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by Rodel Rodis
September 3, 2011
This past week, the Philippine News celebrated its 50th anniversary as it published its 2,600th issue, an accomplishment of endurance that other Filipino American community publications can only marvel at.
It is also significant as it comes at a time when long-established century old mainstream newspapers are folding all over the US because of competition from the Internet which is dominating advertising revenue.
My column, Telltale Signs, first appeared in the Philippine News nearly 24 years ago. In a month, I will be writing my 1,248th column which has covered an eclectic range of topics from politics in the Philippines and in the US to Philippine and Filipino American history. I owe this opportunity to regularly share my thoughts and ideas through my columns to Alex Esclamado, the then publisher of the newspaper, who invited me to write a weekly opinion piece.
I first read the Philippine News when I was a student in San Francisco in 1971. To me at the time, the paper represented “the Filipino establishment” as it was filled with photos of Filipino community leaders posing with various elected officials conveying a sense of political power by osmosis. I would later write about this “lumpia politics” mentality after then San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein commented to her staff that we were her “favorite community” because unlike others demanding appointments to major commissions or funding for their community projects, all Filipinos wanted from her was to have their photos taken with her so that they could be published in Filipino community newspapers. Sometimes she would even autograph them at their request.
Although I tended to be dismissive of its content, I was impressed by the fact that Philippine News was reporting about Filipino community events that were happening all over the US in contrast to other community newspapers that simply cut and pasted articles that appeared in Manila newspapers about events in the Philippines. It was always ironic to me that the paper’s name did not reflect the fact that it was virtually the only Filipino community paper that actually reported on the activities of the Filipino community in the US.
While I was initially skeptical of the paper because of its “establishment” veneer, it won me over because of two issues: martial law and the Filipino WW II veterans.
After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines on September 22, 1972, the Philippine government’s Secretary of Tourism, Jose Aspiras, decreed that all Filipino travel agencies should boycott the Philippine News or lose government patronage and support.
As more than 80% of the advertisements in Philippine News came from travel agencies, the loss of this source of revenue meant severe downsizing of the paper. Alex Esclamado had to mortgage his homes (and his wife, Lourdes Mitra Esclamado, had to sell her family heirlooms) to sustain the paper. Eventually, the Esclamados would lose their homes and the Philippine News building in the South of Market just to keep exposing the brutality and corruption of the Marcos dictatorship in their paper.
A test of character came when a Marcos emissary offered the Esclamados $10 million to buy the newspaper from them in order to silence it. The Esclamado family met to consider the offer and they unanimously agreed to firmly reject it.
The other issue was the Philippine News’ advocacy for the Filipino WW II veterans. I first started reading about the 1946 Rescission Act in this paper in 1974 as the paper explained the injustice that the Filipino WW II veterans faced when the US government denied the Filipinos who served under the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) from receiving their US naturalization and pension benefits.
When 77 Filipino WW II veterans filed their petitions for naturalization in the US federal court in San Francisco and appeared before federal Judge Charles Renfrew in 1977, Alex Esclamado was allowed to address the court on this issue. His passionate advocacy of the veterans’ cause won Judge Renfrew over which caused him to grant the petitions for naturalization of the Filipino veterans which, in turn, opened the doors to hundreds and later thousands of other veterans to be naturalized as US citizens.
After I passed the California bar in 1980, I had lunch with Alex and what was supposed to be a one hour lunch turned into a whole afternoon discussing all the issues of the Filipino community. We agreed to work together to revive the Filipino American Political Association (FAPA) which, at one time in 1960s, had 28 chapters throughout California. Because of martial law, FAPA was split into two with many of the old timer Ilocanos supporting their “Apo Ferdie” Marcos, causing FAPA to become moribund.
Somehow, I sort of ended up being the Sancho Panza to Alex’s Don Quixote, working with him to re-organize the FAPA and support the candidacies of Filipino American candidates for public office.
After the People Power revolution in February of 1986, Alex and I worked to invite pro and anti Marcos factions in the Filipino community to come to a healing and unifying conference in San Francisco in May of 1986 which laid the groundwork for the 1987 Anaheim Conference that brought 1500 delegates from all over the US. From that conference emerged the National Filipino American Council (NFAC).
When the NFAC fizzled out like a ningas cogon after almost a decade, it was back to the drawing boards for Alex and myself as we traveled around the US to organize the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) which we formed in Washington DC in August of 1987 with Alex as the National Chair.
Through 14 turbulent and challenging years, NaFFAA still stands as a legacy of Alex’s “impossible dream” of politically empowering the Filipino community.
When I last saw Alex in Santa Rosa, California about three weeks ago, he was 84 and wheelchair-bound ready to return to his hometown of Padre Burgos, Leyte at the end of August. As we talked about all the political battles we had waged over the last 30 years or so, I sensed in the gleam of his eyes his desire to put on his old armor and mount his horse to challenge the political windmills once again.
As his faithful Sancho Panza, I was ready and willing to join him.
(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them o the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 4127 or call 415.334.7800).