Fighting from a Distance: How Filipino Exiles Helped Topple a Dictator (Asian American Experience) - Softcover

Fuentecilla, Jose V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252079124 ISBN 13: 9780252079122

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2013

Synopsis

During February 1986, a grassroots revolution overthrew the fourteen-year dictatorship of former president Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. In this book, Jose V. Fuentecilla describes how Filipino exiles and immigrants in the United States played a crucial role in this victory, acting as the overseas arm of the opposition to help return their country to democracy.

 

A member of one of the major U.S.-based anti-Marcos movements, Fuentecilla tells the story of how small groups of Filipino exiles--short on resources and shunned by some of their compatriots--arrived and survived in the United States during the 1970s, overcame fear, apathy, and personal differences to form opposition organizations after Marcos's imposition of martial law, and learned to lobby the U.S. government during the Cold War. In the process, he draws from multiple hours of interviews with the principal activists, personal files of resistance leaders, and U.S. government records revealing the surveillance of the resistance by pro-Marcos White House administrations. The first full-length book to detail the history of U.S.-based opposition to the Marcos regime, Fighting from a Distance provides valuable lessons on how to persevere against a well-entrenched opponent.

About this title

About the Author

 

A native of the Philippines, Jose V. Fuentecilla emigrated to the United States in the 1960s. He has lived and worked as a journalist and editor in New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252079124
• ISBN 13: 9780252079122
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184