Some marriages are made in heaven; others, it seems, are made in hell.  This marriage was made in the University of the Philippines.

Letizia Fuentes Roxas, someone once wrote, typified the upcoming ilustrado generation of the good old prewar days. She was the only child of Judge Mamerto Roxas and Mercedes Fuentes of the Acuña-Roxas and Fuentes clans of Capiz.  In 1940, when the story of this marriage began, Letty was an accomplished pianist, a consistent full scholar at UP and a Corps Sponsor.  She also cut a graceful figure on the ballroom dance floor.  Her world was a happy whirl of social events and concerts, interspersed with some serious studying as she was aiming for a summa cum laude upon graduation.

The simmering cauldron of social discontent at that time left vivid impressions on youths who had witnessed these events.  One of them was Renato Constantino, oldest child of lawyer Amador Constantino of Bulacan and Francisca Reyes of Manila.  He was a graduate of manila North High School (now Arellano) – a public school renowned for student dissent and for the first strike ever against an anti-Filipino American teacher.  As a high school senior, Renato won the school’s oratorical contest with a piece entitled “How to Solve Our Problem of Social Unrest.”

In the University of the Philippines, Renato quickly gained fame as a star debater and as the fearless editor of the Philippine Collegian who dared to cross swords with President Quezon himself when he wrote an editorial denouncing Quezon’s proposal for a partyless democracy as a cover for one-man rule under a one-party system.  The year Renato was editor, the Collegian won the award for Best Edited College Paper in the country and his editorial entitled “The University and the Masses” was judged best editorial of the year.

Unlikely Match

This is the story of how the brilliant young dissenter met the campus socialite and how their union blossomed into a partnership of love and common commitment.

In the beginning, they did seem hopelessly matched.  Oddly enough, it was music that set off the initial spark.  The young man was pleasantly surprised to hear such a competent pianist.  She was impressed that his knowledge of the piano repertoire and classical music in general was even wider than hers.

It was not a typical courtship.  In fact, Mama Mer, Letty’s mother, once remarked that it was the strangest courtship she had ever seen.  Her daughter’s suitor would come to their house, she recalled, not with flowers or a box of chocolates, but with an armful of books for Letty to read and outline in preparation for the next visit.  It was, in a sense, a preview of what their marriage would be – where beyond the obvious love and affection they had for one another, there was this constant intellectual interaction and active affirmation of their common perspective.  Renato knew that he had found in Letty his lifetime partner, collaborator and colleague.

For her part, Letty knew, even then, that he would never barter his principles, even for the promise of a brilliant public career.  She realized that life with Renato was not going to be placid, safe or easy.  So that when she said “yes” to his proposal, it was with the unspoken resolve that she would stand by him always, against the world, if need be.

Soon the idyllic peace time days came to an end.  On December 8, 1941, the Philippines was drawn into World War II.  Renato went to Bataan to enlist.  After a stint in the foxholes, he was assigned to intelligence, and sent to Manila where he joined a group tasked to report Japanese troop movements to Corregidor.

Renato and Letty were married on November 21, 1943.  Determined to be absolutely independent from their parents, the young couple first lived in a rented room in the vicinity of what is now the Central Market.  Later they moved to an apartment owned by Renato’s parents, but insisted on paying exactly the same rent as the previous tenant.  They made a living by tutoring children.  Letty also gave piano lessons while Renato did some buy and sell on the side.  Letty happily lined up for rations of free rice.  They lived frugally and managed well.

New Threads

In September 1944, a new thread was woven into their lives.  Son RC was born.  By then, Renato had resumed his resistance activities.  RC was barely two months old when the new family had to flee Manila to escape a Japanese dragnet for the young father.

On October 20, 1944, General MacArthur and the Allied Forces landed in Leyte.  Among the Southeast Asian nations, only the Philippines called the period, “Liberation.”  Even as Americans were shelling Manila, Renato and Letty, with RC in tow, returned to the shattered city.  Renato took on various jobs and resumed his studies.  Upon graduation, he was appointed instructor in Political Science at the UP.  He was also freelancing.  The articles that he wrote then for various magazines contained ideas that he would expand and deepen in future writings.  As he wrote ardently and forcefully on the national issues of the time, Letty was there working with him, taking dictation and doing a bit of editing.  Over the years, her role would grow, as she grew.

The birth of their daughter Karina in 1946 was a second thread woven into their lives.  Politically, this was the period of strong opposition to the Bell Trade Act.  Renato’s early articles on leadership were earnest attempts to urge Filipinos to be more analytical, to question, and if need be to protest.  Even then, his writings on economics proposed alternative visions and goals.

In 1946, Renato joined the Philippine Mission to the United Nations headed by Carlos P. Romulo.  His three years in New York gave him first hand knowledge of how the Philippine government’s foreign policy flipped with every flop of US policy and how minor American diplomats treated our ambassadors as mere subalterns.

In 1949, the Constantino family returned to Manila where Renato, who was barely 30 years old at that time assumed the post of Counsellor of Department, the third ranking position at the Department of foreign Affairs.  He also taught political science, economics and international affairs in well-known universities.  Letty taught literature.  Newspapers and magazines vied for his articles.  He spoke before civic organizations and university students, and even delivered a series of lectures before the officer corps of the Philippine Constabulary where he raised not a few eyebrows when he advocated that the Philippines open diplomatic relations with all countries including the USSR, China and North Korea.  In 1950, he published his first book, The United Nations.

Persecution

In 1951, military intelligence agents raided his home.  No charges were ever filed.  Congress simply abolished his item and position.  Immediately, access to newspapers and magazines was closed.  He was hounded from one prospective job to the next by intelligence agents who visited his would-be employers and warned them against harboring a subversive.  According to the late columnist Ernesto Granada, Renato Constantino, at that time “was one of the most harassed intellectuals of the country.”

Effectively silenced, Renato and Letty contented themselves with helping others articulate ideas that might eventually free imprisoned Filipino minds.  During this period, Renato worked closely with the foremost nationalist of the post-war era: Claro M. Recto.

Senator Recto’s critiques of “Our Mendicant Foreign Policy,” “Our Lingering Colonial Complex,” his espousal of economic nationalism, his stand against the US bases – all these helped revive the spirit of nationalism.  Soon, Renato’s critical essays on Philippine society and politics saw print in This Week, Manila Chronicle and The Sunday Times Magazine.  When Recto ran for president in 1957, with Senator Lorenzo Tañada as his running mate, Renato managed their campaign behind the scenes.  In 1958, Recto would dedicate a book to him in these words: “To Renato Constantino, a patriot, nationalist, a great mind.”

After Recto’s death in 1960, the nationalist cause became suspect again.  Renato’s one-year appointment in UP as a professorial lecturer was not renewed.  Once more magazines refused to print his articles.

The fact that he was no longer teaching in UP did not deter his detractors from dragging his name in the 1961 Congressional hearings of the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities in its probe of alleged Communist activities in the State University.  He was pilloried daily in media.  However, the hearings closed without giving him a chance to testify.  No charges were ever filed but the purpose had been accomplished.

The early sixties was another period of enforced silence for the Constantinos.  By then Renato had become the director of the Lopez Memorial Museum.  It was during this time that he turned to the study of Philippine history.

By the mid sixties, he was back in harness.  His now classic essay, “The Miseducation of the Filipino”written in the late fifties, was finally published in 1966.  His Recto Reader and his first book of essays, The Filipinos in the Philippines, found a new audience in a younger generation.  For the couple, this was a time of vindication and prodigious output.

Renato’s political biography of Recto, The Making of A Filipino was launched on October 2, 1969, the 9th anniversary of Recto’s death.  It was a critical success.

As the decade of the seventies began, Renato launched his book of essays, entitled appropriately for the times, Dissent and Counterconsciousness.  Renato was again much in demand.  He spoke to packed halls in UP and other universities.  The Manila Chronicle asked him to write a regular column – a stint which ended abruptly in May 1972.  His hard-hitting columns on Marcos were regarded as obstacles to the Meralco rate increase then being sought by the owners of both the Chronicle and Meralco.  Rather than heed the advice of his publisher’s son to take a short vacation while the rate increase was being negotiated with Malacañang, he handed in his resignation – not only from the paper but also as curator of the Lopez Museum.  These were critical times.  He would not be muzzled.

The decision was taken with Letty’s wholehearted support.  She assured him that she did not regret the substantial loss of income.  She reminded him that they had lived frugally and saved precisely so that he could afford to stand by his convictions.

Within a few months, martial law was declared.  Renato was placed under house arrest.  After six months he was placed on probation, reporting to Camp Crame once a week, later once a month.  His final release came in 1975.

Dynamic Collaboration

Actually, it was during martial rule that the couple’s collaborative work intensified.  They devoted their energies to historical writing and research, having correctly deduced that history could make inroads into the people’s consciousness without incurring censorship.

Working together, they produced: The Philippines: A Past Revisited in 1975 and The Philippines: A Continuing Past in 1978.  In 1979, another landmark volume came out: The Nationalist Alternative.

Working side by side with her husband over the years, Letty cross-checked data and enriched her husband’s insights with her devil’s advocate’s eye.  She agonized over details, organization, rewriting.  As one article on the couple states: “He kept watch over the forest so that the trees she nurtured would not obscure or clutter its ultimate contour and purpose.”  Or as a former secretary of theirs so aptly described their collaboration: “Sir is the architect, Ma’am is the carpenter.”

“This sharing of ideas,” Letty once wrote, “is our own special key to a good marriage.”

A lifetime of hard work, the long sedentary hours at their desks, even surviving the stress and tensions of dark days would not have been possible without relatively good health.  Renato was always interested in athletics: track and field in high school, handball in the 1950’s, basketball, golf and tennis the last forty years.  Letty keeps healthy with daily walks and aerobic exercises.  In 1979 she even won the marathon race for women of the Scouters Walkers Club of Quezon City.

For intellectual stimulation and congenial company, they prize their membership in the Civil Liberties Union.  Renato became a member in 1968 and Letty in 1988 when CLU first opened membership to women.

The work they had started decades ago has not waned.  It has, in fact, increased.  Renato resumed column writing in Malaya in 1986, moved to the Daily Globe and Diyaryo Filipino in 1988 and to The Manila Bulletin and Balita in 1993.  So far, six volumes of his columns are in print.

In 1981, Letty initiated the Teachers Assistance Program under the auspices of Education Forum, a task force of the Association of Major religious Superiors of the Philippines.  It was an effort to make available to teachers supplementary materials on many different issues, but always from a nationalist, people-oriented perspective.  For eight years, she discussed, as the late critic, Alfredo Salanga commented, “with brevity and clarity, complex issues that affect our lives.”  With the publication of Issues Without Tears: A Manual of Current Issues, Mr. Salanga noted: “Letizia Constantino has come into her own.”

In 1988, various sectoral and peoples organizations joined together to form the national Movement for Civil Liberties.  Renato was elected Chairman at NMCL’s founding Congress.  The new organization had two memorable activities.  The first was the symbolic march away from EDSA and back to Mendiola.  The second was the anti-nuclear signature campaign launched on August 20, 1988 at the National Press Club.

Letty became a member of NMCL’s research Committee.  It was her idea to produce the NMCL Bulletin Board.  The project was a take-off from her work with Education Forum, this time aimed at a wider audience; therefore shorter, simpler.  Today, these one-page posters (in Filipino and in English) are seen all over the country, from Batanes to Tawi-tawi.

Vindication and Hope

Renato continues to write, unwaveringly espousing his beliefs and convictions.  Attacks on his person have not ceased.  They did not faze him then; they do not faze him now.  Neither do these aspersions on her husband affect Letty.  They have survived.

And there have been rewards – recognition has come from various institutions and organizations.  Among these are: the award for Nationalism conferred on him by the Civil Liberties Union in 1988, the Gawad Dangal ng Lipi from the province of Bulacan in 1989 and the Diwa ng Lahi from the city of Manila.  In that same year (1989), the Polytechnic University of the Philippines honored him with an honorary Doctorate of Arts and Letters, and in 1990, the University of the Philippines, his alma mater, a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

In time, a nationalist industrialization program, a genuine land reform program, a government which will not countenance foreign intervention in any form in the affairs of the state, a Filipino nation proud and strong will become a reality.

But Renato and Letty are both realists.  They know they will not live to see it all.  Well into what they consider their “twilight years,” they are thankful that good health allowed them to continue working, to watch with pride as their two children and their spouses contribute their respective talents to the cause of country and people, to see their grandchildren mature into sensible and sensitive young people.

Fifty years of growth and struggle, fifty years of writing, fifty years of welcoming with joy and pride a second, a third, a fourth generation.  To make a contribution “towards the emergence of the decolonized Filipino” was the loom upon which Renato and Letty had chosen to weave the fabric of their lives.

Letizia Roxas Constantino
Renato Constantino, Jr.
Lourdes B. Constantino
Randolf S. David
Karina C. David
Marika B. Constantino
Renato Redentor Constantino
Carlos Primo David
Kara David

Officers:

Chairperson-Letizia Roxas Constantino
Vice Chairperson and President-Renato Constantino, Jr.
Treasurer-Randolf S. David
Corporate Secretary-Atty. Adel A. Tamano
Managing Director-Renato Redentor Constantino
Executive Director-Marika B. Constantino

Now renamed the Constantino Foundation (CF), the institution is focused on developing diverse approaches that can continue to instill in Filipinos the idea of a usable history, where lessons from the past become active elements of the present