A personal memoir

Jim Dalton who helped set up the Asia Foundation office in Manila in 1953 with Bill Fleming dropped by the other day. He is in town together with the foundation brass to celebrate the foundation’s 50th anniversary of working in the Philippines. Those 50 years are blessed with achievements, a lot of it unknown to Filipinos themselves, but meaningful to hundreds of grantees including myself.

I first heard of the Asia Foundation in 1955 when, on my first trip to the United States, I visited San Francisco and was told to visit the foundation. It was there where I met for the first time Edith Coliver who was to be stationed in the Philippines during the crucial Marcos dictatorship.

Upon returning to Manila, I got to know the foundation people, the journalists Mariano Querol and George Cui who were then program assistants.

Through the years, I met many of the foundation representatives in their countries of assignment, Ernie Howell in Saigon, Dick Heggie and Frank Dines in Colombo, James Stewart in Tokyo, Harry Pierson in Bangkok. My Japanese translator Jan Yamamoto, was once connected with the foundation in Japan.

I remember one lunch with Harry Pierson in Bangkok where he introduced me to several Siamese writers, one of whom became prime minister. All were excellent sources of up-to-date information in the countries where they were assigned, and because I was then setting up my journal Solidarity, they introduced me to writers and academics in the region.

I remember my discussions with James Stewart on Japanese culture. He provided me the most interesting explanation as to why contemporary Japanese fiction often depicts kinky – almost perverse – sex.

I recall the intellectual depth of Asia Foundation’s first president, Robert Blum, Hayden Williams the foundation’s retired president held cogent views not so much on regional affairs but on American politics.

Foundation representatives keep close to the ground. Many of them are academics with extensive knowledge of the region and of the countries where they are assigned. Jim Dalton who now commutes to Manila was a Fulbright scholar in the Philippines in the Fifties and an exponent of decentralization. His interest in our country continues to this very day. He often visits as consultant of American agencies and has been vastly impressed by recent developments in Thailand.

On occasion, I contributed a bit to their fund of knowledge. In the week that he arrived in Manila for instance, the late Patrick Judge asked me to take him to Intramuros. We went there one early morning.

At the time, the Manila Cathedral was just rehabilitated but was still surrounded by squatter shacks. A big society wedding was just celebrated and the bridal parade was filing out of the church into a fleet of Cadillacs. The whole entourage was surrounded by squatters. Patrick looked at the raggedy onlookers and asked. "Why don’t they throw stones?"

I told him that there was no real class consciousness among Filipinos – the very poor at that moment were simply enjoying the spectacle.

Edith Coliver stayed longest in the Philippines. On the week she arrived, she wanted to see the poorest sections of the city. Luis Taruc and I immediately gave her a tour of Tondo. We went out of the car and walked in the vicinity of Smokey Mountain. It was there that Edith broke down and wept.

I remember Ka Luis’ comment. "Edith, I have no more tears to shed."

The foundation assisted hundreds of Filipinos, in government and out, the Muslims, with fellowships, travel grants, support for innovative ideas in social reconstruction and education. FELTAF, the organization of assistance recipients will reveal the magnitude of the Foundation’s reach – it is a veritable listing of who’s who in the country.

Continuing to this very day the foundation book program distributes thousands of textbooks and trade books from the United States to so many libraries.

In the past, the foundation provided newsprint for struggling Filipino publishers, seeds for farmers, training for teachers, and efforts at improving the bureaucracy.

Like most American foundations, the Asia Foundation is assisted by private donations as well as from the foreign aid budget of the US government.

Of all the foundation representatives in Manila. I think it was Edith who made the deepest impression on me particularly and to so many others. She lived in Magallanes Village, close to where Jose W. Diokno also lived and very soon, they got to know each other.

Edith’s particular interest was strengthening the justice system for which reason the foundation funded legal scholarships, training programs and the exchange of jurists from all over the region and from the United States.

She introduced me to R.H. Bushner of the Council of Foreign Relations – the unofficial Department of State of the United States. The introduction resulted in two lecture tours in the United States, including several days in Washington during which I got to know how the Americans Congress works and most of all, was impressed with the goodwill of the powerholders there towards the world’s poor and dispossessed.

Edith’s house became a meeting place for many of the critics of the Marcos regime. Because she became close to many of them, her house was also a sanctuary particularly during the last oppressive days of the regime.

In one of those candid moments with Edith, she asked if it was possible for her to have real friends if she was not foundation representative handing out fellowships. I assured her not to have such doubts because she was truly human and compassionate.

I was at her deathbed in San Francisco two years ago and her passing, it seemed to me then, also meant the passing of an era.

When the Asia Foundation started 50 years ago, we were not more than 25 million – today we are more than 80 million. Institutions grow old; the foundation is now manned by a new generation which, I hope, still brims with the enthusiasm and the compassion of the old guard like Edith Coliver, Robert Blum, Jim Dalton. The sad truth about us is that we have not really imbibed the virtues of our former colonizer; the democratic ethos we nurture here is fragile if not hollow – it lacks the essence, the civic strength and the capacity to dignify the profits of capitalism. Where does the sense of purpose, of nation, of basic deency that suffuse public life in America come from? How does integrity develop? Maybe, these are questions the Filipinos and their Foundation friends need to ask.