World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [1]
My love and thanks to Sophia and Louisa Chua-Rubenfeld for their patience and insights and for being my antidotes to despair.
Finally, I am deeply indebted to my agents Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu for believing in this project and to my brilliant editor, Adam Bellow.
INTRODUCTION
Globalization
and Ethnic Hatred
One beautiful blue morning in September 1994, I received a call from my mother in California. In a hushed voice, she told me that my Aunt Leona, my father’s twin sister, had been murdered in her home in the Philippines, her throat slit by her chauffeur. My mother broke the news to me in our native Hokkien Chinese dialect. But “murder” she said in English, as if to wall off the act from the family, through language.
The murder of a relative is horrible for anyone, anywhere. My father’s grief was impenetrable; to this day, he has not broken his silence on the subject. For the rest of the family, though, there was an added element of disgrace. For the Chinese, luck is a moral attribute, and a lucky person would never be murdered. Like having a birth defect, or marrying a Filipino, being murdered is shameful.
My three younger sisters and I were very fond of my Aunt Leona, who was petite and quirky and had never married. Like many wealthy Filipino Chinese, she had all kinds of bank accounts in Honolulu, San Francisco, and Chicago. She visited us in the United States regularly. She and my father—Leona and Leon—were close, as only twins can be. Having no children of her own, she doted on her nieces and showered us with trinkets. As we grew older the trinkets became treasures. On my tenth birthday she gave me ten small diamonds, wrapped up in toilet paper. My aunt loved diamonds and bought them up by the dozen, concealing them in empty Elizabeth Arden face moisturizer jars, some right on her bathroom shelf. She liked accumulating things. When we ate at McDonald’s, she stuffed her Gucci purse with free ketchups.
According to the police report, my Aunt Leona, “a 58 year old single woman,” was killed in her living room with “a butcher’s knife” at approximately 8:00 P.M. on September 12, 1994. Two of her maids were questioned and confessed that Nilo Abique, my aunt’s chauffeur, had planned and executed the murder with their knowledge and assistance. “A few hours before the actual killing, respondent was seen sharpening the knife allegedly used in the crime.” After the killing, “respondent joined the two witnesses and told them that their employer was dead. At that time, he was wearing a pair of bloodied white gloves and was still holding a knife, also with traces of blood.” But Abique, the report went on to say, had “disappeared,” with the warrant for his arrest outstanding. The two maids were released.
Meanwhile, my relatives arranged a private funeral for my aunt, in the prestigious Chinese cemetery in Manila where many of my ancestors are buried in a great, white marble family tomb. According to the feng shui monks who were consulted, because of the violent nature of her death, my aunt could not be buried with the rest of the family, else more bad luck would strike her surviving kin. So she was placed in her own smaller vault, next to—but not touching—the main family tomb.
After the funeral, I asked one of my uncles whether there had been any further developments in the murder investigation. He replied tersely that the killer had not been found. His wife explained that the Manila police had essentially closed the case.
I could not understand my relatives’ matter-of-fact, almost indifferent attitude. Why were they not more shocked that my aunt had been killed in cold blood, by people who worked for her, lived with her, saw her every day? Why were they not outraged that the maids had been released? When I pressed my uncle, he was short with me. “That’s the way things are here,” he said. “This is the Philippines—not America.”
My uncle was not simply being callous. As it turns out, my aunt’s death is part of a common pattern. Hundreds