Centennial, a ‘big hit’
Date: Tuesday, February 28 @ 11:13:42 CST
Topic: Top Stories
By Jennie L. Ilustre
WASHINGTON - If it were a movie, one would call it a box-office hit. “We had to turn a hundred of them away, because there was no space," said Dr. Frank Odo, director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program. “We felt bad about it, but well, we have more events on schedule this year."
The 90-minute program, “2006: A Century of Challenge and Change: The Filipino American Story," presented an overview of Filipino American history.
It spanned the American colonization of the Philippines, the immigration to Hawaii plantations in 1906 and then to California farms and Alaska cannery, and raised the impact of the Immigration Act of 1965, which paved the way for the wave of doctors and other professional immigrants.
Some 400 Filipino Americans showed up as early as 7 p.m. to the first public program marking a hundred years of Filipino immigration to this nation. Only 300 got in at the Carmichael auditorium of the National Museum of American History.
Some of them, like Candace Muramoto, 15, came “because my mom said I should come here, and now I’m sad that I know so little." Her mother, Information Technology professional Glenda Lara Muramoto, with husband Miles, came here in 1981 as a student. “I wanted her to understand our history," she said.
Others saw the full-page ad in the Washington Post with the details on the six public programs sponsored by the Smithsonian’s APAP.
The Post, as one of the major donors, will run complimentary full-page Centennial ads throughout this year.
Four speakers, some using photos, montage and editorial cartoons beamed on the huge screen onstage, took the audience to a journey of Filipinos in search of the American Dream that started in New Orleans and in Hawaii - and continues to this day.
@9PTLA = Proud history
Dean Alegado and others pointed out the Filipinos’ proud history in this nation. Experiencing discrimination and unfair labor practices, Filipino plantation workers in Hawaii and California forged alliances with Mexicans and started a labor movement. Later arrivals joined in the civil rights movement, and today have become advocacy leaders themselves.
Alegado is the associate professor and chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He’s also the curator of the FilAmerican Centennial Exhibition, “Singgalot: Ties That Bind.”
He presented photos that will form part of the May exhibit here and the three-year traveling exhibition tour across cities. “These photos showed Filipinos played baseball, they held tournaments, they celebrated Rizal Day," he said.
Enrique dela Cruz is professor of Asian American Studies at California State University. He co-edited “The Forbidden Book: The Philippine American War in Political Cartoons," with Abe Ignacio, Jorge Emmanuel and Helen Toribio. The first speaker, he gave a well-received scholarly presentation with the aid of editorial cartoons.
@9PTLA = Bridge generation
Pauline Agbayani is professor and coordinator of the Master of Social Work Program at the California State University in L.A. She represented the “bridge generation,” the sons and daughters of pioneering immigrants who came to this country in the early 1920s.
She spoke of the pioneering immigrants’ true legacy: “We learned from them who came here first."
She said the Filipino American communities began with mostly single males marrying women from other ethnic groups. Later, Filipino women came here with the passage of the War Brides Act of 1946.
Angel Velasco Shaw, a film/video maker, cultural activist and curator is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University’s Asian Pacific American Studies Program and Institute.
She showed video clips of Filipino men and women on the subject of identity when you’re straddling two cultures. The clips are parts of “PSST...,” a documentary shot in L.A., Seattle and Hawai. The documentary is a work-in-progress with writer Jessica Hagedorn.
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