Aloha to a Public Servant--
Consul General Julius Torres Comes to Hawaii
By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
I knew it would be tough getting a schedule to interview the new Consul General Julius Deloso Torres.
He had just arrived, and my request was too soon.
Even when then Consul General Leoncio Cardenas was about to retire, I already wrote to Deputy Consul General Paul Cortez to ask for a chance to sit down with the incoming consul general who would be coming from Amman.
He was warming up and trying to get settled, and here I was, egging on, asking for the moon, and asking for the impossible. He had out-of-state appointments, the appointments secretary told me.
But he was gracious, and in between my final examinations at the sate university where I teach, I got an afternoon to sit down with him. I was to probe his mind.
I arrived at the Philippine Consulate General on Pali Highway some ten minutes earlier than the schedule, with an Observer staff photographer in tow.
There was light rain on the streets. Towards the west, two rainbows displayed their spectacular colors as if announcing to all those who would like to watch that in the days ahead so many good things will come for the people of the Philippines.
I went straight to the main door, past the consular offices.
Not far away, two men got out of a car.
I have not met Consul General Torres before and I had no idea how he looked like. One of the men wore a green long-sleeved barong, the verdant color of life. I knew right there and then that he is the new consul general.
“Are you coming for the interview?” he asks.
“Yes, sir,” I respond. “I have a schedule with the new consul general. At two.”
“You came on time,” he says. “We just had lunch.” He offers his hand.
“Thank you for giving in to my request,” I say and I shake hands with him.
He lets us in into a huge receiving room by the first floor of the consulate general. A portrait of President Benigno Aquino III hangs on a wall that leads to another inner room that I have become familiar with because of a previous media briefing I had to attend prior to the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in November.
From a stint at the Philippine Embassy in Jordan as the ambassador for about three years, Consul General Julius Torres comes to us with a fresh vision of what it is to serve the people of the Philippines everywhere.
His more than thirty years of career service with the Department of Foreign Affairs plus a hands-on experience as press officer of the late Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo have prepared him to go where his service is needed.
He has been all over, with postings in a number of embassies: Bucharest, Saipan, Brussels, Canberra, Koror, and Toronto. His degree in journalism and his training in civil law, both at the University of the Philippines, came in handy in his various posting, able to merge both the requisites of diplomacy and the need to take good care of Filipino citizens in these places of assignment.
He did not plan to become a career diplomat.
Fate had it that he would become one when, at the height of his activism during the now famous First Quarter Storm, a time when the basic rights of people existed as a fiction during the dark days of Martial Law, he resolved not to give in to the temptations of becoming a factotum of big business, the economic structure that has closed all avenues to giving a fair chance to the people of the Philippines.
He understood the meaning of capital, and the need to put in place the economic infrastructure of the Philippines state.
But he did not approve the unjust ways of exploitation and dehumanization, concrete realities he himself had seen as a young student of Philippine Science High School where he received his initiation into the just cause of fighting for the basic rights of the people.
Instead, he vowed to serve the people by going into public service.
There are a number of things that are clear to him—and one of these is that his service to the people of the Philippines would never be negotiable.
It is a commitment wrought in stone.
It is a commitment wrought upon realizing full well that the need to create a just and fair society for the people of the Philippines remains an ideal worth pursuing.
This was to be his motive for going into public service, for joining the diplomatic corps.
He came from a town in Zambales that spoke Zambal and Ilokano.
But it is Zambal that stuck to him, with some ability to converse in Ilokano when forced, but not confident enough to carry a good conversation. It is in Zambal that he is most at home with, the language of his family, the language of his place, the language of his people.
He knows of the importance to picking up the Ilokano language to serve the majority of the Philippine population in this state.
He says he is looking for someone who could teach him the rudiments of good, and effective, Ilokano. He says he is ready to learn.
From PSHS, he moved to the University of the Philippines at Diliman, and there registered for the sciences, in chemistry, for his bachelor’s.
But activism had its own energy in those days of disquiet in the late 70s, when life was snuffed out from the minds of the young people looking for a chance to contribute their talents and gifts for the homeland.
The dark night of misrule raged on, and its own rage got into his young heart.
He began to speak the language of social change, of democracy that had substance, of liberty that spoke of the good life for everyone.
Awakened to the realities of an indecent regime with its indecent, abusive ways, he resolved to take part in the struggle, for which reason forced him to drop out of school for a time and take part in activism in a more meaningful way. It would take him several years before going back to college, and finish his degree in journalism, instead of chemistry.
Journalism and its emancipatory promises led him to the doorstep of then Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo.
There, he would be trained in the rudiments of writing, public relations, and public administration.
It would also open his eyes to the possibilities of a government service.
He took the Foreign Service examinations while in law school, and he passed. That was to be the beginning of his work in international relations and the end of his dream of becoming a lawyer.
We exchanged notes on our experiences.
There were serendipitous circumstances that led to the crossing of our paths.
While a faculty at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, I had my office fronting the avenue that was used to film Ruben Torres’ life.
The film, Kadre, would star Cesar Montano, and I watched the shooting from my window, curious as to how they used fire trucks to simulate rain dripping from the dense branches of rain trees that formed a canopy along the oval that stretched from the famous naked man in oblation by the administration building and back to University Avenue.
Julius D. Torres the consul general is the younger brother of Ka Ruben, the famous kadre.
The older brother is known for his earlier activism, and for the political leadership that he played during the early days of the Aquino Regime, right after President Marcos’ ouster from power.
I did not know the connection before that—and the serendipity began.
We talked of the FQS, when I was still in the province as a mute witness to the political activism of those priests and college students of the better colleges of my small city in the North.
The governor, Elizabeth Marcos, would paint the walls enclosing the capitol in pristine white. When the police people were not looking, the activists would turn the while walls into a canvass of rage and denunciation, the big words, in red paint, I would memorize.
“You were involved?” I ask.
“Only the deaf and mute would not be involved.”
“Were you afraid?”
“We were. But there was no other choice.”
“Do you regret?”
“No. My only regret is that I had to go back to UP to finish my degree. Nine years before getting my degree.”
“Is this activism the same energy we expect in Hawaii?”
“It is. And more. My stint in Jordan taught me valuable lessons. I had to fight for our people. I had to fight the people who were not in the know. Our people’s right to live the good life is non-negotiable to me. You cannot just simply say that we have to stop deploying our people. We do not have many options in the Philippines. And even if we officially say that, our people would figure out a way to go to Jordan illegally. In that way, they are at the losing end. In that way, there was no means to protect them. The best option is to negotiate with Jordan. And I did.”
“What is your view of our foreign affairs?”
“We ought to have a lean and mean bureaucracy. And an efficient one. We want trained professionals who know the merits of multi-tasking.”
“If you were offered the job of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, would you accept?”
“I would do anything to serve our people.”
We talked more about our people, the prospects for a better homeland, the blighted lives of our wretched poor.
And we talked about the Ilokanos in Hawaii, their enduring spirit, and their capacity to survive.
Observer/Jan 2012
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
An Exclusive Interview with the Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr.
Mahalo to a Consul General—
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
Observer
Nov 2011
The Honorable Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. retires
by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Photographs by Ie Agcaoili
Cover photo courtesy of Philippine Consulate General
When he came back from a posting elsewhere, we said in our 2009 Fil-Am Observer feature story that his was a narrative of service coming full circle.
He had served as a deputy consul general in Honolulu in the 80s, during the most difficult political times, when loyalties were divided, and the nation was in its ‘days of rage and nights of disquiet’, as one writer has described in a book about this period of contemporary Philippine history.
After the political turmoil, a new team came over to Honolulu; he was posted elsewhere.
Immediately prior to his second Honolulu posting he was the Philippine Ambassador to East Timor, then a newly independent country.
On July 29, 2009, he came back after almost two decades of absence as the consul general.
I interviewed him at the start of his term.
It was a first meeting, and right on, I hit it right with him, the tone of our conversation crisp and light, the texture of our words that of the breezy and gentle wind of the northern Ilocos where we both came from.
I got to know him from afar, from a press release, from a consular announcement, and from second-hand information I gathered from acquaintances; he did not know me from Eve.
During that first meeting, he in his dark and crisp barong, and I in my jeans and rolled long-sleeved shirt, we seemed like long-lost friends reuniting, laughing and exchanging notes about many things from Ilokano poetry to diplomacy and democratic institutions we sorely needed as a people.
It was a delight speaking with him.
In that interview, I came to know of the integrity of the man.
At the height of the struggle for the basic rights and freedoms of the people of the Philippines everywhere, he resolved an ethical dilemma by siding with the Filipino people.
It was service to the people—that commitment he was sworn to protect—that moved him to do the most difficult of all acts.
And history would prove him right.
He did not regret taking sides with the people; it was the most honorable thing to do.
The second interview was on a Sunday morning, on October 29. It was to be at his official residence by a ridge east of Honolulu city proper.
We came in on time. The consul general opened the door for us.
He was helping prepare a late breakfast for a couple, a newlywed from the Philippines, the bride his godchild.
We declined his offer of breakfast; we accepted the steaming coffee he himself brewed.
Here is an official of the land so down-to-earth, so easy to reach, I thought.
He is still the same official I interviewed more than two years ago.
“I have a trepidation with interviews like this one,” he emailed me back when I asked him for a schedule. “I do not usually grant one. But I trust you. And I trust that you will do justice to your material.”
“This interview is the Fil-Am Observer’s way of thanking you for the good work that you have done to our people. It is our way of saying goodbye to you as well,” I explained as soon as we sat down, he facing the balcony of his official residence where below the ridge the sea spreads boundlessly, the sea calm and blue, serene and unmoving.
I sit across him, facing the entrance and towards a two-lane road that slopes down at about 40 degrees. Beyond are the stately homes in this part of the city and county of Honolulu.
“Your coming back to Hawaii for the second time to complete your work as a career diplomat is a blessing,” I said.
“It is so,” he answered. His voice lilted, like a musician’s, soft and sure, confident and caring.
His face brightened up, perhaps thinking of his retirement that will come in a few days, right after the visit of President Benigno Aquino III. “It is very rare that diplomats are given a chance like the one that I have. When the Secretary of Foreign Affairs called me to say that I would be posted in Honolulu and that I had to leave my ambassador’s post in East Timor, I thought that this was a blessing. I enjoyed my work in East Timor. I had good working relationships with the political leaders of that country right after their independence, after going through their most difficult test as a country, and leaving them was something that saddened me. But I have fond memories of Honolulu and the Filipino people I would be representing. To come and serve them again is something that does not happen all the time.”
“You are coming full circle with your work as a foreign service official with this posting,” I remarked.
“It was one way of completing one’s career, one’s mission, one’s vocation,” he replied. “But I am going home after retiring. I will have another life. I will enjoy my new life to the full. I will be involved in a ministry.”
“What is home to you? Where is home?” I queried. I remembered all of the poets of the Ilokano people pining for home, remembering the Ilocos of old so many of them have never seen in a long while.
He thought for a moment, his pause that of a music coming into its most beautiful and haunting lyrics and notes. There is a musician’s mind and heart in the consul general, and that music would keep him company everywhere he was posted. “Home is where the heart is. Home is what we remember. So: geographically, it is Badoc, Ilocos Norte, where I was born, grew up, got educated. Then again, Manila, particularly Makati, is also home to me. I have a home there, literally, and I will stay there for a time as well. But home is also San Francisco’s Bay Area where my family is, my children in particular. In a sense, the entire Philippines is home to me. I must admit that I will have to fly to the Bay Area some of the time to reconnect with my family, with my children.”
“Was it difficult being in the foreign service?”
“I have no regrets. It was a good life. It was a good career. There is nothing nobler and more rewarding than serving our own people.”
“Do we have a hope for our country? People are quitting the homeland. Can you share your thoughts about this as a private citizen? You will soon be a private citizen. There is pessimism in the homeland. There is despair.” I took my cup and sipped from it. The warmth of the brew soothed my parched throat. We had talked for some time.
He sipped from his cup. And then he said: “Even as a private citizen, this I can say: there is hope for our country. We have to trust the current leadership. President Noynoy Aquino means well, and surely, he is showing us the way to do the right thing. I understand the pessimism. I understand the despair. I know of the figures of those who lead wretched lives. The act of doing sweeping changes to correct the errors of the past is not pretty, is not always pretty. But it is being done. We have hopes for the homeland. We have to keep on hoping for the homeland.”
“Is this hope the reason why you are going back?”
“One of the many reasons. But it is a major reason.”
“You said you are going to have your ministry.”
“I am thinking of putting up a non-profit organization for the elderly. The senior citizens have to have something concrete, some reasons to hold on to dear life, some ways to live meaningful lives. I will start this ministry in Badoc. This is to honor my parents who had to put up a lot for my education, for my future.”
“You have made a lot of strides bringing the consulate to our various communities. It is a huge footprint you are leaving behind.”
“To work for our people is always a challenge. When I came in, I simply followed the good deeds of my predecessors. And this I must say: the younger career officers have so much to give. They are oozing with talents and gifts and dedication. Older career officers like us—older senior diplomats like us—must give way to the expertise of the younger ones. The world is changing—and it is changing past. We leave behind a memory, and the fruits of the small things we have done. In the meantime, we look forward to the future and take stock of what we have yet to do so we can do them.”
“Your music will play a role in your retirement?”
“My music has always played a role in my life, both personal and professional. In all my postings, I always had a choir that I worked with. When I retire, music will not take a back seat.”
“Your message to our people in Hawaii? Our people in the Philippines?”
“Thank you for the opportunity of serving you. It was worth it, this life of service in the name of our people, in the name of our country. I am amazed at how our people in Hawaii are always on the ready to give back to our people in the Philippines. I have been part of various drives to help flood victims and other calamities. I have seen up close what kind of energy there is among our people in the state. About our people in the Philippines—there is much to hope for. Let us do the work of building our nation and soon, the good and equitable life will be ours.”
I gave Consul General Leoncio R. Cardenas Jr. a copy of the Contemporary English-Ilokano Dictionary I wrote.
“You sign it, please,” he told me.
“I already did, Apo,” I responded to him.
He flipped the pages of the dictionary to look for my dedication. He reads from my notes in my handwriting. “I will have use of this dictionary in my retirement.”
It was about noon when the interview was over.
We said goodbye to a man we are truly proud of.
Observer
Nov 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)