IN MEMORIAM: Writer, activist Sylvia Mayuga

IN MEMORIAM: Writer, activist Sylvia Mayuga

She was irreverent and endearing. She extended her funny and incisive rants in Facebook, where she was often blocked by humorless adversaries.’

By Frank Cimatu

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – What a way for Sylvia L. Mayuga to leave the world.

Like the morningstar, her nom de Facebook, she left at 8:30 am on the last day of 2019 at the age of 77.

Sylvia studied at St. Scholastica’s College and St. Theresa’s College before taking up a scholarship at Columbia University with Masters in comparative journalism, graduating magna cum laude.

But this was during the Martial Law era – she was, eventually, one of the female columnists of Bulletin Today who got fired. She took her feistiness on the streets and on paper, writing occasionally for Philippine Daily Inquirer while waging battles for environment and against fascism.

It was in the early 1990s when she stayed briefly in Baguio, helping environmental activists in their fight against development aggression at Camp John Hay and the mines.

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