PerryScope
by Perry Diaz 

My instant reaction would be: Hell, yes! But after really thinking about it, it is not an issue in this year’s presidential election. It has never been an election issue since the Rescission Act of 1946. I know that this is probably the boldest and perhaps the craziest reaction of a Filipino-American vis-a-vis the Filipino Veterans Equity bill.But what made me turn 180 degrees around — yeah, I flip flopped — was a “reality check.” Did any one of the presidential candidates make an issue out of HR …

Perryscope
By Perry Diaz
Across America, the Roman Catholic Church has been going through a change — a rejuvenation. The aging priests are being replaced by young ones and attendance in the Mass has increased. What is interesting is that the aging priests, mostly of Irish descent, are getting their replacements from a growing number of young Filipino priests. Some of them came directly from the Philippines. Some are the products of seminaries in the United States.
Filipino-Americans as a Catholic group is not as big as the Irish-Americans, the Italian-Americans or the …

Perryscope
By Perry Diaz
The word “barangay” as we know it today was different in the pre-Hispanic era. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the word “barangay” is derived from “balangay,” the name for the sailboats that brought the Malays from Borneo to the Philippines. Each “balangay” carried a large family group led by a leader called “datu.”
As the family groups settled on land, they continued to call their settlements “balangay” and eventually “barangay.” The typical size of an established barangay was around 50 to 100 families. Each barangay is an independent settlement. The …

PerryScope
by Perry Diaz

In 1976, a Filipino-American lawyer ran for mayor of Monterey Park, California, a Los Angeles suburb — and won! Mayor Monty Manibog served for three terms until 1988. Monterey Park at that time didn’t have a Filipino-American community.
In 1986, a young first-generation Filipino-American in a small New England town ran for mayor — and won! Interestingly, in that small New England town, the new mayor, Ed Portugal, and his wife were the only Filipino-American residents.
In 1994, Jon Amores, a young second-generation Filipino-American lawyer ran for the West Virginia …

PerryScope
by Perry Diaz
If the election was held today, Bush would have won with 321 electoral votes over John Kerry’s 200 electoral votes.  To win, Bush only needed 270 electoral votes.  That’s a 51 electoral vote margin that provides Bush with a comfortable buffer between now and November 2, 2004.
Of the 11 battleground states, four states are leaning to Kerry with a total of 32 electoral votes and seven states are leaning to Bush with a total of 94 votes.  The four states leaning to Kerry are Washington (11), Oregon (7), …

PerryScope
by Perry Diaz
Philippine history books have rarely mentioned our colonial relations with Mexico. Nueva Espana, as Mexico was named then, was seen as another colony of Spain.  True.  Both colonies were “discovered” in 1521 by Spanish conquistadors.  Ferdinand Magellan — who “discovered” the Philippines –  was killed in the island of Mactan by the local chieftain Lapu-Lapu.  In 1542, the Spanish explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas after Philip II, the future king of Spain.  However, Spain wasn’t too enthused in colonizing the far-flung archipelago. …