APPCU pays special tribute to Filipinos who have made efforts through time to strengthen friendly ties and promote mutual understanding between the Philippines and China using their respective advocacies and expertise in the various fields and disciplines of mass media and public service; trade and commerce; and arts, culture and the sciences.

Awardee in the Outstanding Contributions category – where individuals of lesser prominence than the Hall of Fame awardees but nonetheless made notable contributions to promoting and strengthening PhilippinesChina bilateral relations, friendship, cooperation and understanding – is Mauro Gia Samonte.

Samonte is a self-taught literary craftsman, screenplay writer, film director and a practicing journalist all the way into his octogenarian years.

In the early sixties, he dropped out of a civil engineering course at the Mapua Institute of Technology and through sheer hands-on methods proceeded to give vent to his literary pursuits.

His first fiction, “Forests of the Heart,” published by the Weekly Graphic in 1965, became the germ of a screenplay titled “Tag-ulan sa Tag-araw,” which actually teed off a phenomenal film scriptwriting career spanning more than two decades and contributing a remarkable number of the most memorable blockbuster movies of Philippine cinema totalling more than 50.

His “Burlesk Queen” was not only the top box-office hit but also the grand winner of awards in the 1977 Metro Manila Film Festival, garnering 11 out of the 12 awards in the competition, including the Best Screenplay award for himself.

He again won the Best Screenplay award for“Lumuhod Ka Sa Lupa”in 1987.

Samonte has always striven to inject his films with touches meant to arouse awareness for social ills. His “Daluyong at Habagat,” made in 1975 – in times of expected repression by the martial law regime – was cited by literary critic Petronilo Bn. Daroy in this wise: “‘Daluyong at Habagat’ is today what El Filibusterismo’ was during the Spanish colonial era.”

His “Walang Panginoon” was commended by former New People’s Army Chief Rolando Kintanar as impossible to have been done by someone who had not truly lived the hard life of a red fighter.

In 1970, Samonte had already established a name as a movie journalist, and as editor of Movie Confidential and entertainment editor of the weekly Nation, signature publications of the Amado Araneta-owned Makabayan Publishing Corporation, was already part of the company’s management committee. But the rank and file employees implored him to lead in organizing a labor union, and true to character, he lost no time acquiescing. They organized the Katipunan ng mga Makabayang Obrero (Kamao) which was forced to go on strike when Samonte as a result was fired from his job.

The strike led to the integration of Samonte into the mainstream of the national democratic revolution. He was eventually elected Secretary General of the Katipunan ng mga Samahan ng mga Manggagawa (Kasama), which was actually the legal front of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) for the workers sector. At the same time, he was designated head of the education department of the party group in Kasama.

The bombing of Plaza Miranda on August 21, 1971 found Samonte having a hard time reconciling the Sison-instigated popular notion that President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered the bombing with the fact that a wise leader that Marcos was would not do such a dastardly crime that would inevitably be blamed on him. Samonte started seriously questioning the Jose Maria Sison line, particularly criticizing Sison’s class analysis of Philippine society as contained in his book Philippine Society and Revolution for being a verbatim copy of Mao Zedong’s writings on the subject matter.

When Martial Law was declared on September 21, 1972, he was left to fend for himself when his unit was deployed to the countryside.

Realizing the futility of the revolution, Samonte decided to re-establish his stature as an entertainment journalist onward to start a film career. The fame he was surely gaining drew him once more to the attention of those persevering in the revolutionary struggle underground.

In 1977, both Jose Maria Sison and Bernabe Buscayno aka Kumander Dante were captured and incarcerated, and the leadership of the revolutionary movement fell into the hands of Rodolfo Salas aka Kumander Bilog as chairman of the CPP and head of the military commission and Rolando Kintanar as chief of the NPA.

In due time, friendly former members of Samonte’s initial unit saw fit to link him up with Salas, who took him back into the party with good standing.

In 1991, Sison, having been released by Cory Aquino and taking up refuge in the Netherlands, issued his “Reaffirm Our Basic Principles, Stand by MarxismLeninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Ostensibly meant to “rectify errors,” it was actually a document for summary purge of those going counter to Sison’s protracted people’s war. Author of a Nicaragua-type of city-based insurrection was Kintanar, to whom Samonte was directly responsible.

When Sison murdered Kintanar, it signalled to Samonte his ultimate severance from the entire Sisonite muddle-headed rebellion. He sees wisdom in Deng Hsiao Peng’s dictum: “I don’t care if a cat is black or white as long as it kills mice.”

Of the more than a hundred articles he has written in his column that deal with China, 50 have already been published in an anthology titled China, The Way, The Truth and The Life.

The book, evidently the main credentials for Samonte’s nomination to this year’s APPCU Awards, is just one of the things he has intended to do by which to help better Philippines-China understanding.

Among the things that remain a frustration for Samonte is the filmization of “Laurel,” a screenplay by which he intends to straighten out the many distortions of the real history of World War 2 in the Philippines. It is his firm belief that Sinophobia among Filipinos is caused less by their actual antiChinese sentiments than by the continuing cultural enslavement by Americans.

At 81, Samonte cannot but feel he is running out of time to still do the film. But, with China, hope springs eternal.