CHITO STA. ROMANA (1948-2022)

I never met him personally  but I had known of the Sta. Romana twins, Chito and Nelin, since high school days in St. Scho Manila (HS’66).  I’d see the two, tall and lean in their La Salle uniforms, usually standing by the gate just inside the pergola (where we all waited for our sundô), meeting up (I assumed) with their Kulasa sisters Neni and Chona for the trip home.

In U.P. Diliman when student ferment rose to a pitch in the late ’60s, I would hear Chito’s name mentioned in the same breath as that of Ed Jopson — student leaders from conservative exclusive schools La Salle and Ateneo, who started out as “moderates” compared to the U.P. radicals of Kabataang Makabayan led by Joma Sison, and who were all part of the First Quarter Storm when students protested the guns goons and gold that won Marcos re-election in ’69, and warned about Marcos’s plans for a prohibited third term via a constitutional convention.

But first, Martial Law. In ’76 when Eman Lacaba, poet-turned-armedrebel was reported killed by government forces, and again in ’82 when it was the turn of EdJop (who had turned radical in ‘72), I wondered about Chito. When I heard through the grapevine that he was in China, stranded into exile, I was just glad he was safe. I wondered, too, about Nelin, but there was no one to ask.

I read of Chito’s happy homecoming in 1986, of course. But it was only in 2011, when friend Sylvia Mayuga posted on Facebook an article about her cousin Chito retiring from ABC News | Beijing, that I finally got to ask about Nelin the twin, and Sylvia assured me he was fine, too. It was good to know that both had survived the Marcos years.

In November 2011, I got email from Nelin. He heard daw from Chito that I had asked Sylvia about him on Facebook and we agreed to meet, as it happened, on the 25th of Feb 2012 at Via Mare | EDSA Shang where he treated me and Katrina to lunch. It was like catching up with an old friend (in a past life, for sure).

Then in August 2015  I needed advice. Was it a good time for Katrina to go on a junket to China, not exactly the Philippines’ best friend in PNoy’s time, what with China’s belligerent ways in the West Philippine Sea, reclaiming rocks, harvesting Philippine marine life, driving Filipino fishermen away. We reached out to Chito via Nelin and Facebook.

ME.  I hope you don’t mind but you’re the only China specialist we “know.”  Manila Times, for which Katrina writes a column, wants to send her to China end of the month. Given the latest medyo nakaka-praning statements from Chinese officials, I’m thinking it might not be a good time? It might compromise her, in some way? Attached are two pages of the invite.  [12 Aug 2015]

CHITO.  Hi Angela, the Chinese are evidently stepping [up] their outreach to Philippine media. I have met several Pinoy journalists who have either gone or are going on trips to China upon invitation by the Chinese embassy. All these are part of their public diplomacy campaign to improve their image in the Philippines. If Katrina really feels uneasy about going, then I would advise her to wait until she is up to it.  I think the China invites will keep coming in the months & years to come.

But if she has not been to China & would like to see the “other side of the story,” so to speak, then I think she should accept the invite. Having seen her writings, I actually think she can think & analyze independently and so I would advise that she go ahead with the China visit from the perspective of “knowing the other side & understanding their mindset” so as to better analyze & rebut their propaganda.

Of course I could not resist a tiny rant.

ME.  So now, parang they’re being nice and reaching out to our media, pero tuloytuloy ang pag-challenge sa Pilipinas over the Spratleys?  I wonder if it’s an indication of how pliant they think our media people are. Just thinking out loud.

CHITO. I do agree that the Chinese actions in WPS are unacceptable & will simply trigger a counter-alliance vs them. I usually divide the dispute into 3 dimensions: territorial, maritime & geopolitical. The maritime aspect will hopefully be solved or at least clarified by the Arbitral Tribunal, if at all. The tribunal cannot [resolve] the territorial issue & it will be with us for a fairly long time, while the geopolitical issue (US-Japan vs China) will probably escalate in the foreseeable future. Hence the need to understand the Chinese strategy, their mindset. Which is what I am hoping Katrina will gain from the trip. I have seen others who have returned & become “cheerleaders” for China, which I am confident will not be the case for Katrina. My two cents worth.  [12 August 2015]

On Day 5 of 7, Katrina sent email from Beijing that I forwarded, un-redacted, to Chito and, later, Nelin. As it turned out, she was with a media group mostly older than she, and mostly old hands at the China gig. Posting excerpts here [redacted by her].

KATRINA.  This is their standard junket yata. Parang they’ve been on these trips together often enough, and they were surprised that I was even here. And today, after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the talk with the Asian Affairs head, parang malinaw na rin that they are all anti-US … Feeling nila it’s important that the media is brought to China on trips like this, and China needs to give payola to media to balance out the money that America pays media raw … so that when they go back to the Philippines they can change the perceptions about China, etc. etc. And I’m like: lahat naman sila matatanda na and tainted na by their politics and biases. Too many of them are pro-Bongbong. May tendency rin to put down the Philippines among themselves.  … I want to tell nga the embassy girl na sana, next time, to get younger writers and columnists.

And oh my goodness, did I tell you? They fall asleep right in front of the people we meet with! As in humihilik and all. And P_ almost hit her head on the table as she fell asleep in front of the descendants of that Sultan of Sulu who’s buried in China. … And I get naman the ribbing and joking around. Pero talaga, minsan overboard. And the falling asleep in front of people. I wonder what the Chinese think of that.

Interesting naman that Tomb of the King of Sulu. But I don’t know that that specific moment stands for the kind of China, and the kind of Philippines, we are in the present. Oo nga, it was friendly, he died on his way back to Sulu and is the only foreign leader to be buried in China. And yes, his family members and descendants are Chinese citizens. Pero wala rin namang effort culturally for these descendants to care about the Philippines, or PH-China relations. Parang wala lang. May roots lang na gano’n. Tapos tapos na.  [11 Sept 2015]

CHITO. Thanks a lot, Angela, for sharing, Will keep this account “for my eyes only.” I did see a TV report on ANC by Willard [Cheng] on the Sultan of Sulu’s tomb in China, but didn’t know Katrina was part of the group. Her account of the visit is very interesting, insightful & extremely hilarious! She is right about the need to have younger writers be part of future groups. It must have been quite a scene to behold, to have the “seniors” dozing off & snoring during the briefings! Looking forward to Katrina’s columns & postings when she gets back. [13 Sept 2015]

When Chito was appointed Philippine Ambassador to China in 2016, it felt so right – like it was meant to be. It was where Chito pala was headed all along—from the First Quarter Storm to that first China trip, and exile, and immersion, and a lot of hard work and hard study that eventually made him the news bureau chief and scholar that he was, top of the heap, no less, in China studies and PH-China relations.

JAIME FLOR CRUZ.  Some three years into our forced exile, when Imelda Marcos visited Beijing, we received feelers through her Chinese hosts that she wanted to bring us home. Chito and our group thought the offer through, but quickly figured out the agenda of the dictator’s wife: she would bring us home as political trophies. We rebuffed the offer.

RAISSA ROBLES. [China’s Ambassador to Manila] Huang Xilian noted that Sta. Romana was “among the first Filipinos to visit the new China when he headed the visiting Philippine Youth Delegation in 1971”, after which he spent the next five decades as the country’s long-time resident, first as a student of Mandarin in Beijing, and then as ABC News’ China correspondent for over 20 years, before becoming the Philippine ambassador.

FLOR CRUZ. Chito mastered Mandarin, dived deep into China’s history and kept abreast with its current state of affairs. He made many friends and kept a rolodex of Chinese contacts. He learned how things worked in China—and why. He knew China inside out.

ROBLES. The late envoy played a key role in repairing once-tattered bilateral relations by advocating a more nuanced approach to the Philippines’ neighbour, after the 2016 arbitration ruling nullified Beijing’s claims to nearly all of South China Sea

FLOR CRUZ.  He knew, of course, that no one wanted the posting. “It’s a tough job,” he told me in a chat soon after he became ambassador.

In a last public address on March 5 this year, says Robles, the Ambassador advised the next president to hold firm to Ph’s strategy of engagement with China.

STA. ROMANA. It’s a combination of cooperation as much as possible, and pushback whenever necessary.

In private, John Silva, an old friend from La Salle days, tells of trying to find out how Chito felt about representing a government that’s at times indifferent to Chinese intrusion in Ph waters, and also the weakest of all ASEAN in safeguarding our territorial integrity.

JOHN SILVA.  Chito would reveal a nugget here and there and given Big Brother, the assumed bugging of the embassy, and the provided Chinese chauffeur, his remarks would be in near whispers.

The sum of his revelations were indicative of Chito’s style. He measured his comments so as not to be controversial to the listener. He though affirmed Chinese expansionism and rolled his eyes on the latest gaffes from the homeland, but that’s as much [as] one could expect from a diplomat.

I would have loved to see Chito rolling his eyes… over the latest gaffes once he was back in the homeland. Alas, he has gone ahead, gone too soon.

I wasn’t prepared for the sadness that came over me when I read of his passing. It is nothing, certainly, compared to the grief of Chito’s family and close friends, but grief nonetheless. The only other time I felt this kind of sadness was over the death of PNoy, whom I knew, too, only from afar. PNoy was a good man, he meant well. Chito was a good man, he did well. It’s all about nation.

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Remembering Chito Sta. Romana by Jaime Flor Cruz
Tributes pour in for late Philippine ambassador hailed as ‘good friend’ of China by Raissa Robles
Remembering Ambassador Chito Sta. Romana by John Silva