It is almost unheard-of for a promising cardiologist like Mauro Tumbocon to give up his career to work in the media and in the community. But, taking a broader view, there is a continuity to Tumbocon’s path: He is a community organizer focused on enhancing the well-being of the Filipino American community, a healer devoted to using Filipino culture to cure community ills.
Tumbocon was working on the study of cardiac drugs at the
Philippine Heart Center for Asia in Manila during the Marcos regime. As
a member of the Task Force People’s Health, he was involved in developing
educational and training programs for community health workers at the
height of martial law. While trying to build bridges between the grassroots
and the medical establishment, he uncovered a wealth of knowledge on the
part of traditional healers such as babaylan, practitioners whose
techniques were rejected by the medical community. “My idea was to
have a meeting ground. The object is to maintain the health of the people
in whatever
way you can. Health doesn’t mean just the physical and emotional
health of the patient. We are also looking at the health of the community,”
said Tumbocon.
But this community orientation amounted to a rejection of the narrow view taught in Philippine medical schools at the time, creating a dilemma for Tumbocon, who found himself increasingly sympathetic with the burgeoning democracy movement. Eventually, his dilemma was resolved in 1986, when he was thrown out of the Philippine Heart Center for his activism in the democracy movement. Working in private practice gave Tumbocon the freedom to work in the movement and the flexibility to branch out into writing. He became a cultural critic, writing reviews of film and theatre, and after six years, gave up medicine entirely. Tumbocon’s writing career took him on various overseas trips, and in 1994, he came to San Francisco, where he coordinated the first Filipino American Film Festival as part of the annual Filipino American Arts Exposition. Discovering that Filipino and Filipino American film were marginalized even within the Asian American community, Tumbocon became a vocal advocate for Filipino arts and mentor to young filmmakers.
At present, in addition to directing youth programs for the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center, Tumbocon is writing a book about Filipino American cinema and working with Wildflowers on videos documenting community attributes. He became a Wildflowers fellow in 2003.