Her father died when
she was seven and soon after her father’s Chinese kin snubbed them,
prompting her mother to leave Leyte for Manila where they stayed with a
maternal aunt.
That was when Mother
F began to experience hard times. Money was scarce to a young widow with
two little children.
However, Mother F had
such a good singing voice and such a beautiful face that when she was 13,
she started joining amateur singing contests to earn – and always
successfully so. At 16, she won the first prize at the Grand Amateur
Singing Contest sponsored by a liquor company, earning the cash prize of
P75.00 – quite a hefty sum in those days when the peso was still worth two
to a dollar – and beating the tandem who would later gain popularity as
the Reycard Duet, composed of Rey Ramirez and Carding Castro.
With the song,
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” she performed impressively in front of 25,000
people in Luneta including TV hosts Rosa Rosal and Tinno Lapus, then
popular TV and radio talents.
Mother F eventually
became a member of the Philippine Musicians Guild and subsequently an
actress of Filipinas Pictures. These gave her the opportunity to travel to
various provinces, performing in town fiestas, always accompanied by an
aunt.
It was around this
time that she met her future husband, Adolfo Felizco, from an affluent
family in Quezon province. With her marriage to a conservative family, she
became a full-time housewife and started raising a family.
Shortly after, her
father’s relatives would patch things up with them and they moved to Leyte
where Adolfo started his dental practice. Before they could settle there,
her husband contracted a liver ailment and was treated in Manila. The
family doctor advised them to take a Baguio vacation. They did and in
1964, a year after, they decided to settle in the city known as the
country’s “summer capital.”
Her husband used to
work with the Baguio City Hall’s Barangay Affairs Office. The family
easily got along with their neighbors and became very active in
socio-civic and church organizations. In fact, Mother was once a
councilwoman of Bakakeng Central Barangay. Also, as member of the Catholic
Women’s League (CWL), she was one of those who set up the first Nursery of
the St. Vincent Parish. She also worked closely with the nuns of the Sta.
Catalina and Assumption Convents.
In the late 1970s,
Lot, her third child, entered the University of the Philippines (UP) in
Diliman, Quezon City and got exposed to poverty in the streets of Manila
where she joined mass actions against the Marcos dictatorship. With an
activist daughter, Mother’s exposure to political activism started. She
and her husband would often go to Manila to join mass actions with their
daughter. Mother also started to host Lot’s friends at UP who were young
activists like her. She said she could relate with them because she, too,
experienced being poor.
Mother’s political
life continued when she worked in Italy as domestic helper in 1981 and
1982. Although short, her Italian experience exposed her to the
difficulties Filipino migrant workers face. She joined a group that looked
after the rights and welfare of Filipino migrant workers.
After that, Mother
joined the Population Commission (Popcom) as a family planning motivator.
The Marcos administration was then implementing the four-child policy, and
as a motivator, Mother was told that she was there “to change the system.”
Her work involved interviewing women about their perception on family
planning and she learned that the main problem of women was not the number
of children they have, but poverty. She then realized that was not the
kind of “change” she wanted and so she resigned.
At that time, the
Marcos dictatorship was at its peak. Human rights violations perpetuated
by the Marcos regime were then condemned nationally and internationally.
Her nun friends invited her in their fight for human rights and the
setting-up of a human rights organization in Northern Luzon.
It was then that she
again started hosting young activists and mingling with them. One of the
priests she worked with at the Northern Luzon Human Rights Organization (NLHRO)
named her “Mother” then. Local activists came to call her husband
“Father.”
As human rights
worker, she joined numerous fact-finding missions in the hinterlands of
the Cordillera and Cagayan to deliver services to displaced indigenous
peoples. She painstakingly documented human rights violations committed by
Marcos men with the low-intensity conflict (LIC) scheme and later, by the
Aquino administration that implemented the Total War Policy.
Despite difficulties,
hunger and security risks, Mother continued to do what she believed right
and just. She found fulfillment in her work as a woman, as a mother and as
a motivator for true change.
In the later months
of 1990, Mother had to set aside her advocacy work due to thyroid cancer.
She went through the difficulties of cancer treatment, which included two
major surgeries and radiation therapy. Nevertheless, while recuperating,
she still visited her co-workers and cheered them up with her gay antics.
Physical limitations brought about by her illness and harsh treatments
made her decide to leave human rights work.
She went back to a
inactive life but not for long. She craved for mass actions and longed to
be involved again. She could not be passive amid the continuing political
and economic crisis engulfing the country. Thus by the mid-1990s, she
joined Innabuyog-GABRIELA, the militant women’s movement in the region. To
this day, she gives time and effort advancing the causes of women and
children with all her motherly love and concern.
Mother recognizes
that she is no longer as physically strong as before. However this does
not hinder her from being involved in the women’s and people’s movements.
She is not retiring because of age. She will not give up because of cancer
– which, she says, can go back anytime even as she has been a survivor for
more than ten years. She is thankful she became an activist and proud to
be one because, she says, it is what makes her young, gives her energy and
sustains her in life.
She hugs her
political children when she sees them, whoever, wherever and whatever they
are now. Mother serves as an inspiration to many activists – men and
women, gays and lesbians, young and old. Her list of political children is
getting longer with each passing decade. Northern Dispatch / Posted by
Bulatlat
BACK TO
TOP ■
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION ■
COMMENT
© 2006 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided
its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.