He proposed “an action group to help in the legal defense of deserving Filipinos who have applied for
political asylum,” presenting his successful asylum case as “a precedent for others to invoke.”4Eventually, however, feeling homesick, missing his wife, and
broke (he tried unsuccessfully to sell insurance), he yearned desperately to return to the Philippines. But he
had crossed a bridge. If he should return, he feared that Manila would trumpet his “defection.” It would be seen
as a defeat for his “freedom” group. He could not bear the thought of promising the regime that he would publicly
retract his letter in the New York Timesin exchange for safe passage. On April 6, 1975, he hanged himself
in his small apartment on Broadway in Manhattan. He was forty-nine years old.
The Philippine consulate in New York ordered the medical examiner not to release Beloso's suicide note,
ruling his death a result of “foul play.” The lawyer representing his next of kin had to go to the New York
Supreme Court to obtain a copy. In it, Beloso affirmed that he would not “surrender to the Dictator.” Loida
Nicolas Lewis, a Filipino lawyer based in New York, said that the “government has reason to obfuscate the suicide
of Mr. Beloso and to suppress his final letter. His act and his letter are Raoul Beloso's final political
statement of protest.”5
In 1975, Manglapus's own financial situation turned gloomy. A year earlier, he had obtained a position as a
visiting professor and senior research associate at Cornell University in New York. That job was now coming to an
end, and he “was not sure where [he would] find a new one…Trickles [of funds] from Manila had stopped.” All three
boys were in college; Bobby and Francis were at Cornell, where the costs for both exceeded $15,000 a year,
whereas Manglapus's take-home pay from Carnegie was barely more than $20,000. To make ends meet, Pacing ran a
children's daycare center in their residence. In a letter to Bobby and Francis, he warned them that they
might have to drop out of school and look for jobs. Raulito was facing the same prospect. “If we pull together,”
Manglapus wrote, “we will manage to see this through and get you your education. But you will have to help. I am
sorry that I cannot do better. Perhaps one day something will turn up that will make things look brighter. But it
is not yet in sight.”6
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, based in Manhattan, eventually offered Manglapus a position as a
senior associate in its International Fact-Finding Center program. The director, Charles Maynes, said that the
post was designed to provide “outstanding foreign affairs specialists an opportunity to study pending
international conflict situations and produce policy-relevant reports.”7While at Carnegie, Manglapus applied for a fellowship with the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Maynes approved his study proposal on non-Western democratic traditions. Because the International Fact-Finding
Center is partly financed through congressional appropriations, the U.S. State Department exercised its leverage
as a member of the board. The department's Office of Philippine affairs stated that “it was deemed
inappropriate for the U.S. Government to appear to be subsidizing a person who is actively engaged in activities
directed against a government with which the U.S. Government enjoys friendly relations.”8The board vetoed Manglapus's application. In a letter to U.S.
Ambassador to the Philippines William Sullivan, Maynes objected that the rejection was “dictated by political
concerns, not academic merit,” adding that not only was it “incredibly petty for the State Department to prevent
a former Foreign Secretary who has been friendly to the United States to pursue scholarly activities,” but it was
also “politically unwise since at some point this kind of official pressure is bound to come to the attention of
the Congress with acute embarrassment for all concerned.”9Manglapus applied again the next year, and for some reason the department had
“progressed to a passive position,” wrote Chicago Sun-Timescolumnist Charles Bartlett. “The official line
goes ‘We don't think it's a good idea but we won't fight it if the fellowship is voted by the
board.’”10By that time, Manglapus's
proposal had been accepted by the New York–based human rights advocacy group Freedom House, for which he received
a grant.
There had been an earlier episode in 1973 to block a fellowship grant, that time from the Ford Foundation. Marcos
must have learned about it, because “he tried to pull the grant from under me by availing of [chairman Henry
Ford's wife] Cristina Ford's friendship with Imelda,” said Manglapus.11In a biography of Ford by Victor Lasky, the author wrote that Henry Ford
himself had contacted the directors of the Ford Foundation about the grant. “Asked about this by the
Washington Post, the Ford Motor Company confirmed that in 1973 the Chairman ‘did receive an inquiry on Mr.
Manglapus.’”12The foundation “rejected Henry
Ford's soundings for a review,” Manglapus said. But he found it “curious,” Lasky wrote, “that his fellowship,
amounting to $12,000 out of total disbursements that year exceeding $100 million, had been personally reviewed”
by Ford.13In his column, Bartlett wrote that
“Manglapus did not find a particularly warm reception in this country because people and institutions preferred
to keep their relations with Manila.” It was a mindset that Manglapus deplored:
In politics, the old saw goes, there are no friends—only allies. But in exile we exiles, we are not really in
politics but in the universal struggle for democracy and human rights. Among our friends and allies are members
of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, their aides, sympathetic U.S. government officials,
American churches, organizations and individuals. The most potent bloc of sympathizers is perhaps the U.S. media.
Our only real enemy in America is a state of mind—that myopic, condescending, indeed criminal notion that
democracy and human rights are a Western invention which is sometimes unsuited to non-Western cultures and must
be sacrificed for the sake of the brittle “stability” of dictatorships necessary for the military and economic
interests of the United States of America. Many U.S. policy makers are still locked into this state of
mind.14
It must be noted that by holding the Manglapus family hostage, Marcos was able to muzzle an opponent who he knew
would likely lead an exile opposition group. Indeed, during the almost six months that they were held, Manglapus
had to hold his fire lest they be harmed. A number of his more vigorous anti-Marcos Senate colleagues were among
the first to be imprisoned. As soon as his family was out of the president's clutches, he fired his first
salvo—a speech titled “Facts and Fiction about Martial Law” at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on April
17, 1973. Over the next thirteen years, across the country and in Europe, his would be the most prominent voice
denouncing the Marcos regime.