prolific English journalist and former college professor, on April 29, in Manila, Philippines.

Danny Vibas (Source: Facebook)

Francisco A. Mallari, SJ, 98, beloved Jesuit priest, on April 30, at the Ateneo de Manila Campus, in Quezon City, Philippines.

Francisco A. Mallari, SJ (Source: Philippine Jesuits)

MAY
Consul Eric P. Valenzuela, 54, diplomat assigned to the Philippine embassy in Spain, on May 2, in Madrid, Spain.

Consul Eric P. Valenzuela (Source: Facebook)

Jesus Duterte Durano Sr., 89, former mayor of Danao, Cebu, on May 5, in Danao, Cebu, Philippines.

Jesus Duterte Durano Sr. (Source: Facebook)

Dr. Dante A. Ang, 84, former chairperson of the Commission on Filipino Overseas (CFO) and former Special Envoy for International Public Relations under President Arroyo, on May 5, in Manila, Philippines.

Dr. Dante A. Ang (Source: Manila Times)

Dr. Erwin T. Lim, 56. award-winning Cebuano travel and Sinulog photographer who built a reputation for documenting landscapes, festivals, wildlife and everyday life with striking depth and emotion, on May 6, in Cebu City, Philippines.

Dr. Erwin T. Lim (Source: Instagram)

Alfred Reyes, 58, one of Cebu’s most notable figures in the hospitality industry, on May 7, in Cebu City, Philippines.

Alfred Reyes (Source: Instagram)

Carlos Cortes,72, multi-awarded Cebuano author whose prose was marked by lyricism, historical consciousness and a sense of place, on May 8, in Cebu City, Philippines.

Carlos Cortez (Source: Instagram)

Amadis Ma. Guerrero, 85, fictionist, essayist, journalist and art critic who devoted his life to the written word and to the preservation of Philippine culture and history, on May 13, in Manila, Philippines.

Amadis Ma. Guerrero (Source: Facebook)

Eduardo Valdez aka Ed Finlan, 78, actor-turned-director, on May 13, in Manila, Philippines.

Eduardo Valdez aka Ed Finlan (Source: facebook)

Modesto “Chibu” Lagman, 81, journalist and professor, progressive thinker and internationalist, on May 10, in Makati, Philippines.

“Chibu” Lagman

Lourdes Mitra Esclamado, 96, wife of the late publisher Alex Esclamado who helped engage community leaders and form the NaFFAA, on May 13, in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A.

Lourdes Mitra Esclamado

Vince Francis Dingding, secretary of the Southwest Negros Guerilla Front and University of the Philippines alumnus, killed following a series of clashes with the 15th Infantry Battalion under the 302nd Infantry Brigade, on May 16, in Barangay Abaca, Cauayan, Negros Occidental, Philippines. Others killed in the encounter include Jobert “Ka Robi” Casipong, Gilbert “Ka Kolintong/Ka Downy” Tingson, Rolando “Ka Anyo” Dantes, Jr., and Alex “Ka Kaya” Languita.

Vince Francis Dingding (Source: Rappler)

Paciencia “Pat” Gacoscos, 81, former councilmember of the City of Union City and founder of the Union City Friends of Sister Cities, due to pancreatic cancer, on May 22, in Union City, California, U.S.A.

Paciencia “Pat” Gacoscos (Source: Chabot College)

Marina Garon Camia, 82, community volunteer and activist with the Filipino Community of Sacramento and Vicinity, on May 23, in Vacaville, California, U.S.A.

Marina Garon Camia (Source: Facebook)

Roberto V. Garcia, 80, AIM Triple A Awardee and former Chairman of the Alumni Association of AIM, on May 24, in Manila, Philippines.

Roberto V. Garcia (Source: Facebook)

Myrna S. Feliciano, 89, teacher, scholar, law librarian and giant in Philippine legal education, on May 25, in Manila, Philippines.

Myrna Feliciano (Source: Facebook)

Joey Gaston, age unknown, sugar baron who provided scholarships for the people in his hacienda, on May 27, in Negros Occidental, Philippines.

Joey Gaston (Source: Facebook)

Aly Pagaduan, age unknown, vocalist of the rock band Sleep Alley, on May 31, cause unknown, in Manila, Philippines.

Aly Pagaduan (Source: Facebook)

JUNE
Renna Hechanova-Angeles, 70, vice chairman, treasurer, director of Concepcion Industrial Corporation and advocate for vulnerable youth, on June 1, in Manila, Philippines.

Renna Hechanova-Angeles (Source: LinkedIn)

Luz Amandolina “Mandy” C. Navasero, 84, veteran photographer, photojournalist, mentor and travel writer, on June 1, in Manila, Philippines.

Luz Amandolina “Mandy” C. Navasero (Source: X.com)

Felicitas “Tita” Layag Radaic, 88, ballet icon and dance mentor, after a long battle with health complications, on June 2, in Manila, Philippines.

Felicitas “Tita” Layag Radaic (Source: dance.mnl)

Zosimo E. Lee, 73, professor and former University of the Philippines Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, on June 2, in Manila, Philippines.

Zosimo E. Lee (Source: UP Diliman)

Bing Austria, 62, tastemaker, radio host, DJ, and composer best known for his music in the bands Put3ska and Juan Pablo Dream, due to sepsis, on June 8, in Manila, Philippines.

Bing Austria (Source: Facebook)

Roffel G. Brion, 73, poet and professor of interdisciplinary studies, literature, creative writing and popular culture, on June 8, in Manila, Philippines.

Roffel G. Brion (Source: Facebook)

Rene Clert N. Baterbonia, 28, and Nigerian foreign student-athlete Divine Adili, 21, basketball players for Ateneo, due to drowning from a team building exercise, on June 8, in Dipaculao, Aurora, Philippines.

Rene Clert N. Baterbonia (Photo by Julius Domondon/ PEP.PH)

Divine Adili (Source: Facebook)

David Briscoe, 82, Associated Press journalist who chronicled Philippines’ democratic revolution, due to amyloidosis, on June 10, in Kapolei, Hawaii, U.S.A.

David Briscoe (Source: LinkedIn)

Rudy Panaglima, 96, one of only two surviving World War II veteran who performed intelligence work and courier work for the guerillas in his town, on June 12, in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Rudy Panaglima (Source: Instagram)

Lyca Benitez Brown, 74, former member of the Board of Directors of Ma-Yi Theater Company, executive producer of the acclaimed children's TV show Batibot, tireless advocate and patron of the arts, on June 20, in Quezon City, Philippines.

Lyca Benitez Brown (Source: GMA News)

Ayessa Nicole Dazo, 14, Joyancee Badoria Separa, 15, victims in the fatal shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, on June 22, in Tacloban, Philippines.

Ayessa Nicole Dazo (Source: Facebook)

Joyancee Badoria Separa (Source: Facebook)

Loida Nicolas Lewis: How to Look Younger When You’re Older

Elizabeth Ann Quirino — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:54:54 +0000

Book Review: Look Younger When You're Older by Loida Nicolas Lewis
USA Edition: Storehouse Voices (Penguin Random House, 2026)
Philippine Edition: Anvil Publishing, 2025
I was tired of the endless search for the most effective jar of anti-aging cream and appalled by how expensive a 30-day supply could be, with no guarantee that I would stay young.
I was wishing for a straightforward solution to an age-old problem: ageless youth and beauty without spending a fortune, one that fits into my day-to-day routine. More importantly, I wanted something that works.
I found the answer in the book Look Younger When You're Older by Loida Nicolas Lewis—author, attorney, businesswoman, philanthropist, host of The Loida Lewis Podcast, and a popular member of the Filipino American community. Ms. Lewis is also known as the widow of Reginald F. Lewis, the first African American to build a billion-dollar company.
Loida's new self-help book speaks to Filipinos and to readers familiar with how Filipino seniors live their lives.
In a phone conversation, the charming Ms. Lewis told me all about her newest book, a follow-up to her successful memoir Why Should Guys Have All the Fun?, which was on the Amazon bestseller list for eight weeks. She sent me a copy of the new Philippine paperback edition. She also told me there would be a U.S. hardcover edition later this year with an additional chapter.
The 145-page book approaches staying young in a holistic way. It is divided into more than 15 chapters, organized into three major sections that suggest different ways to maintain an ageless routine and way of life: My Face, My Body, and My Spirit.
The advice covers everything from how daily stress, overeating, sleep deprivation, and bad habits can affect your physical appearance, emotional stability, overall looks, and even how you relate to others.
This is the book for anyone who wants a clearer understanding of what the body and soul need. It offers a practical plan for improving oneself overall.

Loida N. Lewis at the recent Asian Hall of Fame Heritage Gala

The paragraphs are easy to read and follow. There is no technical jargon. The book includes illustrations that help readers visualize the suggested solutions. There are also the author's personal photographs that remind us of her life experiences. I read the book in one day, but I know I will reread it and continue referring to Ms. Lewis' advice as I go about my daily routines. I especially like the way the author combines science and common sense with real, everyday habits that we can all identify with.
For instance:
"Too much exposure to the sun causes wrinkles. I limit my facial exposure to the sun to a maximum of 10 minutes. I do sunbathe before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m., but only for 10 minutes."
On weight, she writes:
"I started to eat with intention. I write down what I eat and drink every day. I weigh myself every day, at the same time."
Basically, Ms. Lewis says you don't have to rely on quick fixes, unrealistic promises, or expensive products and procedures. You only need yourself and the right attitude.
Her suggestions are sensible: good nutrition from within, a strong faith, natural beauty tips, maintaining a healthy weight, and emotional wellness nurtured through friendships and family members who genuinely care for you.
Her close circle of friends also offers valuable beauty tips and recommends products they personally use.
Even media personalities generously praised Ms. Lewis' newest book.
"This book is a testament to living well from the inside out. Loida is living proof that aging gracefully and naturally is not only possible, but powerful," said Karen Davila, broadcast journalist and advocate.
"Bravo, Loida! Salamat for all that you are and all that you do to make this world a better place," said Dr. Boy Abunda, the Philippines' "King of Talk."
Readers will find informative, helpful, and thought-provoking lessons on mindfulness. The suggested strategies feel achievable. There are no complicated steps to follow. They are practical and do not overwhelm. They are doable no matter where you live in the world.
What stands out is the book's natural approach to wellness, without resorting to expensive products or costly Botox or surgical procedures. The emphasis is on mindful habits and self-care. Ms. Lewis reminds readers that the essence of staying youthful begins with loving yourself enough to take care of yourself.

Loida's new self-help book speaks to Filipinos and to readers familiar with how Filipino seniors live their lives

Clearly, there was no need for me to buy expensive anti-aging creams at exorbitant prices. I had Ms. Lewis' book. I was drawn to this guidebook because it integrates internal well-being with external care. Ultimately, this self-help and self-care book by Loida Nicolas Lewis is an encouraging read for anyone seeking to stay youthful for the long haul.
Look Younger When You're Older is available in the Philippines at most booksellers.
In the United States, it is available for pre-order through Amazon.

Elizabeth Ann Quirino, is an award-winning journalist, food writer, and cookbook author. Her new book is Every Ounce of Courage, a memoir, is now available. Find her on TheQuirinoKitchen.com.

More articles from Elizabeth Ann Quirino

What Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo Taught Me

Rene Astudillo — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:56:08 +0000

Osaka’s most prominent billboard for a confectionary company is the Glico Running Man located in the famous Dotonbori district. The billboard’s inspiration was Fortunato Catalon, a celebrated Filipino sprinter from Leyte who was a top Asian athlete in the early 1900s.

Japan revealed itself to me not in grand gestures, but in small, unforgettable moments. It was in the way people lined up quietly on train platforms, even when no one was watching. In how streets stayed spotless despite the absence of trash bins. In how a simple meal—whether from a Michelin-starred counter or a convenience store shelf—was treated with care. Traveling through Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo felt less like sightseeing and more like being gently instructed on how society could work.
Osaka was my introduction, and it came with noise, color, and appetite. Dotonbori assaulted the senses in the best possible way—neon lights reflecting on the canal, the smell of frying batter in the air, people laughing loudly without apology. Standing beneath the iconic Glico Man, arms raised eternally in victory, I couldn’t help but smile. I was even surprised to learn that the model for that iconic billboard was Filipino! It felt symbolic: Osaka celebrates effort, not perfection. The sign is commercial, yes, even cheesy—but so is joy sometimes. And Osaka embraces that.
I burned my mouth on takoyaki because waiting wasn’t an option. I devoured okonomiyaki cooked right in front of me, watching the vendor work with practiced ease. Food here wasn’t rushed, yet nothing felt inefficient. Even Osaka Castle, surrounded by modern life, reminded me that history in Japan isn’t sealed behind glass—it simply exists alongside the present.
Kyoto slowed me down. Almost against my will, my pace changed. Walking through Gion, I lowered my voice without realizing it. The streets seemed to demand restraint. At the Shinto shrine Fushimi Inari, passing through thousands of torii gates, I felt oddly emotional. Each gate represented a wish, a prayer, a hope someone cared enough to leave behind. No one pushed. No one hurried. We climbed quietly, sharing space without speaking.
Kyoto’s cleanliness struck me differently. It wasn’t about looking polished—it felt moral. As if caring for surroundings was a form of gratitude to those who came before. Standing before Kinkaku-ji, perfectly reflected on the pond, I understood that beauty here was not accidental. It was maintained, protected, respected.

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion — Buddhist temple in Kyoto

Tokyo, on the other hand, jolted me awake. It moved fast—but never chaotically. At Shibuya Crossing, hundreds of people surged forward at once, yet no one bumped into me. It felt rehearsed, like a silent agreement among strangers. Trains arrived exactly when promised. Apologies were offered for delays measured in seconds. Discipline here wasn’t cold—it was considerate.
Then there was Takeshita Street in Harajuku, where Tokyo briefly let go of restraint. Loud music, wild fashion, oversized bows, pastel hair—it was sensory overload. And yet, even here, there was order. No shoving. No litter. Just young people expressing themselves boldly within an unspoken framework of respect. It reminded me that conformity and individuality are not opposites in Japan—they coexist.

Takeshita Street (Takeshita Dori) in Tokyo's Harajuku district is a vibrant, narrow pedestrian street famous for youth fashion, quirky shops, colorful sweets and anime goods

Tokyo also held onto its soul. At Senso-ji in Asakusa, I joined locals and tourists alike in prayer, waving incense smoke toward my face for luck. Ancient rituals unfolded just steps away from vending machines and souvenir stalls. Somehow, it worked.
And then there were the konbini—7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Lawson. I underestimated them at first. Then I kept going back. Onigiri that tasted freshly made. Bento meals that put fast food elsewhere to shame. Coffee that was consistently good. These stores weren’t just convenient—they were reliable. In Japan, even convenience carries dignity.

Reasonably-prized, ready-to-eat delights from Japanese 7-Eleven

Food across all three cities left a lasting impression. Nothing felt careless. Every bowl of ramen, every yakitori skewer, every packaged meal reflected pride in doing things properly. It made me rethink how often elsewhere we accept “good enough.”

An elderly couple in Tokyo opens their garage door each night to grill and sell yakitori.

By the time I left Japan, I realized what stayed with me wasn’t just the landmarks. It was the way people behaved when no one was looking. The quiet discipline. The shared responsibility. Japan didn’t try to impress me. It simply showed me—calmly, consistently—another way of being. And that stayed with me long after the flight home.

Japan didn’t try to impress me. It simply showed me—calmly, consistently—another way of being.

Many have said that if you want to see the world, don’t start with Japan, because if you do, you’ll find yourself going back again and again. As I will. See you soon, Nagoya, Kobe, Hiroshima!

Rene Astudillo is a writer, book author and blogger and has recently retired from more than two decades of nonprofit community work in the Bay Area. He spends his time between California and the Philippines.

More articles from Rene Astudillo

Chicago Chef Exalts Southeast Asian Fare

Rey E. de la Cruz — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:56:02 +0000

As culinary director at Sunda New Asian, Mike Morales believes that great food starts with exceptional leadership (Photo courtesy of Sunda New Asian)

Sunda New Asian restaurant was established to celebrate Southeast Asian culture, with a special emphasis on Filipino cuisine. Named after the Sunda Shelf—a vast, shallow continental shelf in Southeast Asia—the restaurant blends traditional flavors with contemporary techniques to create a culinary identity and dining experience like no other: a balance of authenticity and innovation that never loses the soul of the dish. Founded in Chicago by Billy Dec, Sunda has expanded from its two Chicago locations to additional branches in Nashville, Tampa, and Detroit.
Mike Morales is Sunda New Asian’s Culinary Director. He develops the menu, maintains consistency across markets, trains and mentors kitchen teams, and ensures that every dish reflects the quality of the Sunda New Asian brand. He also oversees new openings and concept development. “Leadership is just as important as cooking ability,” he emphasizes. “Building a strong, motivated team and maintaining consistency day in and day out are what separate good kitchens from great ones.”
Growing up in the Chicagoland area, his favorite memories centered on family and food. “There was always something happening in the kitchen,” he remembers, “whether it was preparing meals for gatherings or just everyday cooking at home.” He learned early on that food and cooking brought people together.
Morales’ associate degree in culinary arts from the Illinois Institute of Art gave him a solid foundation. Thereafter, his real education took place in professional kitchens—hands-on experience, learning under pressure, managing teams, and continually refining his technique. Being surrounded by talented chefs and high standards pushed him to grow quickly and develop his own style. His culinary philosophy is ultimately rooted in respect for the culture, the ingredients, and the people he is cooking for.

Sunda New Asian delivers total-flavor paradise with sizzling-savory perfection and a mountain of sweet ube bliss (Photo courtesy of Sunda New Asian)

He is drawn to Southeast Asian cuisine for its bold, layered flavors, where sweet, sour, salty, and spicy elements harmonize in every dish. At Sunda New Asian, three Filipino favorites stand out:
Chicken Inasal, a traditional dish from Bacolod, marinated with calamansi, lemongrass, and garlic, then grilled to achieve a smoky, vibrant flavor.
Lumpia, a staple of Filipino celebrations, reimagined at Sunda New Asian with refined ingredients and presentation while maintaining its cultural roots.
Kamayan Feast, a communal, hands-on dining experience where guests share a spread of grilled meats, seafood, rice, and traditional accompaniments, embodying the spirit of Filipino hospitality and togetherness.

No utensils needed--Sunda New Asian's Kamayan Feast is best enjoyed hands-on, though any eating style works perfectly if the plate is left clean (Photo courtesy of Sunda New Asian)

One of Morales’ biggest challenges is sourcing authentic ingredients and maintaining consistency across different locations. Sunda New Asian addresses this by building strong supplier relationships and understanding which elements of a dish are essential to its identity, allowing the restaurant to adapt when needed without compromising authenticity.
There are always humorous moments in the kitchen. Even in the most intense situations, there is room for laughter. “Whether things go perfectly or not,” Morales explains, “those moments build camaraderie and forge lifelong bonds.”

Travel is a major source of inspiration because it gives him the opportunity to experience different cultures and flavors firsthand.

Outside the kitchen, he enjoys traveling, trying new restaurants, and keeping his finger on the pulse of the food scene. Travel is a major source of inspiration because it gives him the opportunity to experience different cultures and flavors firsthand.
In his free time, he spends a lot of time with his dog, a great way to unwind from the pace of the kitchen. Recently, he has gotten really into golf, and it is quickly becoming an obsession.
He is also involved with Culinary Care, serving as a board member and volunteering his time to cook for cancer patients in need.
Mike Morales goes above and beyond his role as culinary director at Sunda New Asian. From sourcing authentic ingredients to shaping the kitchen’s craft and leading with heart, he champions people and community, ensuring that the culinary world stays rooted in culture, driven by flavor, and inspired by imagination.
Sunda New Asian – River North
110 W. Illinois Street
Chicago, Illinois 60654
(312) 644-0500
Sunda New Asian – Fulton Market District
333 N. Green St.
Chicago, Illinois 60607
(312) 900-0033

Rey E. de la Cruz, Ed.D., writes for Positively Filipino from Chicagoland, carrying with him both his immersion in the arts and a steady longing for his hometown of Ballesteros, Cagayan—celebrated as the “Gakka Capital of the World.” He reshaped the very idea of film education in the Philippines, becoming the first recorded film student at the University of the Philippines and later the pioneer who brought film into the high‑school classroom at San Beda. As an educator, he introduced the ancient Philippine board game sungka into classroom practice, turning cultural memory into pedagogy. UMPIL, the Philippines’ largest organization of writers, honored him with the Gawad Balagtas for Drama in Filipino “for his pioneering creative spirit that imagined and expanded what can be possible for today’s modern theater.” His plays—dream‑driven, daring, and theatrically audacious—continue to resonate. He defined Theater Without Apology as a writing ethic that rejects softness, insists on precision, and confronts truth without blinking.

More articles from Rey E. de la Cruz

Pork Belly Sinigang
By Chef Mike Morales, Sunda New Asian

Pork Belly Sinigang (Photo courtesy of Sunda New Asian)

Crispy pork belly, sinigang braised radish, sauted spinach, seared tomatoes, tamarind broth
Ingredients
8 oz Braised Adobo Log
3 Sliced Braised Watermelon Radish
2 Sliced Daikon Radish
3 oz Sliced Tomatoes
6 oz Spinach
8 oz Tamarind Broth
½ oz Micro Cilantro
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
3 oz Canola Oil
Dishware
White Couple Plate
Equipment
Sauté Pan, Tongs
Procedure
-fry pork belly in 350-degree fryer until golden and crispy (5-6min) then slice into 6 slices
-place radish in tamarind broth and bring to a simmer
-sauté spinach until wilted season with Salt & Pepper
-sear tomatoes in a pan with oil
Plating
Place spinach off center of the plate
Add radish slices on the other side
Place singled pork belly on top of spinach
Add tomatoes on one corner
Add broth in a pourer and pour table side
Garnish
Micro cilantro
Braised Radish
Ingredients
2 Watermelon radish, peeled
2 Daikon Radish
4 Tbs Tamarind concentrate
2 Tbs fish sauce
3 each garlic bulb
Water to cover
Procedure
Place peeled radish in a deep ½ size hotel pan
Add Tamarind, fish sauce, and garlic
Cover with water
Cover with foil and bake in a 300-degree oven for 2 ½ hours until tender
Cool in braising liquid (braising liquid will be used for the finished dish)
The Braising Liquid is the Tamarind Broth.

House of Stone Keeps Past Alive in Modern Iloilo

Meyen Quigley — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:55:54 +0000

Arevalo's Balay nga Bato.

In August 1896, Jose Rizal was on board the steamship SS España, on his way to Manila from exile in Dapitan–having been summoned by the Spanish authorities and making the trip with a military escort. It was, of course, only six months after that week-long sea voyage that he met his death by firing squad in what was then known as Bagumbayan, now Rizal Park, sparking a revolution that set our nation on the path to freedom from colonial rule
On that journey Rizal was just a traveler, noticing things a traveler does. Thus on August 4, when his ship docked for a stopover at Loney Wharf (Muelle Loney) in Iloilo, he wrote in his journal: “The entrance to Iloilo is beautiful; it looks like a white city on the water.” He went on to describe Iloilo as “(a) nymph of galvanized iron, a modern creation.”
A ‘White City Set on Water’
Flying over Iloilo City these days, one will see, like Rizal, a “white city set on water” and a “modern creation,” yes, but instead of galvanized iron, a city of concrete-and-glass buildings–from gleaming corporate hubs and high-rise residences to shopping malls and a convention center whose roof design mimics dancing warriors and flowing waves. Wide avenues link different parts of the city, from the older Calle Real to the SM City and Plazuela complexes, and the spanking new Megaworld. The Esplanade, a nine-kilometer walkway, cuts a white swath along a river that has been cleaned and revitalized, and the brand new Sunset Boulevard is four kilometers of a scenic riverside drive to the north.
Visitors to Iloilo are invariably impressed, and Ilonggos are justifiably proud. But among longtime residents there is the persistent and often unspoken thought: “How long before our city becomes totally unrecognizable?”
Happily for anxious Cassandras, there are parts of Iloilo that hold on, stubbornly, to its past. One place holding on carefully and lovingly to Iloilo’s bygone days is found in Arevalo, a district known as the city’s flower capital because of its many gardens and a plaza with flowers in abundance. Only about 5 to 10 minutes from the plaza, the Camina family’s Balay nga Bato, or Stone House, on 20 Osmena Street, stands as a 161-year old witness to the changing times and fortunes of Iloilo.
A Witness to History
Father Anselmo Avanceña designed the Balay nga Bato for his brother Fernando and Fernando’s wife, Eulalia Abaja, in 1860. Construction was completed in 1865. The house was built in the twilight years of the Spanish Empire in the Philippines, but at a time of rapid expansion for Iloilo with the opening of its port to international shipping in 1855. The city’s prosperity and its coastal location made it vulnerable to raids and plunder by sea pirates, and so the wealthy families of the city fortified themselves in houses made of plaster and stone. Hence, Balay nga Bato.
The house’s shining narra floors and the 24 hardwood pillars supporting the structure are from a time when wood was abundant and the preferred material for the interiors of houses. Wide windows at the front of the house with capiz shell panels were ideal not just for ventilation, but also allowed occupants to watch, during the Lenten season, elaborate carrozas passing by, bearing religious statues commemorating the passion of Jesus Christ. A deep Catholic faith is also seen in the oratorio, an area with prie dieu, statues of saints, crucifixes, and other religious objects. An azotea, or balcony, at the back of the house, was for courtship practices far different from today’s.
Most of the objects and furniture in the house are from the Spanish times, but porcelain plates and jars of different sizes are remnants of trade with Chinese merchants in the 1800s. Clay bowls and pots date back to pre-Hispanic times. A gramophone in one corner and an antique Singer sewing machine in another bring us to the American period in the early 1900s. Foot-powered wooden hand looms in the almacen, the ground floor storage area common to all balay nga bato, are a testament to Iloilo’s flourishing weaving industry that collapsed with the opening of the port and the introduction of cheap factory-made fabrics brought in by European merchants.
Repurposing a Historic Structure
Gerard and Luth Camina– the former Ma. Luisa Miniviluz Saludes of Jaro–are the fourth generation of the Avanceña-Camina family to be stewards of the house. Where some members of the family saw the house and its contents as a burden to be managed, Luth and Gerard saw only opportunity. Luth, especially, envisioned inviting the public to see and admire the contents and history of the house. Which is precisely what they did in 2010.

Ma.Luisa Saludes Camina (Luth), owner of Balay with husband Gerard.

Since then, diverse groups of people have streamed into the house, enjoying its antiques collection and furniture from bygone days, soaking in the ambience of times past. Visitors are welcomed with a cup of tablea (chocolate made from pastilles that the Spaniards introduced to the Filipino diet, papaya juice, and on occasion, Spanish-inspired feasts laid out on long tables overlooking the azotea. A serving of pancit molo, a savory soup with pork-filled dumplings that is a beloved Iloilo specialty, is a nod to the Chinese.
Gourmands come to Balay nga Bato wanting to savor its by now well-known food offerings, dishes made using local products and traditional recipes. Students come for lessons in Iloilo’s–and indeed, the Philippines’– past. Researchers come to examine the house’s treasures. It is a popular venue for weddings and anniversaries and even conferences. Visitors from other provinces come to get lessons in cultural preservation. In 2015, recognizing its value to the community and its popularity, the National Museum of the Philippines declared the house an important cultural property.
Preserving Traditional Crafts
Today, craftsmen and women from the community keep alive the weaving tradition, making hablon and patadyong, textiles with designs unique to Iloilo. In spotlessly clean and well-ventilated rooms, workers make tablea using traditional methods. The tablea has won several awards from the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry. Wooden shelves in the almacen display slippers and bags made from abaca fiber, and the artisan tultul salt from Guimaras is found alongside rich, dark muscovado sugar from other parts of Panay. Bottles of sinamak–coconut vinegar infused with garlic, chilies, ginger, and other aromatics– make the mouth water. The stainless steel pitchers used for mixing tablea are on offer, together with the batidor, a stirring rod made from guava wood that is said to improve the taste of the drink. There are jams made from fruits not typically used for this purpose: banana chips, cashews, and other agricultural products.

Most of the objects and furniture in the house are from the Spanish times, but porcelain plates and jars of different sizes are remnants of trade with Chinese merchants in the 1800s.

Many of the products come from the Caminas’ farmland in Guimaras. Instead of detracting from the care of the house, Luth and Gerard’s venture into agriculture feels like a natural offshoot of their work in cultural preservation. Where they protect a house and a city’s history at the Balay, their Spring Bloom Agrifarm in Sibunag protects native tree species like calamansi, cashew, pomelo, camagong, banaba, and batuan, apart from coffee and cacao. The Balay nga Bato is a way of showcasing the abundant yields of the farm.
Keeping Iloilo’s Past Alive
Both Caminas have degrees in business and have had stints in the banking industry, but the work they do at the farm and the Balay is driven not just by a business sense but by passion and a love for their native city. “We have only just awakened to the fact that we are a heritage city, a city with a unique history that is work preserving,” notes Luth. They will eventually pass stewardship of the property to their children, whom they hope will continue the work of keeping Iloilo’s past alive. In the meantime, they continue to explore new ways of making the house even more relevant and accessible.
It was also Rizal who said: "In order to read the destiny of a people, it is necessary to open the book that tells of her past." With Iloilo marching forward briskly on the path of progress, city planners would do well to glean lessons the house has to give. The house illustrates how a city integrated new tools, customs, and industries into daily life during a period of profound political and economic change—retaining what was most essential, pleasing, and functional while celebrating the skills and artistry of its people.

Gourmands come to Balay nga Bato wanting to savor its by now well-known food offerings, dishes made using local products and traditional recipes.

There is much to learn from the values, designs, and craftsmanship embodied in the house, as well as from the sensibilities, aspirations, and strengths of earlier generations, which embraced the shiny new toys and materials of a new era without losing sight of enduring principles.
Stretched out on one of the wicker chairs in the living room of Balay nga Bato, one can almost imagine the clip-clop of calesas along the street outside, carrying people to church or on leisurely afternoon strolls to the plaza. One can almost hear the shouts of boatmen docking at the rear of the house, bearing news of the latest arrivals at the port and unloading textiles destined for nearby storehouses. In the kitchen, housemaids in flowing sayas prepare a meal, using chopping boards hewn from tree trunks. The rhythmic clack of rosary beads and the murmur of voices drift from the oratorio after the church bells toll the Angelus at six o'clock. And on the grand staircase at the entrance, the swish of gowns and the tap of canes announce the arrival of guests, come to partake of the hospitality of Balay nga Bato.
The Balay nga Bato is located at 20 Osmena St., Arevalo, Iloilo and Luth Camina may be reached at saintteresa20@yahoo.com.

Marilynn (Meyen) Quigley is a poet and writer based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She is a graduate of the University of the Philippines in Iloilo City (now the University of the Philippines in the Visayas) and was one of the editors of “Graciano’s Dirty Fingers,” together with Maria Luisa Mabunay and Francisco G. Villanueva.

More articles from Meyen Quigley

Overseas Filipino Achievers, Part 6

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:55:45 +0000

In keeping with Positively Filipino’s goal of celebrating the 13-million-strong (and counting) Filipino diaspora, we are launching a new series titled Overseas Filipino Achievers. The series recognizes outstanding Filipinos making their mark in various countries around the world. It builds on our popular and long-running feature, “FilAms Among the Remarkable and Famous.”
But we need your help. If you know Filipinos outside the Philippines and the United States who are doing exceptional work in their adopted countries, please send their names, supporting documents or links, and photos to pfpublisher@yahoo.com.
FRANCE
Kat Borlongan

Kat Borlongan (Source: Facebook)

Borlongan became the first Filipino to be awarded the French National Order of Merit, one of France’s highest distinctions given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the country. Onstage, she claimed her Filipino identity and took the opportunity to talk about migration and community. Borlongan left the Philippines at 19 to build a life in France. The adjustment was not easy, and she didn’t speak the language, but she went on to earn her Political Science degree from Sorbonne University and her master’s degree at McGill University. At 23, she was leading Reporters Without Borders Canada. After founding an open-data startup, she was tapped by President Macron to lead La French Tech, where she helped accelerate France’s rise as a leading startup hub, expanded a global network of more than 120 tech communities, and advanced initiatives like the French Tech Visa and programs supporting underrepresented founders. She continues to be an ambassador for the European Innovation Council.
Danielle Gonzales-Pareja, Brand Strategist

Danielle Gonzales-Pareja (Source: LinkedIn)

Gonzales-Pareja is a brand and content strategist, photographer, and videographer based in France. She helps beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and hospitality brands tell compelling stories through content, social media, photography, and video. With more than 15 years of experience in brand communications and entrepreneurship, she brings strategic thinking and hands-on content creation to every project. From 2016 to 2024, she was the co-founder and creative director of Tala The Label in Boracay, producing ready-to-wear garments and accessories in Indonesia and the Philippines.
SWITZERLAND
Maria Theresa A. Eviota, Community Leader

Maria Theresa A. Eviota (Source: Facebook)

Eviota is a Switzerland-based migrant and community leader recognized for her outstanding service to the Filipino community abroad. She is a recipient of the 2018 Presidential Pamana ng Pilipino Award. She serves as a leader of Samahang Pilipina Bern, where she actively advocates for the rights and empowerment of migrant women.
GERMANY
Jovel Bante Jr., Chef

Chef Jovel Bante, Jr. (Source: ABS-CBN Facebook)

Bante originally gained social media fame in 2021 as a struggling hospitality student at Holy Cross of Davao College, where he used a makeshift oven made from a biscuit tin to complete his school projects. His journey from Davao to Europe was recently highlighted in a viral update shared by Jelyssa Marañon Freyman, the stranger who gifted him his first professional oven five years ago. Bante reached out to her in March 2026 to express his gratitude, noting that the opportunity to practice his profession in Europe has been a major turning point in his career.
SINGAPORE
Rafael Manuel

Rafael Manuel (Source: Facebook)

Based between Singapore, London, Amsterdam, and Manila, Manuel’s debut feature film, Filipinana, screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision. It also won the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best British Short Film at the 2020 British Independent Film Awards. He was chosen by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke to be his protégé at the Rolex Arts Initiative. Manuel studied at Ateneo de Manila University before taking up his MA in filmmaking at the London Film School.
One critic wrote about the film: “Displaying an extraordinary command of his surreal and unnerving visual language, first-time filmmaker Rafael Manuel adapts his award-winning 2020 short film of the same name to chilling effect. Manuel plumbs the depths of Filipino identity and national consciousness to uncover ominous fragments and cracks that defy picture-perfect unity. Through a stylized, colorful approach lensed with care and precision by cinematographer Xenia Patricia, Manuel takes us into a world where violence and control are exerted with the subtle flick of a wrist or tip of a hat. Painting a scathing portrait of class disparities and post-colonial power structures in ways that are both quiet and unsettling, Filipiñana announces the arrival of an accomplished writer-director who unflinchingly confronts his country’s past, present, and future.”
AUSTRALIA
Emily Wurramara

Emily Wurramara (Source: wemayberry/Facebook)

An Aboriginal-Filipino woman, Wurramara won the 2024 ARIA Music Awards for Best Adult Contemporary Album, making her the first Indigenous woman ever to win in that category. Her father is of Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish descent and grew up in Negros, Philippines, while her mother is a Warnindilyakwa-Greek-Italian-Turkish woman who grew up on the islands of Groote Eylandt and Bickerton Island.
Bishop Nelson Po

Bishop Nelson Po (Source: Australian Catholic Bishops conference)

Po was recently ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Perth at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Western Australia. Born in the village of Cantuhaon in Palompon, Leyte, Bishop Po is the third of six children born to the late Lope Po and Norma Abordo. Before entering the priesthood, he worked as an industrial and management engineer—a background he credits with helping him navigate the complex organizational needs of parish life with a practical perspective. He moved to Australia in 2003 and was ordained a priest in 2005.
Bishop Rene Ramirez

Bishop Rene Ramirez (Source: Global Filipino Magazine)

Ramirez is the first Filipino priest ever ordained a bishop in Australia and was recently appointed by Pope Leo XIV as the ninth Bishop of Sandhurst.
Alizza Reyes, Chef

Chef Alizza Reyes (Source: Facebook)

Reyes is an executive chef based in Melbourne, Australia, known for her work with the Filipino Chefs Association of Victoria (FCAV). She serves as the head chef at Anaïa and has been featured for showcasing Filipino cuisine, including a six-course degustation menu. She has been working in Australia for the past seven years after spending two years in the United States.
NETHERLANDS
Lana Jelenjev, Columnist

Lana Jelenjev (Source: lanajelenjev.com)

Jelenjev is a Filipina who has lived in the Netherlands for 13 years and has a Substack column where she integrates Kapwa, Loob, Kamalayan, and other Filipino values as she tackles broad subjects such as colonial trauma, intergenerational healing, and moral injury. She calls herself “a community alchemist, a weaver of healing-centered ecosystems, a remembering body, and a gentle guide across thresholds.” She says that “healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in relation. In witnessing. In pakikipagkapwa and pakikiramdam.” After surviving cancer at the age of 37, her message to the world is: “Go in the direction that fills your hearts and yourselves to the brim so that you can support and help others around you.”
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Dr. Mary Jane Alvero, Engineer

Dr. Mary Jane Alvero (Source: Asian Leaders Award)

Alvero is a distinguished Filipino engineer and business leader currently serving as Chief Executive Officer of Prime Group and Geoscience Testing Laboratory in the United Arab Emirates. With extensive expertise in quality assurance and materials testing, she has led critical safety and compliance assessments across construction materials, food, water, and air systems throughout the UAE. Her professional journey began at Al Futtaim Wimpey Laboratories, where she spent six years honing her technical and leadership skills. She later joined Geoscience Testing Laboratory as a Quality Assurance Officer and steadily rose through the ranks, demonstrating exceptional leadership and technical excellence and culminating in her appointment as CEO in 2003. Under her leadership, the organization has become a trusted name in testing and certification services in the region. (Submitted by Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Doy Ver)
Marlyn Castro, Entrepreneur

Marlyn Castro (Source: LinkedIn)

Castro is a Filipino entrepreneur and philanthropist widely recognized as the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pinas Express Cargo, a leading logistics company operating between the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. What began as a single logistics venture has grown into the Pinas Group of Companies, a dynamic and expanding conglomerate.
Starting her career in Dubai with modest beginnings, she gained hands-on experience in logistics and business operations before establishing her own company in 2014. Through discipline, perseverance, and strategic vision, she successfully grew her business into the Pinas Group of Companies, a multi-industry enterprise with ventures spanning logistics, wellness, travel, retail, and service industries. Castro continues to empower the Filipino community abroad.
Maria Paz Banaag-Marquez, Baker

Maria Paz Banaag-Marquez (Source: PEP.PH/Facebook)

Banaag-Marquez, also known as “Nanay Paz,” is a Filipino entrepreneur and the founder of Maria Paz Pastry & Café, a UAE-based bakery business known for its cheesecakes and Filipino pastries. She started the business after years of working in Dubai, gradually developing her baking skills and establishing a small food venture that has since expanded into multiple branches across the Emirates, serving customers in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other locations.

A Pathbreaker for Ethnic Studies

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:33:11 +0000

Daniel P. Gonzales (Source: Facebook)

Daniel P. Gonzales belongs to the generation that helped transform Ethnic Studies from a strike demand into a functioning academic institution. His role can be understood in two related but distinct ways.
First, he was part of the San Francisco State College movement of 1968–1969, when the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front forced the university to confront the exclusion of Black, Asian American, Latino, and Native American students from admissions, curriculum, faculty hiring, and institutional power.
Second, and just as important, Gonzales was among those who remained after the strike and helped build Asian American Studies into a permanent program of teaching, advising, curriculum development, institutional memory, and community accountability. His contribution was not that of a lone founder. Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State emerged through coalition struggle. Asian American Studies grew from the efforts of students, faculty, community organizers, artists, writers, and neighborhood institutions. Gonzales' importance lies in the bridge he forged among those worlds—student activism, Filipino American organizing, Asian American curriculum, and the long-term institutional survival of the field.
Campus Strike
The 1968–1969 San Francisco State strike grew out of more than campus unrest. It was a response to a university system that treated communities of color as objects of study, if it noticed them at all, rather than as producers of knowledge. San Francisco State's own College of Ethnic Studies history describes the strike as a movement against the "lack of access, misrepresentation, and the overall neglect" of Indigenous peoples and people of color within the university's curriculum and programs. The demands included the creation of departments in American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and La Raza Studies within a College of Ethnic Studies. That institutional demand mattered. The students were not asking merely for a course, a lecture series, or symbolic inclusion. They were demanding an academic structure, faculty positions, curricular authority, and a measure of self-determination over how their histories and communities would be taught.
Gonzales entered this history at precisely the point where protest met institution building. A later account in the Golden Gate Xpress reported that he arrived at San Francisco State at the outset of the 1968 student-led strike and remained connected to the university for more than four decades. That detail matters because it places him among the generation that did not regard the strike as a finished event. For many participants, the strike marked a beginning rather than an end. It produced an agreement, but that agreement still had to be translated into classes, departments, governance structures, faculty appointments, advising systems, and community relationships. Gonzales became one of the figures who carried the original demand for relevant education into the ordinary but demanding work of institutional survival.

San Francisco State University (Photo by Paffard Keatinge-Clay/Wikimedia Commons)

The Third World Liberation Front created the political framework within which Gonzales' later work became meaningful. The coalition united Asian American, Black, Latino, Native American, and other Third World student organizations around the principle that education had to be tied to self-determination. Asian American Studies did not emerge as an isolated ethnic specialty; it grew out of coalition politics. Malcolm Collier and Daniel Phil Gonzales later wrote that Asian American Studies at San Francisco State was the product of Asian American students, faculty, and community members working together to address "pressing academic and community issues." They emphasized that the founders came from diverse backgrounds and political perspectives but shared a commitment to confronting racial inequity, responding to community needs, and replacing a curriculum that failed to reflect the lives of Asian American families and neighborhoods.
Community-Based Project
That point is essential to understanding Gonzales' role. He did not help build Asian American Studies as a narrow identity program. He helped build it as a community-based intellectual project. At San Francisco State, Asian American Studies addressed immigration, labor, exclusion, family, war, colonialism, media, language, art, and neighborhood survival. Gonzales' later course offerings reflected that breadth. San Francisco State's Asian American Studies faculty biography lists courses he taught in Contemporary Asian Americans, Asian Americans and American Ideals and Institutions, Filipinos in the United States, and Asian Americans and Mass Media. Together, these courses illustrate the scope of the field he helped sustain: contemporary politics, civic ideals, Filipino American history, and representation in mass culture.
His Filipino American role was especially significant. Filipino Americans were central to the formation of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State, yet their place could easily be overshadowed by larger public narratives centered on Chinese American and Japanese American experiences. The Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) became one of the key Filipino American organizations of the strike era. Juanita Tamayo Lott later wrote that PACE was founded in 1968 to tutor and recruit Filipino American youth for college and, in the spring of that year, joined the Black Student Union, the Mexican American Student Confederation, the Latin American Student Organization, Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action, and the Asian American Political Alliance to form the Third World Liberation Front. In this setting, Filipino American activism was not a side story; it was part of the machinery of coalition.
Gonzales' later work kept that Filipino American presence visible within Asian American Studies. His teaching of Filipina/o American history, advising of PACE, and involvement with Filipino American community institutions made him an important transmitter of the strike generation's lessons to later students. San Francisco State's faculty biography identifies him as PACE's faculty adviser and notes his involvement with the Filipino American National Historical Society, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, the New America Media Association, and the San Francisco Filipino American Democratic Club. That combination is revealing. Gonzales did not separate the classroom from the community. He understood Asian American Studies as a field that had to remain accountable to neighborhoods, political organizations, ethnic newspapers, artists, elders, youth, and community memory.

Gonzales (right) with the other Professors of San Francisco State University (L-R) Dawn Buholano Mabalon+, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Irene Faye Duller, Barbara Jane Reyes, Eric Pido. (Source: Facebook)

Ethnic Studies' Survival
This is where Gonzales' role becomes larger than biography. Ethnic Studies survived because people like Gonzales performed the institutional labor that movements often leave unnamed. A strike can force a university to concede, but it cannot by itself create a durable curriculum. Courses must be proposed, justified, staffed, revised, defended, and taught year after year. Students must be advised. Departments must withstand budget pressures, administrative skepticism, ideological attacks, and internal disagreements. Gonzales' career represents that second stage of Ethnic Studies: the long work of building permanence after the dramatic moment of protest had passed. In 2012, he identified establishing Ethnic Studies curricula and helping assemble a collection of stories from founding and later members of Asian American Studies as among his major achievements.
His collaboration with Malcolm Collier is especially important for that reason. Together they wrote about the origins, governance, creation, and survival of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State. Those essays are more than recollections; they form part of the field's documentary infrastructure. In Origins: People, Time, Place, Dreams, Collier and Gonzales warned that the excitement of the strike could obscure the long work that followed. They argued that the strike was only one part of the origins of Asian American Studies and that any new vision succeeds only through later implementation involving "long and arduous effort." That observation captures Gonzales' historical significance. He belonged to the generation that understood self-determination required administration, curriculum development, meetings, teaching loads, and the preservation of institutional memory.
The demand for a School of Ethnic Studies reflected this practical understanding from the outset. According to Collier and Gonzales, the movement's most important demand was the creation of a School of Ethnic Studies for the groups represented in the Third World Liberation Front, with each ethnic organization exercising authority over hiring, retention, administration, and curriculum in its own area of study. The demand flowed directly from the principle of self-determination. It also reflected a sophisticated understanding of university power. Students recognized that without authority over faculty, curriculum, and institutional structure, Ethnic Studies could be reduced to tokenism. Gonzales' later career in Asian American Studies became part of the effort to protect that principle from within the institution.

Gonzales with Daly City Mayor Juslyn Manalo (Source: Facebook)

First of Its Kind
The College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State became the first of its kind in the United States. The official strike collection states that the strike concluded on March 21, 1969, when representatives of the Third World Liberation Front and the administration reached an agreement. The outcome included the establishment of the College of Ethnic Studies, expanded Educational Opportunity Program admissions, a commitment to hire more faculty of color, and amnesty for many students who had been arrested or suspended. These gains were structural, not merely symbolic gestures toward diversity. They reshaped admissions, hiring, curriculum, and the place of community knowledge within the university.
Gonzales' place in that history was therefore both Asian American and interethnic. He worked within Asian American Studies, but the department existed within the larger College of Ethnic Studies. That mattered because Asian American Studies at San Francisco State was never intended to become a detached ethnic enclave. It was born alongside Black Studies, La Raza Studies, and American Indian Studies. Gonzales inherited that coalition framework. His work in Asian American Studies carried forward the memory of shared struggle among communities of color. This was especially important for Filipino American Studies, which had to account for colonialism, U.S. empire, labor migration, anti-Filipino violence, military service, interracial politics, and the complex position of Filipinos within both Asian America and the broader Third World movement.
The San Francisco State model also shaped the meaning of "Asian American." The term emerged in the late 1960s as a political identity rather than a simple demographic label. It was intended to unite communities often divided by national origin, language, religion, class, and immigration history. At San Francisco State, Asian American Studies developed through that same process of coalition. Chinese American, Japanese American, Filipino American, and other Asian American students and community members did not share identical histories, but they recognized common experiences of exclusion, racialization, war, labor exploitation, and cultural erasure. Gonzales' work helped keep Filipino American history within that broader Asian American framework without sacrificing its distinctiveness.
That balance was one of his major contributions. Filipino American history can be overshadowed when Asian American Studies is organized primarily around Chinese exclusion and Japanese American incarceration. Those subjects are indispensable, but they do not encompass the full scope of Asian American history. Filipino history brings into the field U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, the pensionado generation, manong labor migration, West Coast farm labor, anti-miscegenation laws, taxi dance halls, labor organizing, military service, post-1965 immigration, and transnational family formation. Through his teaching of Filipinos in the United States, Gonzales ensured that the Filipino American experience was not treated as an appendix to Asian American Studies. It belonged at the center of the field's questions about empire, labor, law, masculinity, family, culture, and political belonging.

Filipino American Mural at San Francisco State University (Photo by Raymond Virata)

Mentor
Gonzales' role as a mentor was equally important. Ethnic Studies depends on transmission. It is not only a field of books and courses but also one of memory passed from elders to students, activists to researchers, community organizations to classrooms, and one generation of scholars to the next. Juanita Tamayo Lott described Daniel P. Gonzales as someone who taught, mentored, and advocated for hundreds of students over more than four decades, calling him the longest-serving faculty member in the College of Ethnic Studies. That observation points to a form of labor that institutional histories often overlook. Gonzales helped students see themselves in the curriculum and, in turn, helped many become teachers, lawyers, public servants, writers, organizers, and historians.
His mentoring mattered because many students entered Ethnic Studies from families and communities that had been told, directly or indirectly, that their histories were not legitimate subjects of academic inquiry. Asian American students often arrived with fragmented knowledge: family stories, immigrant silences, wartime memories, labor histories, neighborhood lore, and cultural practices absent from textbooks. Gonzales showed them that these fragments constituted historical evidence. A family's migration, the destruction of a neighborhood, a farmworker's testimony, a Filipino veteran's claim, or a community newspaper could all become sources for historical interpretation. This was one of the deepest purposes of Asian American Studies: to transform community memory into disciplined scholarship without stripping it of its moral force.
The artistic and cultural dimensions of Asian American Studies also shaped Gonzales' work. In a later conversation with Jerome Reyes and Mary Valledor, he discussed the importance of artists, teachers, and neighborhood institutions in the formation of Asian American Studies. The discussion linked proposed Asian American Studies courses to artistic practice, neighborhood arts programs, and the broader cultural world of the Bay Area. That connection is significant because Asian American Studies at San Francisco State was never solely a social science project. It also grew out of poetry, theater, murals, photography, music, newspapers, and community arts. Gonzales understood that artists did more than illustrate Asian American experience; they helped create its language, imagery, and political imagination.
That cultural emphasis also explains why Gonzales viewed Asian American Studies as lived experience. According to the Golden Gate Xpress, he observed that poets and writers were among the most influential figures in shaping Asian American Studies because they had lived the experiences they described. The remark reveals an important feature of his intellectual outlook. Gonzales did not regard academic knowledge as superior to community expression. He understood that Asian American Studies drew its authority from people who had experienced exclusion, migration, labor, neighborhood struggle, and cultural creation. The professor's role was not to replace the community's voice but to organize, interpret, and defend the conditions under which that voice could be heard within the university.
Legal Training
His legal training also gave him a distinctive intellectual perspective. San Francisco State lists him as holding a J.D. from Hastings College of the Law and a B.A. in International Relations from San Francisco State College, with a focus on theories of revolution and war. That combination helps explain his sensitivity to power, institutions, governance, and political conflict. Asian American Studies had to examine law because Asian American history in the United States was shaped by it: exclusion acts, alien land laws, naturalization restrictions, anti-miscegenation statutes, wartime incarceration, immigration quotas, deportation, labor regulation, and civil rights struggles. Gonzales' background made him especially well suited to teach Asian American Studies not simply as cultural celebration but as the study of institutions, state power, law, and resistance.[15]
Gonzales' role in creating Ethnic Studies should therefore be described carefully. He was not its sole creator. No one was. The field emerged from collective struggle, especially through the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front, with support from students, faculty, staff, and community members. Gonzales, however, was among those who made that creation durable. He helped transform the demand for Ethnic Studies into curriculum, departments, advising, faculty leadership, community engagement, and a body of historical reflection. His work belongs to the institutionalization phase of the movement—the phase that determined whether the strike would become a permanent academic structure or fade into commemorative memory.
His contribution to Asian American Studies was even more direct. He taught in the department, advised students, sustained Filipino American Studies within the broader Asian American Studies framework, coauthored histories of the program, participated in governance, and preserved the field's origin story. His career demonstrates that Asian American Studies was built not only by celebrated theorists or highly visible public intellectuals but also by faculty who taught survey courses, advised majors and minors, defended curriculum, worked with student organizations, wrote program histories, and maintained community ties. Gonzales' career reminds us that the survival of a field depends as much on institutional builders as on founding manifestos.
Ethnic Studies and Politics
Gonzales' significance also lies in his refusal to separate Ethnic Studies from politics. In a 2018 Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund article and podcast page, Emil Guillermo described Gonzales as one of the students in the Black, Latino, and Asian coalition at San Francisco State and noted that he later became a tenured professor of Asian American Studies. The same account reported that Gonzales urged scholars to remain engaged with contemporary politics. That insistence was consistent with the founding logic of Ethnic Studies. The field was never intended to be neutral in the sense of being detached from power. It was meant to be rigorous, accountable, community-based, and politically engaged.

Ethnic Studies survived because people like Gonzales performed the institutional labor that movements often leave unnamed.

That position remains important because Ethnic Studies has often been misunderstood as grievance, separatism, or identity politics. Gonzales' career offers a more accurate interpretation. Ethnic Studies arose as a response to institutional absence. It asked why universities could teach Western civilization but not colonialism, immigration exclusion, Indigenous dispossession, the Black freedom struggle, Asian American labor, Latino community formation, or Filipino American history. It asked why students of color encountered themselves only in footnotes. Gonzales helped answer those questions not by abandoning the university but by expanding what the university could teach and contain.
His work also illuminates the difference between founding and sustaining. Founding Ethnic Studies required confrontation. Sustaining it required patience, governance, memory, and pedagogy. The first demanded courage in the streets and on the picket line; the second demanded endurance in offices, classrooms, committees, archives, and community meetings. Gonzales' historical role lies at the intersection of both. He emerged from the strike generation, but his larger legacy rests in the decades that followed. He helped build the institutional machinery that enabled Asian American Studies to sustain itself across generations.
In the end, Daniel P. Gonzales' role in creating Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies was that of activist, teacher, curriculum builder, mentor, institutional memory keeper, and Filipino American community advocate. He helped make Asian American Studies practical. He gave it courses, students, stories, and continuity. He kept Filipino American history visible within Asian American Studies while preserving the coalition origins of the College of Ethnic Studies. His significance is not that he stood above the movement but that he remained within it long enough to help turn it into an institution. The strike opened the door. Gonzales was one of those who stayed to build the rooms.

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. is a retired Philippine American Military History professor.

More articles from Alex Fabros, Jr.

Life and Death Choices in Bikol in the Dark Years

Marilen Abesamis — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:33:05 +0000

BOOK REVIEW: Mga Daso: Stories of Martial Law in Bikol; Edited by Soliman M. Santos, Jr, Paz Verdades M. Santos, and Greg S. Castilla; (University of the Philippines Press 2025)

Mga Daso: Stories of Martial Law in Bikol

"Daso” in Bikol is a native torch, made from a slim, splintered bamboo—used in religious processions, in places of worship, or in spaces for dancing—used, always, to extinguish the dark. There could not have been a more appropriate title for this book of stories about martial law, for this book is itself a torch, now being passed on as legacy, a symbolic weapon, from one generation to the next.
As one who lived through the horrors of Ferdinand E. Marcos’ martial law, I am eternally grateful for the persistence of the editors in collecting and synthesizing these voices from Bikol heroes whose lives were intimately shaped by 14 years of oppression. A few of these writers have passed on since the book first came out, and others remain frail and no longer remember the details of the past. Thus, the significance of this well-crafted book: the capture of a painful and, simultaneously, joyous era, one that brought out the best in our generation.
For Daso’s memories define who we were, and who we can be in the face of life-and-death choices. We are the stories and myths we construct for ourselves, the struggles we launched and fought for decades, and those we are yet seeking to complete. This book serves as both guide and inspiration.
Daso’s voices come from all corners of Bikol’s wide archipelago—from the Camarines provinces in the north to the outlying islands of Catanduanes and Masbate. If one takes an imaginary stroll through these beautiful islands, one will almost hear the sound of storm-tossed trees, smell the scent of spices and coconut milk, and hear the angry crackling fire of beautiful Mayon.
There are voices from varied perspectives—stories written from the underground, where bonds of the deepest friendship were forged, as well as stories of shocking betrayal; stories written in the fastnesses of the countryside; and stories written from the viewpoints of professionals interrupted from doing the work they did best: broadcasters, lawyers, medics, teachers.
There are stories that map the beginnings of martial rule and the quiet evolution of resistance, grueling stories of the arrest of heroes Atty. Antonio Carpio and Grace Vinzons Magana, whose father died at the hands of the Japanese invaders.
There are stories of the infamous Daet Massacre, in which 35 Philippine Constabulary troopers arbitrarily fired Armalite rifles into a crowd of 4,000 citizens, including women and children, gathered for a political march.
There are stories of People Power, such as that of Y de los Trino. Here, teachers and students guarded ballot boxes at a crucial moment and prevented the stealing of an election. It is audacious and funny at the same time because, in the end, the enemy—the dictator’s soldiers—shared their toothpaste in exchange for food. She can express that unlikely exchange only in the colorful vernacular: “Ta pirang banggi na mayong urulian, mayong karigusan” ("It's been several nights without any sleep or peace.")

This book is made to remember those many unsung heroes and the many moments worthy of celebration. It should be required reading for young people in our secondary schools.

Here are stories told from the viewpoint of the children of activists. Maria Ira Bisuña says that her parents “drew their strength from service—a heavy legacy, I know, but it is now my obligation to carry on …” Another younger woman, Jazmin Badong Llana, wistfully writes, “The grappling with the past will never be over. I was a ‘martial law baby’ and will forever be marked by the experience of struggle against authoritarianism, which continues to this day…”
The image of a model father remains with Rebecca C. Torres when she writes, “I attribute my passion for social transformation at a young age to my father’s influence. As children, we sat at his feet as he told stories about heroism, fairness, and compassion. He knew Rizal’s Noli and Fili by heart and would describe people based on characters in the novels.”
Here, too, are remembrances of fathers who sacrificed sons to the movement, as when Soliman M. Santos Jr. writes of the martyr Alex Belone’s father, whose words of grief are matchless in their tenderness: “We have done our share in raising a son who loved his country,” Ka Tandis’ father said. “In times of peace, you pay revenues in terms of cash. But in times of crisis, you pay in terms of life. … Kung namatay siya sa fever at hindi namin na-save ay grabe ang aming pagsisisi. Pero namatay siya sa bala para sa bayan, paaanong hindi kami magmamalaki?” (If he had died of a fever, our regret would have been unbearable because we couldn't save him. But he died from a bullet in service of the nation—how could we not be proud?)
Lino del Rosario recounts the profound anguish endured by his family as they lived with the uncertainty of never knowing where the remains of his sister, Nona del Rosario, who was killed by the military, were laid to rest.

Nona Del Rosario

Here, too, eminent professionals recall rough days but still find moments of redemption.
Raffy Banzuela describes the “spicy dishes of arrogance and heavy-handedness” of Marcos’ soldiers when they took the radio station he managed off the air. In Camp Canuto Days, Chito R. Irigo recalls that though he was confined to a tiny bartolina inside Camp Canuto, he still saw it as a gift: he was able to do a great deal of reading and was exempted from the prison’s daily weeding. Greg S. Castilla writes compellingly about the short but admirable life of a desaparecido he met in a squatter community in Quezon City. Juan Escandor describes his town’s spiritual tradition and the Gubatnon fiesta in honor of its beloved patron saint, when families renew connections each year with kin, classmates, contemporaries, and friends.

Chito Irigo

A few names of Bikol heroes are now rightfully enshrined on the Wall of Remembrance at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City. But as Alma Domingo reminds us, for every name written on that wall of heroes, there are countless others “…who will be remembered only by their kin. Or maybe only by the very earth that holds their remains…”
This book is made to remember those many unsung heroes and the many moments worthy of celebration. It should be required reading for young people in our secondary schools.
The editors say that the initial impulse to publish this collection came from the 2016 book of martial law stories published in Davao—now required reading in Davao high schools—and from the 2022 collection of martial law stories from Cebu. These three regional histories, each unique in its own way, provide a powerful impetus for other regions that served as pillars of resistance to the Marcos dictatorship. It is our hope that, with this excellent compilation, other regions will soon memorialize our people's love of land and language, and the audacity and ingenuity that remain our enduring heritage.
Interested persons may view and purchase the book here:
UP Press website: https://press.up.edu.ph/product/mga-daso-stories-of-martial-law-in-bikol/
Lazada: https://www.lazada.com.ph/products/i5232055989.html?spm=a1zawj.24863640.table_online_product.4.7a6b1e13x0P5fy
Shopee: https://shopee.ph/product/276147505/42818169660/

Marilen Abesamis is a grandniece of Bikolano heroes General Ludovico and Tomas Arejola, who gave their lives to the nation’s struggle against the Spanish and American colonizers in the 1900s. She is a retired teacher and an energy medicine practitioner. She has a Master in Women and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and worked at the New York Times in the ‘70s before moving to Mindanao, where she taught writing and communication skills to farmers, workers, and students during martial law.

My Own Personal Masbate

Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:32:51 +0000

Masbate Island (Source: Google Maps)

Masbate has always lived in me like a quiet ache – familiar, comforting, and yet tinged with a sadness I can never quite explain. The salty breeze seems to carry memories rather than just air, brushing against my skin with reminders of who I was and what I have lost. Suddenly, the memory rushes back. I am standing by the shore, watching the waves while the far-off expanse of the Buntod Reef Marine Sanctuary and Sandbar catches the sun, glistening like tiny specks of diamonds across the horizon – a brilliant shield protecting the island against the open sea. Even when I am far away, I find myself returning to it in thought, tracing the outlines of its shores and rolling hills as if they were part of my own being.

A Youtube photo showing an aerial view of Buntod Reef Marine Sanctuary and Sandbar. It is a stunning marine protected area known for its white sand and crystal-clear waters perfect for snorkeling, diving, and swimming. It is a 10-15 minutes boat ride from Brgy. Ibingay in Masbate City.

Masbate Province sits at the crossroads of geography and culture – where Luzon ends and the Visayas begin. The capital city, which shares the province’s name, is my hometown. Nestled on Ibingay Street, our old family home rests where the road meets the sea. During high tide and monsoon rains, the surroundings transform into a shimmering pool, making the house look like a floating casino at night when the lights are on. Back then, only a pathway of coral rocks connected us to the main road. Running parallel to the road is the airport runway, cutting across the landscape and terminating right at the water’s edge along the very same shore.

A photo of the old family home on Ibingay Street, Masbate City. The concrete structure at the base of the house was built to elevate it and withstand the rising waters during high tide and monsoon rains. The coral rock pathway that connected the house to the main road is now gone, as the whole property was later filled with soil and gravel.

The city is also home to Rodeo Masbateño – an annual summer festival celebrating the province’s rich cattle industry and cowboy culture. I have never actually experienced the festival myself. By the time it kicked off in 1993, I was already in college and living in Manila. Over the past three decades, I’ve only managed to visit less than a handful of times, usually during the Christmas holidays. What I do remember is that, while my father didn’t own a cattle ranch, he did own three yearlings for a time. They were given to him as gifts - or perhaps as payment for attorney’s fees. I also remember the jingle of our sole local radio station at the time. It went exactly like this: “The cattle country, in the island of Masbate…”

A summer day in 1988 on Ibingay Beach, now part of Jesse M. Robredo Boulevard, just a short walk from home. The author sits in the middle of the second row, sharing a warm afternoon with her siblings - Antoine and Maria Andrea in the front row (left to right), and Maria Anette and Maria Harriette in the back (left and right).

But the Masbate I remember is not the same as the one that stands today. The slow creep of modern development has reshaped its face, trading stretches of sandy beach for concrete and chirping of birds for the restless hum of machines. The vast open space on the beach where we used to play and bask in the sun is now occupied by hotels, restaurants, bus terminals, and other structures. In those days at high tide, the sea rushed in to submerge the shore where we would lose ourselves in the cool, translucent depths. And as the water recedes, low tide strips the sea floor bare, prompting a quiet, bent-backed humility as we begin manguha san sigay, the playful gathering of seashells.
The places that once felt endlessly pristine and alive now seem smaller, diminished, as though something essential has been taken away. I cannot help but feel heartbroken watching these changes unfold, as if I am witnessing my home fade into memory, a place that once offered a tranquil retreat.
The beach lies along the stretch of coastline off Masbate where former DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo’s ill-fated plane crashed. The once tranquil beach has transformed as a busy seaside artery linking people and commerce toward the province’s bustling ports and open skies. Mangroves are protected within Mangrovetum Park located along the boulevard – an LGU-led drive to rehabilitate the mangroves and other coastal resources. The main seaside boulevard is now officially named after him – Jesse M. Robredo Boulevard.

A Youtube photo showing an aerial view of Jesse M. Robredo Boulevard in Masbate City.

Because of Masbate’s geographical location, it has long been a rich, multilingual tapestry. While Masbateño or Minásbate serves as the primary tongue around the capital, a fluid collection of other languages shifts depending on the area of residence, pulling in threads of Bicolano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Waray. I remember a joke from my youth that captured this fluid landscape: they said that in Masbate, the language you speak depends entirely on the direction you are facing. To turn south was to invite the cadence of Cebuano or other Visayan tongues; to face north was to answer in Bicolano; to turn east was to whisper in Waray; and to turn southwest was to speak Hiligaynon. It was a place where local horizons dictated the voice, even as Tagalog and English carved out their necessary spaces in schools, government, business, and everyday interregional communication.
Back then, Minásbate was the undeniable thread that unified communication across the province. Returning now, however, I am caught by surprise at how widely Tagalog has claimed the city’s public spaces – it dominates the conversation in restaurants, shopping malls, grocery stores, hotels, pharmacies, and hospitals. Even the radio DJs broadcast in mix Tagalog and Minásbate, as if the local media outlets have collectively defaulted to a metropolitan script.
The shift isn’t just linguistic. The city’s streets reveal a stark divide on the asphalt the moment one steps out of a vehicle and onto the pavement. Both private motorized vehicles and traditional tricycles unite in a bipartisan effort to saturate the streets with a shared, suffocating blanket of toxic emissions, making a stroll on the sidewalk a hazardous ordeal for the lungs. Back then, we can take a 15-minute relaxing walk to and from St. Anthony de Padua Cathedral for the Sunday Mass. Now, even a short walk to Social Center, a large open-air area to relax, exercise, and socialize, about 450 meters from our house, makes you endure a visceral assault on the senses due to the thick gas emissions, and forces you to play a high-stakes game of survival against the oncoming traffic. The pedestrian have been thoroughly conquered by a dense volume of vehicles using them as parking lots, forced structural blockades, and territorial stray dogs.
There is a quiet dissonance that settles in when I walk those familiar streets now. The buildings have been replaced, repainted, or repurposed, but beneath the surface, everything feels strangely unchanged. It is as if time moved forward physically, yet stood still in spirit. I searched for something recognizable – not in the structures, but in the rhythm of life, in the way people speak, think, and relate – and what I found left me unsettled. The place I once knew exists only as a memory, and I no longer know how to live in what has taken its place.
In fact, what deepens this feeling are the actualities - the same conversations echo, the same habits persist, the same perspectives remain firmly rooted. Having spent so many years away, my mindset has stretched and shifted in ways that feel incompatible with what I encounter here. It is not a matter of right or wrong, but of distance. It is an invisible gap that makes even the simplest interactions feel heavy and strained, as though I am translating myself constantly – speaking words they understand, yet carrying a worldview that remains entirely foreign to the place I once called home.
Even the food, once a source of comfort and identity, has lost its hold on me. Dishes I used to crave now feel heavy, both in body and memory. Perhaps it is my lifestyle that has changed, or perhaps it is something deeper – a subtle detachment from the version of myself who once found joy in these flavors. What used to feel like home now feels strange, and I am left wondering whether it is the place that has changed, or me.
The loss of my parents has left a hollow space that no place can fill. Their absence lingers in every corner of memory – echoing in the rooms of our house in Ibingay, in the routines that no longer exist, in the warmth that has faded into something distant. I find myself missing the simple, vivid details that once filled our days – the savory aroma of garlic and vinegar in Mama’s adobo, and the wood-fire smokiness of Papa’s sinugba na pakol. Most of the time, with quiet generosity, my father would buy everything inside the fisherman’s basket. It was a gesture that brought a comforting abundance to our kitchen – a direct, unvarnished connection to the island’s resources where dinner was never a commodity bought from a sterile shelf, but a gift won straight from the hand of the sea. These memories return not just as images, but as feelings, grounding me in a past that feels both abstract and obscure.

New Year’s Eve in 1988 at the family home on Ibingay, Masbate. Standing left to right: Anthony, Maria Anette, Enriqueta (mother), the author, Antonio, Sr. (father), Antoine, Maria Andrea, and Maria Antoinette. Maria Harriette and Antonio, Jr. are not in the photo.

There is a peculiar grief in realizing that belonging is not something you can simply return to. It evolves just as you do. And sometimes, without noticing, you outgrow the spaces that once defined you. I stand in my hometown not as a part of it, but as a visitor to a past that no longer fits, carrying pieces of it within me, yet unable to place them back where they once belonged.
And still, I carry with me the image of our humble home, where everything began. It was never grand, never more than what we needed, but it held a quiet strength. It taught me resilience, shaped my beginnings, and gave me roots that remain firm despite everything that has changed. In remembering it, I recognize who I am – someone shaped by simplicity, by loss, and by a hometown that will always be both a comfort and a sorrow.

Christmas Eve dinner in 1988 at the family home on Ibingay, Masbate. Seated left to right: +Mrs. Enriqueta Delera Bosa (mother), +Most Reverend Monsignor Porfirio R. Iligan (the first Bishop of the Diocese of Masbate), and +Atty. Antonio Belen Bosa, Sr. (father). Bishop Iligan was always a special guest of the family’s Noche Buena dinner.

I’ve come to realize that time does not simply pass – it reshapes. It carves new contours into who we are, often in places we cannot see until we return to where we began. And in that return, the contrast becomes undeniable. I am no longer the person who left, and Masbate, despite its outward transformations, no longer holds the version of me it once knew. We have both moved on, just not in ways that align.
And yet, beneath it all, there lingers a fragile thread of connection – something that refuses to fully sever. Perhaps it is memory, or gratitude, or simply the knowledge that Masbate, in some irreversible way, shaped me. It gave me a beginning, a foundation, a sense of who I once was. But that thread is not enough to anchor me here anymore. It stretches, thin and delicate, reminding me that belonging is not always about returning, but sometimes about learning how to let go.
On the eve of our departure, my husband was rushed to the hospital with a gastrointestinal concern. The triage area was quiet, and a female doctor examined him. Her demeanor was casual – she sat in a relaxed figure-four position, one shoe kicked off, casually massaging her foot while chatting with us. It wasn’t exactly the medical consultation I’d envisioned, but a crisis has a way of adjusting your standards. Protocol matters very little when you are consumed by anxiety for a person you love. As my husband snoozed behind a privacy curtain, pumped full of IV fluids, I sat alone with my thoughts as time stretched into that heavy, distorted rhythm unique to hospitals at night, punctuated only by the slow drip of the IV and the borrowed fan fighting off mosquitoes.
Driven by restlessness, I stepped into the deserted ward, where the silence was broken only by distant snoring and the unsettling sight of a shape laid flat on the floor, completely covered by a blanket. In a hospital, an unmoving sheet carries an eerie connotation, and a sudden chill of fear sent me retreating straight back to my husband’s bedside. Hours later, anxious for his lab results, I ventured out again and called into empty hallway until two half-awake nurses emerged from behind a nearby curtain. When a knock on the doctor’s office door yielded no response, the nurse casually murmured, “She’s still sleeping, she usually wakes up around six.” I felt a knot of disbelief tighten as we had a flight to catch at ten o’clock that morning.
Silent hours crawled by until a laboring mother arrived to give birth, effectively ending the hospital’s naptime. By seven o’clock, lab tests were clear and we received the formal release clearance. Exhausted but free, we broke away from the facility’s twilight zone, ready for our journey.

I’ve come to realize that time does not simply pass – it reshapes. It carves new contours into who we are, often in places we cannot see until we return to where we began.

The airport terminal became a gallery of faces from my distant youth. Old faces materialized in the crowd, eyes locking onto mine with sudden recognition. Soon, air filled with the rustle of their speculation: ‘She is the daughter of….’ they murmured, as though my entire family tree had been stamped across my forehead. I met their curiosity with a smile and a gracious nod of acknowledgement and courtesy, sharing a conversation with an old school batchmate who had gone on to serve as the province’s governor. Yet the homecoming remained complex. Beneath the warmth of recognition ran a hilariously predictable undercurrent; there were those who watched me with discerning, critical eyes, trying to calculate my entire life story based solely on the man standing beside me – my foreigner husband. Sensing the heavy gaze, my husband leaned in and whispered, “They look like they’re trying to figure out which planet I came from”.
As the plane ascends, hovering momentarily over the island, I am captivated once more by its beauty and simplicity. With eyes brimming, I see katunggan - a mangrove swamp spread across the edge of the shore - while I trace the pristine white sand of Buntod stretches into the blue like a monument in the sea, a solitary witness to both the island’s glorious past and the persistent tide of modernity.

The author posed among the mangroves during low tide at the Buntod Reef Marine Sanctuary and Sandbar in 2015.

Now I understand that belonging is not fixed. It shifts, just as we do. Masbate, my hometown, is no longer where I fit, not because I have rejected it, but because we have moved in different directions.
So, I carry it with me instead – not as a place I can return to, but as a part of my story that lives within me. And in accepting that reality, there is a different kind of peace – not in reclaiming what was, but in letting it remain where it belongs: in the past.

The author and her husband

Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen is a retired Philippine foreign service staff officer and diplomat based in Brussels, Belgium. Her writing draws on both personal and professional experiences, spanning more than two decades of government service and diplomatic assignments in the United States and in Europe. She is a recipient of the Department of Foreign Affairs 2014 Outstanding Employee Award.

The Analog Bag: Internet-Free Fun

Claire Mercado-Obias — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:32:14 +0000

Enjoy offline living with this analog bag filled with books from the library and crafting materials found at home. (Photo by Claire Mercado-Obias)

There is a bag that’s currently “trending”—it’s called the analog bag.
It’s not the bag itself that’s sought after. We’re not talking about the latest designer purse or the $2.99 tote from the neighborhood grocery. Rather, it’s what’s inside that matters.
The purpose of an analog bag is to keep us from doom-scrolling on our phones by tempting us with digital-free activities like books, crossword puzzles, snail mail, drawing, coloring, photography, playing cards, and board games. Back in the day, before mobile devices and the internet, these were the things we did for fun. Before all of these were consolidated into a single device, they were tactile, required physical effort, and were often enjoyed with other people. Isn’t that what connection is about?
Research has shown that prolonged exposure to social media is linked to poor sleep, a sedentary lifestyle, shorter attention spans, and an increased risk of anxiety and depression. What’s more, being online makes us susceptible to buying things simply because an influencer says so. How many times have we clicked "add to cart" after watching someone’s shopping haul or unboxing video?
When putting together your analog bag, think about conscious consumption. Start with the bag itself—you probably already have several in your closet. Then go on a scavenger hunt around your home. Do you have books waiting to be read, puzzles waiting to be assembled, forgotten art materials, or blank notebooks ready to be filled?
Borrowing is another option. Maybe your dad still has his old digital camera and CD player, or your mom still has her sewing and crafting kits from decades ago. Swap books and games with friends. Explore vintage and secondhand finds from Buy Nothing groups or thrift shops. Try these hobbies before committing to them. And if you do need to buy something, why not support small entrepreneurs and Filipino-made products?
An analog bag can be any container, as long as it holds your screen-free selections. Think of it as a child's toy chest filled with options so enticing that you naturally reach for them instead of your phone. It should also be portable enough to accompany you during those moments when grabbing your phone feels automatic—while waiting in line, commuting, or simply killing time.
Here are a few ideas for what you can put inside.
A Bunch of Books

A bag of books borrowed from the library, written and illustrated by Filipinos: Kilig, Gigil, & Other Uniquely Filipino Words by G.M. Reyes, Cat’s People by Tanya Guerrero, I Dance by Diana Rañola, and World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. (Photo by Claire Mercado-Obias)

Getting lost in a book is one of life's simple pleasures. Start with something short: a comic book, graphic novel, children's book (you'll be surprised how much wisdom they contain), a chapter book, or a collection of essays that lets you read one chapter or essay a day. Then branch out into other genres and longer reads.
Visit your local library. It's where we found these books by Filipino American authors.
Kilig, Gigil, & Other Uniquely Filipino Words by San Francisco-based G.M. Reyes defines commonly used Tagalog words that have no exact English equivalent through rhyme and adorable illustrations.
I Dance by Connecticut-based Diana Rañola introduces Philippine folk dances and traditional costumes to early readers and anyone curious about Filipino culture.
World of Wonders by Mississippi-based poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a collection of essays, each centered on a natural wonder—from whale sharks to monarch butterflies. In her soulful, National Geographic-like style, she weaves together personal memories and fascinating facts. As she writes, "For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts."
Cat's People, written by Manila-based Tanya Guerrero, follows five strangers experiencing loneliness and longing who are brought together by a stray cat in their Brooklyn neighborhood. It's an endearing story about community, random acts of kindness, old-school forms of communication, and the value of gathering face to face.
A Box of Handmade Hobbies

Philippine jeepney cross stitch pattern from Sugar Star Stitch on Etsy. (Photo by Claire Mercado-Obias)

Just like the older generation's habit of turning cookie tins into sewing kits, why not keep the tradition alive? Clean out an empty biscuit tin and fill it with needles, thread, scissors, and fabric. You can also add crochet hooks and yarn.
Etsy shops like Sugar Star Stitch offer cross-stitch patterns featuring the Philippine jeepney. Team Mesi Studio sells a Philippine Star crochet pattern, while Sumo Goods offers a Filipiniana Dress Doll amigurumi crochet pattern. Download, print, gather your materials, and ask your lola, mom, older sister, or cousin to teach you. Working on Filipino-inspired designs connects us to our heritage while giving us the satisfaction of creating something by hand.
Another option is a box devoted to writing. Fill it with your favorite pens, a journal, and stationery for writing letters. Improve your penmanship with ideas from Hand Lettering A to Z by Berlin-based artist Abbey Sy, or decorate your pages with Everyday Explorers Co. stamps designed by San Francisco-based Christine Herrin.
Or assemble a box of art supplies with paper, markers, paint, brushes, crayons, and coloring books. Etsy shops like Little Aphrodite Art offer Filipino-themed coloring pages that also teach children Tagalog words.
Remember that these creative activities should leave you feeling relaxed and present—not overwhelmed. They should keep you "in the zone" instead of reaching for your phone. And don't feel pressured to post your finished project on social media. It's enough that you like what you made.
Analog for Everyone
Many of these activities can be enjoyed alone, but they're even better with others.
Join a book club where members read the same book and gather to discuss it over food and drinks. Or put a twist on the idea by choosing a cookbook like Sugarcane: Sweet Recipes from My Half-Filipino Kitchen by New York-based Arlyn Osborne. She captures the nuances of the Filipino sweet tooth, pays homage to traditional ingredients like ube and calamansi, and transforms them into original desserts. Make a few recipes, then gather for a potluck.

Gather with friends or strangers who share your interests such as baking from a cookbook like Sugarcane by Arlyn Osborne and playing games together. (Photo by Claire Mercado-Obias)

While we can’t go entirely digital-free, a few analog moments in our day not only boosts our mood, but it also fosters community.

Host a book swap with books you've finished and are ready to pass on to someone new. Attend a reading party or silent book club, where everyone brings their own book to read before breaking into conversation about what they're currently enjoying.
Around the world, craft social clubs are also on the rise—from pottery, woodworking, sewing, and soap-making to game nights featuring mahjong or trivia. Whether you're trying a new skill or reconnecting with one you learned in your youth, these gatherings offer opportunities to play, learn, and make new friends.
While we can't go entirely digital-free, carving out a few analog moments each day can boost our mood, strengthen our attention, and foster a deeper sense of community.

Claire Mercado-Obias is a writer, food stylist and pastry chef based in New Jersey.

More articles from Claire Mercado-Obias

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Guide to US-Philippine Relations Across Decades

Michael Gonzalez — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:54:56 +0000
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Filipinos—particularly those in the diaspora—should remember that their ancestors' blood, sweat, and tears were part of 50 of those years, contributing to America's struggles as well as its triumphs. That shared history continues to shape Filipino perspectives on the United States.
Historians have often described the U.S.-Philippine relationship as a "compulsory marriage" or, as others have put it, a persistent "love-hate" relationship. Officially called "Special Relations," this bond was frequently marked by conflict, unequal power, and a lack of genuine reciprocity. The U.S. occupation of the Philippines from 1900 to 1946 represented America's first major attempt to export democracy, specifically its electoral system. By that measure, the experiment succeeded. Although the Philippine experience was unique, it has since served as a reference point for later U.S. regime-change strategies.
For more than 125 years, this relationship has formed a complex tapestry woven from profound cultural admiration, dashed hopes, strategic partnerships, fervent nationalism, and the enduring socio-cultural and psychological scars of colonialism. These forces affected Filipinos differently depending on class, gender, and participation in social and political movements, both in the Philippines and throughout the diaspora.
Broadly speaking, decades of American domination—physical, economic, and psychological—deepened the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots inherited from the late 19th century. That inequality found expression in a series of uprisings, including the messianic Kolorum movements and the worker-based Sakdal movement. Together, they reflected the unequal economic relationship with the United States that many scholars describe as neocolonialism: a post-independence condition in which a former colony continues to serve as a source of extractive economic, social, and cultural resources. The legacy of that relationship remains visible well into the 21st century, in policies such as labor exportation, tax-free techno-economic processing zones for foreign corporations, and continuing military dependence on the United States.
The following are ten significant events in our shared history, easily found in any reputable political science textbook. They are government to government situations that spell cooperation and conflict; often tinged with ambiguity and tension, that nevertheless, spill into personal lives. As in most Filipino relationships, a “love-hate” relationship is not strictly binary, but more fluid, amoebic, and sometimes it fuses into something else; at other times, it breaks yet is never irreconcilable.
1. The June 12, 1898 Independence Declaration and the Mock Battle of Manila (1898)

Declaration of Philippine Independence and flag raising ceremony at the Aguinaldo mansion, June 12, 1898.

The Good: In 1896, Andres Bonifacio and his Katipuneros revolted against Spain. Following a fierce and deadly power struggle for leadership of the revolution, Aguinaldo consolidated his authority and won a series of battles, prompting the Spanish to seek a ceasefire. Aguinaldo and his military junta negotiated a truce with the Spanish, securing an indemnity payment and self-exile in Hong Kong. There, Dewey's emissaries recruited him to return to the Philippines and resume the fight against Spain.
Back in Kawit, Cavite Province, Aguinaldo established a revolutionary government and proclaimed Philippine independence from Spain on June 12, 1898. Trusting in America's anti-colonial past, Aguinaldo believed—though without explicit written confirmation from Dewey—that the United States would recognize Philippine independence. He initially viewed the Americans as liberators who would help the Filipinos defeat their Spanish colonial rulers.
The Bad: Although Dewey dispatched observers to witness the Declaration of Independence, they were not present in any official capacity. The United States never formally recognized Philippine independence. Instead, it referred to the Philippine Revolution as an "insurrection" in official documents and portrayed Aguinaldo as an easily misled figure. It was not until the 1990s that the Library of Congress officially recognized the conflict as the Philippine-American War. Ultimately, after forty-five years of American rule, the United States did grant independence to the Filipino people.
While Aguinaldo kept the Spanish confined within Intramuros, Dewey annihilated the Spanish Pacific fleet. Lacking ground troops, Dewey relied on Aguinaldo's forces to pin down the Spanish while awaiting reinforcements. General Merritt's troops arrived in August. Rather than surrender to Aguinaldo, the Spanish secretly struck a deal with the United States. To preserve Spanish "honor," they staged a mock battle inside Intramuros before surrendering the city to American forces. This maneuver completely excluded the Filipino revolutionaries, who had surrounded the city and cut off its food and water supplies.
In the months that followed, Spain, through the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), ceded all of its remaining overseas territories to the United States, except Cuba. The United States paid Spain $20 million for the Philippines.
2. The Philippine-American War (1899–1902, 1913); the Thomasites (1901); the St. Louis World's Fair (1904–07)

American troops resting in a trench (Source: Wikipedia)

The Bad: What Filipinos viewed as a war for independence, the U.S. officially termed an "insurrection." Official statements sought to win over the native population by referring to them as "little brown brothers," a stark contrast to the Spanish, who used the derogatory term Indio. However, the American popular press portrayed the conflict in deeply racist terms.
The Philippine-American War ended without redistributing the vast church-owned haciendas and extensive estates held by the local elite, despite U.S. condemnation of the injustices of the cacique system, which resembled feudalism. A homesteading program in Mindoro, Palawan, and Mindanao, intended to alleviate agrarian problems in Luzon, instead resulted in settler colonialism. This later proved detrimental to the ancestral land rights of the indigenous peoples in these regions. The U.S. relied on the support of the local elite to facilitate colonial assimilation and cultivate a landowning, educated middle class.
Colonial policies established "protected territories" for indigenous populations in the northern and southern provinces, thereby creating a "Christian" versus "Non-Christian" divide that led to the arbitrary marginalization of indigenous communities. Public school curricula further entrenched discriminatory attitudes by portraying indigenous peoples as backward and uneducated.
The Ugly: Two brutal years of intense fighting resulted in the deaths of more than 4,200 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, most from disease and famine. In Batangas, reconcentration camps (later echoed in Vietnam through "hamleting") were used to cut off guerrilla support, while scorched-earth tactics were employed in Balangiga, Samar. Resistance persisted until 1913. At Mt. Bud Bagsak in Jolo (1913), American soldiers clashed with Muslim fighters in one of the first encounters of its kind, ending in a massacre that included women and children. This battle also marked the end of the last significant resistance to American occupation.
The U.S.-Philippine War pitted Americans directly against Filipinos. Initially, published correspondence, films, and magazine articles celebrated the Filipino struggle against Spanish rule, but this soon gave way to overt racism. To legitimize a more palatable form of colonialism (despite opposition from figures like Mark Twain), the U.S. framed its colonial project as a mission to "civilize" the Filipinos. To reinforce this narrative, hundreds of Filipinos from several ethnolinguistic communities were brought to the St. Louis World's Fair and presented as a living diorama illustrating their supposed evolution from primitive to civilized. The exhibit featured dog-eating headhunters from the Mountain Province, Muslim Moro groups in elaborate attire carrying bladed weapons, local women portrayed as schoolteachers, and a marching band of native constabulary soldiers. Approximately 20 million Americans attended the fair, and for many, it was their first introduction to Filipinos. After the fair's eight-month run, American promoters continued exhibiting people from the Mountain Province in a manner akin to a human zoo. The prejudices and stereotypes fostered during this period occasionally resurfaced in popular media until the late 1970s.
The Good: Even as fighting raged, the U.S. began implementing its policy of "benevolent assimilation" by sending hundreds of American teachers—the "Thomasites"—throughout the archipelago to establish a free public school system, heretofore a bold experiment in colonialism. Filipino students learned English through primers featuring Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, along with unfamiliar objects such as apples, oranges, and snow. Although initially resisted by the Spanish-educated local elite, the public embraced the novelty of the new educational system. Teaching promoted democratic ideals of equality and opportunity, in contrast to the former religious authoritarianism. Schoolchildren pledged allegiance to the U.S. flag and enthusiastically sang the Star-Spangled Banner in their own words: "Oh Jose, can you see..."
My grandfather, who became an intern to an American schoolteacher, learned his three R's well and eventually became a provincial school superintendent. The public school system laid the foundation for the deep cultural affinity Filipinos still have for the English language and American culture today. Within sixteen years of the occupation, Filipino poetry in English was being recognized and published in American journals, most notably the works of Jose Garcia Villa.
To cultivate a core group of dedicated scholars and professionals, promising students, known as "Pensionados," were selected from the local elite and sent to study at U.S. universities. This initiative significantly expanded educational opportunities, particularly for women, enabling them to pursue professional degrees. Remarkable women such as Honoria Acosta-Sison, who became the Philippines' first Western-trained female physician, studied in the United States, returned home, and profoundly influenced Philippine medicine and education. The successful Pensionados, both men and women, became visible symbols of assimilation. With this experiment, the Americans had indeed found the key to "soft power."
3. The Commonwealth Era (1935–1942); Occupation by Imperial Japan (1942–1945); Bataan

Bataan Death March (Source: National Archives)

The Good: Driven by advocacy from Filipino nationalists and American labor unions, the U.S. enacted the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934, leading to the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935. The legislation stipulated full Philippine independence following a 10-year transitional period, during which the nation would operate as a Commonwealth. American investment flowed into the Philippines, primarily targeting extractive industries such as gold mining (Benguet), rubber production (Mindanao), coconut oil processing (Southern Tagalog), abaca fiber cultivation (Bicol), and sugarcane farming (Central Luzon). This influx of capital primarily benefited local landowners, who subsequently enhanced their social and political influence, leading to the emergence of sugar magnates and a prosperous professional class. This era of relative economic well-being led many long-time residents to fondly recall it as "peacetime."
The Bad: While women saw greater enrollment in the professions, adopted flapper dresses over traditional attire, favored swing dancing over the fandango, and showed more interest in Hollywood films than zarzuelas, they were still denied equal voting rights. The U.S. Congress established a Philippine Assembly, but despite advocacy from women's groups, only men literate in English could vote. The 1935 Commonwealth Constitution included a provision for women's suffrage, but it required ratification through a women's plebiscite in 1937. (For context, the U.S. itself did not guarantee comprehensive voting rights for all races until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.)
When World War II broke out, American and Filipino soldiers fought fiercely side by side in Bataan and Corregidor against the Imperial Japanese Army, forging a legendary "brotherhood in arms" cemented by the blood and sacrifice of Filipinos during the Bataan Death March, in which approximately 65,000 Filipino and 12,000 American prisoners of war were forced to march more than 61 miles to prison camps.
Women also played vital roles in the resistance. American-born Yay Panlilio-Marking organized a guerrilla spy ring while posing as a "Tokyo Rose" radio broadcaster. Josefa Llanes Escoda, founder of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines and a leading suffragist, provided aid to both American and Filipino prisoners of war. She is believed to have been executed by the Japanese in 1945.
Many Filipinos felt that the U.S. had prioritized the European theater over the Pacific, leaving American and Filipino forces in the Philippines inadequately supplied and defended, making them vulnerable to the swift and devastating Japanese invasion that culminated in the fall of Bataan and the infamous Bataan Death March.
4. WWII Reparations; the Rescinded Veterans Benefits (1946); Parity Rights; Comfort Women

The Manila Comfort Women Memorial Statue (Source: Wikipedia)

The Good:
The U.S. provided hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed rehabilitation funds to rebuild war-torn Manila, the second most devastated Allied city after Warsaw.
More than 250,000 Filipino soldiers answered President Roosevelt's call to fight under the U.S. flag during World War II, fully expecting the equal treatment and veterans' benefits that had been promised to them.
The Bad:
Shortly after granting the Philippines independence in 1946, the U.S. Congress enacted the Rescission Act. This legislation retroactively stripped Filipino veterans of their recognized service status, denying them the full GI Bill benefits and pensions extended to their American counterparts. This profound injustice fueled more than six decades of activism before it was partially rectified. For many veterans, however, justice came too late, as they had already succumbed to illness and old age.
The clamor from women's rights groups demanding reparations for the Japanese Imperial Army's use of "comfort women" (sex slaves) in occupied countries—including Korea, China, and the Philippines—was ignored when the U.S. set aside the issue of reparations under the 1951 San Francisco Treaty with Japan. Women's groups continue to demand reparations and an official acknowledgment of responsibility from the Japanese government.
The Ugly: The Bell Trade Act and Development Aid with Strings Attached.
The aid came with a massive catch for a country devastated by war. Manila, after all, ranked only behind Warsaw as the most heavily destroyed Allied capital. The Bell Trade Act required the newly independent Philippines to amend its Constitution to grant American citizens "parity rights"—equal access to exploit the country's natural resources and operate public utilities. To many Filipinos, this created the perception that Philippine independence was conditional and economically subordinate to the United States. The agreement also included a provision granting the U.S. 99-year leases on the military bases at Subic and Clark.
While parity rights gave American businesses favorable access to the Philippine economy (at a time when few Filipinos possessed the capital to establish businesses in the United States), the extraterritorial privileges enjoyed within the U.S. military bases at Subic and Clark made a mockery of Philippine sovereignty. U.S. servicemen who committed crimes in the Philippines could not be tried in Philippine courts, held in Philippine jails, or extradited to face justice in the United States. For decades, the continued presence of the U.S. military bases remained a flashpoint in Philippine-American relations.
Much of the postwar assistance came in the form of war-surplus materiel, including the jeep—which evolved into the iconic Philippine jeepney—and decommissioned naval vessels used to rebuild inter-island shipping. Direct U.S. aid has been estimated at about $5 billion. Japan, by comparison, ultimately received roughly $300 billion in aid and economic assistance. The former enemy received substantially greater support as part of Washington's Cold War strategy to rebuild Japan as a stable ally and counterweight to Communist China.
5. Supporting the Marcos Dictatorship (1972–1986)

President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Good: For more than a decade, Washington provided billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to the administration of President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. During the martial law era, U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush famously praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principles," reflecting Washington's continued support despite growing concerns about authoritarian rule. U.S. military bases at Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base also served as major Rest and Recreation (R&R) hubs during the Vietnam War, injecting millions of dollars into the local economy. This relationship helped project an image of prosperity and international importance for the Philippines during much of the period.
The Bad: For years, the United States largely overlooked widespread human rights abuses, political repression, and the deterioration of democratic institutions under Marcos. As the Philippine economy became increasingly burdened by foreign debt, corruption, and crony capitalism, living standards declined for many Filipinos. Driven by Cold War strategic priorities, Washington continued supporting the dictatorship to safeguard its military bases and regional security interests. (The U.S. eventually shifted its position, facilitating Marcos and his family's departure into exile in Hawaii during the 1986 People Power Revolution.)
The Ugly: The era also entrenched the exploitation of many Filipinas around the U.S. bases. Cities such as Olongapo and Angeles developed extensive entertainment and red-light districts that catered to American servicemen. Tens of thousands of women worked in bars and clubs, often under exploitative conditions fueled by poverty and unequal power relationships. The military presence contributed to a system in which the bodies of Filipina women were commodified for the entertainment industry surrounding the bases. The period also left behind hundreds—and likely thousands—of Amerasian children, many of whom were abandoned by their American fathers and received little or no financial support or legal recognition.
6. The Eviction of U.S. Military Bases (1991)

Clark Air Base (Source: Wikipedia)

The Good: Driven by a wave of post-martial law nationalism, especially among militant women's groups, the Philippine Senate voted narrowly in 1991 to reject the extension of the U.S. military bases agreement, effectively evicting the United States from massive installations such as Subic Bay and Clark Air Base. Until their closure, the bases were effectively sovereign territories where Philippine law had no jurisdiction.
The government developed the former bases—whose infrastructure remained largely intact—into an economic hub for Central Luzon. The conversion of these facilities was largely responsible for the continued growth of Olongapo City. Today, the former base properties comprise the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, which includes an international airport, a major shipping port, a high-end residential community, and export processing zones.
Despite the diplomatic breakup, the two nations signed the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 1998, recognizing that they still needed each other to counter regional security threats, particularly from China in the Western Pacific, and to respond to natural disasters.
The Bad: The closure of Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Base caused a sharp drop in local revenues and the loss of thousands of jobs tied directly or indirectly to the bases. As the region's main economic engine disappeared, businesses that provided food, construction, manufacturing, and other services went into decline. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the nearby province compounded the area's economic woes, adding another layer of devastation.
The Ugly: Countless children were born during the nearly 50 years of interaction between U.S. servicemen and local women, as well as during troop transits to and from Vietnam and South Korea. The withdrawal of the bases often meant the immediate loss of financial support from American fathers, leaving many families without assistance for basic needs such as housing, food, medical care, and education.
In Olongapo City alone, an estimated 8,600 Amerasian children were left behind. In 1992, the year the bases closed, mothers of these American children filed a class-action lawsuit through the San Francisco law firm Cotchett, Illston & Pitre, seeking parental support. There were also calls for U.S. recognition of the children's claims to American citizenship.
7. The Visiting Forces Agreement & Sovereignty Clashes (2005 & 2014)

U.S. and Philippine Armed Forces during the Balikatan Exercises (Source: Wikipedia)

The Good: Under President Benigno Aquino III, the U.S. and Philippine militaries continued to hold massive annual Balikatan ("Shoulder-to-Shoulder") exercises, improving the Philippines' defense capabilities. Under the legal framework of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the security pact allowed U.S. troops to rotate into the Philippines for large-scale joint military exercises. For the Philippine military bureaucracy, traditionally reliant on U.S. training, logistics, and hardware, the VFA was a critical lifeline.
The Bad: During the presidencies of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III, high-profile criminal cases involving U.S. servicemen—specifically the 2005 Subic rape case ("Subic Boys") and the 2014 killing of trans woman Jennifer Laude by a U.S. Marine—ignited furious protests over sovereignty, as the U.S. invoked the VFA to retain custody of the accused servicemen rather than turning them over to Philippine jails.
The Ugly: The impact of the 2005 Subic rape case went far beyond the crime itself. The question of sovereign rights—specifically, which government should have custody over accused criminal offenders—became a lightning rod for nationalists, reviving a debate that had simmered since the 1991 closure of the U.S. bases and continued across several presidencies, even drawing in Supreme Court justices nearing retirement. The accused U.S. Marine was tried and convicted by a Philippine court but was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Embassy rather than a local prison. He was later acquitted in 2009. In reviewing the VFA, the Supreme Court ruled that the diplomatic arrangements governing his custody were invalid. The ensuing tug-of-war over jurisdiction and sovereignty once again raised the specter of the return of U.S. military bases. Worse, there was widespread speculation that the controversy could affect President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's pending meeting with President George W. Bush, where military aid was expected to be a key agenda item.
8. Rodrigo Duterte Era's Anti-Western Posture

President Rodrigo Duterte (Source: Picryl)

The Good: Nationalists supported Duterte's anti-Western rhetoric, which marked a departure from the pro-American stance of previous presidents. His use of the Filipino language in official speeches was another notable departure and won admiration from many ordinary Filipinos. Duterte's relations with the United States (2016–2022) were inconsistent. He positioned himself as anti-Western and attempted to realign the Philippines with China and Russia while fiercely criticizing America's colonial past in the Philippines.
The Bad: Duterte routinely insulted President Barack Obama and weaponized the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), repeatedly threatening to scrap it in an effort to secure more advanced military hardware, greater allocations of COVID-19 vaccines, and a more equitable partnership with the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. government, citing human rights concerns over Duterte's drug war, suspended certain arms sales to the Philippine National Police. Beneath Duterte's anti-U.S. rhetoric, however, institutional ties between the two countries remained strong, supported by a Philippine public that continued to be overwhelmingly pro-American. China's continuing assertion of its claims over Philippine maritime territories in the Western Pacific also undermined Duterte's strategic pivot toward Beijing.
The Ugly: Crimes—alleged and otherwise—committed by U.S. servicemen repeatedly tested the limits of the VFA. In 2015, in a case involving the killing of transgender woman Jennifer Laude, U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton was convicted of homicide and imprisoned at Camp Aguinaldo. Duterte later granted Pemberton an absolute pardon, reportedly to avoid jeopardizing the Balikatan military exercises, which the United States had threatened to cancel, and to gain leverage in securing access to Western COVID-19 vaccines. Anti-VFA groups condemned what they viewed as the "special treatment" accorded to U.S. troops and cited the case as further evidence of the Philippine government's continued acceptance of unequal, neocolonial arrangements with the United States.
9. The Modern Geopolitical Pivot (2022–Present)

U.S. and Philippine soldiers training together (Source: Picryl)

The Good: Under the current administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the U.S.-Philippine relationship has experienced a dramatic resurgence. While the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) provides the legal framework governing the status and protections of U.S. troops in the Philippines, the expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) has given the United States operational access to several additional strategic military sites aimed at deterring aggression in the South China Sea.
The Bad: While the alliance is arguably at its strongest in decades, the VFA and the expanded EDCA have sparked fierce domestic debate, reviving old memories of U.S. military bases on Philippine soil and the social ills associated with them. Many Filipino activists, politicians, and citizens worry that turning the Philippines into a forward operating platform for the U.S. military could draw the country into a catastrophic superpower conflict between Washington and Beijing.
The Ugly: The Philippines, together with its Southeast Asian neighbors, sits astride the maritime artery through which much of the world's trade flows between Asia and Europe. A U.S.-China conflict—for example, over Taiwan—would have severe economic and security consequences for the Philippines.
10. Emerging ASEAN Economies: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam
These countries are projected to grow their collective nominal GDP by 56 percent between 2022 and 2028, potentially overtaking Japan as the world's fourth-largest economic bloc by 2030. The prospects for regional growth that is less dependent on U.S. and Chinese supply chains appear favorable under conditions of peace in the region. To help make this possible and strengthen the Philippines' defense standing in the region, the United States will need to elevate the Philippines above its current "second-tier" alliance status while fostering greater defense interdependence with Japan and Australia. Although no permanent U.S. bases exist in the Philippines, vigilance must be exercised to ensure the country does not become a launch pad in the event of a U.S.-China confrontation over Taiwan.

Officially called "Special Relations," this bond was frequently marked by conflict, unequal power, and a lack of genuine reciprocity.

Epilogue
Over 125 years of U.S.-Philippine relations—a relationship forged in war, from the Philippine-American War of 1899 through World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars during the Cold War, and now what many describe as Cold War II—it behooves both Filipinos and Americans to remain mindful of this shared history and to build institutions through which both countries treat and respond to one another with genuine reciprocity and mutual respect, less influenced by the politics and personalities of individual presidents.

Dr. Michael M Gonzalez after decades of classroom teaching in Philippine and American colleges, retired in 2022. He is looking forward to devoting more time to his nonprofit activies with the Hinabi Project, the NVM & Narita Gonzalez Writers’ Workshop, the Kaisipan.org as an outreach to the culture and arts communities. Outside of that, he is an avid student of fiction and nonfiction writing; and the classic guitar, and indigenous music.

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