Writer and activist Lualhati Bautista passes away at 77
Distinguished writer and activist Lualhati Torres Bautista passed away on Saturday, February 12. She was 77.
The news was confirmed by Bautista’s cousin, Sonny Ross Samonte, in a Facebook post. Bautista died at her residence in Quezon City at around 6 a.m.
Born in Tondo, Manila on Dec. 2, 1945, Bautista took up journalism at the Lyceum of the Philippines, but dropped out because she had always wanted to be a writer and schoolwork was keeping her from chasing her dream. The publication of her first short story “Katugon ng Damdamin” in Liwayway Magazine launched her writing career.
In a martial law piece originally published in 2013, Bautista remembered what it was like to be a writer under the authoritarian rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. She recalled that speaking against the Marcos administration was severely prohibited and carried certain risks.
Bautista’s first screenplay, “Sakada,” a social-realist film about the ordeals of sugarcane farmers in Negros, was shown in 1976 but was later banned by the military. She went underground along with fellow writers for four months and continued to work on her novels, one of which was “Dekada ’70.
On September 21, 2021, in commemoration of the 49th anniversary of Martial Law, Bautista wrote a Facebook post in which she listed some of the individuals who were either tortured, killed, or disappeared during the reign of terror.
A pre-eminent writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, Bautista garnered several Palanca Awards for her novels “‘GAPÔ,” “Dekada ’70,” and “Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa?” which exposed injustices and chronicled women’s activism during the Marcos era.
She also authored the screenplays for unforgettable ‘70s and ‘80s films such as “Sakada,” “Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap,” and “The Maricris Sioson Story.”
She served as vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and the chair of the Kapisanan ng mga Manunulat ng Nobelang Popular. She became a national fellow for fiction of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1986.
Bautista was conferred the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining for Literature by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Bautista’s death has occasioned an outpouring of grief and tributes from Filipinos on social media. Many shared their thoughts on their favorite works of the esteemed Filipino writer, as well as their memories of her. Some also renewed their calls for Bautista to be proclaimed as a National Artist for Literature.
