Editor’s Note: Ambassador Rodolfo “Rudy” Arizala celebrates his 91st birthday. In his honor, here’s an article written by Colleen Smith, a writer from Denver and a member of the MIF board, and published in our book, “Labong ng Kawayan: Walking the Streets and Pathways of Infanta.” Happy 91st birthday, Ambassador Arizala!
“From Adversity to Diplomacy”
By Colleen Smith
Every once in a while, an individual comes along and personifies a people, a culture. By living out his life, he captures the essence of an entire people. Ambassador Rodolfo A. Arizala (“Rudy”) to his family, relatives and friends) is one such person. Like many natives of the Philippines, he is no stranger to poverty. Yet, he managed to rise above disadvantage and achieve positions of power and prestige through hard work, intellect and integrity.
Ambassador Arizala was exposed to the adversities of the islands like most Filipinos. Born prematurely in the aftermath of a typhoon, he struggled for life from his earliest days. For lack of an incubator, nurses surrounded the infant Arizala with hot water bottles and suggested he be named Rodolfo after the actor Rudolph Valentino. That was in year 1929.
The baby not only survived, he thrived. He was just four years old when he began scribbling words, imitating his father who wrote reports in the evenings. Even before entering school, he developed the habit of perusing newspapers, albeit the comic strips. Given his interests and aptitudes, Arizala’s mother assumed her young son would develop into a writer or an artist.
In his autobiographical notes, he recalls that he again faced a life-threatening situation as a young boy. Following a strong typhoon, he was washing his feet at the still swollen river near his house when he slipped on the muddy riverbank, slid into the river and was carried away by the strong currents. A neighbor, who heard Arizalas mothers cry, saved the young boy.
He went on through the remainder of his relatively uneventful youth. Ever a devoted and gifted student, as a middle schooler he learned Japanese, the first of several languages he would take up throughout his career.
Like their neighbors, Arizala and his family were evacuated after the Japanese Imperial Forces attacked Pearl Harbor and invaded the Philippines. Subsequently, his school in Infanta, faced with a lack of rooms, books and other equipment, could not open its doors after World War II. Arizala’s father enrolled him in Rizal Standard Academy in a town in Laguna Province. He graduated as high school Salutatorian in 1948.
Arizala then entered vocational school where he studied bookkeeping and stenography and courses that would serve him well later in his career. He entered college as a pre-law student, worked during the day and studied at night. After finishing his Associate in Arts degree in 1950, he enrolled at the Manuel L. Quezon School of Law, where he completed his first two years of law. Then he transferred to the newly opened law school in Intramuros, the Lyceum of the Philippines where he graduated in April 1954 with a Bachelor of Laws Degree. He passed the bar examinations that same year.
His law career was short-lived, however. Arizala remembers that while practicing law, he had plenty of cases but often not a single centavo in his pocket. Arizala frequently rendered legal services free of charge to poor people who could not afford to pay. Clients paid him with chickens, eggs, vegetables and fruits. “I was poor financially, but rich in friends,” Arizala remembers.
However, it was not the lack of financial reward but corruption that cut short his career as a lawyer. A turning point came when Arizala had a case before a judge, who dismissed his case before even hearing his argument. “I was so disappointed that I lost interest in the practice of law,” he said.
Law’s loss was international relation’s gain. Arizala went on to hold one post after another in places as remote as India, Iran, Argentina and Chile. In 1965, he earned a Masters of Arts Degree in International Relations at Syracuse University in New York. Wherever he landed, Arizala found himself a long way from home in the Philippines. And wherever he was assigned, the Ambassador worked as a tireless entrepreneur to promote and position his homeland.
