Media loses two best writers

It’s incredible that two well-known veteran media personalities would pass away one after the other. Sylvia Mayuga on the last day of 2019, and Ninez Cacho-Olivares, three  days later, on Jan. 3, 2020.

Sylvia lived up to her name as “Morningstar,” as I remember her as charming as early mornings, brilliant the whole day, romantic as dawn crept in, forever loyal to the virtues of being truthful, just, and freedom loving.

The Women Writers in Media Now (Women) announced “with great sadness the passing into eternal life of one of our own.” She was 76. She is  survived by her only son Aya Yuson, two sisters and two brothers

 Sylvia wrote occasional pieces for the Inquirer in the past few years. She edited books on culture and history and, as she described herself, was “a busy activist on Facebook.”  She had planned to write a book on contemporary Philippine electoral history, writes Doyo. 

Another established journalist Ceres Doyo writes of  Mayuga’s  first scribbling a script for a cartoon strip when she was eight years old. Of the succeeding years, Doyo writes, “This native Manilan’s gift for the written word matured into a professional writer’s reflective essays, documentary scripts, lectures and occasional poems. Consistently, she wove biography and autobiography with threads of the larger histories of her country and the world, revealing a visionary strain as she wanders ‘Between the Centuries’ (the title of her last book of essays).”

In her introduction, writer and professor Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo described the book as Mayuga’s “act of faith,” “a love song to her country.”

Her other two books of essays “Spy in My Own Country” and “Earth, Fire and Air” and “Huling Ptyk: Da Art of Nonoy Marcelo” won National Book Awards.

Mayuga had the continuing hope that through her writings, the Filipino may “come to know who he/she really is” and might become.

According to Doyo, in one of Sylvia’s pieces, she mused: “Out there, playwrights dance, painters sing, singers dance, everyone serving the whole in the awakening of children relearning what a whole race needs to encounter.” In the premartial law years, Mayuga belonged to a bohemian group of writers, poets, artists and free spirits that called themselves Los Indios Bravos. She joined the newly formed Women, composed mostly of feisty women writers, in the 1980s.

Award-winning journalist Sheila Coronel’s blurb in Mayuga’s last book reads: “Reading Sylvia Mayuga is like taking a dive into the unknown. Be prepared for surprises. She leads us to a magical world where politics and poetry, science and mysticism, art and logic, numerology and ecology mix and collide. The result is dazzling. And only Sylvia Mayuga can pull it off.”

Mayuga studied at St. Scholastica’s College and St. Theresa’s College in Manila. She had a master’s degree in comparative journalism from Columbia University in New York, a degree she said she found useless under Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorial rule.

Remembering those years, Mayuga said: “I launched a protest silence for 10 years until (martial law’s) ‘paper lifting’ in 1981. The two years I spent as a columnist in the Bulletin Today ended when I and three other independent columnists were fired on Marcos’ orders.”

Some of Mayuga’s banned pieces of that era are in the book “Press Freedom Under Siege: Reportage that Challenged the Marcos Dictatorship” (University of the Philippines Press, 2019), edited by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo.

After her firing at the Bulletin Today, she took her feistiness on the streets and on paper, writing occasionally for Philippine Daily Inquirer while waging battles for environment and against fascism.

In the early 1990s she stayed briefly in Baguio, helping environmental activists in their fight against development aggression at Camp John Hay and the mines.

“She was irreverent and endearing. She extended her funny and incisive rants in Facebook, where she was often blocked by humorless adversaries,” writes Doyo.

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Ninez Cacho Olivares was one of the four women writers who wrote critical columns in the Bulletin Today which the dictator Marcos ordered banned.

“Our mother died peacefully this morning. She is survived by her children Peter, Bambina, Michael and Pixie, her children-in-law Tweety Quintero, Xandra Barretto and Jay Fonacier, and her grandchildren Carlo, Iñigo, Isabella and Enrique Olivares, Samantha and Jessica Wise, Julio Olivares and Noelle Fonacier,” the family said in an official statement sent on Jan. 3 to Philstar.com by The Daily Tribune.

After her stint in the Bulletin Today Olivares founded, published and was editor-in-chief of The Daily Tribune in 1999. (The newspaper is now published by Willy Fernandez, owner of Concept and Information Group in June 2018.) 

Several libel cases were slapped her in her decades-old career, but she continued to write in her column “Frontline” after selling the company. Her last column, “’Nuff said,” was published on Jan. 3, the day she died. 

Online reports note that Olivares was known for her hard-hitting commentaries against government officials. She was a staunch critic of the Liberal Party, former President Benigno Aquino III and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. 

In February 2006, The Daily Tribune office was raided by the police at the height of the State of Emergency imposed by then President Arroyo. Despite the raid and harassment, the paper continued to publish critical stories under Olivares’ leadership.

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Corazon Kabayao, well-known pianist and wife of the violin icon Gilopez Kabayao explains why she and her husband decided not to give concerts for free. (See my column of Dec. 23, 2019.)

“Our dream is to see Filipino classical artists to be well appreciated and able to make a living as professional artists, teachers and performers in the Philippines! If we cannot offer this to the new generation of artists and assure them of a secure future for their craft and their families, we will continue to see our Filipino artists leaving for greener pastures in other countries. We have to start teaching our young to know the worth of our national treasures in the field of music and the arts.”

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Wikipedia reports that on Friday, Jan. 3, 2019, Filipino author and academic Genoveva Matute became the subject of Google Doodles, which are “temporary alterations of the Google logo to commemorate an important occasion.” Doodles celebrated her 105th birthday on Jan. 3.

Genoveva was born in Manila on Jan. 3, 1915 to Anastacio Edroza and Maria Magdalena Dizon. She was the creator of the popular radio program and television series, “The Story of the Boys,” in the 50s.

She studied at Manila North High School (now Arellano High School), Philippine Normal School (PNS), Philippine Normal College (PNC now Philippine Normal University), and the University of Santo Tomas. She taught for 46 years at Cecilio Apostol Elementary School and Arellano High School, and served as chair of the Philippine Department of PNU. 

Some of her short stories are “Leave-taking” and “Land of the Bitter,” published in the Manila Post Sunday Magazine and in the monthly Manila Post. But she was most intrigued by her ideas examining the psychology and experiences in teaching, such as “Eight Years,” “Noche Buena,” “The Story of the Good,” and “Sailing the Heart of a Child.” 

Matute is known for “Ang Kuwento ni Mabuti” – the first short story in Filipino to win a Palanca when the annual literary awards were first held in 1951. She was also a recipient of the Gawad Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1992, the Republic Literary Awards from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in 1995, and the St. Scholastica College’s St Hildegarde of Bingen Award for women-pioneers of Philippine media in 2007.

She retired as the dean of the Filipino department at Philippine Normal University) in 1980. She died in 2009 at the age of 94.

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