I tried to overcome my feelings of inferiority by doing well in extracurricular activities and veering toward a barkada or peer group. I was not inspired by San Beda’s Catholic mission, and I did poorly in academics. However, San Beda’s extracurricular program offered what I considered the best practical education. I learned journalism through the student publications. And I learned organization and leadership by joining the Sodality, and later the Student Council. At age 12, I was single-handedly producing the newsletter for the Sodality and organizing religious retreats (which were actually “fun” nights) for kids younger than I. In grade seven, I was doing editorial and layout work on the Little Bedan, the official student publication. I also started organizing parties for my class.
When I was 12, a close family friend started to “borrow” me as company for their only son. Emiliana Jalbuena, whom we affectionately called Tita (Aunt) Emy, and her husband, Alberto, had four children. The first three were girls. The youngest, and their favorite, was a boy my age named Joma. Dr. Alberto Jalbuena, an ophthalmologist, had earned a fortune pioneering the use of contact lenses in the Philippines. His success and the inherited landholdings of his wife afforded the family the life of millionaires. They had a large, beautiful house in Urdaneta Village, an exclusive gated community in Makati. The family had a swimming pool, four cars, and uniformed servants and chauffeurs attending to their needs. At first, Mom was reluctant to allow me to spend much time at the Jalbuenas’. But seeing that Tita Emy treated me like a son, Mom accepted it as a temporary arrangement.
It was a dramatically different and pampered life for me at the Jalbuena residence. Waking up in the morning, I would slide open the glass doors of the air conditioned room and jump into the swimming pool. (I wore goggles that covered my nose and relied on my arms to carry my weight.) After a hot shower, I would find my school clothes neatly pressed and prepared on my bed. I would then eat a continental breakfast before the chauffeur drove Joma and me to school in a Mercedes Benz. I became seduced by the life of luxury, and my extended weekend stays at the Jalbuena residence became alternate week stays. Then they stretched to include summer and Christmas vacations. Ricky Yatco, Joma’s first cousin, joined us at the Jalbuena residence. Eventually, we formed a close-knit peer group. Later, my brother Jun, who was a year and a half younger than I, would join the barkada intermittently.
Ryan was eight and Jun was six in this picture (1962). Entering their teens, they were still close enough to be part of the same barkada.
Living with the rich sometimes gave me the feeling of being rich myself. Most of the time, however, it only underscored the real situation of my family. I felt this not only at the Jalbuena residence, but in school as well. When I was at Concepcion Aguila with my family, my allowance was 50 to 75 centavos a day. In school, some of my classmates had daily allowances of five to 10 pesos, and for a select few, it was double or triple that amount. At the Jalbuena home, Tita Emy gave me an allowance of 50 pesos1 a day.
I had just turned 14 when the barkada participated as poll watchers in the 1969 presidential elections where President Marcos was running for a second term. We were interested in meeting girls, and one of Ricky’s friends recruited us as poll watchers. So there we were at the poll precincts of the very rich in Forbes Park and Urdaneta Village, both in Makati, our attention riveted more to girls rather than to the ballot boxes. We enjoyed meeting girls, and while our participation in poll watching was totally insignificant, the exercise made me inquisitive about elections and the issues of the day.
EVEN BEFORE THE First Quarter Storm of 1970, my elder brother Jan was already into activism. A year older than I, he usually shared his experiences whenever we saw each other. He told me about the protest movement in his school and introduced me, through his stories, to Kabataang Makabayan. Although he didn’t elaborate on KM’s program, he impressed on me that the crisis in the Philippines called for radicalism, a revolution with ideals similar to the Katipunan of 1896. He was very serious, determined, and fearless when he spoke of his beliefs.
While Jan took on the serious path of revolution, my sisters Caren and Lillian were on the side of the “moderates.” They were in a group called SUCCOR which advocated reforms through a “nonpartisan Constitutional Convention.” The group was part of a movement led by the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) which placed its hopes on a new constitution that would avoid revolution and bloodshed as a path for change.
Reform or revolution? The question was answered for me by the First Quarter Storm. Most of my older siblings were in the January 26 demonstration. I was not. But hearing the blow-by-blow account on the radio, I could only empathize with the student protesters. A picture published in the newspapers reporting on the January 26 demonstration showed a dozen students trying to find refuge inside a jeepney. They were surrounded by riot police who were swinging their truncheons despite the obvious fact that the students were unarmed, helpless, and terrified. Young as I was, I came to understand the words fascism and state violence. I concluded that such brutes understood only the language of bullets.
Weeks later, as I left school to go home, I heard pillbox bombs exploding on Legarda Street behind San Beda College. It was another demonstration that was degenerating into a street battle. The smell of gunpowder was in the air. Something told me that the revolution was no longer a question of possibility, or whether or not it could be avoided. The pages of history were turning fast.
My feelings then solidified into a coherent cause as I read nationalist articles and books that mushroomed in campuses after the First Quarter Storm. Among the authors we read were Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, Amado Hernandez, and Claro M. Recto. Movements outside the Philippines also inspired us, including the anti-Vietnam War movement, the student movement of the late 1960s in Paris and other parts of the world, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.
But the most influential for me were Jose Maria Sison’s articles. I found his book Struggle for National Democracy, or SND, to be nationalistic, comprehensive, exuding confidence and certainty. In my eyes, no other book or document bore such clarity on the history, the current crisis, and the future of the Philippines. It convinced me that “national democracy” was the blueprint for a free, democratic, and prosperous nation.
I found it a bit exaggerated that Sison called reform-oriented groups and the Jesuits “clerico-fascists” in his article “Sophism of the Christian Social Movement.” However, his principal message was that the ruling elite in the country, led by Marcos and his cronies, would never share their wealth and power through peaceful means. Neither would they do it through “profit-sharing” or “constitutional reforms.”
WHILE SND AND other earlier articles by Sison did not explicitly advocate revolution modeled after China, his writings indirectly advocated the ideas of Mao Tse-tung. Sison espoused Mao’s writings as the most “advanced outlook” that could guide the revolution and avoid the problems in leadership.
Dr. Jalbuena had a collection of Mao books from what was then known as “Red China” which he bought when he visited there as a tourist. He bragged about his visit and was proud of his Mao collection because at that time it was rare for Filipinos to visit a communist state like China. One of the books he lent me was a little red book titled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
One day I brought the little red book to school. I sat on one of the benches fronting the San Beda auditorium and began reading the first chapters. One of the passages that hit me was the famous Mao quote:
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
Gerundio “Bogs” Bonifacio, a classmate and close friend of my elder brother Nathan, passed by, greeted me, and asked what I was reading. When I showed him the book, he said, “A philosophy takes a lifetime.” Then he left, as abruptly as he arrived, leaving me to reflect on his words.