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Felino Santos is a recognized aficionado of the chavacano language. He created a chavacano dictionary that is officially accepted by the City of Zamboanga.
Known the least except for the nameless clients of his ghostwriting skills. Ask him to write about any topic under the sun, and you get an answer via email at the most within the hour. Letters, speeches, writeups on any, yes any topic- and you have it – for a fee.
Also managed and edited about a dozen local newspapers since 1980 to the latest Zamboanga Peninsula Journal (for a dozen years).
Felino Santos was born in the hills of Lo-ok, Lamitan, Basilan in March 5, 1944. To date, he has worked for nearly half a century or since 1976 as a news reporter, correspondents of national news outfits, international news agencies and as editor of newspapers in Zamboanga since then to end of 2018. He is also a prolific writer, author of books and still continues to write books and instructional materials.
After finishing high school at the St. Peter’s School at Lamitan in 1959, he moved over to Zamboanga to study at the then teacher training Zamboanga Normal School (later Western Mindanao State University). After college, he settled in Zamboanga as there were plentiful teaching jobs in the public schools in the early 1960s to dozens of years later.
He likes to describe himself as self-taught, enrolling in home study courses including writing or journalism in correspondence schools.
He affiliated with the worldwide fraternity, the Rosicrucian Order sometime in 1964. After over half a century later he managed to visit the Grand Lodge in San Jose California in January of 2017. – Proof, as he says, that at times, “dreams can come true.”
“I embarked on a career in journalism because of my initial exposure to the Philippine Free Press. I remember my father, a school teacher who used to bring home in Lamitan Basilan, copies of the magazine when he collected his monthly salary in the mid 1940s era,, in fact, since I started grade I, at the age of four and a half years old. I started reading the magazine at age 5. Fast forward to 1964 , my first year of teaching in the public schools. I used my first salary to buy a portable typewriter, a Teach Yourself Typewriting Handbook and stationery, --because I wanted to write for the magazine."
"My first attempts at writing resulted to a harvest of rejection slips. Somehow I found time to enroll in a home study course in writing offered by a publisher in the USA. A month later after taking the course and rewriting my previous rejected articles, I received my first money order payment of ten pesos for a published article that I sent to the PFP. On and off I submitted short items which brought me money order payments on a regular basis. In 1976, I left teaching and got a job as a news reporter in the Department of Public Information (DPI) eventually transferring to the then Bureau of National and Foreign Information (BNFI) the mother unit of the Philippines News Agency. From the PNA I branched out to the private media to where I ended up these days. The DPI regional director said I was accepted in the agency because of my experience in the Philippine Free Press. Those were the days."
He claims to have good tutors and editors in his time: Author and Carlos Palanca Literature Awardee Antonio Enriquez and Claro M Recto Journalism Awardee Eddie Sapal, one time Philippine Herald News and PAL Information Officer.
Other than his regular job as correspondent for the PNA, he also wrote stories for other foreign news agencies, like the Spanish News Agency EFE, UPI, Agence France Presse, UPI and Yomiuri Shimbun. He also served as correspondent for Business World and the Manila Standard Today based in Zamboanga. For a time, he was correspondent of the Daily Express published in Sabah, Malaysia.
For television , he worked as news editor of Channel 9, of the First United Broadcasting Corporation or FUBC in the 1980s. He also labored as newseditor of Dateline Zamboanga (TV 11) of the Golden Broadcast Specialists Incorporated (GBPI) since 1994.
In 1980, a friend David Erasga, invited him to help revive their weekly newspaper, Zamboanga NewsWatch. With no experience in newspaper production, he went along to their press office and “adjusted” himself to the production of the newspaper. The Erasga brothers have their own Printing Press and were interested in producing their own newspaper.
In one way or the other, aspiring individual newspaper publishers in Zamboanga and the environs approached him for help to set up or start a newspaper in Zamboanga. These publications, short-termed or lasting for a few years included: Peoples Review, the Economic Times, City Limits, Zambas Reporter, Zamboanga Journal, and half a dozen others. He also managed the Sun Star Zamboanga edition for three years, until he left it, for “political persuasions” and the like. After Sun Star Zamboanga he managed the Zamboanga Peninsula Journal, a bi weekly starting 2001 to today.
It is bruited about that sooner or later, the printed newspapers will give way to electronic news outfits. As a precaution he has started his own online Newspaper, Zamboanga News On Line. (https://zambonewsonline.webs.com/headlines.htm) Zambo News On Line Blogspot.
He also has the vernacular counterpart, Noticias en Chavacano (http://noticiaenchavacano.webs.com/)
In between work, he has compiled an English-Chavacano Handbook, as well as an English-Chavacano-English Dictionary (https://chavacanohandbook.wordpress.com/). He is also working on phrasebooks for Chavacano and local dialects.
For the elementary grades, he has copyrighted Reading English Books that are in demand in schools.
Other links /contacts
http://felinomsantos.weebly.com/
http://learntoreadenglish.webs.com
http://readenglisheasyhandbook.webs.com/
http://readingmanual.webs.com/
http://readenglisheasyway.webs.com/
http://linomansantos.googlepages.com
www.freewebs.com/felinosantos
www.geocities.com/readingmanual
www.geocities.com/felinomsantos
www.freewebs.com/readenglisheasyway
www.freewebs.com/readingmanual
Santos admits that censorship or not, not all stories, the real ones, are reported to media outfits in Manila. He says that there are a number of stories, -behind the stories,- that have been kept from the public, particularly those during the Marcos martial law years. He is familiar with developments in the establishment of the autonomous regions in Mindanao starting with the signing of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF.
“I have stumbled across hair-raising incidents of treachery, betrayals in the decades long problem to bring peace to southern Philippines,” he says. A co worker, Novelist Antonio R. Enriquez has warned “You cannot publish those ‘Behind the Bylines’ stories during your lifetime. Someone would prefer that these stories stay away from public view.”
http://felinomsantos.weebly.com/
Felino and his guavano
Felino santos and his grandson at the Rosicrucian Egyptian museum in San Jose, CA in 2017.jpg