A Pinoy odyssey
Ode to the Filipino overseas, from the deserters of Manila-Acapulco galleons to the adventures of a Filipino family in Liberia
I find serendipity in people and the stories you never knew they could tell.
I have known Monic Ocampo-Herrera for over 10 years as we watched our sons play football together. In the course of our friendship, I found out something extraordinary about her—her family and their life in Africa when she was growing up.
When Monic was about two, her physician father moved his family to Liberia in West Africa to work for a lumber company, then a mining company. For 14 years, Monic explored jungles with her siblings and friends, experienced close brushes with wildlife such as waking up in the morning seeing various “big game” animal footprints in their backyard, encountering snakes and kicking them away with her foot, calmly waiting an hour as a swarm of killer driver ants passed through her childhood home, and at one point even going eye to eye with a big black wild cat.
Monic’s father is Dr. Oscar Marella Ocampo, a neurosurgeon who also specializes in tropical medicine. In 1968, when he was a resident physician at San Juan de Dios Hospital on Roxas Boulevard, he was offered a job by an American patient. His patient was an executive at a subsidiary of Getty Oil, Skelly Oil, which created the company Vanply with the goal of developing a large lumber concession in central Liberia. Dr. Ocampo was offered to be part of the pioneer group of medical officers looking after the employees, family members, and local residents in the area.
“It seemed like an adventure, with good pay and perks,” recalls Dr. Ocampo. “We (the Philippines) did not have diplomatic relationship with Liberia so obtaining our working visas was a bit circuitous. There was no OFWs, POEA, or OWWA at that time but the company took care of all travel arrangements. On Oct. 25, 1969, I got the plane tickets, so my wife Milabel and I left.”
A bold move indeed for the doctor, then 27, and his wife, then 24, even more so since they had to leave their children, Mei, two years old, and Monic, five months old, with Milabel’s parents. In 1971, the children would be reunited with their parents and live in Africa. “Having the family with me had the distinct advantage against homesickness,” adds Ocampo.
In the beginning, Dr. Ocampo was the only Filipino working in Liberia but soon he was able to convince the company to hire Filipino engineers, mechanics, and support personnel. “We were able to bring in about 20 Filipinos and some with their families,” he recalls.
At that time, Dr. Ocampo describes Liberia as a small country with vast natural resources (timber, oil, precious metals). Education, health, and the economic picture were wanting. The political situation was unstable due to discrimination against the natives by the ruling class or Americo-Liberians (descendants of freed slaves from the US) and tribalism.
Nevertheless, he remembers his years in the country fondly. “Our almost 15 years in Liberia was an adventure,” he says. “Close family bonding plus traveling a lot together was an opportunity not enjoyed by many.” Their time in Africa was also educational. "It gave the Ocampo family the opportunity to have close contact with people of different nationalities and cultures. Dr. Ocampo explains. “Most Liberians had no idea about the Philippines. Many thought we were the Philistines in the bible and that we all knew kung-fu, like Bruce Lee.”
In 1984, the Ocampo family left Africa for good. Political instability, including two civil wars in the ’80s and ’90s, drove most of the Filipinos out of the country. His daughter Monic says they have kept in touch with some of their Filipino friends from Liberia, who have mostly settled in the US, where pre-pandemic figures show there are a little over four million American-Filipinos. They are found in large metropolitan areas, but there are small communities too scattered all throughout the country.
The very first naturalized Filipino in America was Ramon Reyes Lala, an illustrado sent to London and Switzerland to be educated in the 1870s. He returned to the Philippines but soon after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution in 1896, fearing repercussions for being an illustrado, he moved to the US, where he was naturalized, the first Filipino to become an American citizen, though there had been many Filipinos who had set foot on American soil before him.
Three decades before the Pilgrim Fathers, the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower, arrived in Plymouth, Filipinos had already been there. The Pilgrims were fleeing England because of their religious beliefs. They landed on Plymouth Rock, now Massachusetts, in 1620. Spanish documents reveal, during the Manila-Acapulco trade (1565-1815), that on Oct, 18, 1587 the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Buena Ezperanza was on its way to Acapulco when it stopped by Morro Bay (Morro is Spanish for Hill) in what is now San Luis Obispo county in California to gather fresh water and supplies and conduct repairs on a damaged mast. While there, the crew clashed with the local Chumas Indians. The encounter resulted in the deaths of one Spaniard and one Filipino. The next time a Filipino would set foot in California again was in 1595.
The Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade lasted 300 years. Galleons plying the route were manned by Filipinos working and living in harsh living conditions—poor rations, disease, and low wages. Escaping forced labor and enslavement in the galleons, Filipinos started “jumping ship” in North America. The first recorded Filipino settlement was in St. Malo, Louisiana in 1763. Soon more Filipino settlements began to appear along Louisiana’s bayous. Manila Village in Barataria Bay became the largest.
Three decades before the Pilgrim Fathers, the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower, arrived in Plymouth, Filipinos had already been there.
Desertion became the norm due to harsh treatment and dangerous conditions experienced by the Filipino crew, who were forced into labor, on voyages between Manila and Acapulco. Filipina women were also trafficked. At one point during the 1600s, Filipino women comprised 20 percent of migrants from the Philippines.
Filipino sailors who managed to escape settled in Mexico. They married local women and began a new life. Recent DNA studies show one out of three people in Guerrero, the state where the city of Acapulco is located, has Filipino ancestry.
A large settlement of Filipinos, later known as Filipino Town, grew in Coyuca de Benitez along the Costa Grande of Guerrero. It was where the first ships from Mexico sailed to the Philippines on Oct. 31, 1527.
In the early 20th century, Spanish-Filipinos came to Mexico as refugees fleeing from General Francisco Franco’s dictatorial government (1939-1975) in Spain. The Filipino settlers in Spain go all the way back to the Philippine colonial period between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Most were Filipinos working on the galleons arriving in Mexico then migrating to Spain.
Filipinos have been moving around to all parts of the globe for centuries. As a people and as a nation we have a rich and deep migratory past that has slowly defined us as a hardworking, family loving and resilient people.