22 delegates filed a resolution prohibiting the extension of the President’s term. Marcos castigated the move as being “personally motivated by hate and self-interest.”
The Sanggunian vigorously supported the MCCCL. It invited two progressive Con-Con delegates, Voltaire Garcia and Romeo Capulong, to explain the implications of the writ suspension to students. It mobilized 300 Ateneo students for MCCCL’s 50,000-strong People’s Congress for Civil Liberties on September 13 at Plaza Miranda. The MKA appealed to all the sectors of the Ateneo community—students, teachers, workers, and the administration—to put aside differences and unite against “the wave of fascism led by the U.S.-Marcos alliance.” The Sanggunian sponsored a rally for all sectors of the university, with Con-Con delegates Jose Mari Velez and Fr. Pacifico Ortiz (former rector-president of the Ateneo), faculty member Dr. Lumbera, and several student leaders as speakers.
A subsequent MCCCL protest march from Manila to Caloocan City on October 6 drew only 40 Ateneans, but it proved memorable to me. A rumor had spread that the mayor of Caloocan was sending out his armed goons to forcibly disperse the marchers, as he had done with two previous rallies. Despite this and the heavy rain, the march proceeded. At the forefront were Senator Diokno, Con-Con delegates Voltaire Garcia and Heherson Alvarez, and newspapermen Joaquin (Chino) Roces and Amando Doronila. Twice, a phalanx of armed men blocked our way, but we detoured. After walking a dozen or so kilometers braving the rain and strong winds, we entered Caloocan. The goons were gone.
While the other marchers chanted triumphantly and some practically danced on the street, I shivered under my raincoat. I had never felt so wet, cold, and tense. We had made great strides at the Ateneo, and here we were, still marching, but the forces of repression were closing in.
NOTES
1 In its literature in Filipino, the CPP also uses the initials PKP, but to avoid confusion it will be referred to here only as the CPP.
2 Since the fall of Marcos in 1986, a growing number of credible accounts have indicated that the Plaza Miranda bombing was perpetrated by leading CPP figures, principally party chairman Jose Maria Sison. Prominent among these accounts are those of former CPP Central Committee member Victor Corpus, bombing victim Sen. Jovito Salonga, American journalist Gregg Jones (Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement, Westview Press, 1989), and UP Asian Center dean Mario Miclat (the novel Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions, Anvil Publishing, 2010). According to them, Sison and company plotted the bombing, convinced that it would exacerbate the conflicts within the ruling class and hasten the victory of the communist revolution. After the Corpus and Jones revelations, I asked some kasama in the CPP Central Committee about the Plaza Miranda bombing, and they confirmed to me that the two writers’ accounts were on the whole accurate. I eventually became convinced that the brains behind the bombing had indeed not been Marcos but Sison, though Sison has continued to deny this.
Fallout at Cervini
9
NATHAN GILBERT QUIMPO
DAD AND MOM were getting very worried. More and more, their children were becoming involved in political activism. With Caren and Lillian, it was not so bad. Dad and Mom knew that they were with SUCCOR, moderate activists who were not the type to carry pillboxes and do battle with the police. Nonetheless, they fretted that during demonstrations the extremist elements might infiltrate their ranks and provoke violence. Much more disquieting for Dad and Mom were the four boys who were being drawn into radical activism: first Jan, then Norman, and, around August 1970, Ryan and me. Ryan and I tried to be discreet, but neither of us could really keep our involvement a secret. At home, Ryan was always under the watchful eyes of Dad and Mom. Although I was staying at Ateneo’s Cervini Hall, I simply could not tell a lie when Dad would ask me directly if I had been to a rally, though I could keep the details from them.
Student leaders from different schools, meeting at the National Press Club, announce plans for an indignation rally to protest the killing of Philippine Science High School student Francis Sontillano. Jan is second from the right (December 5, 1970). (Photo from the Lopez Memorial Museum Collection)
Although Dad and Mom were not too happy about Norman’s involvement, they did not try to stop him. As far as they were concerned, Norman had finished college, had a job, and they were no longer responsible for him. But with Jan, Ryan, and me, it was different. Since the three of us were still in school, Dad and Mom felt responsible for us. They tried several times to dissuade us from becoming more deeply involved in activism, to no avail.
Like Jan, I went to rallies without asking Dad’s or Mom’s permission or informing them afterwards. Unlike Jan, I had managed to steer clear of heated arguments with Dad. But I knew that a confrontation on the issue, sooner or later, could not be avoided. Ryan could not go to rallies as often as he wanted due to his physical handicap.
In early December 1970, Dad and Mom were alarmed when they learned that Jan had attended a rally that was marked by violence. Student activists from all over Metro Manila were holding a series of protests against blacklistings and expulsions from schools of some in their ranks. At a rally in downtown Manila, a security guard of the private, nonsectarian Feati University lobbed pillboxes from the roof of Feati’s main building as student activists marched by. A 15-year-old activist, Francis Sontillano, a schoolmate of Jan at the Philippine Science High School (PSHS), was hit on the head and killed instantly. Jan was a few meters from Francis. He saw the grisly sight, and shreds of skin and brain stuck to his shirt. The headlines on TV about a PSHS student being killed during a rally shocked Dad and Mom. They immediately tried to contact Jan by phone but couldn’t reach him. The next day, I was surprised to see Jan in a press conference photo on the front page of the Manila Times. Student representatives from different schools, Jan among them, expressed their indignation at the death of Sontillano and announced another rally to protest.
When Dad and Mom finally got to see Jan, he admitted that he had been at the rally where Sontillano was killed. But he didn’t tell them what a close call he had had. Their entreaties could not dissuade Jan from attending the indignation rally. He had to be there, not least because he was one of those who had recruited Sontillano into the Malayang Katipunan ng Kabataan (MKK). Norman recalls having tucked away in a book somewhere the MKK application form that Sontillano had filled out. As his reason for joining MKK, Sontillano had written: “To help the country.”
After Sontillano’s death, virtually the entire student population of PSHS boycotted their classes. Boycotts were already common at PSHS in 1970, not only related to national issues but also because of the abominable physical conditions at the school and its dorm. This latest boycott stretched for days and weeks, with no end in sight. Instead of going to school, the students participated in rally after rally, march after march, at UP, at Plaza Miranda, in the University Belt. As the classrooms stayed empty, scores of PSHS activists became instant full-timers, giving up school to concentrate on the radical movement. Jan was among them.
IN THE WEEK leading up to the anniversary of the First Quarter Storm, rumors spread that violence was likely to erupt at the commemorative rally slated for January 25. A few days before the rally, Dad and Mom drove over to Cervini Hall in Dad’s dilapidated Ensign for their regular weekend visit, bringing with them my weekly allowance, my laundry, and some snacks. Since it was already late and they still had to visit Jan at his boarding house, we talked in the parking lot of Cervini. They quickly brought up the January 25 rally. I sensed that the moment I dreaded had come.
“Are you thinking of going to the rally?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“It isn’t safe for you to go,” Mom
