IV
Olivia
“Redemption”
She told her driver to slow down as they pass the throngs of people demonstrating along the road by the Buhi Public Cemetery going to Tabao. She wondered where they would park, considering that every bit of space on the side of what would have been a provincial street is now filled with angry people. “Spare the dead!,” said one placard. “This is a holy ground, Father!,” goes another. “Pro-life Church is not just for the living!,” screamed another.
These people are gathered today in this part of town to condemn the decision of the Parish, after years of foot-dragging, to bulldoze the tombs near the road to give way to an improvement of the cemetery that was long overdue if you ask the Church administrators, and half of the town, but is a cruel, inhuman act to the other half whose tombs of loved ones are among those affected by the clearing.
The driver asked if they should turn back, but she told him to just find a place to park at the other end. It wouldn’t matter, and in fact would even be better, because it is at least closer to the Mausoleum of the Contradas of Buhi. Olivia smiled to herself how apropos, this dilemma about finding parking. It is very much what her life was all about. In every difficult situation thrown to her by God, or fate, she manages to find a way that ends up even better.
At the other side of town, in the plaza, the huge crowd that witnessed the oath-taking of the newly elected Mayor, has dissipated and thinned and all that was left was the crew now busy cleaning up the place. Olivia was there, and she witnessed how the man he helped and pushed to become Mayor of this town, with his wife, three children and one grandson, became the realization of what she has planned for a long time since that rainy, stormy day as a young girl, in that hospital bed, she promised to a dying old woman that she would redeem her name. Alejandro Contrada, scion of the powerful Contrada dynasty in Buhi, a retired professor of political science, a controversial columnist and vlogger, is now the Mayor of Buhi, Camarines Sur. He is the very first Contrada who would hold public office. The Contradas made name in politics as kingmakers. Now one of them has just been elected as local king.
Her phone rang and she picked it up. Alejandro was on the other side, asking her where she was. He had been badgering her to accept his offer to become the municipal administrator and serve Buhi by his side. She took that as an insult, actually. But she didn’t tell him that. How could she serve as a mere acolyte, when practically she made him what she is now? Administrator of a town, even if first class is just too beneath her.
The election campaign was nasty and grueling. The former Mayor Miranda Lavacoste was a popular figure in Buhi politics. A comely, plump woman like her easily won the trust and hearts of the people in her first two terms. Alejandro, on the other hand, while nationally prominent, was nevertheless far detached from Buhi politics. It was only the year before the elections that he decided to register as a voter in Buhi, his birthplace. And this has always been his main handicap, one that Miranda played against him. After all, Miranda never left the town. She started her political career as a youth leader active in the Kabataang Barangay, which she sustained even when she was spending most of her time in Legazpi City to pursue her education degree. After finishing college, she taught at the Buhi North Central School even as she continued to engage in issues that concerned the people of the town.
In contrast, Alejandro left the town to pursue his career. After attending high school at the Ateneo de Naga, he went to Los Banos to pursue a course in Agriculture, and from then on decided to live a life far from Buhi. He considered Buhi as a place to visit, but not to live. He taught for 14 years at the state university, after which he went on to pursue graduate studies abroad, this time in political science as a Fulbright scholar in Berkeley.
Alejandro’s life has always been hounded with controversy, not because of corruption, but because he had in his blood the aggression of the Contradas which he took from the genes of his father Bienvenido’s family, but with a healthy dose of having a heart for the oppressed and the downtrodden which his mother Honorata and his maternal grandfather Gregorio, the former guerrilla who read Marx, have obviously bequeathed him. He was articulately assertive, which offended a lot of people because it came out as arrogance to a society whose virtue is carved from quiet acquiescence. But his heart for taking up unpopular causes, or of becoming the voice of those who refuse to speak out of fear, or even out of convenience, may have made him public enemy of those who are in power, but greatly endeared him to the ordinary people.
Wherever he went. Alejandro became the champion of those who serve, and who are ordered around. He may have ruffled the feathers of University administrators, but he was a darling of the ordinary secretaries, utility workers, employees and low-ranked faculty members. He was a threat to the powerful, but a promising voice for the powerless. If there is one thing he learned from his father, it is the lesson of being kind to lower-ranked employees for these are the people who you can rely upon as the eyes and ears, and their loyalties are always genuine if you also genuinely care about them.
This landed him in trouble. Upon his return from graduate studies, he rejoined the faculty as a vocal, assertive voice who constantly questioned management prerogative. His principled stance on issues made him the target of institutionalized bullying by those with small minds who just happened to be given temporary power.
Alejandro came from a family of powerful women, from Valentina Contrada to Maria Segunda Contrada to Honorata Contrada. But as it turned out, his main tormentors were also women in power. Two women, one of whom was even his friend, connived and conspired to have him suspended for trumped up charges of plagiarism, which his research assistant actually committed but he had no heart to sacrifice as a lamb to be slaughtered. Another woman, who happened to be another close friend, and who occupied a position of power and authority, threw her weight around to have his application for leave denied at a time that he already left the country in connection with his engagement as a visiting scholar in Harvard. This particular woman was actually more sinister, since Alejandro felt that her acts of bullying was driven less by her adherence to policy, but more because of sheer envy that Alejandro was more productive as a scholar, and was getting promoted at a faster rate, and obtained his PhD earlier than her, despite her being older and more senior in tenure.
Alejandro was thus forced to resign from the state university, and moved to a private university in Manila. His tormentors did not allow for him to peacefully resettle, as they hounded him with nasty letters, some of which were anonymously sent, to the owners and administrators of this university, who fortunately ignored them. Alejandro’s career as a political scientist flourished in his new home. He also took more prominent roles in running the school, from being appointed as research director, and later to dean of the biggest college. Two years before he retired, and decided to take up a more active role in electoral politics, Alejandro became the President of the faculty association of his university, where he successfully led a series of negotiations that benefited the welfare of his colleagues. His legacy was unassailable, and to the minds of many faculty, beyond compare.
Alejandro Contrada was as controversial, as he was endearing. In the last 2016 elections, he began acquiring a prominent notoriety, or fame, whichever side of the political divide the person making the judgment may be located. He was one of those who got involved in the expose on the anomalous patterns that marred the Vice-Presidential election between Bongbong Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo. Eventually, Robredo won not only the count, but the Court when Marcos elevated his defeat to its attention and consideration.
Alejandro became the target of much vilification by the elite class, including many from academe, some from his own university. He was accused of being a Marcos apologist, and a historical revisionist, when the truth of the matter was that his position was born more from his science and not from partisan politics. Alejandro, after all, has always been governed by his adherence to the rigors of his academic discipline. His controversial positions propelled him as he took on a career in newspaper column writing, and in social media microblogging. He became one of the most sought-after political commentator and analyst in the country.
He is one person who either you love and adore, or you hate.
It is this Alejandro that Olivia saw. Their first encounter was when her services as a PR consultant was procured in connection with the electoral protest by Marcos against Robredo. She couldn’t resist following the social media posts and commentaries of this controversial professor. But if there is one thing that drew her to him, it is less about his prominence, or infamy in his political opinion, many of which she disagrees with. He is a bleeding heart liberal while she is a conservative. It is more of what she saw in his name. Contrada. And it just brought back, like water rushing, a lot of poignant, and yes, painful memories. Particularly most memorable are the memories that came out of a dying old woman she knew.
Olivia Lim, at 45, has made a lot of money, that she is probably one of the undocumented richest woman in the country. She made fortune not only from the inheritance she got from her father Benjamin Lim who made fortune in shipping and trade, mostly from China. In fact, such money she saw more as a burden. She was not really made to run a business trading things. She hated the fact that her father forced her to take up a double major program in La Salle on business and accountancy. Her real passion was in making people famous, and not just make money. She wanted to go into advertising, or in communication, or even journalism. But her father wouldn’t hear any of her protestation. There is no money in journalism, he screamed at her. She would take up business and accountancy, his powerful voice boomed.
Had she been any younger, she would have ran to her great grandmother, Lita Lim, who would probably have more heart to understand her dreams. After all, what she knew of her is her story of struggle and survival. It was Lita who practically built the shipping empire that her drunkard for a husband Luis Lim left when he accidentally fell off the port of Batangas in his drunken stupor and drowned. Some people even say he was actually pushed to his death by a jealous stevedore who was furious that Luis was having an affair with the man’s wife.
She still remembered his grandfather Felipe talk about how her great grandmother, penniless and unknown to many already one-month pregnant with him, arrived in Batangas looking for another Chinese man. She spoke very little Tagalog, but her Asian beauty radiated beyond the disheveled hair and the unmade-up face, and drew a lot of men to her. As she entered the port, the men, like wolves ready for the kill, circled around her. Many of these men were starving not only for food but for something else, something that Lita can give. “Leave her alone,” a voice reverberated. “She is mine,” said Luis Lim, the most feared by every man in the port. Luis made money from smuggling contraband from China. He had strong connections with politicians in the Commonwealth, and even the Americans. He rescued Lita not out of chivalry, but simply because he also lusted for her.
Luis Lim took in Lita more as his kept woman, than his wife. And people in the port have always wondered why right after the very day he took Lita away from the men, that he began abusing Lita and treated her like a slave servant. On many days he would beat her up. It was only revealed later that Luis found out that Lita was no longer virgin, and that she was already pregnant. Disgusted, Luis wanted to throw out Lita then, but decided to keep her. He needed a servant. And she can very well serve his sexual needs. It is in this life that Felix was born, as a bastard son of Lita taken in by one of the most feared Chinese in Batangas. Luis’ abuse towards Lita was inherited by Felix. The boy did not feel any love from Luis. All he got was a daily dose of abuse, the same way Luis treated Lita.
And as Luis’ business expanded, and so did his alcoholism and his debauchery, and his being deep in debt because of his gambling, that when he fell off the Batangas port and drowned, mother and son both heaved a sigh of relief. Their seemingly endless suffering, from the daily physical assault to the verbal and emotional abuse, ended. The number of cracked bones Lita and Felix bore in their bodies, as imprints of Luis’ cruelty, are just too many to count. And it was over. At age seven, Felix has become the only heir to a shipping company about to collapse in debt. And it was Lita, the kept woman who years before wandered into the cruel hands of a drunkard, who saved it from collapse, and turned out to be astute and skilled in running the business. Lita Lim, straight from a life of hell with Luis, became the richest woman in Batangas and soon in the country.
Olivia misses her great grandmother. She was the only one who understood her, even when she was little. As a people person, who loves to observe others, she was always in deep awe as she gazed at her beauty. But she can also tell that despite her stature and her wealth, as the matriarch of the biggest shipping company in the country, she bore a lot of scars. And she was not just referring to the physical scars left by the abusive husband she had, but emotional scars. Olivia’s vivid memory of her great grandmother is when she saw her holding a picture of a man, caressing it gently as she gazed at the horizon. She knew where she kept that picture. That man must have been important to her great grandmother, someone she probably loved so much, but someone who must have also caused her so much pain. And she knew it was not Luis. He was someone else.
She remembered the words her grandmother whispered to her as she lay in her death bed. She admonished her to follow her dreams, and not the dictates of others. Then she pointed to a box on the top of her dressing table beside her bed. She motioned her to get it, and she did. She asked her to come closer. And she whispered something else that forever was etched in her memory.
And she thought of that everyday of her life. It brought her to search for people around Batangas, and in Quezon City. And it led her to a treasure trove of a bitter story of a woman whose life demanded redemption. She promised her great grandmother that she would not fail her.
Making Alejandro Contrada Mayor of Buhi was not an easy feat. True enough, he was well known nationally. He has a wide following in social media, and his thrice a week column is one of the most popular in the newspaper he was writing in. He has the heart to serve the interest of the downtrodden, seen most vividly every time he takes up an unpopular cause, or be the voice of someone being given the raw end of a deal, when he could very well just keep quiet. It is in taking up these unpopular causes that he ends up terribly misunderstood. Olivia Lim knows these. Alejandro is terribly misrepresented as a Marcos apologist, when he could very well be a defender of any politician as long as it aligns with what he perceives as right.
Convincing Alejandro to enter politics was the easier part. But he has no money to finance his campaign. This, and the fact that he is seen as one of the staunchest critics of Leni Robredo, who was running for the Presidency. And Robredo is from Bicol. Alejandro would be a hard-sell in a town in a province whose warring political leaders, from the Fuentebellas to the Alfelors and the Andayas, have all thrown their support behind their fellow Bicolana. Alejandro would not even have a chance even if he just runs for the post of the Barangay Captain of Santa Clara in Buhi. But nothing is impossible for Olivia Lim.
Alejandro is known to the entire country as a fearless voice of reason and impartiality. His columns are well-researched and his social media posts are fair. But in local politics, it would mean nothing. Thus, convincing him to run, and making his wife Joanna agree to it, are a breeze to Olivia. She has landed PR contracts more difficult than convincing a retired political science professor to serve his hometown. In fact, she has managed PR campaigns for local brands that brought internationally renowned celebrities. Her network of engagement and influence spans the world, from the Americas to Europe to Asia. She has satellite offices in Paris, San Francisco, Honolulu, Seoul, Bangkok, Lima and Dubai. She carries her name as her brand. Olivia Lim. No frills, no additional platitude for a company name. Just her name. The recent contract she landed is to promote Afghanistan as an investment paradise, and she took it knowing she will be able to wing it. After all, she is Olivia Lim, great grand daughter of Lita Lim, a woman who became the richest shipping magnate in the country, despite being scarred by an abusive husband and a past full of painful secrets.
Learning the secrets of her great grandmother just made Olivia even more less desirous of men, and of relationships. Even before, she had very little appetite to be in long-term relationships. For her, men are synonymous with ambition, and it pleases her so much that her services are valued by men who are consumed by ambition, whether in business or in politics.
The headwinds against Alejandro’s candidacy were so strong. His main competitor Miranda Lavacoste is no pushover. She is well-loved, and best of all, remained as a loyal resident of the town. Alejandro left Buhi to pursue a career. Miranda is a pink warrior, actively campaigning for Leni Robredo, just like any Bicolano politician running in office who actually mattered. Alejandro was painted as a critic of Leni Robredo. That alone is enough to bet against him. And he did not have money, as he refused to openly endorse Bongbong Marcos and join his party. After all, doing so would be political suicide in Bicol, and Olivia also strongly advised him not to align with Marcos for practical political reasons.
But Olivia Lim is so determined to make Alejandro win. Her tenacity is what made her what she is now, defying her father’s wishes to run their shipping business after graduation, and deciding to start her own PR company from scratch. She is the Olivia Lim who was treated badly by known advertising executives of companies she later competed with. This is the Olivia Lim who mobilized everything and anything to win a contract, and it gave her additional pleasure if the one she outwitted and trashed are those companies, and those advertisers and PR persons who bullied and maltreated her when she was just starting in the industry. To show how good she is in turning trash to gold, she managed the career of a former porn star who ended up winning the Oscars. She just made a dictatorial regime in the middle east look nice in the eyes of the world, as she successfully painted over their inhuman treatment of their women with gloss images of their idyllic desert villages, and turned it into a tourism haven. She can start a hashtag and easily make it trend without any effort. She can make Alejandro win.
She badly wanted Alejandro to win, not for anything else, but because of a memory and a promise she made when she was a little girl. She told him she was able to get the money, without telling him it was her own personal money, her own fortune, that she was spending, masked as donations from some people she knows and who owe her much enough to allow their names to be used as dummies.
After all, elections in the Philippines, particular in local races, are all about who can outspend the others. And Olivia Lim endowed Alejandro’s campaign with enough cash that Miranda lost in an avalanche of votes from people who preferred Alejandro’s ten thousand pesos over the pitiful five hundred bills handed out by the Lavacoste camp.
Alejandro won in a campaign of shock and awe. Olivia shocked voters with cash and awed them with PR glitz.
Olivia Lim made Alejandro Mayor of Buhi. This man from a lineage of powerful women was made Mayor by another woman. He who was bullied by powerful women in her professional life has been turned into a political superstar by Olivia Lim, an equally powerful woman. Working behind the cameras and the limelight has always been Olivia’s trademark. She doesn’t advertise her presence. And there in that less visible place she turned Alejandro, who was running for Mayor in this provincial town, into a national figure, amplifying his presence not only in local platforms. She even landed Alejandro an interview with Christianne Amanpour in CNN and a front-page prominence in many online and print platforms.
But the best thing that came with Alejandro’s victory is that it fulfilled Olivia’s promise to redeem the pain of someone she truly loved.
She still remembers looking at the dead body of Lita Lim, and the secret she whispered to her ear. She looked at the picture of the man who she saw her caress with gentleness as she looked at the horizon. And she saw the face of Alejandro Contrada who looked exactly like him.
How can he not look like him?
She had so many questions, and she blamed her great grandmother for dying without telling her the entire story. She grew older, finished college, started her own company, became rich and famous. But her desire to get the entire story, and fulfill the dying wish of her great grandmother remained burning in her mind, and in her soul. Her father Benjamin, and her grandfather Felix were all clueless, except for a name Felix provided, a man named Antonio Contrada. He may have the answers.
And she looked all over for Antonio Contrada. She asked around. Every Contrada she encountered she asked if he or she knows an Antonio. She always come out empty handed. The Antonio Contradas she came across, and there were many, are the wrong ones, just namesakes. She showed to many people the picture of the man her great grandmother kept in a box like a guarded secret, a picture she lovingly gazed at and caressed, but she stopped short of making a public announcement. She ended up hiring private detectives to help her in the search.
And then, one day, one of the private detectives called to tell her he found a man who may have the answers. On the day he met Anthony Lee, she immediately noticed his resemblance to the man in the picture. Anthony Lee showed him another picture of the man, this time with two other men, in front of a boat in Batangas pier.
“That man you are looking for, Antonio Contrada, you will never find because he already changed his name. He became Antonio Lee. And he is my grandfather. And died five years ago. He is now buried in Buhi. He is the son of the man you are looking for. That man, that man in your picture, the same man in this picture I am showing you, was Procopio Contrada, whose Chinese name was Lee Sia Co.”
And from these words truth flowed like a raging river. And the story of Lita Lim unfolded like a painful memory that needed to be rectified, more so that it contained a detail that had everything to do with Olivia Lim’s own bloodline, and her own origins.
And now, as she looked down at the tombstones inside the Contrada Museum, with the noise of the people protesting the impending clearing of the tombs of their relatives nearby, Olivia Lim is witnessing the rebuilding of her name, and that of her great grandmother, from the tombs of the dead Contradas.
She saw the name of Procopio Contrada, and of Valentina Contrada, and of Modesto and Maria Segunda Contrada, and of Bienvenido and Honorata Contrada. She also saw the statues of the two fallen Contrada soldiers who died in Bataan. And yes, he saw the name of Antonio Contrada, except that it was named Antonio Lee, a name he decided to take up when he ran away as a young boy, taken after the Chinese name of his father Lee Sia Co, in the care of a Chinese wife driven away by the second Filipina wife of her husband, abandoned by him. Antonio was that young boy who ran away to be with the young Chinese girl who he eventually married and whose lineage from where Anthony Lee, the man who told him everything, came from.
Olivia saw herself in that Chinese woman who stowed away in a truck with Antonio and that young Chinese girl. Devoid of money, and work, that woman begged a Chinese trader to take Antonio and the girl with her to wherever they are going. And as she watched the two board the boat in Lucena going to the port of Manila, she resolved to herself that she would take another journey, and another name, to look for a Chinese man named Artemio Contrada somewhere in Batangas, the cousin of the man who is the father of the child she is now carrying in her womb.
Lee Tan Cu became Lita.
And her search for Artemio led her to a living hell in the hands of Luis Lim. But in a twist of fate, it also made her the richest woman in the country at the time of her death.
Her son, Felipe, father of Benjamin, Olivia’s father, deserved to have a place in that Mausoleum. After all, he is the son of Procopio Contrada to Lita Lim.
And Lita Lim has every right to be there too.
After all, they should have been all named Contradas.
Olivia Lim was so pleased with herself. Now she can tell her great grandmother she can really take a rest. She fulfilled the wish Lita Lim whispered as she lay dying: “That man in the picture. His family. Find them. You are one of them. Show them that we are better.”
And as she looked down on the tombstones, she knew she had paid homage to her great grandfather Procopio, her great uncles Modesto and uncle Bienvenido, and all the rest of the Contradas.
“Lita Lim wishes to give her best regards to all of you,” she softly said.
She also paid homage to the Contrada women. She had nothing but respect for Maria Segunda and Honorata, and even for Valentina despite the way she treated her great grandmother. She knows had she been in the same shoes, she would have kicked any woman who would dare take away what was hers. Valentina was protective of her lands. Olivia will fight tooth and nail to protect her clients, her company and her legacy.
Olivia was ecstatic. She made Alejandro, great grandson of Procopio and Valentina, grandson of Modesto, and yes, even of Maria Segunda, and son of Bienvenido and Honorata Mayor of Buhi. And she has just started. She can make her President if she wants to. That would be for another day. Maybe in 2028. Alejandro would be 66 by then. But that would not be a problem. The President replaced by Bongbong Marcos was already septuagenarian when he was elected, and he was a mayor.
But first, Olivia has work to do, for now. Her office in Dubai just called. She has to take the first flight out and her secretary told her the private plane her company booked is now waiting for her at the Pili Airport.
Making Alejandro win pumped up her inner energy. She is now ready to manage a make-over of the Talibans in Afghanistan.
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