Our woman in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO – One can feel the enthusiasm and energy and delight to promote the Philippines in Consul General to San Francisco Maria Rowena Mendoza Sanchez. One Filipino who has seen a succession of holders of the post, has commented that while her predecessors have done their share in projecting their country, without a doubt Con-Gen Sanchez has accomplished a lot since her arrival here two years ago.

Some of the 500 Filipino American organizations in the Bay area have been holding Independence Day and other programs, but with the zeal and support of the new Con-Gen, more activities are being lined up. Ms. Sanchez herself acknowledges that she and her staff have been up on their feet meeting with leaders of various groups as well as reaching out to the nearly one million Filipinos living in the areas covered by the consulate general, namely, North California, Alaska, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, Northern Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

It seems the local organizations have caught the Con-Gen’s fever to promote the Philippines – its heritage, tradition, culture, arts, dance and music, not only for the benefit of Americans, but also of Filipinos who might be interested in investing in their mother country.

May was a lively month in the Bay Area, with activities ranging from kite-flying to a performance by the University of the Philippines Concert Chorus, concerts, the release of Anthony Cruz Legarda’s book and DVD, and a reception in honor of "Dancing with the Stars Champion" Cheryl Bautista Burle.

June 7 was marked by a performance of the Palawan State University’s Sining Palawan Dance Company at the Philippine Center. This group will also perform at a special reception on June 12, to be attended by among others, officers of the California Academy of Science which will put up a permanent display of the Philippine Reef in 2008. Ms. Sanchez told us that the Philippines should rejoice that Palawan’s reef has been chosen over the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and Palau.

Fiesta Filipina’s tenth year will be held June 10-11 at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. Fiesta Filipina, which has the biggest attendance of from 15,000 to 20,000 persons, is organized by the business sector of the Filipino American community.

Lined up for June: The Fil-Am Festival project of the Daly City-Quezon City Sister City Committee, a musicale written and performed by Stephanie Reese, and the 28th Annual Ethnic Dance Festival.

Next month, on July 13-22, the 2nd Ambassadors/Consuls General Tour will take tourists from the United States and Canada on a tour of the Philippines. Ms. Sanchez recalled that just days before the departure of the first tour group last year, the news heard in the US was that the opposition was going to hold a big rally on July 17, which was the day of the arrival of the group. "We thought most of the 250 who had signed up were going to back out, but surprisingly, more than 500 persons joined the tour."

Billeted at the Shangrila in Makati, the tourists saw the rallyists. "Hindi naman pala magulo, peaceful, and showed that democracy was at work in the Philippines," the tourists said.

The tour will take the participants around Manila, and for some participants, around the islands. Highlight of the program is lunch with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Scheduled for next year is a performance of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, a project of the Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation.

An exhibition organized by Ayala Museum next year will feature more than 30 paintings that chronicle 100 years of Philippine painting, from Juan Luna to Fernando Amorsolo and Fernando Zobel.

These cultural activities, said Ms. Sanchez, are part of "our thrust, that is, of promoting our culture." She tells Philippine associations during her travels that they are "the common treasure of two countries – the United States and the Philippines. "She also tells them, imagine how America would survive without Filipino doctors, nurses, teachers, and workers.

Ms. Sanchez finds as most challenging "the need for us to reach out to at least 500 organizations. We send email messages – this saves us money as we don’t have to spend on stamps – we invite people to our forums, we put information in our website."

Ms. Sanchez joined the Philippine foreign service in 1978. She served overseas as deputy chief of mission and consul general at the Philippine Embassy in London from 1997 to 2000, with concurrent accreditation to Dublin, Ireland, and Reykjavik, Iceland. She was also acting Philippine Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization in London, 1998, posted as consul at the Philippine consulate general in Chicago from 1994 to 1997, and assigned to the Philippine embassies in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa. She is married to Mario E. Sanchez, and they have two children, Isabel, and Gabriel.

The consulate general has a staff of 28. "Everyone here is a multi-tasker," Ms. Sanchez said. "They assist in every section. Our work is to be of service to our kababayans, so we are working very hard to do our job right."

* * *

We finally visited the Museu ng Buhay Filipino, a project of the Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation (PFMF) on the sixth floor of the Philippine Center building directly across the consular office. No less than the PFMF president, the refined and good-looking Lettie Figueroa, guided us through the glass-encased displays of costumes of different tribes of the Mt. Province. There were the costumes of the Gadang of lower Apayao; the Itneg of Abra province and those of Bontoc. Aside from the nicely woven cloths and handmade jewelry there were displays of kitchen utensils, food containers, burnays and baskets.

Letty said that the next show will feature costumes of people of the Cordilleras. An interesting show will be of Filipina ternos worn by former First Ladies of the Philippines.

Lettie said a big project of the PFMF is sponsoring, in collaboration with the Philippine Consulate General and the San Francisco-Manila Sister City Committee (chaired by Dennis Normandy), the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra’s first concert tour in the United States. The PPO, led by its music conductor Eugene Castillo, who was born in California, will perform at Davies Hall in San Francisco on May 18 next year.

* * *

THE ART DIRECTOR of the Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation, Cota Deles Yabut, will be featured in a joint exhibit with Justiniano "Noni" Mendoza on Nov.12 at the Social Hall of the Philippine Center building in San Francisco. Consul General Sanchez will be the presenter of the exhibit entitled "A Sense of Place and Space."

The double exhibit will do a tri-city tour, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then New York. The exhibit will be presented by the consulate generals of those cities. Other support groups will be Noni’s Upsilon Sigma Phi Alumni Association, and the sorority of Cota, the Sigma Delta Phil Alumnae Association, both of the University of the Philippines.

Noni graduated from the UP with a BA in architecture. He obtained a master’s degree in landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin. He studied painting under Donald Anderson, and painting and sculpture under master Manuel Rodriguez Sr. at the Art Association of the Philippines.

Cota is a graduate of the College of Fine Arts, UP. A much-traveled artist, she was instrumental in the formation of the Children’s Art Exchange program of the Philippines with Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Paris, and which went on tour around the Philippines with the "Lakbay Sining" program of PAEA (Philippine Art Educators Association) for 15 years.

The exhibit will feature art works in water color, oils, acrylic, collage, pen and ink sketches and some tapestries.

* * *

My e-mail: [email protected]