Compared to the 15-meter-high barricades in UP, which I saw when I visited the Diliman Commune on its last day, our Katipunan barricade was a minor affair, a puny obstacle that lasted for a brief period and attracted little attention in the dailies. It was, however, a signal event for Ateneo, the most dramatic and audacious protest action ever held in Loyola Heights. It heralded the rise of the NatDem radicals in Ateneo student politics.
THE MODERATE-RADICAL RIVALRY on campus heated up, with the approaching student council elections on February 19. For the first time, the NatDem camp contested more than a token number of seats. For our candidate for council president, we chose KKK activist and recent NatDem convert Alexander (Alex) Aquino, a seminarian and an academically outstanding junior, as well as a former sophomore representative. The moderates did not have a candidate from their own ranks, but they backed the candidacy of Teodoro (Ted) Baluyut, the chairman of the junior council. I ran again, for the second time that school year, to represent sophomores the following year.
During the election campaign, the campus came alive as it had not done in the past year—there were posters, banners, ribbons, leaflets, buttons, speeches, sloganeering, even campaign jingles. Nearly every Atenean seemed to be actively involved. Superficially, it was hard for a student to distinguish one candidate from another. As had previously been the practice, there were no announced party slates. Each candidate ostensibly ran on his own, with his own campaign machinery. The platforms all sounded the same, all calling, for instance, for Filipinization. However, everyone knew that the elections mainly pitted the moderates against the NatDem radicals and, in general, Ateneans knew who was who. Some moderates painted the radicals as rabble-rousers and violent extremists. To meet this red scare head-on, Alex admitted that he was a national democrat and that he would strive to build a “committed council.” Ted stressed that he was not aligned with any group and would see to it that the council remained a “free market of ideas.”
Unexpectedly for us, Alex won by a landslide. Almost everyone on our undeclared slate also made it. With the highest number of votes among soon-to-be sophomores, I automatically became chairman of the incoming sophomore council. Overall, NatDems were still a minority on the student council, but we were confident that we would be able to win nonaligned votes on important issues, and the moderates were in disarray. The triumph of NatDem radicals in Ateneo student politics resounded in many places. In the keen rivalry between moderate and radical groups for dominance on Metro Manila campuses and across the country, the radicals had scored a stunning victory. Ateneo was the home turf and the supposed bastion of the moderates, particularly the SocDems. Yet, they had been trounced.
THE SETBACKS SUFFERED by the Ateneo moderates must have dismayed and deeply embarrassed the Jesuits. Moderate activism was closely identified with them—most of the major moderate activist groups in the country had been organized by Jesuits or persons trained by them. On the whole, the Jesuits espoused social reform but were strongly opposed to violence and revolution. Thus, the radicals’ advocacy of armed struggle, even if covert, must have alarmed them, as must have the radicals’ espousal of communist ideology, seen as totalitarian and antireligion. Furthermore, radical activism was developing into a threat to the Ateneo itself. In their view, radicals were manipulating such issues as Filipinization and resorting to extreme forms of protest that disturbed the campus and disrupted the university’s academic mission. Unchecked, radicals could undermine the Ateneo’s Catholic and liberal leanings and destroy it as an institution of learning.
Ateneo students attend to their barricade in front of the university’s Gate 3 during a protest against campus repression (1971). (Photo from the Lopez Memorial Museum Collection)
When the Filipinization movement started in Ateneo, the Jesuits were divided, with the American Jesuits in general opposing it and the Filipino Jesuits supporting it to some degree, though not really challenging Ateneo’s overall Western orientation. As criticism became more strident during my first year, with the rejection of the path of social reform, the Jesuits put aside their differences regarding Filipinization and banded together in defense of their educational system.
As early as September 1970, Fr. Francisco Araneta, then newly installed as rector and president of Ateneo, declared: “Academic freedom cannot be absolute. No living organism allows without a struggle those forces which would destroy it to remain within the body. The university likewise cannot allow forces that are destructive of the university and of the total community to remain in the body. At one point it must make a stand.”
Few students paid much heed to those words, which were belied by the administration’s tolerance of leftist views and leniency toward radical militants. Before and after this declaration, we were able to speak out and publish virtually anything without being censored or harassed. From time to time, Dean Chee Kee did take down unsigned activist statements posted on the SOB (the student opinion board) and reminded activist leaders in the quad to switch off their sound systems or give up their megaphones when classes were in session. He warned that anyone disturbing classes was liable to be disciplined, but no one was actually sanctioned. Activists, including myself, were several times called to his office or that of Father Bernas, but the most that we got was a light oral reprimand never committed to paper.
Similarly, at the dorms, the proctors left radicals to themselves as long as they followed dorm rules. The only exception may have been my physics teacher, Fr. Francisco Glover, who stayed in Cervini. Jolly and friendly toward me when we first met, he took to needling me as well as other radical students: “If you don’t like Ateneo’s system of education, then get out of it.” When we had a chat once, he gibed, “Ateneo has given you a dormitory scholarship, why do you keep attacking it?” He cut off any reply by saying it was pointless to discuss further.
Toward the end of the school year, a more unified, harder line against campus radicalism became visible. When Father Bernas announced that he would not continue as dean of the college, Father Araneta picked Fr. Jose Cruz, an assistant professor of philosophy, to replace him despite strong objections from students and faculty. A tough disciplinarian when he was principal of the Ateneo High School, Father Cruz was controversial as a philosophy teacher. Known to be a personal friend of the Marcos family, he appalled many upperclassmen who took his courses with what they viewed as his apologetics for Marcos in class.
Close on the heels of Father Cruz’s appointment was the dismissal of two leftist faculty members. Dr. Dante Simbulan, associate professor of political science, and Adolfo de Guzman, mathematics instructor, were both NatDems and members of Malayang Guro ng Ateneo (MAGAT), to which my brother Norman also belonged. De Guzman, in addition, was chairman of the Ateneo chapter of the NatDem Samahan ng Makabansang Siyentipiko. When final exams started, they were informed that their teaching contracts, due to expire in four days, would not be renewed.
The new student council, which now referred to itself by its Filipino name, Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral, asked for the reasons for the dismissal of the two teachers, which Father Araneta refused to disclose, claiming that the proceedings of the committee on rank and tenure were confidential. Approached by Simbulan, however, he cited such reasons as poor teaching ability and irregular office hours. This was unconvincing since both teachers had been favorably evaluated by their respective department chairmen and had already been assigned teaching loads for the next semester. The political science staff attested that Simbulan kept regular office hours.
The Sanggunian could see no plausible reason why Simbulan and de Guzman were sacked other than their left-wing politics. Like other campus activists, I was astonished that the ax had fallen not on leading student activists but on two teachers who had