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Alfonso Gaerlan Aquino, a product of Far Eastern University’s Institute of Arts and who cut his teeth in campus writing as a regular contributor to the university’s weekly student newspaper, Advocate, has joined Pinoy Watchdog as executive editor. He will work with managing editor Rene Villaroman — who also had apprenticed with Advocate as an editor — in charting the editorial outlook and direction of the fortnightly Pinoy Watchdog.
“My forte at the time was literary writing, so I contributed short stories and poems to the Advocate, the official campus paper of the university, later in 1958 to 1959,” Aquino said. “ I wrote a column called “Of Arts and Literature,” collaborating with a fellow student named Marcelo Mercado, who went on to become a national artist,” Aquino recalled.
When Aquino left school in 1960, he joined the broadsheet daily, Philippines Herald, as a cub reporter and left after barely 11 months for a higher paying job at the House of Representatives, Congress of the Philippines. “These years saw me going into politics (he served as Mayor of San Juan, La Union in 1976 to 1979, and Member of the Provincial Board in 1972 to 1976) and joining an underground newspaper called the Batasan Times during Martial Law in 1984, until I decided to move to the United States in 1987,” Aquino said.
Three months after he got settled in Los Angeles, he went to an interview for an editorial job at California Examiner, published by businessman-CPA Oscar Jornacion. Aquino said it was California Examiner’s editor-in-chief, Max Alvarez (now deceased) who interviewed him. “He told me that the policy of the paper was to avoid being involved in controversial issues and not to take sides in community wrangling and quarrels in organizations like FACLA (Filipino American Community of Los Angeles), no matter how obvious who was right,” Aquino related. Alvarez had asked him to bring in ads, “as if he knew I would answer ‘thank you, I am not joining.’”
“Those were his parting words,” Aquino recalled. He then met community leader and freelance journalist Larry Pelayo, and they became friends. “Larry asked me to write for his paper, the Los Angeles People’s Journal, which did not last long,” Aquino related. “So I was without a venue again.” The last writing position that he held was with the Los Angeles Monitor, which was published by former FACLA president Meng Gatus.
“My early exposure to the printed media led me to set my sights on becoming a writer, or at least, a newsman, when I was in my elementary schooling,” Aquino told Pinoy Watchdog. “I had a father who was very fond of reading books of literary writers like Theodore Dreisser, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Philippine newspapers and the Philippine Free Press Magazine,” the former FEU debating team member said. “In my sixth grade, I found myself picking up the papers and reading them after my father was through. In my senior year in high school, I became the school paper’s editor,” Aquino told PW. So when he began attending college in 1953, he was determined to become an English writer. While a student writer at his alma mater, FEU, Aquino also joined the College Editors Guild (CEG).
Aquino is married and retired and still lives in Los Angeles. He also brings to the position of executive editor years of experience in government service and civic and community involvement – he served as Vice President of FACLA in 1996 to 2000, Acting Mayor of Philippine Town, Inc. in 2008 to 2009; Chapter Commander – Order of the Knights of Rizal in 2007 to 2009; and Member-Moderator of Media Breakfast Club. – Rene Villaroman.
