A sentimental journey

I leave for London on Monday on a sentimental journey. My daughter, Al-Jazeera’s Veronica Pedrosa and I will appear on stage at the National Theater to give the historical background of David Bryne’s musical on Imelda — Here Lies Love. In a sense Imelda’s story became also our story in London as exiles. It was in this city where we became political activists.

My late husband and I campaigned not just for freedom for the press but also for the rights of migrant workers. Twenty years is a long time. Veronica was barely five and as she describes in an article “she lived with political activism” accompanying us when we campaigned for Filipinos at the height of the Thatcher government’s policy to limit immigrants especially from poor countries like the Philippines.

As it turns out, after many talks and discussions with members of parliament and labor union leaders, we found out that the Filipino community was especially chosen as the target of the campaign because it was a weak community.

Neither the Philippine Embassy nor the government in Manila cared for them.

Lip service was paid to their contribution to the Philippine economy and nothing more. The situation today has not changed much despite the much-acclaimed EDSA revolution. Educated Filipino professionals still come to the UK seeking well-paying jobs as domestics and nurses. There are Filipino doctors who downgrade themselves into medical technicians to get jobs here.

I am glad that the National Theater is going out of its way to include a political background of the musical. It does seem a contradiction if it were to stand alone. It would trivialize the many hardships and the political systemic difficulties that remain true today.

I had written the book but the repercussions of the Marcos dictatorship was left for my daughter to take up. The little girl who trudged along with her parents visiting more than 200 hospitals and hotels where Filipinos work had herself become a journalist and made a documentary “Imelda and Me” about its repercussions to her and to her country of birth.

With both of us telling our stories to the audience on Here Lies Love, Veronica opted for the title “Imelda and Us.’ But it is more than about us, as mother and daughter, caught in the web of political events and intrigue. From the declaration of martial law it was a downward spiral for the Philippines. So us is collectively about Filipinos.

The EDSA revolution exiled the Marcos family in 1986, but the corrupt oligarchs who took over the reins of power, have since allowed them to return to the country, ensuring that they start their grab for power once again.

My daughter submitted to al-Jazeera a subject for a documentary on a theme that present activists continue to wrestle with and struggle for. She would tell the story from a personal vantage point.

She e-mailed to me an essay entitled “Has Imelda Marcos created some kind of alternate reality in which she is the victim?”

As a parent I was more interested in the personal side of the story: how our exile affected her. As parents we make decisions not thinking of what it does to our children. It is only today, more than three decades later, that she was able to express her feelings.

“Imelda Marcos has always cast a dark shadow over my life, so making this film was a unique chance to confront her with her crimes.

“There have been many times when I thought I hated her. I was furious at the obscene wealth her family amassed and disgusted by the litany of carefully documented cases of torture and disappearances that were delivered to us in exile in London and which formed a staple part of my diet of reading materials when I was a teenager.” For the first time, poignant feelings welled up: “I grieved too at what I never had: a life surrounded by extended family that is so much a part of Philippine culture, the culture itself and the native language that my mother dreams in but which I speak badly and with a distinctly London accent and syntax. Imelda and her coterie robbed me of part of my identity that most people take for granted ± a sense of belonging.”

But she learned to accept that loss and fit it in her adult life and career.

“In some ways of course Imelda’s attempts to intimidate our family turned out for the best. I probably would not be in the position of being able to write this story and make this film if she had not booted us into exile. It is a rather delicious irony that her attempts to shut us up only motivated us to speak louder and take action on the international stage.

“You can watch the film to see how the interview went but what became clear is that Imelda is living in a world that does not exist. She has an idea about what she wants to stand for and she calls it ‘love’ but is in total denial about the facts. So no matter how many times she speaks of love, her legacy is far too tainted with cruelty, lies and corruption for her to be loved. Because that is what she says she wants engraved on the headstone of her grave, ‘Here Lies Love.’”

Al Jazeera correspondent Veronica Pedrosa takes a journey back to the country she was exiled from when she was just a child. It is also the country where she later began her 20-year career as a journalist.

We hear how her family, along with other dissidents, worked to overthrow the Marcos regime. And how the People Power uprising eventually toppled them from power.

Today, Imelda Marcos is a congresswoman and her son Ferdinand Marcos Jr a senator. This, Pedrosa says, is an example of the culture of impunity that exists in the Philippines:

“In other words, the guilty going unpunished for their crimes. In 2009, the Philippines saw the worst mass killing of journalists that the world has ever seen; and yet a year-and-a-half later no one has been successfully convicted for those killings.

“I wanted to find out what’s really going on … there’s a very personal dimension for me.”

* * * Some of the Filipino workers who worked for the cause of democracy and freedom of the Philippines during martial law will be in the audience in the National Theater in London, but many others have died or gone home. It’s been a long time.