I began to feel uneasy about my situation in school. The threat to expel the seven had unnerved me. In the weeks that followed, I wavered about whether I should be at the forefront of protest actions. I decided I had to continue with political activism, but that I should also play it safe, keeping as much as possible within the bounds of university regulations. I could not risk disciplinary action, which would mean losing my scholarship and possibly any chance of getting a university degree.
WHILE THE SCHOOL administration was monitoring radical students, it was not sensitive to trouble developing elsewhere. For a few months, trade union organizers belonging to the radical Katipunan ng mga Samahan ng Manggagawa (KASAMA) or Federation of Workers’ Associations had been conducting politicization seminars among Ateneo’s maintenance personnel. The organizers were led by Alan Pobre, a classmate of mine who had dropped out of school to become a “full-timer” who devoted all his time to working for the movement. In mid-May, the union local left the moderate Jesuit-influenced Federation of Free Workers to create a new union affiliated with the more militant KASAMA. They drafted a list of demands, including recognition of their union, reinstatement of the two dismissed workers, a three-percent wage increase, and the release of previously collected union and life insurance dues. The administration rejected the demands, and conciliation attempts by a representative of the Department of Labor failed. On August 20, the workers voted to strike and contacted the Sanggunian to ask for our support. They set the beginning of the strike for three days later, on August 23.
Before the strike could begin, national politics took a dramatic and gruesome turn. On August 21, 1971, at Plaza Miranda in downtown Manila, unknown persons threw live grenades on the stage during the final campaign rally of the Liberal Party, the main opposition party, before the senatorial and local elections. Nine people were killed and scores wounded. Among those seriously injured were opposition senators Jovito Salonga, Gerardo Roxas, and Sergio Osmeña Jr., and Manila mayoral candidate Ramon Bagatsing. Marcos immediately pinned the blame on the Communist Party of the Philippines, charging that it was trying to sow chaos and discord in furtherance of its plan to overthrow the government.
I was stunned by the news of the bombing. How on earth could anyone plan and perpetrate such a despicable act? It could have been worse. If the grenades had exploded in the middle of the crowd, scores more could have been killed. A few feet closer to the stage, they could have wiped out virtually the entire leadership of the Liberal Party. I instantly dismissed Marcos’s allegations that the CPP was behind the bombing. Like many kasama, I thought it probable that Marcos himself had instigated the dastardly act to provide an excuse for staying in power. A sense of foreboding came over me.
Despite the dark clouds on the political horizon, the Ateneo workers launched their strike on August 23 as planned. The university administration was taken by surprise. The Sanggunian passed a resolution in support of the strike; radical activist groups came out in full force to join the striking workers at the picket sites. We helped with mobile pickets in front of all three gates of Ateneo. Classes from grade school to college were suspended.
It was my initial first-hand experience of a workers’ strike. Together with other student activists, I tried my best to support the workers and, in the process, befriend them. We helped pitch tents and cooked and ate with them. We spent time talking and sharing experiences, asking them about their families and their working and living conditions, cracking jokes, and singing along with them. We formed discussion groups and taught the workers revolutionary songs. To raise funds for the strike, we asked for donations from fellow students, commuters, and passersby. Sympathetic jeepney drivers slowed down their vehicles to allow us to solicit contributions from passengers. I helped write and produce statements and press releases about the strike.
About 50,000 people assembled for a “people’s congress” organized by the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties at Plaza Miranda (September 13, 1971). (Photo from the Lopez Memorial Museum Collection)
That evening, after delivering press releases to various newspaper offices in downtown Manila, I learned from other kasama that the writ of habeas corpus had been suspended throughout the country. They had just heard the news over the radio. In Proclamation 889, Marcos also ordered the arrest of leaders of radical organizations, which he branded as subversive communist fronts. I had to ask others what suspension of the writ meant: that a prisoner could no longer be guaranteed an appearance before a court to challenge the legality of his or her detention. Marcos said he had suspended the writ within a few hours of the Plaza Miranda bombing. It occurred to me that we had been picketing the whole day without knowing that, with the writ already suspended, we could all have been picked up by the police and indefinitely detained.
Nevertheless, the strike continued. Some student activists stayed overnight with the workers to man the picket. I didn’t join them and instead slept at Cervini. I was worried about a sudden raid by the police or the military and also unsure whether I could endure the hardship of sleeping in a tent or in the open, without pillows and blankets, side by side with workers and other activists who were dusty and grimy from a day at the picket. The next morning, I was back there with other student activists. We wrote statements condemning the writ suspension and the growing repression in the country. We prepared papeldikit (posters) to put up in the nearby town of Marikina, daubing slogans in red paint on old newspapers. All day we felt anxious, half-expecting truckloads of men in khaki or fatigues to arrive suddenly. But nothing happened.
Virtually all sectors of Philippine society condemned the Plaza Miranda bombing. The writ suspension was also very widely denounced by radicals and moderate activists, progressive Con-Con delegates, prominent political opposition figures, civil libertarians, respected newspaper editors and columnists, and other opinion leaders. Civil libertarians headed by Sen. Jose W. Diokno saw the writ suspension as a dangerous move that was bound to lead to further suppression of civil liberties. The CPP and radical activist groups went further, accusing Marcos of masterminding the bombing himself. The CPP asserted that Marcos was plotting to perpetuate himself in power in a one-man dictatorship, and that the Plaza Miranda bombing was a part of the plot, meant to justify the imposition of repressive laws and measures.2 The CPP warned that the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was a prelude to the declaration of martial law.
THAT EVENING, AFTER supper at Cervini, I drove out to Marikina with three fellow KM activists—Bill Begg, Kiko Villanueva, and Danny Nicolas. With our papeldikit, we brought along pails of homemade paste, starch dissolved in boiling water. We put up our papeldikit every few hundred meters along Marikina’s major roads and thoroughfares, on lampposts and walls, regardless of signs warning “Post no bill,” but always on the lookout for patrolling police or military vehicles. We were almost done when a police jeep passed. The police had seen us! We rushed into the car and Bill stepped on the gas. We needn’t have bothered. Bill’s rickety, dirty white station wagon was no match for the brand new police vehicle. We were caught red-handed, with a messy, sticky mixture of red paint, black newsprint ink, and paste on our hands.
At a police station near Marikina’s town hall, we were booked for malicious mischief, photographed, and made to “play the piano”—activist slang for having fingerprints taken. The police interrogated us without bothering to inform us of our rights. Bill—intense, indefatigable, and sometimes brash—kept answering their queries insolently, and one of them punched him in the stomach. However, when they learned that we were Ateneo students, they began treating us with kid gloves and allowed us to phone our parents, friends, or lawyers for help. None of us wanted to phone our parents; I didn’t dare call Dad. Instead we called friends at the Ateneo who were not too closely identified with activism and who we knew had connections in high places. They arrived shortly and assured us that they were doing what they could to get us out quickly. But we still had to spend the night in a small jail cell, where we hardly slept.
The next morning, we were brought before a judge in a small courtroom nearby. There were few people around and the judge called us up immediately. In a low voice, he admonished us and advised us