Rio Gonzaga

Rio Gonzaga (RREE-oh gohn-SAH-gah) is a first-person narrator. She recalls, from an unspecified time in the future, events of her childhood from the ages of ten to fifteen.

Joey Sands

Joey Sands, another first-person narrator, is named for the Las Vegas casino. Joey is effectively orphaned in early childhood when his mother, a beautiful sex worker named Zenaida, drowns herself. Joey has no idea who his father is, other than that he was a Black American soldier. A small-time pimp and drug pusher, Uncle, pays for the mother’s funeral expenses and takes Joey into his shack in the slum district of Tondo. Uncle teaches Joey to steal at the age of seven and arranges for Joey to have sex with a sex worker at the age of ten. Grown up, Joey works as a disc jockey at CocoRico, a club owned by Andres Alacran, a relative of the wealthy and influential businessman Severo Alacran. At the club, Joey meets prosperous foreign men, with whom he has affairs and from whom he sometimes steals drugs and money.

General Nicasio Ledesma

General Nicasio Ledesma (nee-KAH-see-oh leh-DEHS-mah) is an army chief who runs torture camps for subversives. His wife, Leonor, has devoted herself to a sacrificial life of praying on the cold cement floor of her tiny bedroom, fasting on water, and on “good days” doing charity work for the Sisters of Mercy orphanage. The general does not seem to mind, perhaps because he keeps a mistress, film actress Lolita Luna, who is always out of money and usually high on drugs.

Senator Domingo Avila

Senator Domingo Avila (doh-MEEN-goh a-VEE-lah) is the opposition party leader and father of Daisy Consuelo Avila. Senator Avila is assassinated.

Daisy Consuelo Avila

Daisy Consuelo Avila (kohn-SWEH-loh) is the daughter of Senator Domingo Avila. After winning a national beauty pageant, Daisy promptly becomes a recluse suffering from protracted crying spells. Finally, Daisy consents to an interview with Cora Camacho, host of the television show Girl Talk. Daisy denounces the pageant and shortly thereafter marries an Englishman, Malcolm Webb. The marriage founders, and Malcolm returns to England. Reputed to have fled to the mountains with her guerrilla lover, she is captured by General Ledesma and tortured and raped by all of Ledesma’s men except Pepe Carreon.

Romeo (Orlando) Rosales

Romeo (Orlando) Rosales (rho-MEH-oh roh-SAHL-ehs) is a waiter at the exclusive Monte Vista Golf and Country Club. He is shot by the police and then charged with the murder of Senator Avila. He is at the assassination scene, the SPORTEX department store, to break up with his girlfriend, Trinidad Gamboa, who works there as a clerk.

Pepe Carreon

Pepe Carreon (PEH-peh kah-rreh-OHN) is an ambitious man with a bad complexion who elopes with Baby Alacran, daughter of the wealthy Severo and Isabel Alacran. His army career is marked by rapid advancement to the position of aide to General Ledesma.

The Gonzaga Family

Rio Gonzaga: One of three main narrators; a young mestiza woman of Filipino, American, and Spanish ancestry; born in Manila but moves to the US.

Freddie Gonzaga: Rio’s father; married to Delores Gonzaga; an influential upper-middle-class businessman.

Dolores Logan Gonzaga: Rio’s mother; married to Freddie Gonzaga; a former beauty queen.

Raul Gonzaga: Rio’s older brother; he becomes a fundamentalist Christian minister at the end of the novel.

Belen Garcia Gonzaga: Raul’s first wife; they have three girls and she leaves him.

Erlinda Gonzaga: Raul’s second wife; they marry in a civil ceremony and the family believes they are living in sin because they do not marry in the Catholic Church; they have two girls.

Lola Narcisa Divino: Rio’s maternal grandmother; a Filipina; married to American Whitman Logan.

Whitman Logan: Rio’s American maternal grandfather, married to Lola Narcisa.

Socorro Pertierra Gonzaga: Rio’s paternal grandmother and a widow; she is a Filipina but lives in Spain; her deceased husband Don Carlos Jose Maria Gonzaga was also Filipino but, like his wife, considered himself Spanish. She visits once a year and considers herself to be very “high society” (this is the title of the chapter in which she appears). Her character represents the Spanish colonial influence in the Philippines.

Cristobal Gonzaga: Freddie’s oldest brother; lives in Spain with Freddie’s mother; wealthy head of an import/export firm.

Esteban Gonzaga: Another of Freddie’s brothers.

Tita Menchu Gonzaga: Esteban’s wife.

Eddie, Ricky, and Claudio Gonzaga: Rio’s grown-up Spanish cousins; sons of Esteban and Tita Menchu.

Pucha Gonzaga: Rio’s flirtatious cousin; narrates one chapter at the end of the novel.

Agustin Gonzaga: Pucha’s father; Rio’s uncle, Freddie’s older brother; Freddie gets Agustin a job working for Severo Alacran.

Florence Gonzaga: Pucha’s mother and Rio’s “Tita” (aunt).

Miguel “Mikey” Gonzaga: Pucha’s older brother.

The Alacran Family

Severo “Chuchi” Alacran: Suave, powerful, and ruthless tycoon; considered the richest man in the Philippines.

Isabel Alacran: Former beauty queen; Severo’s wife.

Rosario “Baby” Alacran: Severo’s daughter; his only legal child.

Pacifico Alacran: Severo’s brother; he is the blind father of Girlie and Boomboom.

Blanca Alacran: Pacifico’s wife; she is deceased; mother of Girlie and Boomboom.

Boomboom Alacran: Severo’s spoiled nephew; brother to Girlie.

Girlie Alacran: Severo Alacran’s niece; runner-up to Daisy Avila in the beauty contest; when Daisy abdicates, Girlie becomes the winner.

The Avila Family

Senator Domingo Avila: A popular, left-leaning Philippine senator, leader of the opposition movement against the government; Daisy’s father; he is assassinated. His character serves as a symbol of Philippine resistance. He is patterned after Benigno Aquino, a popular leftist leader who challenged the authority of the Marcos Regime. Benigno Aquino was assassinated as he returned to the Philippines for political elections.

Maria Luisa Batungbakal Avila: Domingo Avila’s wife; outspoken and controversial professor of Philippine history.

Daisy Avila: Senator Avila’s twenty-year old daughter, a beauty queen who wins the Junior Miss Philippines contest; becomes part of the resistance movement.

Aurora Avila: Daisy’s younger sister.

Clarita Avila: Daisy’s cousin and a controversial artist; she and Daisy are close in age and are like sisters; Daisy’s father, Domingo, has paid for art lessons for Clarita and treats her like his own daughter; she becomes a revolutionary with Daisy at the end of the novel.

Oscar Avila: Domingo’s brother; Clarita’s father; he does not get along with his brother Domingo.

Delia Avila: Clarita’s mother; Oscar’s wife; she does not approve of her daughter’s erotic art.

Joey Sands’ “Family”

Joey Sands: A teenage Afro-Filipino hustler and DJ; young male sex worker, one of the three main narrators.

Uncle: Joey’s perverted “mentor”; a middle-aged drug dealer and pimp; Joey’s mother sold him to “Uncle” when he was a young child.

Andres “Perlita” Alacran: Black sheep of the Alacran family; a distant relative; drag queen and owner of the club, CocoRico, where Joey Sands works as a DJ.

Eugenio/Eugenia: A “genuine hermaphrodite” who was once Andre Alacran’s lover; dies mysteriously.

Zenaida: Joey’s deceased mother; “a whore.”

Boy-Boy: One of Uncle’s male sex workers and a sex show performer; grew up with Joey and is still Joey’s friend; helps the guerrillas later in the novel; helps Joey escape from the government.

Carding: One of Uncle’s protégés; petty criminal and male sex worker; grew up with Joey Sands.

Chito: One of Uncle’s protégés; petty criminal and male sex worker; grew up with Joey Sands.

Rainer Fassbinder: A gay German film director who has a brief affair with Joey Sands.

Neil: An American serviceman who has a brief affair with Joey Sands.

Sergeant Isidro Planas: A corrupt policeman who helps Uncle from time to time.

The Government

General Nicasio Ledesma: The cruel and powerful chief of the Philippine military; married to Leonor but having an affair with Lolita Luna; rumored to be either a half-brother or cousin to Senator Avila.

Leonor Ledesma: Deeply religious wife of General Ledesma; she is forced to marry the general by her elderly parents and her parish priest; constantly performs acts of penance hoping to absolve her husband of his sins.

Pepe Carreon: A lieutenant in the army, and General Ledesma’s protégé; marries Baby Alacran.

“The First Lady” (or “Madame”): The Philippine dictator’s wife, a former beauty queen, modeled after Imelda Marcos.

Father Jean Mallat: Nineteenth-century Jesuit priest, explorer, and author; snippets from his writings about the Philippines are included for realistic effects.

Jaime Oliviera: Brazilian ambassador who has an affair with Rio’s mother, Delores Gonzaga.

Dr. Ernesto Katigbak: A doctor and Emilia’s husband.

Dr. Emilia Katigbak: A doctor and Ernesto’s wife.

Joyce Goldenberg: Wife of the American consul; she is mentally unstable; she is Jewish and from California.

Howard Goldenberg: The American consul; he is Jewish and from California.

Trixie Goldenberg: Daughter of Joyce and Howard; Pucha and Rio think she is gay, but she marries twice and does not have any children.

Congressman Abad: A government official who cheats at golf.

Sylvia Abad: The congressman’s wife.

Other Characters

Romeo (Orlando) Rosales: Struggling, star-struck waiter and aspiring actor; is falsely blamed for assassinating Senator Avila; he is shot, brought to Camp Dilidili, and mysteriously disappears, possibly tortured and killed by General Ledesma.

The Widow Rosales: Romeo’s mother; she encourages Romeo to marry Trini, get a job, and forget about becoming a movie star.

Trinidad “Trini” Gamboa: Romeo’s girlfriend; she is several years older than Romeo; she is a ticket seller at the Odeon movie theatre who later works in the Alacran superstore SPORTEX.

Chiquiting Moreno: Gay hairdresser to Delores Gonzaga.

Salvador: Delores Gonzaga’s manicurist.

Uncle Panchito: Delores Gonzaga’s gay dressmaker.

Mimi Pelayo: Delores Gonzaga’s rich friend; her son is in a mental institution.

Malcolm Webb: A foreign banker who sees Daisy Avila on TV, falls in love with her, and marries her; they separate soon after.

Baby Katigbak, Baby Abad, Baby Ledesma: Daughters of the doctors Katigbak, Congressman Abad, and General Ledesma; these three girls are contestants in the beauty contest that Daisy Avila wins.

Santos Tirador: A revolutionary fugitive; twenties to thirties; meets Daisy Avila in her cousin Clarita’s art studio and falls in love with her; Daisy later runs off with him while still married to Malcolm Webb and joins him in his guerrilla hideout.

Steve: A foreign journalist that interviews “Madame” on a television program.

Lorenza: Rio’s maid and sometimes chaperone.

The Actors and Actresses

Barbara Villanueva: A soap opera actress.

Nestor Noralez: A soap opera actor.

Lolita Luna: A “Bomba” (soft porn) movie star, General Ledesma’s mistress.

Cora Comacho: A TV talk show hostess, “the Barbara Walters of the Philippines.”

Tito Alvarez: A popular actor; childhood friend of Romeo Rosales. Romeo is constantly trying to convince Tito to fulfill his promise and make Romeo a star as well.

Rio Gonzaga

Rio is one of the three main narrators. She tells her family’s captivating story through means of flashbacks so her recollections are filtered through the more experienced eyes of an adult. Her observations and assessments come across as sardonic and detached, rather than as innocent childhood memories. Rio is both an eyewitness and a dreamer, however. As the reader finds out at the end of the novel, her observations may be her own invention. Her cousin Pucha accuses her of purposefully mixing things up. The reader is left to wonder how much of the story is real and how much is invented. Perhaps Rio’s story is wishful thinking. Perhaps she has fashioned her own mental movie with her family as the actors.

Rio’s story begins when she is ten years old. She is a precocious young Filipina girl, a “mestiza” whose ancestors include American, Spanish, Chinese, and native Filipino people. Older-acting than her ten years, she pals around with her cousin Pucha, who is fourteen when the story begins. Rio is not interested in boys and loses patience with her cousin Pucha’s constant flirting. Rio is tomboyish and shuns her mother’s attempts to mold her into a proper Filipina woman who cares about her looks. Rio is conflicted. While she would rather watch movies and read books than have her hair and nails done, she also is mesmerized by her mother’s perfumes, creams and ointments, tubes of lipstick, jewelry boxes, combs and brushes, and talcum powders. She spends hours watching her mother “dress and undress, talk in hushed tones on the telephone” and give orders to the servants. She defies her mother’s warning to stay out of the sun, which will ruin her skin. “I love the feel of the sun toasting my skin,” she explains. Rio remarks that her mother often complains that she is strange, rebellious, and “an ungrateful little brat” who hates wearing dresses and going to parties, yet she also notes that her mother seems proud of her “precociousness” and worries about the negative influence the boy-crazy Pucha might have on her.

Rio is close to her maternal grandmother, Lola Narcisa, and sneaks off to her grandmother’s room to listen to the Filipino radio drama Love Letters with the servants. Unlike others in her upper-middle-class family, Rio is respectful of the servants and does not treat them as if they were invisible. Rio enjoys eating the traditional Filipino food that her grandmother and the servants eat with their hands in the tiny incense-filled room. She finds the fact that she can “weep without shame” over the soap operas and Tagalog songs “a delicious tradition” rather than something that “appeals to the lowest common denominator,” as Rio’s father states critically behind his mother-in-law’s back. As Rio matures, she moves into the modern age but maintains respect for the traditions of the past. Rio is a coming-of-age character searching for her identity among her varied cultural heritages. She is not always sure where she belongs and complains of having to “reconstruct her genealogy.” In this sense, her character is symbolic of the uncertainty of the postcolonial Philippine national identity. At the end of the novel, she still has not resolved her identity. By then, she has moved to America, still “anxious and restless, at home only in airports,” living in a limbo between where one comes from and where one is going.

Pucha Gonzaga

Pucha is Rio’s cousin. Except for a final chapter, everything about her is revealed by Rio. Pucha is fourteen when Rio’s narrative begins. Rio describes her as an “overripe” flirt with “overdeveloped 36B” breasts who enjoys the attention of boys. “Everything reminds Pucha of sex,” Rio reports. Pucha is Rio’s movie buddy. Chaperoned by either Pucha’s “ya ya” (nanny), Lorenza, or one of the girls’ older brothers, the cousins attend American movies and debate the virtues of American actresses and actors. In Rio’s narrative, Pucha becomes enamored with the rich Boomboom Alacran and embarks on a quest to snag him for a husband. Pucha acknowledges that Boomboom is a bit “gordito” (chubby), but he is rich, and that makes him “cute enough for [her].”

Pucha symbolizes the aspect of colonial Philippine culture that mimics the United States in that, like many Americans, she wants to forget the past. Pucha’s character is a foil to Rio’s. Unlike Rio, Pucha is comfortable with her upper-middle-class social status. She is not conflicted and knows what she wants out of life, although Rio believes her goals are shallow. Pucha would never be caught eating Filipino food with her hands. She is contemptuous of the Filipino servants, either treating them with disdain or as if they were invisible. She ignores her chaperone’s warnings and continues to flirt and carry on unabashedly with the boys in the Café España. Rio is often embarrassed by the way her cousin treats the servants and waiters.

Pucha wants to elevate her position even further by marrying into the wealthy Alacran family. Rio explains that “Pucha’s been climbing so fiercely since the day she was born.” Pucha and Rio have a “weekly manicure, pedicure, and complimentary foot massage” at Jojo’s New Yorker, but Pucha constantly complains about the “unpretentious beauty parlor with its modest neighborhood clientele.” She would prefer to patronize the ritzy salon of Chiquiting Moreno, hairdresser to the stars and to the first lady, but the girls cannot afford the exorbitant prices. Pucha assures Rio that when she is “Mrs. Doña Pucha Alacran” she will be able to afford a Chiquiting Moreno hairdo whenever she feels like it. It is “one of her goals in life,” Rio complains. Pucha is happy to ignore the Philippines’ colonial past and embrace the future as long as she can afford to go to Chiquiting Moreno’s.

The grownup Pucha sends numerous letters, “spelling errors intact,” to Rio, who is living in the US. Pucha has married Boomboom right after high school, a terrible marriage that does not even last a year. Boomboom “is insanely jealous” and locks Pucha in the bedroom while he plays golf, drinks, and gambles all day. He beats her and accuses her of being unfaithful. Pucha escapes in her nightgown to her parents’ house. Boomboom threatens to kill himself on Pucha’s front lawn. Pucha finally divorces Boomboom but keeps the surname “Alacran.”

Rio’s account of these events is very dramatic, almost like an American movie, but all very untrue, according to Pucha. Pucha gives her version of events in a final letter to Rio in the only chapter that she narrates. Rio’s story is all wrong. She never married Boomboom, she tells Rio. Her first husband was Ramon Assad. “You like to mix things up on purpose,” she accuses Rio. “If I were you, prima (cousin), I’d leave well enough alone.”

Delores Gonzaga

Delores Gonzaga is Rio’s mother. She is the daughter of an American father and a Filipina mother, a beautiful woman who is nevertheless ashamed of her mixed race ancestry. She keeps her ancestry hidden, just like she hides her dark-skinned Filipina mother, Lola Narcisa, while Lola lives with the family during her husband’s hospitalization.

Rio refers to her mother as “my Rita Hayworth mother.” Delores is a former beauty queen whose goal in life is to maintain her beauty. She is thin because she does not eat. She nibbles. Rio says she has “smooth skin, the color of yellow white ivory.” Delores avoids the sun and spends her days slathering on “cold creams and moisturizers” while taking daily naps “with masks of mashed avocado” and “red clay from France.” She has her hair tinted regularly at the posh Chiquiting Moreno salon. She meets weekly with her manicurist, Salvador, and her dressmaker, Panchito, who is also her closest friend. Delores’s husband, Freddie, detests Panchito and Salvador, calling his wife and her two pals “The Three (dis) Graces.”

Delores has a sexless relationship with her husband, and they fight often. The couple socializes together to keep up appearances. Delores is obsessed with keeping up appearances. They are both having extramarital affairs. They have violent fights. When her husband has a heart attack, she accusingly tells him that it is because he eats too much and his only exercise is “fooling around” and “sitting on his ass, gambling long hours at the poker table.” It is going to kill him, she complains, and she is “too young to be a widow.” Delores is dependent on her husband for her social status yet trapped by the marriage that allows her this status. She symbolizes the frustrated upper-middle-class Filipina woman whose role in society is defined by men. She is apolitical and does not play golf. She only goes to the country club to watch her lover play tennis.

Delores’s one sanctuary, ironically, is her bedroom. Here, she escapes her husband and gossips with Panchito and Salvador. She has designed it herself. Everything is mauve—drapes, bedspread, walls. The windows are boarded up and painted over, and the air conditioner runs constantly. When Delores looks at herself in one of the many mirrors, it is always night. In her cool, dark room, she can pretend that she is not aging; she can pretend that she is happy. When her friend Panchito calls it “creepy,” she explains that it is designed to “soothe her, like a womb.”

In Rio’s tale, Delores inherits money from her American father, becomes a successful artist, and moves to the US with Rio. Freddie loses all his money. Pucha’s version claims this is not so, that Freddie and Delores are still together and Freddie still has money. Perhaps it is only Rio’s wishful thinking movie version of reality that has liberated Delores from the trap of being a woman in the 1950s Philippines.

Freddie Gonzaga

Freddie is Rio’s father. He is a successful businessman who works for the Alacran family conglomerate. Rio describes him as a man of connections who can always find money and can always find a way out. He believes in “dual citizenships, dual passports, as many allegiances to as many countries as possible.” Although Freddie is Filipino, born and bred, he describes himself as being a visitor in his own country. His great-grandfather came from Spain, he informs his wife. She reminds him that his great-grandmother came from Cebu, Philippines. “It doesn’t matter,” he retorts. “It’s how I feel.”

Rio describes her father and uncles as “smug, mysterious men” when they are together. Like the Gonzaga and Alacran women, the men share the same characteristics and are symbolic of the patriarchal Philippine society that objectifies women. They pride themselves on being safe men, “not fools and not cowards,” men who, no matter what they are discussing—“real estate or politics”—“want to stay alive at all costs.” Somehow, Freddie is always able to know “which side is winning.” He is an opportunist who comes from a family of opportunists. “Adaptability is the simple secret of survival,” Freddie brags.

Freddie eats and drinks too much. He puffs expensive cigars and plays golf with his cronies at the Monte Vista Golf Club, where he is a “privileged member.” He is “polite and solicitous” to his mother-in-law, but he does not invite her to sit at his dinner table. He is as concerned with keeping up appearances as his wife. When his brother Agustin gambles away his inheritance, Freddie convinces his boss, Severo Alacran, to hire Agustin, mostly because having a deadbeat brother living nearby will reflect negatively on him.

In Rio’s story, Freddie is having an affair with a “starlet in Hong Kong” when he has a heart attack. His wife leaves him and moves to the US with Rio. Freddie loses all his money. Pucha’s story refutes this. It may only be Rio’s movie version of reality that has punished the symbol of oppressive patriarchy.

Lola Narcisa Divino

Lola Narcisa is Rio’s maternal grandmother. Rio describes her as a “small brown-skinned woman with faded gray eyes.” Lola Narcisa is a Filipina from Davao, the southern part of the Philippines. She has married an American, Whitman Logan, “a leftover from recent wars” who is ill and in the hospital when the novel begins. Lola Narcisa is convinced he is the only white man ever to be stricken with bangungot, the mysterious tropical disease that only affects men and which all of the doctors claim is “native superstition, a figment of the overwrought Filipino imagination.” While her husband is in the hospital, Lola Narcisa lives in the Gonzagas’ guest room, behind the kitchen. She prefers to eat alone in her room or with the servants. They all eat kamayan style (with their hands) salted fish and rice. Lola Narcisa is a quiet woman who rarely speaks. She does not always recognize who Rio is and is sometimes is surprised by Rio’s visits to her room, calling Rio by her mother’s name. She allows Rio to join her and the servants as they listen to the famous Filipino radio soap opera Love Letters.

Lola Narcisa’s character represents tradition, that part of Filipino history and culture that is fast disappearing in a country that idolizes everything American. Her room illustrates the value Lola places on the old ways. Over her bed hangs a crucifix and a painting of the Madonna, who, Rio explains, “is depicted as a native woman wearing the traditional patadyong.” The infant Jesus has the brown skin of Lola Narcisa. The sorrow of this disappearing Filipino culture is symbolized by the radio soap opera Love Letters, which Lola Narcisa loves to listen to with Rio. The plots are always sad and almost always, someone dies. The omniscient narrator states, “Our country belongs to women who easily shed tears and men who are ashamed to weep.”

Severo Alacran

“The King of Coconuts,” Severo Alacran is the richest man in the Philippines. His character is a symbol of the money, power, and corruption that exists in postcolonial Philippine society. Severo even tells the president what to do. He was once asked to run for the presidency himself. He collects expensive art and “rotting statues of unknown saints.” He plays polo and breeds horses. His home is a mansion, and he smokes expensive cigars. He flies his own helicopters and owns everything anyone would ever need. He is “short and smells like expensive citrus.” He is a self-made man with a beauty-queen wife. He has always wanted sons and has several illegitimate ones that “worship him, love him, plot against him.” His only legitimate child is a girl named Rosario whom everyone calls “Baby.” Boomboom Alacran is his nephew. Out of necessity, he has stopped drinking alcohol and eats a high-protein diet. He is obsessed with dying of cancer and worries that drugs might not be enough to alleviate his pain. He is occasionally impotent but brags about having sex with his servants to annoy his wife.

Severo is a “ruthless and ambitious” wheeler-dealer who does business with everyone. He is the wealthy power broker who ensures that a corrupt president and first lady will stay in power and pass laws favorable to his business interests. Like Freddie and Delores Gonzaga, his fights with his wife are legendary. Their arguments are shouting matches with flying objects, breaking glass, and shattering plates. Also like the Gonzagas, Severo and Isabel “would never consider leaving each other.” They, too, must keep up appearances. Severo is the king of phonies. He poses for pictures with a smiling face that turns stern as soon as the camera is pointed away. He appears on talk show host Cora Camacho’s TV program to dispel any negative images of himself, but no one is fooled. He is both feared and revered. He proudly informs everyone that the name “Alacran” means “scorpion” in Spanish.

Isabel Alacran

Isabel Alacran is Severo’s wife. She is a “stunning, selfish beauty with a caustic tongue.” Like Delores Gonzaga, she represents the oppressed 1950s Filipina, trapped by her gender and her marriage. Her mother died when she was young, and her father was a handsome petty hustler, also now dead. She was an incredible beauty but lacked talent, so she improved her social standing by marrying the wealthy Severo. She spends her time shopping, jetting around the world, and perfecting her English. She is at home in Rome and Madrid and “learns to roll her r’s.” Her goal in life, like Delores Gonzaga, is to remain beautiful and thin. Also like Delores, she is “an asset to her husband” at social functions, a manicured, oiled, massaged, exercised, pampered woman who invented another self, denying her past and focusing on the present. Hers is a marriage “made in heaven and hell.” Like the Gonzagas, she has fierce fights with her husband complete with broken glass, flying objects, and shouting. She and Severo are “exemplary Catholics,” however, and donate huge sums of money to the church.

Despite her contempt for her husband and their stormy relationship, she watches his salt intake, reminding him about “doctor’s orders.” Like Delores Gonzaga, she does not want to become a widow; that would ruin everything. Isabel has had her tubes tied after having one child, her homely daughter Rosario (Baby), whom she dislikes “and almost admits it.” When Baby announces her plans to marry Pepe Carreon, a soldier and protégé of General Ledesma, Isabel is horrified and will not allow it. Baby, in fact, is so awkward that she is lucky that anyone wants to marry her, but Isabel is more concerned with how her daughter marrying a soldier will make her look. She angrily tells Baby that she “detests army men.” Besides, Pepe is one of the ugliest men in Manila. “How could you do this to me?” she asks Baby.

The normally composed Isabel completely loses her composure over this impending marriage. For all of Baby’s life, she has been a detached, indifferent mother. Now, she can only stand “erect and dry-eyed” at her daughter’s wedding, the rage on her face “plain for all to see.” In Pucha’s version of events, Isabel dies of cancer in 1967.

Rosario (Baby) Alacran

Baby is the pathetic daughter of Isabel and Severo Alacran. She is “not exceptional or beautiful,” and she hardly speaks. Her inelegant body and awkwardness are a constant source of embarrassment to her svelte and sophisticated mother, Isabel. Baby is a burden to her parents but in turns bears the burden for their hypocrisy. Baby’s character is symbolic of the deformities of the postcolonial Philippines, and her parents represent the leaders of the country who are unsure of what to do about these deformities. At Baby’s birth, her mother gazed down at her new baby “curious but indifferent,” and her father’s look was “preoccupied, mysterious.”

The postcolonial deformities are illustrated by Baby’s various bodily evils. She has “a chronic case of eczema, seborrhea and God knows what else,” her mother complains. Baby shamefully hangs her head when she is constantly reminded that she is “not blessed with her mother’s presence and feline allure.” Baby is shy, soft, plump, and short, and she has acne. She has flat breasts, a narrow waist, big hips, and thick and muscular “peasant legs.” Baby bites her fingernails to the quick. She sweats profusely and must use men’s deodorant. She bathes three times a day, sometimes four. As a child of ten, when the sweating was really bad, she feigned illness so she would not have to go to school and confront the “stares of the nuns and her classmates.” The doctor blamed it on stress. Expensive powders and ointments were ordered from Europe, but they caused Baby to break out in “an extreme case of nonspecific tropical fungus.” Baby was unable to go to school for a year and had to spend her time in bed or in a wheelchair. Her mother thought she had leprosy and refused to go near her. “Think of your daughter’s body as a landscape, a tropical jungle whose moistness breeds this fungus, like moss on trees,” the doctor explains. He is talking about Baby but describing the country.

Baby carries on a surreptitious phone relationship with Pepe Carreon, a soldier. Pepe wants to marry Baby. Baby is not sure she really wants to marry Pepe, but she will, mostly to spite her parents. She is more in love with Pepe’s telephone voice than Pepe himself because he speaks to her with romantic words and phrases he has heard in American movies. Pepe never calls her stupid, whereas her mother shouts to her father, “Your daughter is dimwitted! She can barely read!” Baby’s father’s only response is, “You’re her mother!”

Baby elopes with Pepe on her way to school one day. Pepe has planned the whole thing. They run away to a secret location and send a note to her parents “setting out terms.” They announce that Baby is pregnant. When they return, her parents give them the wedding of the century, no doubt part of the terms of the note. This is Baby’s “small triumph, her only revenge,” but Baby is unhappy. Her wedding is described in a chapter titled “The Weeping Bride.” Baby wears a “spectacular white gown of silk and Chantilly lace.” The president and first lady are honored wedding guests.

After her marriage, Baby is miserable and uncomfortably pregnant. Her husband is never home. She languishes in bed watching Filipino soap operas and talent shows in Tagalog. She pessimistically chuckles, imagining what her mother would say if she knew she spent her days in such “sad and vulgar” pursuits. She becomes another spectator in a country of spectators, using the unreality of movies to remove her from the pain of her life.

Daisy Avila

Daisy is the daughter of the popular opposition leader Senator Domingo Avila. She is just shy of twenty years old when she is introduced by the third-person narrator in a chapter titled “Sleeping Beauty.” She is a beauty who has been “sleeping” politically. Daisy has just been crowned the most beautiful woman in the Philippines. After the coronation, Daisy plunges into depression. “Why am I so unhappy?” she asks herself. To be considered “exceptionally beautiful in a country overrun with beautiful women is a personal triumph.” She refuses to appear in public as required by the beauty contest sponsors. She cannot eat or sleep. In a chapter titled “Epiphany,” Daisy experiences a political epiphany. She appears on TV and relinquishes her title. Beauty pageants are a farce, she announces, “a giant step backward for all women.” She quotes her father and mother. She accuses the first lady of “furthering the cause of female delusions in the Philippines.” The censors cut her off immediately, but Daisy has already become a sensation, “as popular as her father.”

Daisy’s character is a foil to the gender-oppressed and apolitical characters such as Delores Gonzaga, Isabel Alacran, the first lady, and Cora Comacho, who all buy into the patriarchal view of women as objects, useful in social situations. Women have no role in politics, so the only way to obtain a role is to accept the “beauty contests are a gesture of national pride” philosophy. This convoluted idea is perpetuated by the first lady, who goes on national television to plead with Daisy to stop embarrassing not only the first lady personally but also the Philippine nation. Daisy goes from being an icon of national beauty to a symbol of national resistance, however, when she runs away with the revolutionary Santos Tirador. When Daisy is captured, tortured, and raped by General Ledesma’s men, she takes on the punishment of the resistance movement that she now represents. The general plays a soap opera in the background while his men rape Daisy. He watches the spectacle from the dark corner, the symbol of a government that allows others to rape the country while it remains aloof in an effort to hide its own guilt.

“Madame” (The First Lady)

“Madame” is the first lady of the Philippines, modeled after Imelda Marcos. She is a vacuous but conniving woman obsessed with beauty and keeping up appearances. She perpetuates the myth that women are valuable national symbols when they participate in beauty pageants. A former beauty queen herself, she encourages all women to follow her example.

Her character is a vehicle for the author to expose the blatant fraud and corruption of the Marcos regime. The first lady spends her entire life trying to foster and maintain beauty, encouraging beauty pageants and movie star lifestyles; meanwhile her country is falling apart. She denies there are any problems. “There are no real issues,” she protests. “Issues are conflicts made up by the opposition to tear my country apart.” The opposition, she says, “is ugly.”

Lolita Luna

Lolita Luna is a film actress, a “Bomba” (soft porn) star. On screen, she controls an adoring public. She has power. In real life, she is owned and controlled by General Ledesma. She has a second lover, a mysterious Englishman who never appears in the novel. The general pays for her expensive apartment and living expenses, but he complains that she is high maintenance. Their affair is “a messy one,” and Lolita is not very discreet. Their affair is high on the tsismis (gossip) list.

Their relationship is mutually exploitative. The general uses Lolita for sex, but Lolita uses him to support her and her young son, who lives with his grandparents. She is often under the influence of drugs when the general visits her, and she uses these drugs, which she calls vitamins, as a way of coping with his violent and demeaning sexual demands. She is yet another woman trapped by gender oppression and violence. Although her fans worship her and every young Filipina wants to be her, behind the scenes she performs privately as a sex object. If people knew the truth, they would not want to be her. She represents her country in the sense that she is oppressed, controlled, and violated. She is a commodity that can be bought and sold at the whim of those in charge.

Lolita fears that being the general’s well-known mistress will result in her mysterious death. It is all tsismis, the general tells her. Unconvinced, she begs the general to help her escape to America. She is tired of being a movie star, although she cannot explain why. “Surrender” and “Movie Star” are the two chapters that represent the dual nature of Lolita’s life. She is tired of doing both.

Joey Sands

Joey Sands is one of the three main narrators. He is an Afro-Filipino bisexual teenager and DJ who also works as a sex worker. Joey is the byproduct of American colonialism. He is the son of a Black GI and a “desperate, half-crazy whore of a mother” who sold him to a pimp named Uncle for fifty pesos when she could no longer feed him or herself. After that, his mother, Zenaida, drowned herself, and Joey grew up owned and controlled by Uncle. Unlike the other characters, Joey’s world is the subculture of the Filipino underclass.

Hagedorn creates many such marginalized Filipino characters to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Marcos regime, which was a time of not only political corruption but also of “the worst moral decay.” In an interview, she explains that during this period, “pornography was part of life even though you had this regime that was trying to present itself as being squeaky clean.” Characters like Joey Sands are the “people who nobody cared about and nobody thought about” because “they were too easily dismissed,” she explains. Joey represents the Philippine nation that must prostitute itself to the West for economic aid and political protection.

Joey is a survivor, however. He is a hustler who turns the tables on his exploiters. Even though he sells himself to rich foreigners, he enjoys being wined and dined and waking up in fancy hotels. He invents his own movie-like fantasies in which he exploits the sexual aberrations of his wealthy male clients. He enjoys the sexual power he has over them and often steals from them afterward just to keep alive “the element of danger” that energizes him. He proudly proclaims, “I’m nobody’s slave,” but this is mostly wishful thinking.

Joey’s narrative may not be trustworthy. At one point he says, “Maybe I’m lying” and then brags that he is a born liar and even lies in his sleep. Joey does not want to wind up an “old junkie” like Uncle and boasts that he deserves something better, yet he is a young drug addict who does not seem to want to kick the habit. His explanation that he is “just biding his time” does not ring true. He claims to like things off-balance, but in the next breath he explains that he loves it “when everything falls into place.” In CocoRico, the bar where he works, he is at times the spectacle and at other times a spectator. He is both exploited and an exploiter. He is a character of contrasts, just like the postcolonial nation he represents.

Joey naively believes he is in control of his life until one day fate intervenes and shows him he is not. He accidentally witnesses the assassination of Senator Avila while escaping from a wealthy client whom he has just robbed. He feels guilty and in need of confession, not because he has had any part in the death but because symbolically he has not had any part in the life of his country. He has been politically passive. The assassination is a turning point for Joey. He must entirely submit control of his life to others. He must hide from the government, who is pursuing him for having witnessed the assassination. He must hide from Uncle, whose shack he has destroyed and whose dog he has brutally butchered. He has no choice but to entrust his life to the protection of his fellow hustler and childhood friend Boy-Boy, who arranges for him to be secretly transported to the guerrillas’ jungle hideout, where he joins Daisy Avila and morphs from passivity into part of the opposition.

General Nicasio Ledesma

General Ledesma is the sadistic and powerful chief of the Philippine military. He is married to a deeply religious woman but is having an affair with Lolita Luna, the movie actress. The tsismis (gossip) is that he is either the half-brother or cousin to Senator Avila. His character is a flat one, more symbolic than human. He represents the corrupt Philippine government that must resort to violence to maintain power. He is in charge of camp Dilidili, where political prisoners are tortured. He has a reputation for enjoying the torture. Intrigued by this rumor, his mistress, Lolita, questions him about it, but he warns her not to ask such dangerous questions. His relationship with Lolita Luna is perverted and sadomasochistic, but his sexual appetites prevent him from leaving the relationship even though he admits it is “messy.” He represents that part of the government that is authorized to exert power and thereby terrorize any opposition to the state. While his men brutally rape Daisy Avila, the general stands in a corner and watches. The radio is playing the popular Filipino soap opera Love Letters during the rape. This scene is symbolic of a corrupt government that stands in the corner watching the suffering of its people.

Orlando “Romeo” Rosales

Romeo is an aspiring actor whose story is presented by an objective third-person narrator except for one chapter in which Romeo himself is the narrator. Romeo is handsome, in his own words a man with a “smooth complexion” and “blue-black hair.” He is a man who enters beauty contests and auditions for acting roles but never wins either. He earns money by waiting tables. His girlfriend, Trinidad, buys him clothing and pays for his meals and their entertainment, which mostly consists of going to movies where he dreams about starring next to the famous Bomba star Lolita Luna. He fantasizes about Lolita when he is having sex with Trinidad, talking to her with lines he has memorized from the movies and from his favorite actor, Nestor Noralez. Romeo writes to and visits his mother when he can. She says he is a good son.

Romeo’s character illustrates the interplay of personal fantasy, political control, and truth versus reality in the Marcos-era Philippines. His character longs to become part of the movie that is the Philippines, but he cannot achieve this on a personal level. His fantasies, then, remain that. One day, however, fate intervenes in his life as it does with Joey Sands. In fact, it is on the same day as Joey Sands’s epiphany. After Senator Avila is shot, the police see Joey fleeing down the street trying to escape from his wealthy German client. Romeo is standing on the street, waiting to break up with Trinidad. In the melee, the police shoot, and Romeo is hit. He becomes a scapegoat for Avila’s murder. The tsismis (gossip) account is that Romeo is a Communist. He is questioned by General Ledesma at Camp Dilidili and then mysteriously disappears. His girlfriend tells the police he is not a Communist. What is the truth? All of Manila is talking about Romeo and speculating about his part in Senator Avila’s assassination. The first lady reveals a completely fabricated story about Romeo on national television. Ironically, through no effort of his own, Romeo has become a national star. The police can now disguise the truth and assure the people that law and order has been restored. The people can now go back to watching movies, inventing fantasies, and pretending that “everything is okay, lang,” as the first lady likes to say. “What would life be like without movies?”