CHAPTER 2
Rough Landings
Surviving the First Years
Manglapus's family's escape took seventeen days, a measure of the ordeal
that would-be escapees faced. Martial law security forces were extra-vigilant regarding people with the stature
and the means to pose problems for the Marcos regime. Hence, even family members and close associates of
prominent activists felt that they were under surveillance, especially those who had evaded arrest by “going
underground” locally or who had somehow made it out of the country.
Escape routes out of the Philippine archipelago were either by air or by sea. Some people took what became known
as “the back door”—island-hopping from Zamboanga province on the southern tip of Mindanao Island to Malaysia.
Manglapus's family—his wife disguised in a wig, and carrying false identification papers—managed to slip out
of their home in Urdaneta village in Manila and make it to the airport. From Zamboanga, a motorboat took them to
Sibutu Island, off Sabah, a Malaysian state. There, the authorities refused to allow them to disembark because
they had no landing permit. While Manglapus contacted friends for help, they sat bobbing on the water for three
days. “It was a kumpit, a motorized boat with bamboo outriggers. At least it had a roof. But no bathroom,”
Pacita remembered. “One more day on this boat and I'll go back home,” Raulito joked in
frustration.1It had taken them days to get to
this point; they were almost ashore, and now they found themselves stranded. Once they were finally on land, they
proceeded to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah; then to Kuala Lumpur, the main capital; and then onward to
Singapore, Istanbul, Cairo, Athens, and New York. Ben Maynigo's family followed essentially the same sea
route, but their journey took a frightening turn when their boat was chased by pirates. An armed escort arranged
by the Jumats, who were on the same boat, got them safely to Malaysia.
The anxious months spent hatching schemes to escape, compounded by the perils of the trip, were bad enough.
Getting settled as an exile proved to be the real struggle. Manglapus, like other prominent Marcos opponents, had
a wide circle of friends who provided temporary support. But for those without such a safety net, economic
survival was of paramount concern. Charito Planas, a lawyer and former candidate for mayor of Manila, was a
well-connected leader of various civic organizations and political groups in the Philippines, living a
comfortable cosmopolitan life. She arrived in Virginia on June 5, 1978. At one time, home was a basement,
furnished with wares salvaged from flea markets and the streets. Unable to obtain gainful employment, she worked
as a telemarketer; ran a pizza parlor, even delivering the pizzas herself; demonstrated food preparation at
shopping malls; and delivered parcels.2Bonifacio Gillego, former deputy secretary-general of the CSM and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of
1971–72, worked as a security guard and as a hotel accountant in Washington, D.C. Friends who visited Gaston
Ortigas in 1981 “found not the well-heeled professor of management they knew in Manila but a gaunt man living on
coffee and cigarettes in a little home office on Rivera St. off Sunset Boulevard in San Francisco.”3
Heherson Alvarez, a lawyer who was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, went into hiding soon
after martial law was declared. Former president Diosdado Macapagal, whom he had served as private secretary,
advised him to flee overseas and join Manglapus. He made it to Hong Kong, where the captain of a cargo ship
sneaked him aboard in November 1972 as a stevedore. He was directed by friends to a small printing shop, where he
had been told that for 5,000 Hong Kong dollars he could obtain a fake passport (a week later, the pickup price
had increased to 50,000 HK dollars). After a few test trips to Macau to acquire authentic entry stamps on its
pages, it got him into France, Canada, and then the United States, and into temporary housing with Manglapus.
The first exile who succumbed to the stressful anxieties of being stranded was another high-ranking government
official. Raoul Beloso, the chairman of the Small Farmers Commission of the Department of Agriculture, was
attending a conference in New York when martial law was declared. He fired off an angry letter to President
Richard Nixon that was printed in the New York Times, in which he warned of the advent of a “police state”
and an “absolutist regime.” He then founded a group called Filipinos for Freedom, which was affiliated with the
MFP.