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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”—islandhopping 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.1 It 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 10 . Chapter 2 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.2 Bonifacio 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...

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