Songs Her Father Taught Her
/The moth has always been a powerful symbol in Philippine iconography, associated with the story of Jose Rizal as a young boy being told the story of a moth that warned against flying too close to the flame (possibly of liberty or of dangerous subversive ideas) lest it perish in this venture. This was like Icarus being warned by his father not to fly too close to the sun. In Filipino, “Minsa’y isang Gamugamo” (or “There Once Was a Moth”) sounds like the beginning of a tale to be told by a mother to her children.
In this case, the script of the prize-winning movie directed by Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara (then Concio) and produced by Digna Santiago, was written by Marina Feleo-Gonzalez, daughter of the assassinated leftist leader Juan Feleo and already a well-known scriptwriter of such oeuvres as “Lakambini at Supremo”(the story of Andres Bonifacio and his wife Gregoria de Jesus). It was to become the sleeper of the season, winning prizes left and right and especially for its scriptwriter. Women film scriptwriters, then as now, were a rarity. It is all the more remarkable that she was only 46 years old at the time.
How the movie itself came about is a saga, and its success in the midst of authoritarian rule beholden to the Americans is nothing short of a miracle. It was also prescient in showing the predicament of the Philippines’ citizens, brought on by their government’s over-dependence on a great power, reflected in a film directed by the sister of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.
The movie also featured Nora Aunor, the petite singer from Bicol whom nobody suspected of being able to powerfully interpret the dilemma of the people whose land had been appropriated to host one of the largest and most important U.S. bases in world at the apex of American imperial power. Her partner in the film was Jay Ilagan, also a popular male star with barely a dramatic success to his name. Finally, the picture featured Filipino heavyweights such as Gloria Sevilla and Perla Bautista in supporting roles.
The film recalls important episodes that had taken place in and around the U.S. bases, which had been imposed on the Philippines as a condition for its supposed independence granted in 1946. Filipinos had been killed in the periphery of these bases, and Americans committing crimes could not be judged in Philippine courts and were routinely spirited away if they were charged.
In “Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo,” scriptwriter Marina Feleo-Gonzalez brilliantly crystallizes these injustices through the story of Bonifacio (played by Jay Ilagan), a Filipino worker with a mother working in the commissary of the military base, who is on the verge of emigrating to the United States, and his fiancée, Corazon (played by Nora Aunor), who had aspired for a visa to join him there. These plans come to naught when Bonifacio’s mother (played by Perla Bautista) is falsely accused of stealing from the commissary and humiliated by being stripped of her underwear, which is displayed to the American guards. Bonifacio and Corazon realize the futility of seeking justice through Philippine courts, but the final straw comes when Corazon’s brother is killed by U.S. patrols, allegedly because he was mistaken for a pig. The iconic phrase emerging from the film is Corazon’s cry of indignation and despair, “My brother is not a pig!” –echoed by activists henceforth.
Jay Ilagan and Nora Aunor in iconic death scene of brother
The U.S. bases abruptly closed in 1991 as a result of a vote in the Philippine Senate terminating the U.S.-Philippine Military Bases Agreement, as well as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo a year earlier, which destroyed and inundated Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base with lava and debris. However, this did not end military cooperation with the United States as the Visiting Forces Agreement signed during the term of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo permitted military exercises on Philippine soil for the alleged purpose of combatting terrorism.
It took some 30 years after independence from the United States in 1946 for “Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo” to articulate protest against foreign oppression through a film.
The film was reissued in a digital version in 2018 under the auspices of the ABS-CBN Network. Representing Marina at the showing of the revised film version was her niece, writer Anita Feleo.
Today, Marina Feleo-Gonzalez is a grandmother shuttling between Minnesota and New York, while putting final touches on a memoir on her father, Juan Feleo, entitled Songs My Father Taught Me. As a matter of fact, her father did one of the first Filipino translations of the “Internationale,” and in Marina’s memory still reverberate other songs that he taught her. She has been included in a documentary with Pete Seeger on YouTube on her father’s version of the “Internationale” and its influence on her.
Marina at 90, still spry and healthy, is a living Sibyl or babaylan.
Among her parents’ greatest legacy to her is her mastery of and love for the Filipino language. She prides herself on the fact that she was sent to public schools, including Arellano High School where she rubbed elbows with people like writer Adrian Cristobal. Nevertheless, she finished her studies at the University of Santo Tomas College of Philosophy and Letters. The same Royal and Pontifical University would recognize her as an outstanding alumna in its 400th year jubilee.
Marina herself is not a narrow-minded patriot in that she loves writers from other cultures as well, notably the American poet Emily Dickinson, whose sense of privacy and melodic, simple language characterizes her. Marina has memorized lines of Dickinson that she can quote at the drop of a hat, such as “Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings a song without the words and never stops at all” and “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door to her divine Majority, present no more.”
As her husband, Arnulfo “Arling” Gonzalez, was working as an accounts manager in the advertising agency Philprom, Marina was also exposed to the upscale, competitive world of a Philippines in its postwar recovery. She would meet people in the entertainment world, such as Leila Benitez, Eddie Ilarde, and Pepe Pimentel. The movie world was not a novelty for her. In addition, her husband’s income was sufficient in those times for their tiny family of four, which enabled her to write non-commercial scripts and to not compromise her artistic vision. Perhaps, her father’s uncompromising stand as well as her mother’s own comfortable background explained her inability to go along with simply commercial deals and her determination to wait for someone who understood her own message. Whatever Lamberto Avellana is supposed to have said, her kind of film did not cater to the “bakya crowd” (elite term for common folk).
As to the genesis of the film, “Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo,” she says that she was already aware of American abuse of Filipinos at the U.S. bases, but that a personal encounter at Rizal Park in 1971 sparked this initial awareness. On an appointment to meet her husband, Arling, from his day-job in Intramuros, she became suddenly enmeshed in masses of students fleeing police brutality at a rally protesting the U.S. bases. Many pleaded with her to pretend to be their mother as a form of protection. Thus, was the seed born to become the articulate script of an iconic film.
It so happened in 1975 that Lupita Aquino-Concio had worked on a film with her on the Katipunan’s leader Andres Bonifacio and his wife-muse, Gregoria de Jesus. A friend, Digna Santiago, fresh from her own studies at Georgetown University, materialized as a possible collaborator on a film which would highlight the disturbing presence of American bases in the Philippines.
The two of them zeroed in on Marina as the ideal person for such a script. She herself had doubts about such a project and quoted a price that she thought would turn them off. They called her bluff and accepted the price immediately. Since the idea had long been brewing in her mind, it did not take her long to finish the script, which entailed her locking herself up in an attic and hammering out dialogue and scene descriptions on three typewriters.
Marina with granddaughter Diwa Gonzalez-Tamrong
Nevertheless, it did not mean smooth sailing as the three of them did not always agree on the content and orientation of the script. At times, Marina would threaten to withdraw her script if it was censored or changed in a way that did not suit her. Notably, one stumbling block was the line, “My brother is not a pig!” that her collaborators feared would make audiences laugh. Quite the contrary, when the scene was witnessed by ordinary Filipinos during its filming, it brought tears to their eyes as well as to the film crew’s, proving Marina right.
The film and its famous lines have accompanied Marina wherever she has gone. In 1980, well into martial law, Marina and Arling Gonzalez were persuaded by her mother to visit her in the United States as she was already in the final stages of cancer in Texas. They were able to secure visas easily but were surprised at the U.S. airport to be led off by Immigration to be interviewed by an agent. Marina was asked about her provocative film and of what she thought of the U.S. military presence in the Philippines. She artfully threw back the question, that the agent himself, would be best able to answer that question. In a surprising turn, they were even escorted out and offered transportation to their destination, which they declined.
It was Marina’s intention to return to the Philippines after her visit to the Philippines, but by that time, events led to her staying in the U.S., with the death of her mother, and her children settling here as well. Marina was also not lacking in offers to share her experience in film writing with such institutions as Columbia University, New York University, and the Film Fund. It gave her breathing space to finish other pending scripts, such as one on a famous novel granted to her by Ka Honorata or Atang de la Rama, widow of the literary laureate Amado V. Hernandez. She mentored young Filipino graduate students in film in the Big Apple, who were privileged to take master classes with her.
One footnote to her Texan sojourn while taking care of her hospitalized mother was a projected encounter with Ninoy Aquino, who was also recuperating from his operation at the same hospital. Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara had related that Ninoy had admired her script and desired to meet with her, which she had to turn down due to the need to be with her mother 24/7. Years later, in 1983, Marina was requested to accompany Ninoy on his fateful trip back home on August 21, but family commitments prevented her from doing so.
Her husband, Arling, passed away on November 6, 2012 (as Marina recalls, on the night of Obama’s election). Family is what occupies Marina nowadays, shuttling back and forth from her daughter Marlina G. Tamrong in Minnesota in the warmer months of the year, to her son, Arnulfo Jr.“Jojo” in Beacon, New York, for winter (Minnesota being even chillier than New York. She is justifiably proud of her own children’s artistic and professional achievements.
In the Philippines, a Feleo nephew was known as the actor Johnny Delgado, the late husband of director Laurice Guillen, and son of her brother Felipe. Another nephew, artist and painter Roberto Feleo, is known for his stunning work depicting important episodes in Philippine history as well as for pioneering in mixed media—a record that arguably should merit him National Artist status.
Marina’s two granddaughters, Maya Stratton-Gonzalez and Diwa Gonzalez-Tamrong, reflect her Filipino and American offshoots. Her regret is that neither of them speaks her beloved Filipino although they know all the tales that she recounts of the home country. Since her last visit to the Philippines was several decades ago, she misses her house in Caloocan and the vintage furniture that she had deposited there, thinking that she would always come back some day.
Marina with grandniece Anna (left) and granddaughter Maya
She attributes her relatively long life to genes, a good diet, and exercise (she does about 5,000 steps a day). She is herself amazed that she has reached 90, considering Arling and that she had marveled at the Beatles song “When I am 64,” thinking that was so far away. While not particularly religious or even being a strong believer in an afterlife, she thanks the “Divine Force” for giving her another day each time she awakes. She loves the gourmet meals that a friend cooks and invites people to. She still dresses up when she goes out to visit friends. She looks forward to visiting her octogenarian sisters in Texas when the occasion presents itself.
Marina Gonzalez’s depth as a writer may be attributed to her ability to absorb details of historical encounters with figures and incidents which now form part of the tapestry of Philippine mythology. Memory reverberates in her scripts and musings.
One notes her family’s involvement in the leftist movements of the country and their tragic interactions with the leadership of both Presidents Quezon and Roxas, at whose door she places the blame for her father’s death. In Marina’s youth, she knew Mayor Arsenio Lacson and the young beauty queen Imelda Romualdez. She regarded as both professional colleague and friend the opera singer Armida Siguion-Reyna, whose brother Juan Ponce Enrile was also a key figure in Marcos’ cabinet. She was shielded by some of the harsher measures of martial law and was able to leave the country without problems. In effect, she has ties to the Philippines’ prewar leadership as well as to both sides of the Marcos-Aquino divide. She is credible when she speaks of either faction.
Marina Feleo-Gonzalez is like a Sibyl or an oracle from Greek mythology. In Philippine terms, she is a modern babaylan whose utterings may be said to reflect the inner workings and reflections of society. Her films were precursors to today’s independent films in Cinemalaya.
Having spent the most productive years of her life producing noteworthy scripts in colloquial and classic Filipino, it is an irony that she is spending what could be her final years in the belly of the beast itself, the country against which her protagonists once railed. The world awaits her final opus. Quo vadis, Marina? Sing us the songs your father sang!
Full disclosure: The author took a film-writing course under Ms. Gonzalez in 1990 in New York City and is actively in touch with her.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
A career diplomat of 35 years, Ambassador Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr. served as Philippine Ambassador to South Africa (2003-2009) and Italy (2011-2014), his last posting before he retired. He is now engaged in writing, traveling, and is dedicated to cultural heritage projects.
More articles by Ambassador Virgilio Reyes, Jr.
