By Gian Camacho
Inquirer
THERE is no other family I know of that’s as intensely defined by international migration than mine. I haven’t encountered any other family as mobile as mine.
Beginning with my great grandfather, Gavino Camacho, our family has so far accumulated a grand total of 77 years of migration history, which effectively covers all three major waves of Filipino migration abroad.
Although the first generation of Filipino migrants could be traced all the way back to the Spanish colonial era, particularly during the galleon trade, the history of Overseas Filipino Workers is popularly divided into three systematic waves.
First wave
The first wave began from 1900s to the 1930s and was composed of pensionados, Filipino students awarded with academic scholarships to American universities, and agricultural laborers recruited by the US government to work in the vast sugar and pineapple plantations of Hawaii. My great grandfather Gavino belonged to this wave.
He used to work as a rig driver in our hometown, Bayambang, Pangasinan. Without much to live by with his and his wife Antonia’s earnings, my Lolo Gavino and several men in his barrio decided to volunteer as plantation workers in 1930, during the final years of the American government’s massive recruitment of Ilocano laborers for Hawaii’s sugar and pineapple plantations.
World War II
Because of Gavino’s departure in 1930, the family he left behind had to work hard to get by. My great grandmother Antonia’s earnings as local midwife weren’t enough to feed all her five children. So my grandfather Justo Camacho, with his siblings Bernardo, Calixto, Fulgencia and Clara, had to start working at a very young age.
My Lolo Justo can’t even imagine how they managed to survive all those years without a father to support them. All they had to rely on was the entire family’s pooled earnings and sporadic remittances from Lolo Gavino.
There even came a time when they lost all contact with Lolo Gavino after the Second World War broke out. It was only after the war that Lolo Justo and his siblings got word on Lolo Gavino’s whereabouts.
Through the help of Emmanuel Pelaez, then secretary of Foreign Affairs, they found out that Lolo Gavino was still in Hawaii. But with the good news that their father was still alive and well came the discovery that Lolo Gavino already had another family in Hawaii.
From that time on, the Camacho siblings realized that they really only had each other and their mother to rely on to survive. My Lolo Justo and his brothers and sisters began building families of their own and managed to make a decent living by becoming one of the pioneering families that went into onion farming in our Pangasinan hometown.
In spite of having no father to guide and support them, Lolo Justo and his siblings secured a relatively comfortable life for themselves and each of them found success and respectability in the town.
During Lolo Gavino’s absence, Lolo Justo and his siblings received a significant degree of prominence in Bayambang town through their renowned values of hard work and service.
Lolo Gavino’s last visit
Lolo Justo became the most respected captain of their home barrio for almost 30 years while his younger brother Calixto had a long and fruitful career serving the people as town mayor.
It took over 40 years for Lolo Gavino and his family in the Philippines to be reunited, but only for a brief period.
In 1971, my great grandfather returned home for a 40-day vacation, which turned out to be his last and only visit to the Philippines after moving to Hawaii. After seeing my Lolo Justo and his siblings getting by well enough without him, Lolo Gavino returned to his family in Hawaii where he spent the final years of his life.
It was my Aunt Lourdes, Lolo Justo’s eldest child, who spearheaded our family’s inclusion in the second wave of Philippine labor migration.
Armed with a working visa, Aunt Lourdes left for the United States in the early ’70s, and became part of one of the final batches of the second major wave of Filipino migrants.
Exodus to US
The migrants of the second wave were family members of first generation American labor migrants and Filipino World War II veterans who were given US special citizenship opportunities because of their service during the war.
Aside from these groups, post-World War II America experienced the immigration of Filipino professionals from the medical, nursing, accounting, engineering and other technical fields — this was the group in which my Aunt Lourdes belonged.
In 1980, she facilitated the migration of my Lolo Justo and his wife, Lola Monica to the United States.
In a slightly warped sense, 1980 turned out to be the right year for Lolo Justo to move to America because a few months after migrating there, Lolo Gavino died in Hawaii. Lolo Justo flew to Hawaii that same year to go to my great grandfather’s funeral and finally met his half-siblings there.
Third wave
After acquiring American citizenship in the mid-80s, Lolo Justo started taking all of his unmarried children (my father among them) with him to the United States.
Because it took a longer time to petition for the migration of married children, it was only two years ago when Lolo Justo finally completed sending for all his other children left behind in the Philippines.
With the departure of Lolo Justo’s children who stayed back in the Philippines at first, the series of migrations that my Aunt Lourdes started was finally closed. They are all in California now.
But the international exodus of my family did not end there. Some family members went on to join the third wave of Filipino labor migrants.
This third wave began in the mid-70s when the Middle East oil boom created a huge demand for Filipino contract workers. It’s is still going on at present and is now composed mostly of Filipino contract workers trying to meet the demands of the international labor market.
Some of my aunts and cousins joined this exodus of Filipino laborers to different parts of the globe. This effectively completed our family’s inclusion in all three major waves of Philippine labor migration.
These days, my Lolo Justo still finds it unbelievable that through our long history of migration, the entire family has found security and contentment in life.
Global Pinoys
Of his 16 children, 15 made something of themselves after grabbing the opportunity of a better life through overseas work.
Some of my cousins now work in Singapore, Hongkong, Taiwan and Dubai. (Four members of the fifth generation — a nephew and three nieces — are also based in California now.)
As for me, after looking back at the family’s labor migration history, it’s no wonder that the world of overseas Filipinos continues to fascinate me. Because of this fascination, the subject of Philippine labor migration continues to dominate my research work in school.
My immersion in a family made up of four generations of Global Pinoys, beginning from my Lolo Gavino down to mine and my cousins’, has certainly contributed a lot to defining who and what I am right now.
Gian S. Camacho, 21, graduated with honors from San Beda College with a degree in Philosophy last March. He has been admitted to the College of Law of the University of the Philippines this school year.
