In an open letter to the Philippines, writer Miguel Syjuco, author of acclaimed Ilustrado and contributing opinion writer for the International New York Times and a professor at New York University in Abu Dhabi, talks about the chaotic politics of his birth country mentioning: “I was born under martial law and I could now die during martial law. Don’t we all hope to end in a better state than we began?”
Syjuco, who seems to be confronted with some health issues with a ’50/50 chance’ in his own words, in an article titled No Eulogy for the Living appearing in Boston Review says “There are a few things still that I’d like to see. The things I broke, fixed. Thanks, given to those to whom I’m grateful. Books, written. Laughter, with loved ones. The Northern Lights (he is a Canadian). And the entire length of the Philippines, on foot. I’d like to live to see all that. Most of all I want to witness politics working the way it promises. That’s partly because I was raised among it, with my parents as members of Congress. But mostly it’s because it is human to want promises kept.”
“My family, like many exiles, watched from afar martial law’s expanding violence against others, and like many émigrés we suffered wounds that even we could not see. Gone was not only our democracy, but our home, our country. I grew up in a purgatory of in-betweenness, never learning the language of being Filipino but never thinking for a second that I was anything else.
“In 1986, nine years after we had left, it was the dictator’s family’s turn to lose what they had stolen from us. In what became known as the People Power Revolution, Filipinos of all backgrounds flooded the capital. The ailing strongman faced a tough decision. Members of the military were abandoning him. His son and heir allegedly urged him to open fire on the peaceful protestors. The American president offered their family asylum in Hawaii. In the middle of the night, they fled in disgrace. Not long after, my family returned to the Philippines.” READ MORE
