Remembering Chito

On the morning of Aug. 21, 1971, Chito and I landed in Red China. For Filipino travelers, it was a verboten destination. There were no formal diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China then. In fact, it was illegal to travel there. Philippine passports were stamped with a warning: “Not valid for travel to China, the Soviet Union and other communist-controlled states.”

We were there anyway, 15 youth leaders privileged to visit a country still isolated and poorly understood by the rest of the world. Among us were leftist students, including some of the shock troops of the First Quarter Storm like Ericson Baculinao, the formidable chair of the University of the Philippines’ Student Council. His counterpart from La Salle, Chito Sta. Romana, was himself impressive. He was especially eloquent. I remember first hearing him speak at a UP auditorium as spokesman of the Movement for a Democratic Philippines, and having nearly every student there convinced that “national democracy” was good for the Philippines.

Chito and Eric would become a huge part of my life. But I knew nothing of this then. Then we were just guests of the China Friendship Association, a quasi-government agency; then we were just college students excited about a special three-week study tour. We never expected a lifetime’s friendship in the works.

In the first few days of our visit, we were oblivious to what was going on in the Philippines. China then was totally isolated. There were no direct phone links, no foreign newspapers, no daily radio-TV reports, certainly no mobile phones, internet and social media. It was a kind of hermit land.

On the night of Aug. 21, we would learn later, grenade blasts had ripped through an election rally at Plaza Miranda, killing six in the crowd and seriously wounding more, including top leaders of the Liberal Party, which had the strongest chance of unseating then president Ferdinand Marcos. That same night, Marcos declared a state of emergency and suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, allowing his police force to arrest and detain anyone without going through the courts, and lock them up them indefinitely. Arrests followed. Many among them were student activists. Those they could not find, they put on a blacklist, and this included some of us in the tour group.

Five of us ended up staying put. “Wait until further notice,” our lawyers in the Philippines advised. A year later, however, on Sept. 21, 1972, Marcos declared martial law – spawning more arrests. Some were tortured; others, kidnapped, adding to the country’s desaparecidos. Another year later, our Philippine passports expired. Five of us – Chito, Eric Baculinao, Rey Tiquia, Grace Punongbayan and I – were now stranded in China.

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Soon, we realized that if we were to survive an indefinite stay in China, we had to learn Mandarin Chinese. In October 1974, we enrolled at the Beijing Languages Institute. It’s the best school for foreign students to learn Mandarin.

Chito mastered Mandarin, dived deep into China’s history and kept abreast with its current state of affairs. He made many friends and kept a rolodex of Chinese contacts. He learned how things worked in China – and why. He knew China inside out. With those credentials he carved out a successful career as a foreign correspondent in China, a China scholar and finally a distinguished diplomat and public servant. (To be continued)

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Jaime FlorCruz is currently an adjunct professor at Peking University. He was for many years CNN’s Beijing bureau chief.