Angela Silva

Carmen Luz:

My husband, Fred (Alfredo Luz) was an architect who designed buildings in different parts of the world… Because he had dealings in Mexico, he was always (traveling there). Whenever he was there, of course, he knew people, so he would go to parties. And one of the parties he went to was at the house of the Ambassador and I guess your mom was in residence at that time over there. Then he went out to go to the men’s room or something and who was upstairs, calling him. He looks up, Helen, what are you doing here? LAUGHTER.

She was pregnant at that time with your younger brother. The story was that she went there to get a divorce. Nobody knew that she was pregnant, not even Fred. He came back to Vancouver and he said, guess who I saw. I said, who? I couldn’t guess. He said, Helen, I said, Helen who? Helen Silva. What’s she doing in Mexico? She told me that she was getting a divorce and she was very pregnant. She was very, very pregnant. She was alone. She was not at the party, but she was living at that house, Daddy Bacosa.

Your mother is a very frank person, you know, if anything she was always shocking all the Filipinos with her frankness. She would say anything, she told me about him. But I said, how do you expect this guy to stay with you when he’s married, the first thing on my mind was he’s married. She says, oh, but you know, well you know, things happen. (She was in therapy) and she was very mad at your dad and then she didn’t say anything anymore. She said that she had broken up with your dad, she had consulted this psychiatrist and then she got involved with this psychiatrist. I don’t know (who came on to who), I didn’t ask anymore… But then I was hearing stories in Manila, because by then your grandmother was upset, they wanted to, they were trying to make arrangements for her to be with somebody else, the shame, you know. In those days, it was a big scandal. Up to the 80s, it was still a big scandal.

That was the end of it, she was very in love with this guy, and she was so confident that this guy would just forget everybody, the American (girlfriend), whoever it was. And you know, I didn’t want to pursue the conversation too much because I didn’t know what exactly to tell her, you know. I knew that she wasn’t asking for advice. But then I was also at a loss on how to react to this.

Angela's notes:

The city of Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico dispensed "quickie" divorces very easily. Elena was represented by a lawyer, Tony did not show up to contest it (how could he, he didn't know), and the divorce was granted on September 1962. The three grounds for divorce: XVI: Abandonment of the home or marriage obligations for more than three months without justifiable cause, XVII: Separation from the conjugal home by one party for more than a year without the other party instituting divorce proceedings, and the ever-popular XIX: Incompatibility of temperament.