Richard R. Guzman

As part of mayor Richard Irvin’s One Aurora initiative, the Filipino flag was raised in Aurora, IL, on October 18th, 2024.  It was only the third time this has happened in the entire country:  in New York, 2022, in Los Angeles, 2023, and now in Aurora.  The VIDEO below shows about half of the full 23-minutes of video I shot on that day.  You can see that full video HERE, and read Steve Lord’s article for the Aurora Beacon/Chicago Tribune HERE.

In the full video you’ll get to see all of Kayla Tejero’s rendition of America’s national anthem, all of Lou Ella Rose Cabalona’s singing of the Philippine national anthem, all of Rev. Nancy Abiera’s invocation, all of mayor Irvin’s proclamation, and more of Clayton Muhammad’s wonderful emceeing.  Though I missed entirely a funny moment when Mark Taghap, Aurora’s chief information security officer, apologized to his parents for not becoming a nurse—a theme recurring throughout the ceremoney—The VIDEO below does capture a lot.  I’d call your attention to Abbey Tiu-Kemph’s history lesson, for example.  She was the one who mentioned that this was only the third Filipino flag raising in all of America.  “It’s only now that we’re being recognized,” she said, “but we’ve been a part of American culture for a long, long time.  This is a very signifying moment.”  She, like Clayton Muhammad noted that the first Filipinos landed in America on October 18th, the exact day of this ceremony—but in 1587!  More important, she gave historical context for why so many Filipinos are nurses and recommended a new documentary, Nurse Unseen, about how many Filipino nurses took care of COVID patients—and died doing so—during the height of our pandemic.  It was an emotional lesson for us all.

The VIDEO below also shows some of the many special guests who showed up.  Tejero, who sang the American national anthem, is, fittingly, a nurse, but also an author, model, and international performer, having won Aurora’s first Aurora’s Got Talent competition in 2012.  Lou Ella Rose is lead of the SamaSama Project, the Philippines’ premiere folk, pop, rock fusion band.  Besides the mayor, the deputy mayor and several alderpersons, were there, as well as many other leaders from the Chicagoland Filipino community.  I was even recognized, which I didn’t expect, and Rick gave me a shoutout as well at the end of his short remarks on being recognized with one of several PEARL awards.  (Steve Lord’s story ends with this detail.) The Philippines is often called the Pearl of the Pacific, though this PEARL stands for Philippine Excellence, Aurora Resilience, and Leadership.  It was Rick’s second big recognition in as many days, the night before being honored as one of the alumni of the year at his alma mater, North Central College. (Watch his acceptance speech HERE.)

PEARL Award winners. See the Steve Lord article (at link above) for full names.

All in all, it was a wonderful ceremony.  We Filipinos are often in-between people.  We’re caught in between pride in our homeland and in being Filipinos in the first place, and pride in being Americans, though we often feel lost in the vast juggernaut of American history.  This flag raising helps us find ourselves, though not entirely. Part of our uneasy stance is, in fact, that we have been so close to America for so long, and that closeness often compromises our sense of what being Filipino means.  Early on, the closeness was so tight that Americans referred to us as “little brown brothers,” a phrase both racist and endearing.  I’ve written a lot about this, and you can read some of that writing at the link below.  What comes to mind now is a line the late Anthony Bourdain says in what is perhaps his greatest television show, his episode on Manila.  “Beware pampered American rock star.  At any moment in the Philippines, there’s at least one person, and probably many more, who can step in and do your job better than you can, and with only about an hour of rehearsal.”  We’re often better at doing American music than Americans themselves.  But does this mean we’re too close to see clearly what makes us, at our core, Filipinos in the first place.  Many times it does.  Abbey Kemph mentioned the American program of “benign assimilation” towards the Filipino people, a program that in many ways worked way too well.

♦ See a partial index of all my writing on the Philippines HERE.