Before I came to know Alejandro R. Roces (Anding) personally, his family and mine were actually living across each other on Taft Avenue for years before the war. When Anding and I became friends, he told me with a laugh that our families unknowingly kept moving together: from Manila to QC and finally Makati (Dasmariñas Village).
Anding became my boss in the post-EDSA Manila Times and eventually my fellow columnist in the STAR. Through all that time, I often heard Anding speak in public: he was in great demand as a speaker, being, as I had written the other day, a fount of information, “a walking encyclopedia” particularly on his country’s history and culture. Further, his speeches, laced with wit and humor, invariably sent his listeners rolling in the aisles.
He was voluble or cryptic as the occasion demanded. Addressing the Peña Hispano-Filipina, an organization of rabid Filipino hispanistas and Spanish filipinistas, Anding said: “My relations with the Spanish language are very much like my relations with my wife: I love it very much but I cannot dominate it.” This said, Anding sat down to deafening applause.
Anding’s fine features and the bristling moustache he sported earlier often led people into mistaking his nationality. The morning he accompanied the visiting Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos to the Aguinaldo house in Kawit, Cavite, the crowd that surrounded their party was so dense that Anding, clearing a path for his important guest, pleaded: “Paraanin niyo si Presidente Mateos.” Forthwith, one of the bystanders, his hand clapped over his open mouth, exclaimed in awe: “Aba, marunong pala etong Mexicano magsalita ng Tagalog.” As the multitude dispersed, a local newsman gingerly approached Anding and inquired: “Sir, what are your impressions of the Philippines.”
During the visit of another head of state, German President Henrik Lubke, Anding, wishing to give him a foretaste of our much vaunted hospitality, requested the students of a girls’ school to sing along the route of the visitor’s entourage and, to render the welcome even more “rousing”, to wave to President Lubke as he passed by. Anding naturally anticipated a smile at the very least, from Lubke. Instead, he saw a puzzled look on the benign face. Puzzled in turn, Anding gently asked his guest if anything was wrong. To his discomfiture, he was told that the gist of the German song the young girls rendered, was not “Welcome” but “When are you leaving?”
One of Anding’s most hilarious misadventures had to do with his official visit to Villar, Zambales. He was candidly informed upon arrival that the people had not made any preparations about his coming because they just couldn’t believe that the Secretary of Education would take the trouble of traveling to their isolated Negrito village.
The wife of the village chief was so excited about Anding’s unprecedented visit that she gave birth prematurely. The village chief informed Anding about the (good?) news and asked him to be the child’s godfather. Accordingly, the baby was baptized Alejandro Roces. At the time of the village baptism, President Macapagal and Vice-President Pelaez were feuding in Manila, and in the heat of the verbal combat, Macapagal called Pelaez “an arrogant mestizo”. Anding recounted that as he held the puny child for the rites, he thought to himself, “Here, at last, is a Roces who is not a mestizo. I just hope he does not grow up to be an arrogant Negrito.”
News of the baptism spread like wild wire throughout the village, and as a consequence, the villagers rushed to Anding with their babies. Forthwith, a mass baptism followed, with Anding standing again as godfather, this time to 48 boys and girls all named Alejandro Roces.
Three days later, Anding had to address public school teachers in Olongapo, and he casually prophesied to them that in six years time, they would be mentoring six-year old Negrito children in their classrooms, and they might then recall that he had spent three days in the village. Forthwith, Anding told them: “When you do recall my visit, kindly give me the benefit of the doubt.”
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Isagani R. Cruz sends this correction:
Other surviving brothers of Anding, besides Alfredo, are Jose Miguel, Francisco and Marquitos.