went off for the Christmas break, KM-Ateneo, KKK, and Lakasdiwa picketed the Ateneo alumni homecoming luncheon at the plush Hilton Hotel, which we viewed as an ostentatious and crass display amid the country’s poverty and social turbulence. The alumni, in their fancy attire, driving up in their chauffeured, air conditioned cars, were greeted with placards, leaflets, boos, and taunts. One placard read: “Down from the hill, up to the Hilton!” It was quite a spectacle, though the alumni were not amused.
WHEN CLASSES RESUMED after the Christmas break, KKK, after months of soul-searching, had deserted the moderates and come over to the radicals. To coordinate efforts in our growing ranks, our three Ateneo radical groups established a loose confederation, the Makabayang Katipunan ng Ateneo (MKA) or Nationalist Confederation of Ateneo. I sat on the MKA council as one of the representatives of KM-Ateneo. We all immediately plunged into preparing for a rally to commemorate the first anniversary of the First Quarter Storm.
At that point, the government announced an increase in the price of gasoline. Drivers of public utility jeepneys went on strike and paralyzed jeepney services throughout Metro Manila. Denouncing the “imperialist” oil companies for “extracting superprofits” from Filipino consumers, activist groups joined the jeepney drivers in organizing a protest rally scheduled for January 13. The MKA, not bothering with a student council endorsement, mobilized a busload of Ateneo students. From different points of Metro Manila, the marchers—jeepney drivers, students, workers, slum dwellers, and vendors—converged on Plaza Miranda and over several hours cheered a battery of speakers. All of a sudden, we heard explosions—pillboxes, then gunshots. Armed Metrocom soldiers and policemen appeared from out of nowhere to break up the rally. I saw everyone around me running, but I could see no one from Ateneo. I sprinted down the Quiapo underpass and into a side street, and that was the end of my part in the rally. Later, I learned that four young demonstrators had been killed and over a hundred were injured.
Nationwide protests followed. MKA put up a red and black banner in the college quad in memory of the four dead demonstrators and hung effigies of Uncle Sam and Marcos from an acacia tree. We held successive teach-ins and discussion groups. On January 15, we mobilized 200 Ateneo students and jeepney and tricycle drivers for a short march within and around the university, stopping briefly at San Jose Seminary, the Loyola House of Studies, the dormitories, and the administration building and ending in front of the Loyola Center.
The anniversary of the First Quarter Storm was only days away and tension mounted throughout Metro Manila. Activist groups braced for another major confrontation with the police. A week before the scheduled January 25 commemorative rally, the moderate groups—NUSP, KASAPI, Lakasdiwa, the Federation of Free Farmers, and the Federation of Free Workers—changed their minds about joining and decided to hold an alternative rally two days ahead. They feared another outbreak of violence and the growing possibility that Marcos would use it as an excuse to declare martial law. NatDem radical groups stuck to their plans, scoffing at the moderates’ faint-heartedness. The Ateneo student council decided, by a close vote of 8–6 with one abstention, to join the January 23 rally and not to support the January 25 rally. But both rallies turned out to be peaceful.
Amid the hubbub over the violence at the January 13 rally and the threats of violence at the FQS anniversary rally, the issue of the oil price hike got somewhat sidelined. Gasoline prices were not rolled back.
BEFORE THE TENSION of the January events could subside, a new political storm broke out. Oil prices rose again, and jeepney drivers again went on strike. Activist groups once again denounced the greed of the oil multinationals and declared their support for the strike. The nation’s attention soon became riveted to UP Diliman, where students, led by the radical student council, protested the oil price hike by barricading all the main campus roads. As tempers flared, an irate professor shot and killed a student who was a former classmate of Jan (as recounted in Chapter 4). Student resistance broadened and hardened. Keeping police at bay, students took over parts of the campus, occupying university buildings and using the university radio station and printing press to denounce the government. This Diliman Commune held out for nine days, longer than the jeepney strike itself.
In Ateneo, the student council called for a boycott of classes on the first two days of the jeepney strike. However, only 150 or so students joined the boycott and marched down Katipunan Avenue to link up with striking jeepney drivers. On the third day, Ateneo’s activist groups took over. Gathering fallen tree branches, pieces of wood, old automobile tires, and large chunks of trash, we put up a barricade across Katipunan Avenue at Gate 3, blocking a public jeepney route. Soon, armed Metrocom soldiers and police arrived on the scene. We jeered, cursed, and ridiculed them. Tension built, until Fr. Joaquin Bernas, the dean of the college, and Rafael Chee Kee, the dean of students, intervened. The soldiers were allowed to remove the roadblock and then they departed, leaving the police behind. We rebuilt the barricade. Before long, several Volkswagen buggies and a truck arrived with more policemen. They charged at the barricade, firing their guns. Blanks? We weren’t sure. We scattered, most of us dashing through the university gate and into the grounds. However, some students fought back. Molotovs flew and the sound of pillboxes rent the air. Not much of a thrower, I didn’t join in hurling incendiaries. The policemen arrested 11 students, mauling one of them, a Lakasdiwa activist. After a few hours of detention at the police precinct, the 11 were released. The barricade went up again late in the afternoon and again briefly the next day. But the Metrocom and the police stayed away.
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.
