The Three Anti-Martial Law Rallies in the Philippines in 1977 and My Encounter with Cardinal Sin

The May 1, 1977 Luneta Anti-Martial Law Rally

In 1977, the significant anti-martial law protest rallies were: the May 1 Labor Day rally at Luneta or Rizal Park, the August 25 rally at San Marcelino St., and the September 21 rally at Rizal Avenue (Avenida Rizal).

The May 1 rally wanted to showcase the newfound strength of the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) in the Philippine labor sector. The BMP is the precursor of today’s Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU).  It was, however, broken up by the police barely after it started. Taking advantage of the Sunday crowd at the park, the rally participants, numbering around 2,000, surreptitiously assembled at Rizal Park at about 3 pm. However, as they closed ranks, they were either dispersed or arrested.

I myself got picked up, together with my friend Jess Agustin. At that time, Jess and I were working for the National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA) of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). We were very close friends, and we decided to attend the rally together. We were shoved into the back seat of a Western Police District (WPD) Toyota patrol car and brought to the landmark WPD headquarters at UN Avenue.

It was a short ride, but I was scared out of my wits. It was my second time to be arrested under martial law. I will not forget the busy chatter of the police radio in the car. The guys at the other end were jabbering about the progress of the dispersal operations. At the headquarters, I saw other rally participants, some of whom I knew personally, who were sitting on the cement floor of a long corridor, waiting to be interrogated.

We were released about 30 minutes later after I bribed our captors with a single pack of cigarettes! We were probably too inconsequential to be detained lengthily. Remarkably, Jess and I summoned enough daring to return to Rizal Park where we saw more activists being accosted by the police. I even saw a diminutive Benedictine nun, whom I knew to be Sr. Noemi Francisco, being twirled around by a cop who had discovered that she had slyly wrapped a long anti martial law protest streamer under her habit from the waist down. This rally, although it lasted very briefly, enabled the radical sector to flex its muscles in preparation for the bigger September 21 rally

The August 25, 1977 San Marcelino Anti-Martial Law Rally

In August 1977, the World Law Congress of the International Congress of Jurists (ICJ) was to be held in Manila. The theme of the congress was "Human Rights as Essential to Progress Toward World Peace Under the Rule of Law."

In the mid-afternoon of August 25, 1977, a symposium was scheduled to be held at the auditorium of St. Theresa's College Manila (STC-Manila) at San Marcelino St.. The stated purpose of the symposium was to discuss the theme of the World Law Congress.

However, the not-so concealed agenda of the organizers, whom I remember were the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) and the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) was to hold an anti-martial law rally, which would denounce the widespread human rights violations of the Marcos regime. In the CPP memos calling for this event, it was touted as another big push towards the “rebolusyonaryong sigwa.”  

The crowd that had gathered in the small plaza in front of STC-Manila and Saint Vincent de Paul church was the usual mix of students, laborers, nuns, priests, and seminarians, and was more than 5,000 strong. The square was enclosed by a security wall consisting of a low concrete wall which supported a long row of pointed steel bars, whose tips resembled sharp arrow heads. 

The Philippine Police Disperses the San Marcelino Rally

However, the STC-Manila administration cancelled the use of the auditorium at the last minute. The rally organizers then decided to hold the rally in the plaza itself. The most prominent person in the crowd was Senator Jose W. "Pepe" Diokno.

The rallyists were now getting agitated, as speaker after speaker condemned the martial law regime, using the most poisonous words they could muster. It was around 5 pm. The most cheered and applauded speaker was livewire UP student leader Susan Tagle, who was the emcee.

Tagle regaled the crowd with her sarcastic bombast and acerbic wit.   The speakers, representing the different social sectors, were all this time encouraged by the seeming absence of riot police, and the crowd’s rousing response. They smugly thought the authorities would let this one pass without an incident.

A little after an hour into the rally, the police did arrive, and in full force. They suddenly barged into the enclosed rally site, and lost no time dispersing the protestors with rattan truncheons and water hoses that spewed red colored water. The dye was used by the police to mark and arrest those who attended the rally.  

Tagle grabbed the microphone and tried to rally the troops. She heroically appealed to the protestors to stand their ground, succeeding at this for a brief moment. However, the violence being inflicted by the police was just too much, and bedlam ensued. It was everyone for him/herself, as the crowd tried to flee the riot police.

As the police dispersed the rally, the water soaked Tagle was surrounded by nuns, to prevent her from being arrested. They then boarded a public bus on San Marcelino to get away from the rally site.

However, the police boarded the buses to flush out the rallyists, and soon they spotted Tagle. A scuffle ensued as they dragged her away, with the nuns refusing to give her up.

When she was finally arrested, Susan Tagle was whisked to headquarters and interrogated. The notorious Lt. Rolando Abadilla showed her photos of rallyists, and asked her who were giving her orders. Abadilla was trying to pinpoint the underground operatives who composed the rally's "central command."

Tagle just sneered at her captors and refused to reveal anything. Angered, Abadilla put out his cigarette on one of Susan's palms.

Many demonstrators had no choice but to climb over the pointed steel bars that enclosed the church plaza, lest they get hit by the water cannons and the nasty rattan sticks, or get trampled by the stampede. Very few got out through the main gate, which in any case was too narrow for a crowd that size to quickly pass through.

In the process, many protesters got pierced and lacerated by the razor like tips, and their clothes torn. One female rallyist, Rosario Trono, was pierced through in through in one leg by the steel bars, and she hung upside down the fence helpless. Despite her predicament, the police still trained their powerful hoses at her, as she screamed in pain. 

However, most of the rallyists were young and nimble, and clambered over the wicked fence unhurt.  Once outside, they scampered in all directions on San Marcelino. Many ran to nearby Taft Avenue, where they boarded jeepneys to safety.

The rally was over, with the brutal dispersal lasting just a few minutes. Unfortunately, there were no bystanders that could have served as force-multiplier for the rally, like what would happen in the Rizal Avenue protest action less than a month later. Neither did the captive media cover the event.

This inspiring rally in front of STC-Manila and the Saint Vincent de Paul Church at San Marcelino has scarcely been recorded in Philippine martial law history books, but it certainly occupies a permanent place in Philippine activist lore. It is recalled again and again in reunion after reunion by the now aging Filipino martial law activists.

The 1977 Human Rights Awareness Campaign: My Encounter with Cardinal Sin

About three months before this rally, weekly symposiums about human rights were held in various Left-influenced colleges and universities in Manila and Quezon City.  Known anti-Marcos and anti-martial law personalities, like former senators Jovito R. Salonga and Jose W. Diokno, spoke frequently.

Also leading this human rights awareness campaign were the AMRSP and the NCCP. I was in the secretariat of this effort, which was initially planned in the United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP) building along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), right next to the NCCP building. This planning meeting at the UCCP building sometime in October 1977 is very important to me, because it was on that day that I saw my wife-to-be, Loida Buyao, for the first time. But that is another story.

I was given the job of personally inviting Cardinal Jaime Sin to one of these symposiums.  I was then working on a youth survey project for the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), under its Commission on Youth. I had also just completed a one-year contract as Youth Coordinator for the CBCP’s National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA).

In other words, the higher-ups must have decided that I had enough credentials and stature to ask for an appointment with the Cardinal at his Villa San Miguel residence and invite him to speak at a human rights symposium sponsored by religious radicals. At any rate, these “qualifications” emboldened me enough, so I said yes. I was only 22 years old then.

In those pre-EDSA days, the anti-martial law forces looked to Cardinal Sin as an ally, albeit with mixed feelings. The reason behind this ambivalence was Cardinal Sin's policy of "critical collaboration" towards the Marcos regime. It plainly meant that Cardinal Sin was approaching the regime and the Philippine democracy movement on an issue-to-issue basis. This was not acceptable to those in the broad front, and least of all to the radical Left who, at that time, was its motive force. That said, the organizers of this human rights awareness campaign were willing to walk the extra mile in asking Cardinal Sin to participate. And that responsibility fell on my shoulders.

Setting an appointment by phone was the easy part. At Villa San Miguel, I was ushered in by a staff, whom I remember was a Daughters of Charity (DC) nun, into the Cardinal Sin’s spacious office. It was well lighted by a big window, had red wall-to-wall carpeting, and had lots of fine wood paneling. There were two chairs with red suede upholstery facing each other in front of Cardinal Sin's imposing desk. I chose to sit on the chair on the left.

After some friendly and perfunctory banter in which he asked how I was doing at NASSA and which lasted about fifteen minutes, I handed him the official letter of invitation. I am not sure but the invitations must have been signed by NCCP and AMRSP heads Rev. La Verne Mercado and Fr. Lope Castillo MSC respectively.  I explained the purpose of the human rights symposiums and invited him to be the main speaker in one of them. Not taking any chances he might not have understood what I said, I gave him a brochure explaining everything.

The Cardinal told me he would study the matter first, and asked me to come back several days later for his answer. He was effusive with praise for what I was doing, and sneaked in a joke and a wisecrack now and then.  The witticisms, for good measure, were all followed by a hearty laugh. Then, as a parting shot, Cardinal Sin praised the organizers for their commitment to human rights, while writing a dedication on the blank starting page of a book on Chinese proverbs. To my amusement, the page already had a dedication from the giver, a man named "Daniel." Cardinal Sin told me he was giving the book to me as a remembrance of our meeting. That was late 1977. I have kept and treasured the book to this day.

Cardinal Sin's dedication went:

Dear Beto:

This book comes from a friend but I am giving this to you as a friend.

+ J. Card. Sin

The meeting was held in Cardinal Sin's office in Villa San Miguel, Mandaluyong City. He was a very sincere man, and genuinely sympathized with what I was doing as an anti-martial law activist. He was smiling as he scribbled the dedication. 

When I came back to Villa San Miguel to find out if Cardinal Sin had accepted the invitation, I did not know I was in for a shock. I passed through his secretary the way I did in our first meeting, and I sat on the same chair. The Cardinal, unlike in our first meeting, was now dead serious. His first move was to call in a priest in his late thirties, whom he said occupied a responsible position in his staff, which position I have now completely forgotten. His name was Fr. Gabriel Reyes, and he sat on the chair in front of me. It was obvious he was one of Cardinal Sin’s able lieutenants.

Cardinal Sin proceeded to give me the lowdown. A very important general in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had told him that the human rights symposium I was inviting him to attend was actually sponsored by the CPP, who were using AMRSP and NASSA as legal fronts.  He said the general also told him the communists were just out to exploit his name to give credibility to the gathering, and that he should not to attend it.

But Cardinal Sin was reserving the worst for the last. I thought I was already shocked, but his last sentence was the real bombshell. Cardinal Sin revealed to me that the general mentioned my name as one of the “hard core” elements organizing the human rights symposiums. Upon hearing this accusation, I got so numb I could not speak.

After this tirade by Cardinal Sin, it was Fr. Gabriel Reyes’ turn to speak. He spoke slowly, and in a polite yet direct manner, explaining to me the decision of the cardinal not to attend. Cardinal Sin was now very still, stoically silent, and with a blank expression on his face. I felt that he had already said his piece and was just letting Fr. Reyes finish me off and send me away. I was right.

After a few motherhood sentences, Fr. Gabriel Reyes gently told me that the meeting was over and I had to go. By now I had regained my composure and I tried to explain my side.  But he plainly and bluntly reiterated that the meeting was over.  I could have read his mind right there and then, saying “Nice try kid!”

There was a brief silence in the room, as the two cassocked men stared at me accusingly. The awkward lull was only broken when I thanked both men, trying to be as gracious as I could. I wanted to tell them that everything I was representing was legitimate and for a noble cause, yet the looks on their faces told me they were not in a mood for any explanations. This was another triumph for the red-scare tactics of the military, I told myself. 

After bowing meekly in utter rejection and embarrassment, I half-consciously stepped out of Cardinal Sin’s office on the second floor of stately Villa San Miguel. I descended the carpeted stairs into the first floor lobby, whose broad front entrance led to the beautiful gardens outside. After negotiating the long driveway, I dazedly stepped out of Villa San Miguel’s tall gate and found myself on busy Shaw Boulevard. I grabbed the first available taxi and went home.

The September 21, 1977 Rizal Avenue Anti-Martial Law Rally

The September 21, 1977 Rizal Avenue rally protested the fifth anniversary of the declaration of martial law. Previous to this mass action, the anniversary of martial law had not been the object of open protest, and certainly not denounced in such a scathing way, as this rally did. With so much at stake on this rally, the CPP Manila-Rizal committee (MR) prepared and planned way in advance for the gathering, with party memorandums mentioning it as early as February or March 1977.

As with the 1976 rallies, this demonstration was part of the general effort towards generating a “rebolusyonaryong sigwa” (revolutionary storm) that would get the participation of 50,000 to 100,000 people, to finally topple the Marcos regime.

MR worked hard to ensure “maximum mobilization” or the biggest participation possible, for this historic demonstration. It set at its target 7,000 to 10.000 people to attend  the audacious rally. The protesters were to converge at the busy intersection of Rizal and Recto Avenues. In those days, when the population of Metro-Manila was a lot less than today, and with the government policy of dispersing protest rallies, these were big numbers. 

The would-be participants, who were either CPP sympathizers, national-democratic activists, or CPP members, were under instructions to cause a monstrous traffic jam, and attract the attention of as many pedestrians as possible. The organizers knew that the propaganda value of the rally hinged greatly on its on-the-ground audience, as the Marcos media was expected to ignore the event.

The rally went on as scheduled, at around 5 pm. It was a Wednesday. The sidewalks of Rizal and Recto avenues teemed with people, and the Seventies rush-hour traffic was building up. Upon a signal from the marshals, which consisted of many red balloons being released by a designated group, the protestors suddenly occupied the intersection and that stretch of Rizal Avenue between Recto and Carriedo.

Per the estimate of the marshals,  the rally achieved the number of 7,000-10,000.  Suddenly, that part of Rizal Avenue became a sea of angry streamers, placards, and red flags being waved in giant figure-eights. The anti-Marcos slogans and chants, which resonated off the enclosing buildings, seemed to blend in cadence. The most shouted slogans were “Ibagsak ang batas militar!” (Down with martial law!), and Marcos Hitler Diktador Tuta! (Marcos Hitler Dictator Lapdog!).

The sidewalks of “Avenida Rizal” were now jammed with ogling pedestrians, curious as to how the rally would play out, and admiring the guts of these derring-dos. They occupied the front of the small restaurants, “soda fountains”, first-run theaters, department stores, bakeries, magazine stands, and school-supply stores that once gave this stretch the fashionable title of “Downtown”, at least to my father’s generation.

This captive audience curiously scanned the inflammatory leaflets that the protestors scattered. Fearing arrest, most of them immediately dropped the printed materials to the smudgy, tile-covered Avenida sidewalks. If the number of spectators were added to that of rally participants, then this CPP initiated affair would have easily assembled 12,000 people, making it the biggest anti-Marcos rally so far at that time.

The rally was cut short not 30 minutes after its start, with the arrival of several fire trucks belonging to the WPD. In no time, the fire trucks’ powerful pumps were whirring, with their 2.5 inch hoses pummeling the demonstrators with powerful bursts of red and green colored water. Many nuns got knocked down from the impact, their immaculate habits stained by the fluid. Many participants and bystanders, who got drenched as well, swore it stunk like sewage.  They later surmised that the color and odor of the water were either a part of the police’s psychological warfare, or a way of marking the rally participants for possible arrest.

The male laborers and students tried to resist the police onslaught. However, they too, soon dispersed, because of the sheer strength and volume of the water. The pressure of those fire-hoses, 75 to 100 psi, is strong enough to cause bone fracture. At any rate, there were truncheon wielding riot police and thugs wearing “Barangay Tanod” uniforms out to finish what was left over by the fire trucks.

By the time it was dark, around past six, the protesters had completely dispersed. The September 21, 1977 Rizal Avenue anti-martial rally was part of history. Most of the participants converged at pre-determined meeting places to recount their experience. Most of them were young: very few were past thirty. and the celebratory assessments lasted till the wee hours.

The Manila Anti-Referendum Rallies of October 1976

The Setting

In 1976, Philippine martial law was four years old, President Ferdinand E. Marcos was secure in his power, and  the economy was not much of a worry. It was growing,  and the balance of payments deficit had been solved through heavy borrowing. To project stability, the regime inaugurated the huge and ultra-modern Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in September. Its initial hosting was the 1976 IMF-World Bank meeting.

The First Lady, Imelda R. Marcos, had been Governor of Metro-Manila for more than a year. She was her usual self erecting buildings and travelling abroad, with or without her husband. The PICC was  her pet project. She and President Marcos went to the Soviet Union in June, for their first official state visit. They established diplomatic relations with the USSR on that jaunt. 

Alone, Imelda had visited the US in January, and earned a brief and awkward appointment with First Lady Betty Ford, where the two exchanged gifts. To my recollection, it was in mid-year that Imelda was given the nickname “Iron Butterfly” by the foreign press, for her tenacity against her enemies.

In sports, the Philippines had sent 14 athletes to the Montreal Olympics in July, its smallest contingent since 1932. The Philippine delegation was small because of the absence of the basketball team, due to our first -time failure to qualify for the Olympic basketball competitions.  Meanwhile, the world gasped in awe at a diminutive 14-year-old child Romanian gymnast named Nadia Comaneci.

In the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), the Crispa Redmanizers won all three conferences for their first “Grand Slam.” William “Bogs” Adornado was named Most Valuable Player (MVP).

In show business, the Second Metro-Manila Film Festival was held. Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon won Best Film, with its lead, Christopher de Leon, winning Best Actor. Hilda Koronel won the Best Actress award for her performance as an impoverished woman out for revenge in Insiang.

On August 16, 1976, there was a magnitude 8.0 earthquake between Mindanao and Sulu which killed 5,000 to 8,000 people. The tsunami it generated did most of the killing, especially in Sulu, and in the cities of Zamboanga and Pagadian. I started in my first job ever in July, as youth coordinator for the social action arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference (CBCP), an outfit called National Secretariat of Social Action (NASSA). NASSA got very busy in the relief operations for the victims of this earthquake and I helped pack relief goods.

I remember that when we had finished packing a shipment at the NASSA headquarters in Pasay City, Sr. Marilu Limgenco MM, a committed Maryknoll nun,  told me there was a PAF C130 at the domestic airport ready to bring the goods to Pagadian City, and that could I accompany her. I begged-off because I had a scheduled meeting that day.  To this day, I regret that decision.

In May, a typhoon inundated much of Central Luzon for a week, killing 60 people. The University of the Philippines Consultative Committee for Student Affairs (UP Concomsa) launched Operasyon Tulong (Operation Help) to bring relief goods to the affected areas. I was attending a meeting in a small hut in Hagonoy, Bulacan when the flood started to rise threateningly. We cut short the meeting and went to UP to attend Operasyon Tulong's convening meeting at UP Women's Home behind Vinzons Hall. Former Concomsa member Renato S. Velasco presided.     

The Rallies of October

The really important events in politics were denied the public by the Marcos media. Everything was focused on the referendum-plebiscite. Hardly reported, for example, was the nascent anti- martial law movement. There were three significant protest rallies in Manila in 1976, but the landmark events, noted for their sheer audacity,  received paltry coverage.   They all happened in October.

The first one occurred on October 3, 1976. It originated as an indoor rally in the auditorium of St. Paul College Manila, with Sen. Jovito Salonga as the main speaker. Numbering around 5,000 persons, the main body spilled out into Herran St. (present-day Pedro Gil) and managed to occupy a portion of Taft Avenue for about an hour after which it self-dispersed.  

The second and third ones, which were more defiant, took place on October 10, 1976 in front of De La Salle University on Taft Avenue and Plaza Miranda, respectively.  The Taft rally was held at about 3:00 in the afternoon while the Plaza Miranda rally happened at about 9 pm. The daring activists pulled no punches in denouncing martial law and Marcos’ human rights violations, shouting one illegal slogan after another.   They were both about 5,000 strong, The second rally was violently dispersed by the police with truncheons. However, it lasted more than an hour --- long enough for it to attract a large crowd of innocent onlookers, and a news article with a photo in the next day’s captive newspapers.

As they scampered from the police, the participants pasted conspicuous 3” by 12” self-adhesive stickers on walls, electric posts, and bus and jeepney interiors. The stickers bore the slogan “BMI Ngayon.” BMI Ngayon meant “Batas Militar Ibagsak Ngayon,” and was  a teaser for a planned huge rally to be held in 1977. Even the Leftists had some advertising sense. 

The 1976 Referendum-Plebiscite

The October 1976 rallies were protesting the approaching national “referendum-plebiscite” which was to be held October 16-17 1976.

In this exercise, some 42,000 barangays nationwide were to vote a) if martial law were to be continued, and b) to ratify proposed amendments to the 1973 Constitution. The said amendments would substitute the Interim Batasang Pambansa (IBP) for the regular Batasang Pambansa pursuant to Presidential Decrees Nos. 991, 1031, and 1032.

At that time, Marcos was concerned about the legal status of his four-year-old martial law regime. Marcos, after all, was a lawyer by training.  He wanted that his martial law was standing on firm legal grounds. He reasoned that a resounding favorable vote from the Filipino people, via a referendum, was the best legal validation for martial law. Hence the first question in the referendum plebiscite.

At the same time, Marcos needed a transitional body for the country’s eventual shift to the parliamentary system, and the IBP was to serve that purpose. In that parliamentary system, Marcos, as his scheme would have it, would become the Philippines’ first Prime Minister. Hence, the second question in the referendum-plebiscite.

The referendum-plebiscite was also meant by Marcos to convey the impression that he was consulting the Filipino people in matters affecting their welfare and future. Such an image was important in conveying a benevolent image and fostering a climate of “normalization” for what otherwise was a brutally repressive regime.

Left-Led Opposition to Marcos

Politically, the strongest opposition to Marcos was the Philippine Left, led by the “revitalized” Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The Maoist CPP had weathered the arrest of politburo member Jose Luneta and other prominent Leftist figures in January, and had, by this time, regrouped nationwide, especially in the Metro-Manila area.

In Metro-Manila, the CPP had laid out a respectable political infrastructure, an ample mass base, and had established tactical alliances with middle-of-the-road politicians. The latter were either sympathetic to its cause or had no choice but to align with it.

In contrast to its student dominated mass base in the immediate pre-martial law years, the CPP in Metro-Manila now relied more on the support of thousands of workers under the Leftist “Bukluran” federation, urban poor under the Zone One Tondo Organizations (ZOTO), and religious activists under the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) and the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP).

The Manila-Rizal committee of the CPP (MR) was now under the leadership of the rambunctious Filemon “Ka Popoy” Lagman. Lagman’s vision was the development of a mass uprising in Manila, which he called “Rebolusyonaryong Sigwa,” or revolutionary storm. The center of the maelstrom was intended by Lagman to be right in the political center of the city of Manila, meaning Plaza Miranda or in front of Malacañang Palace. Meanwhile, according to Lagman's plan, preparatory rallies, like the ones that happened in 1976,  were to be staged, the better to build momentum for the Sigwa. These pick-up rallies Lagman called "Rebolusyonaryong Unos," or revolutionary mini-storms. 

In his numerous fiery memorandums written in combative Tagalog, Lagman made it clear that the anti-referendum rallies were but dress rehearsals for the Sigwa. He pointed out that the Sigwa was to be unequivocably anti-martial law. Lagman did not state it categorically in his memos, but it was clear that if the opportunity presented itself, Sigwa was to aim at toppling the Marcos government.

In doing so, Lagman was being careful not to displease the CPP national leadership, which was oriented around bringing Marcos down after a lengthy or “protracted” war against the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the country’s rural areas. This approach was asserted in the recently issued CPP document entitled “Our Urgent Tasks.”

Traditional Opposition

The traditional oppositionists, elements of the Liberal and Nacionalista parties, 1971 Constitutional Convention, and the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP) had not yet reorganized from the disarray caused by the arrests of its members four years earlier. Three of its most prominent personalities were effectively blocked off from public view either by incarceration, as in the case of Ninoy Aquino, or if they were free, by media censorship, as in the case of senators Jose W. Diokno, and Jovito R. Salonga.  

Diokno, Aquino’s companion in Fort Bonifacio until he was released on September 11, 1974, had no organized forces under his command except for a few civil libertarians under the CLUP. He was assisted in this capacity by former constitutional convention delegate and economist Alejandro Lichauco.  In 1975, Diokno and Lichauco wrote a limited circulation pamphlet titled “A Message of Hope for Filipinos Who Care.”

Bold for its time, the pamphlet was an elaboration of the non-communist critique of martial law. It proclaimed, on its cover that it contained “an analysis of three years of martial law, an evaluation of the new society, a projection of the future, and a proposed alternative.” True to the repressive conditions then prevailing, the authorship of the pamphlet was vaguely put as “a representative group of citizens devoted to the cause of truth, justice and freedom.”

I participated in distributing this pamphlet in the University of the Philippines, sometime in 1975. I distinctly remember helping unload packs of the pamplets off senator Diokno’s dark green VW Kombi in front of Vinzons Hall in UP.   

Jovito R. Salonga, still hobbled by the effects of the Plaza Miranda bombing five years earlier, made the rounds of symposiums and seminars sponsored by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), where he assailed the martial law regime. Nonetheless brilliant and eloquent when he spoke, Salonga was often accompanied by anti-Marcos United Church of Christ (UCCP) senior minister Rev. Cirilo A. Rigos.

One such regular gathering was the “Wednesday Forum,” which Rev. Rigos started. It was held alternatively at the Ellinwood Church in Malate, Manila or at the NCCP headquarters along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA).  The forum gave free lunches to those who attended, as an incentive. Suffice it to say that Diokno, who was also a regular in these forums, and Salonga had little mass following. They were heavily reliant on these Left influenced institutions in finding an audience for their anti-martial law denunciations.

The CPP Agenda for the Anti-Referendum-Plebiscite Movement

The demonstrations against the October 16-17 1976 referendum-plebiscite were very important to the CPP and its allies. First, they were meant by the CPP to be venues for the ventilation of what the CPP saw as the people’s real sentiment regarding the referendum-plebiscite. This expression was important since a landslide victory for a “yes” vote was expected, given the rigged nature of the polls.

Second, the mass actions were a show of force for the CPP. They were meant to show the Marcos regime, the CPP allies, and the world that the CPP was the decisive anti-martial law force in the Philippines. The CPP was making it clear that it had the political will and sufficient warm bodies to clog the streets of Manila, albeit for a few hours, in defiance of the severe martial law ban on political demonstrations.

Third, the mass actions were aimed at frustrating Marcos’ attempts to legitimize martial law through a vote of confidence and Marcos’ plan to institute a parliamentary system with him as indefinite prime minister. To achieve this aim, the CPP had sent out a memo to all its sectoral and territorial units to go all out and call for a boycott of the exercise.

A boycott was adjudged the best option for the anti-martial law coalition because, with a Marcos victory all but assured, participation would have given credibility to the results.

The “Ad Hoc Committee” and the “Thursday Group”

The Preparatory Commission for the National Democratic Front (Prepcom NDF) of the CPP put up a seven-person “Ad Hoc Committee” to oversee preparations for the October demonstrations. It was composed of cadres temporarily pulled out from their assignments in the different social “sectors” comprising the CPP urban mass base. Each cadre was responsible for maximizing the attendance of their respective sectors in the rallies. The Ad Hoc Committee was also responsible for organizing symposiums, prayer vigils, masses, and prayer services that would “expose and oppose” the coming referendum-plebiscite and call for a boycott. After the referendum-plebiscite, this committee was commended by Prepcom NDF for a job well done.

The NDF also organized a so-called “Thursday Group” that was composed of civil libertarians, religious leaders, educators, and selected NDF organizers engaged in “united front” or “middle forces work.” It met over dinner and refreshments at St. Scholastica’s College every Thursday evening starting in the first week of September 1976.

The meetings, held over a long and food-laden wooden table, were very cooperative despite the ideological differences. The planning sessions usually lasted up to 11:00 pm. These meetings attested to the drawing power of the Philippine Left at that time, which impressed the non-communist sector because of their persistence, daring, and most of all, organized strength.  

The Thursday Group’s purpose was essentially to keep the civil libertarians well-informed about the anti-referendum movement, enlist their participation as speakers in the rallies, and reassure them on the current strength of the anti-martial law forces. In each meeting, they were given the latest copy of the AMRSP newsletter “Signs of the Times.”

The Thursday Group was composed of Senator Jose W. Diokno, representing the CLU, Senator Jovito Salonga and Rev. Cirilo A. Rigos representing the NCCP and Wednesday Forum, Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB, the Dean of College of St. Scholastica’s, prominent lawyer and former constitutional convention delegate Teofisto Guingona, Gerry Bulatao representing the AMRSP and the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), myself, representing NASSA, and the aforementioned NDF persons. 

In one meeting, former Supreme Court associate justice and civil law scholar JBL Reyes attended, representing the CLUP. Others who attended one or two meetings included Fr. Lope Castillo MSC and Fr. Toti Olaguer SJ, representing AMRSP.

In these meetings, I was awed by the presence of these famous people, particularly Diokno and Salonga. I was only 21 years old, and had worshiped them since I started reading newspapers. I remember most vividly one incident in the meeting on September 9, 1976, when Sen. Diokno dramatically announced to the group that Mao Zedong had just died. 

  

A Brief History of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Movement in the Philippine Student Sector 1976-1977 Part 3

How Kabataang Makabayan (KM) was Revived, How League of Filipino Students (LFS) Got its Name

It was the middle of 1977, and martial law was at its height in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the CPP’s Standing Group for Youth and Students (SGYS) was making significant progress in initiating class boycotts in Manila and Quezon City. In the heat of the campaign, the group received a letter purportedly written by Jose Maria Sison. Sison hailed SGYS’ proposal to revive Kabataang Makabayan (KM), the premier Leftist youth organization before martial law. Sison was the first chairman of KM, with Nilo Tayag being the second.

The letter took several months to travel through the intricate CPP channels. A few weeks after receiving the letter, SGYS requested a meeting with National Democratic Front- Youth and Students (NDF-YS) to brainstorm the specifics of KM’s revival. SGYS was especially interested to get the say of the NDF-YS secretary because he used to be in KM’s national leadership and knew all about chapter building and expanding. He joined KM way back in 1966.

NDF-YS – SGYS Planning Meeting

For the meeting, NDF-YS booked the seminar house of the Catholic church of Sta.Isabel, Malolos, Bulacan. NDF-YS had reliable contacts in the Diocese of Malolos' youth program and regularly used the facility for its meetings. It was a good place for underground meetings. It was tucked away in a secluded and sleepy corner of Malolos, and was not well known to activists and military alike. An added feature was a basketball court in the church plaza, where the activists could exercise and fight boredom.

Also, the seminar house's huge front window, designed for watching processions and festivities in the olden days, offered a vantage view of the vast plaza. Any police raid of the place would have been detected way in advance, giving the activists ample escape time. 

The seminar house fee was P20 pesos per person inclusive of three meals and two meriendas a day. Even in 1977 prices, this was cheap. The meals and meriendas were prepared by the in-house cook named “Ka Biring.” NDF-YS footed the bill, they being more financially capable.

An original find by NDF-YS, the seminar house was only  40 km. from Metro-Manila. One had to go first to Malolos poblacion by bus,  then take a 3.5 km. tricycle ride to Sta. Isabel. Sta. Isabel used to be a separate town from Malolos, but was integrated in 1903.  The seminar house was a traditional “kumbento” attached to a church. Built in Spanish-era style, it had a spacious, well-lit, and airy living room on the second floor which had been converted into a seminar room.

The room’s original floor was still in place. It was made of ten-foot long, one-foot wide and one-inch thick sturdy wood planks rendered a shiny dark brown through the years. It creaked in many places as people walked. The dormitory, connected to the seminar room by a narrow corridor, could house twenty persons. It was basic but comfortable, with its green steel-frame beds with coil springs supporting new kapok matresses and pillows. It was air-conditioned, and the lone bathroom was clean and working.  

For a legal front, NDF-YS told the management that a group would be having a parish “youth formation seminar.” In complete attendance were SGYS, and NDF-YS, all in all  8  persons. By this time, the 5 members of SGYS, all in their early twenties, had been toughened in the tuition fee boycotts, and were keen to share their experiences. The NDF secretary , a balding, diminutive, and mustached 29 year-old man named Edgar Jopson, dropped by in mid-morning. After observing the meeting and saying a few things, Jopson left in the afternoon. I remember seeing him off with my eyes from the old building's front window, as he boarded a tricycle.

It was in this seminar house (with the red roof) at the extreme right of the Sta. Isabel
 church in Malolos, Bulacan that the League of Filipino Students (LFS) was conceptualized in 1977.
The place has lately been renovated, but it looked a lot more modest back then. Photo borrowed from the blog  "Travel.Journey.My Life. My Story."at http://novamayjtravels.blogspot.com/

Kabataang Makabayan Revival

A few months earlier, SGYS had sent a memo to the CPP central committee, suggesting that, in the light of the upsurge in class boycotts against tuition fee increases, it was necessary and feasible to revive KM. As a special request, SGYS asked that  KM’s founding chairman air his views regarding the proposal, so that these could inspire and guide a planning meeting. 

KM had to be revived because it was disbanded in 1973, after the CPP leadership realized that legal and open activist organizations like KM were not feasible anymore. Many UP based CPP cadres recoiled at the idea of disbanding KM and other mass organizations, largely due to the force of sentiment, and a misreading of the new situation. They engaged the CPP national leadership in a spirited debate that lasted for months.  

This time around, said the SGYS, KM, or "Karina" was to be revived as an underground organization. SGYS sometimes casually referred to KM as “Karina,” owing to its revered pre-martial law code name. KM would accomodate the hundreds of student activists who had participated in the boycotts, but who could not be formally integrated into the CPP just yet.

 “I Understand Kabataang Makabayan is Reinvigorating Itself”

These students were called “national-democratic” (ND) activists by the CPP, and would have been members of generic ND core groups in the absence of a unifying organization. SGYS argued that being members of KM instead of just an ND cell would give the ND activists a wider perspective, group pride, and introduce them to organizational discipline. It would be a worthy phase-in period into the CPP, just like in the old days, SGYS quipped.

In the letter, Sison acknowledged being informed of KM’s impending revitalization. “I understand Kabataang Makabayan is reinvigorating itself,” he wrote. Sison went on to cite the importance of a covert organization that would link up the various ND core groups that had been formed in the past few years, but especially after the bountiful campaign against tuition fee increases. This can be done, he said, by offering the student activists an underground organization that gives a collective outlook to their apparently isolated undertakings.

Creating the LFS

The secretary of NDF-YS, being at 27 the “senior” of the group, opened the meeting and presided. After giving a short introduction, he gave the floor to the SGYS secretary. The head of SGYS, a 22 year-old former history major in UP,  briefly bragged about the letter, then gave it to the group. As the letter went around,  he proposed that they spend the first session discussing how to revive KM. The second session, he proposed, was to discuss another suggestion from the letter, which was creating a legal student organization.  The proposals were approved immediately.

The  deliberations about KM that ensued centered on the formation and consolidation of KM chapters, programs of study, forms of mass actions, CPP keadership over KM, CPP recruitment from KM, and how to publish Kalayaan, the official KM newsletter.  They went very smoothly.

As the second session began, the SGYS secretary explained that the legal organization the letter suggested was nothing less than an overt counterpart of KM. SGYS itself had earlier entertained a similar idea. However, before the letter arrived, SGYS intended the meeting exclusively for KM’s revitalization. Now they were making an adjustment. 

Creating a legal organization proved to be the harder talking point, because it had never been done before. Putting up a legal but noticeably activist student organization under martial law had no precedent.  Compared to it, the revival of KM did not seem so hard.

A legal organization, the letter said, was necessary to aggressively expand the student anti-martial law movement, demand the restoration of student councils and publications, and otherwise shrewdly project a legal version of KM. It was to be pro-student and patriotic, yet must survive the harsh times.  It should evince enough militancy to attract radically inclined students, yet exude enough restraint not to be suppressed straightaway.

 The League of Filipino Students or LFS

SGYS understood that naming the organization was critical. The way the group thought went, the proposed group had to have a name that projected peaceful reform, but still had a radical appeal. The name had to be tame enough not to invite repression during the organization’s early life, yet audacious enough to do justice to its combative demands. Realizing they were crossing a thin line, the group wracked their brains what the name would be.

In the afternoon, the group settled on a name. The legal student organization would be called “League of Filipino Students” or LFS. The use of English was decided easily: it was a safe choice. Everyone conceded that the use of Filipino was a giveaway for LFS' latent radicalism. By using English for the organization’s title, it was given a veneer of temperance and discipline.  A tricky part was deciding on the first word. The contenders were: association, society, union, alliance, organization, and league. League was chosen because of its novelty, restraint, and subtle militancy.  

Furthermore, league was chosen because of its not so vague association with Rizal’s reformist group, Liga Filipina. Being associated with Liga Filipina, someone suggested, would somehow enable the LFS to lull the senses of the military and the school administrations.  At the end of the discussion, SGYS expressed its desire to consult its lower units first regarding the proposed name, before it was finalized in another meeting. But everyone thought this was just a formality.

The third and final session of the meeting was devoted to drafting the guidelines on building up KM, and its legal counterpart, LFS. The guidelines on the LFS were scant compared to that of KM’s, because much of the second session was devoted to deciding on a name.   At any rate, the cadres were excited by the new undertaking, considering it unprecedented in Philippine history. Another planning meeting was scheduled to flesh out the guidelines. The group had a sumptuous dinner at about 7 pm in the seminar house’s spacious dining room and broke up at about 10 pm.

This meeting is historically significant because in it the CPP not only approved KM’s revival, but also decided to establish the LFS, and choose its name. LFS was founded a few months later, on September 11, 1977 at the Asian Labor Education Center (ALEC) at the University of the Philippines. KM and LFS remain to be essential players in the still unsettled 45-year Philippine insurgency.

  

A Brief History of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Movement in the Philippine Student Sector 1976-1977 Part 2

CCY

Although the CPP’s plans for expanding in the student sector emphasized penetrating existing religious youth groups, it did try, through NDF-YS, to utilize its church assets to set up its own youth organizing unit. Formed in early 1976, the group was called “Committee for the Conscientization of Youth,” (CCY). The mission of the CCY, as decided in its first meetings, was to raise the critical awareness of, or “conscientize” youth in schools and communities. It would do so by conducting “conscientization seminars.” 

Also called "structural analysis" seminars, these discussions were designed to raise the youth’s social awareness, and discreetly push them to organize their ranks against martial law. They also served to softly introduce the participants to Marxism, the easier for CPP operatives to pluck them up for recruitment. Advanced seminars made use of Antonio Gramsci's ideas. 

The term conscientization was articulated by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s pedagogy, especially its class analysis, is Marxist.  Freire’s Marxism is best gleaned in his idea of developing critical conciousness (conscientização), which encompasses not only understanding social and political contradictions, but also wilful action to resolve these contradictions. Freire’s framework evolved from his experience in adult literacy work among Brazilian sugarcane workers in 1962.  

These early CCY meetings were attended by a CPP cadre, two CPP contacts who were in the administration of an exclusive girls’ school in Manila, a CPP female cadre in the religious sector, and an Irish Columban priest who was also a CPP contact. It was the CPP cadre who initiated the meetings. His original idea was the formation of an inter-university alliance. The meetings were held in the secure confines of the exclusive school. Sometimes the group met at the old Asian Social Institute (ASI) building on Leon Guinto St. in Manila. 

Christians for National Liberation

At that time, many persons in the Philippine religious sector  had already been radicalized by martial law. These militant priests, nuns, pastors, and seminarians were members of the CPP controlled underground organization called “Christians for National Liberation.” (CNL) The latter was formed in an emotional ceremony on February 17, 1972, in front of a Gomburza monument in Manila.

Many of these Filipino religious were educators, social action directors, community organizers, or otherwise had jobs which exposed them to widespread poverty or brazen human rights violations. In the course of their respective vocations, they were introduced to Left theory via Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez’ book “Theology of Liberation.” They accepted Marxism when they made contacts with CPP cadres in the few years leading to martial law.

When they formed the CNL in 1972, many of them were probably already CPP members. The CNL sent many of its members and mass supporters to attend the last protest rally before martial law was announced, held on September 21, 1972, in Plaza Miranda. These religious activists became the mainstays of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP), which was at the forefront of the legal opposition to martial law.

To be able to operate openly under martial law, some CNL members used legally acceptable terms to popularize Marxist analysis, and the term conscientization was one of the more useful ones. Another popular term was "Basic Christian Communities Organizing." (BCC-CO) NDF-YS, in its effort to broaden the student movement, decided that getting the participation of these radical church people was a viable option. NDF-YS scouted for religious activists who had natural ties to students, like being school administrators and teachers. They had the perfect legal cover and thus ideal members of CCY.

CCY Founding

These early CCY meetings tackled the problem of how to camouflage CPP youth organizing seminars under a  religious cover. One of the CPP contacts, who was a nun, suggested the catchword “conscientization,” which was then rapidly spreading among Filipino religious radicals. The other CPP contact, a comely young woman who was in charge of the exclusive school’s student affairs department, suggested the creation of a pool of educators which will conduct youth conscientization seminars when on call.

The core activity of the CCY, she proposed, was to conduct conscientization seminars,  with its secondary job being the setting-up of CCY chapters all over the Philippines. After a few more meetings, the group agreed on the orientation, activities, and name of the proposed group. The CPP cadre must have been the one who suggested the name CCY.

Finally, the group agreed on who would staff the CCY. Since CCY did not have the means to provide even small allowances to regular staff, it was decided that two people would first work as CCY staff on a part-time and voluntary basis, and that full-time staff would be acquired as soon as CCY acquired support from foreign funding agencies. The exclusive girl’s school was selected as the CCY’s temporary headquarters. 

Once CCY was finalized, the CPP cadre made contact with NDF-YS, which eventually took CCY under its wings, in behalf of the CPP. It was then arranged for one member of NDF-YS to become a member of CCY. The group now had 3 staffers. If there was a seminar to be conducted, skilled facilitators certified by the CPP would be invited. The 3 CCY staffers themselves were to train in giving seminars.     

CCY Structural Analysis Seminars

The standard CCY concientization seminar was called a “structural analysis” seminar. In the radical religious circles of the time, the euphemism was the accepted way of cloaking Marxist analysis. Each seminar was attended by about 20 to 30 students at a given time. These students were considered by CCY as having “low social consciousness,” but open to “social awareness raising.” They were prospective activists or even potential CPP cadres and members. After the CCY group leaves the seminar’s venue, it was envisioned, local CPP organizers would befriend and organize them, for eventual integration into the movement.  

The facilitator usually gave an initial lecture on the three main structures of Philippine society namely the economic, political, and cultural systems. Sometimes a fourth system was included, which was the religious system. After this lecture, the facilitator breaks up the group into workshops, with each workshop being assigned to discuss a specific system.

Each workshop was instructed to list down as many random facts as possible about the Philippines that they deem would fall under the system assigned to them. Those assigned to the political system, for example, would list down martial law, the armed forces, habeas corpus, “salvaging,” the Supreme Court, barangays, and so on. 

Those assigned to the economic system would list down things like Laurel-Langley Trade Agreement, Central Bank, high prices of food, foreign investments, and so on. Lastly, those assigned to the cultural and/or the religious system would list down the Catholic Church, Cardinal Sin, the 1974 Miss Universe Pageant, schools, the mass media, Thrilla in Manila, and so on.

The workshops were then told to write their output with marking pens on wide pieces of “Manila Paper” and report these to the entire seminar group. The workshop reports were taped to a wall or to a blackboard for everyone to see. The reporters often read the reports with much enthusiasm. After the workshop reports, it was the turn of the facilitator to “interpret” the data.

It is at this point that he/she injects Marxist analysis into the seminar. He/she weaves the abundant data into a summation that mirrors the CPP analysis of the Philippine situation, and the courses of action the CPP prescribes. It takes considerable skill to do this, as the facilitator has to be careful with the words he/she uses, or he/she endangers the security of the whole group.

The facilitator tells the group that the economic system is the “determinant” system which influences the other systems. However, he/she points out that meaningful change for social justice happens in the political system and this needs collective action by the people. The cultural system, on the other hand, is where a change in consciousness happens, which leads to or inspires, the collective action desired.

Antonio Gramsci

Sometimes, when the CCY facilitator reckoned it was safe enough, he/she injected Antonio Gramsci’s critique of the cultural system. For some reason, Gramsci, an Italian communist leader, was very acceptable to Filipino religious radicals at the time. Likewise, Gramsci’s name was deemed by many religious to be safe enough to use openly, as it was unfamiliar to the authorities, and not associated with the CPP.

Gramsci’s “cultural hegemony” theory was very useful in telling the participants how the dominant classes used the cultural system to justify the local and national status quo. The CCY facilitator also used Gramsci’s theory of “organic intellectuals” in encouraging the participants that they can become intellectuals even without going through formal schooling. 

All told, the skillfull CCY facilitator, by using non-activist terminology and a host of other subterfuges, subtly introduced the participants to the analysis, political program, and calls to action of the CPP.

CCY Student Conference 

In March 1976, CCY, using the CPP underground network, CCY was a able to hold a well-attended, 2-day Metro-Manila wide inter-university conference. It was held at the AMRSP’s Sisters’ Formation Institute (SFI) in San Juan, Metro Manila, with Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB giving the keynote address. More than 120 student leaders from different universities in the region attended. History will look to this conference as the first Left-organized student conference under martial law. The first student congress under martial law was not organized by the Left --- it was initiated by the government’s Department of Education and Culture (DEC) on December 26-29, 1975, in Baguio City.

The conference predictably issued resolutions against martial law, and in favor of student rights and welfare. The main demands were the restoration of student councils and press freedom for student publications. This is not to say, however, that the deliberations were smooth-sailing for the CCY.

Most of those who attended were mustered by the CPP SGYS through its underground facilities. However, since the conference was announced openly, quite a few non-CPP contacts or "walk-in" participants registered, paid the conference fee, and participated in the sessions. Many of these new contacts were not anti-Left, and so were soon on good terms with the CCY, and supported the conference resolutions.

The Soc-Dem Intervention

However, the same cannot be said of the 2-3 delegates from Ateneo University (AdMU) and Maryknoll College (MC), who were dyed-in-the-wool social-democrats (Socdems). From the start, the Socdems deviated from the workshop topics and vehemently raised the issue of “manipulation.” They meant that the participants were being manipulated by the CPP, through the CCY, into agreeing to the conference resolutions.

At first, the Socdem objections were civil. However, the discussions soon became acrimonious, when the CPP contacts, upon instruction by the CCY staff, began to counter the Socdems’ charge of manipulation. With equal anger, they defended the CCY, maintaining that the workshops were a democratic exercise. Despite the heated exchanges, the workshops were able to formulate and write the resolutions desired by the CCY. These resolutions were to be adopted by the plenary session in the afternoon of the second day of the 1976 CCY student conference.

During the plenary, the Socdems did not let up on their attacks on the CCY. One student leader from Ateneo kept raising his hand, grabbing the microphone in the center aisle, and vehemently accusing the CCY of “railroading” the resolutions. He did this so many times the presiding officer was soon declaring him out-of-order every time he spoke.

In the end, the Socdems were drowned out by the overwhelmingly National Democratic (ND or Natdem) conference body. The lone Socdem delegate who cried railroading in the plenary soon retired to his seat and grudgingly observed the delegates pass the resolutions one-by-one. The gutsy Ateneo student was Ricardo Manapat, who would make a name for himself after the EDSA Revolution by writing a well-received book on Marcos crony capitalism titled “Some Are Smarter Than Others.” Manapat died in 2008.

The CCY also published a militant newsletter titled “Conscientizer.” CCY designated one of its contacts in the exclusive girls school, a philosophy professor, as the newsletter’s editor. It came out in mid-1977. Out of the normal, CCY decided that the paper be militant in tone, as it was supporting a sudden upsurge of student anger. 

Conscientizer   managed to come out only three times though, due to CCY’s limited means. Every issue was printed in 5,000 copies, and openly distributed in the University Belt. CCY had a hard time looking for a printing house that would accept the Conscientizer, as the contents were patently subversive. All three issues were devoted to heralding the wave of class boycotts that hit the University Belt and South of Pasig areas in that period. The class boycotts were sparked by tuition fee increases, and at its peak spread like wildfire. The anger lasted a whole semester and garnered for the CPP many members and mass supporters. The boycott campaign was coordinated by MR's SGYS, with the CCY giving propaganda support through Conscientizer.

End of the CCY

After more than two years of operations, CCY folded up in early 1978, when NDF-YS abandoned the concept. NDF-YS concentrated instead on using existing youth groups in the catholic and protestant sectors. It was decided that this method was more cost-effective. The existing youth groups already had seminar teams of their own, had ready-made logistics like headquarters, equipment, and staff, and had more reliable funding.

CCY succeeded in getting substantial funding from two foreign funding agencies. One avid CCY benefactor was a prominent Australia-based Catholic funding agency. However, more than 50% of the funds were appropriated or "centralized" by the CPP. This elicited complaints from some CCY members, CPP members and non-members alike. They believed, and rightly so, that CCY could have done more if it was able to use all of its funds. 

During its existence, CCY managed to conduct conscientization seminars in several places in Luzon and the Visayas. Many of those who participated in these seminars were turned over by the CCY to the local activist network. Quite a few later became active CPP members or Natdem activists. The most successful CCY seminars were the ones conducted in Silang Cavite for the Student Catholic Action  of the Philippines (SCAP) chapters of Cayetano Arellano High School and Florentino Torres High School in late 1977, and for the Social Action Center (SAC) Youth Formation Program of Leon, Iloilo, also in late 1977.     

   

A Brief History of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Movement in the Philippine Student Sector 1976-1977 Part I

Introduction

In early 1976, CPP protest activities in the youth and student sector (YS) suffered a major blow, albeit temporarily, with the arrests of student leaders in the University of the Philippines (UP) and the ensuing supression of student anti-martial law protests in Diliman.

However, the CPP’s underground assets in UP were largely intact. What is more, by this time, CPP branches and national-democratic (ND) groups had been put up in quite a few universities in the greater Manila area (GMA). They too, had sidestepped the government onslaught.

The CPP Manila-Rizal committee (MR) planned to begin another round of protests using these assets later that year. The protests in the student sector were to complement MR’s grand scheme of starting a general uprising (Sigwa) in the region in a few years , with its fast growing mass base in the labor, urban poor, and church sectors as the main effectives. MR had a nascent disagreement with the CPP central committee over this uprising, but that is another story. 

District Supervision

The CPP branches in the penetrated schools were supervised by the respective MR district committees. For example, the CPP branch in UP and other Quezon City schools were administered by MR’s District 2 (D2), while the CPP branches in Manila schools were managed by MR’s District 3 (D3).

Sometimes, MR transferred seasoned cadres from one district to another to strengthen school organizing in that district. For example, as early as 1975, a number of organizers were dispatched from UP, where organizing was advanced, to the  University of the East (UE) in the Manila University Belt (UB), where organizing was just starting. UE was of critical importance to the CPP. It had a huge student population of about 60,000, and its official student paper, The Dawn, had an enormous circulation.

In Quezon City, the schools where the CPP had strong branches, apart from UP, were Trinity College and St. Joseph’s College. The CPP has a hard time making in-roads in Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) and Maryknoll College (MC), because these schools were dominated by the Philippine Social Democratic Party (PDSP).

In UB, the strong schools were University of Santo Tomas (UST), Far Eastern University (FEU), Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU) and UE. In the South of Pasig area, the CPP functioning units were in Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM), University of the Philippines College Manila (UPCM), Adamson University (AdU), Philippine Christian University (PCU), St. Scholastica’s College (SSC), and De La Salle University (DLSU).

SGYS

In mid-1977, to unclutter the management of party work in YS,  MR created a special committee called “Standing Group for Youth and Students” (SGYS) from outstanding cadres pulled from UP and UST.  MR then put all the school  branches (including UP’s) under SGYS’ supervision, and away from hands of the district committees. The latter already had their hands full organizing urban poor and workers.

The new committee was called a standing group because of its specialized mandate of badgering the CPP school branches to produce results.  However, because of its strategic importance in forming national public opinion, the CPP branch in UP was oftentimes given direct instructions by MR and even by the CPP central committee. The SGYS did not mind being bypassed though.

SGYS divided its YS activities into the following areas: Quezon City (which includes UP), the University Belt (UB), and the so-called “South of Pasig” area. The latter area covered Intramuros and Taft Avenue. The school party branches were given instructions by SGYS to contribute to the creation of an anti-martial law protest movement in the national-capital region, through their respective mass bases. The main issue the CPP branches were told to harp on was high tuition fees. The mode of political action was the mass boycott of classes. The single most used slogan was: “Oppose the commercialization of education!” These issues were to be ultimately linked to the Marcos dictatorship and sure enough, to “US imperialism.”

The connection between Philippine education and US policies was made by citing the creation by Marcos of the “Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine Education.” (PCSPE)  CPP propagandists alleged that this was a scheme by Marcos and the US to make Philippine education produce more cheap but skilled Filipino workers for US corporations.

New Orientation: Scaling Down Expectations

At this point of the narrative, we point out that the Philippine student sector was now playing but a supporting role in the CPP’s overall design. This was a big departure from the strategic orientation in the epic anti-CAFA (Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities), anti-Vietnam War, First Quarter Storm (FQS) and Diliman Commune campaigns, where the Philippine student sector was the spearhead and main body combined.

Quietly and smoothly, the CPP was now internally scaling down its long-standing expectation of YS as the main factor in influencing public opinion, as laid down by CPP chairman Amado Guerrero in his book and CPP bible "Philippine Society and Revolution." (PSR) This new thinking did not show in CPP propaganda, but it showed in the priorities of the party's organizing work, and in the kind of people who attended its rallies. 

Given the realities of martial law, the CPP was implicitly admitting  that those who could best survive open defiance of military rule, namely the religious and labor sectors, had assumed this role. Unfortunately the YS sector had borne the brunt of martial law suppression, with Marcos making sure of it. It could not influence public opinion the way it did before martial law, because it had a hard time hitting the streets. As proven in the historic December 6, 1975 Bustillos rally, the religious and laboring sectors could do it. This was because of the church garb for the former, and sheer desperation for the latter. 

That said, while MR had plans for the YS sector in its own domain, the national leadership also saw the need to expand the CPP’s YS organizing work to include every significant urban center outside of GMA where there was a sizable tertiary student population. These areas included Baguio, Dagupan, Angeles, Cabanatuan, Los Baños, San Pablo, Naga, Legazpi, Cebu, Dumaguete, and Davao. The CPP still had enough residual trust in, as Amado Guerrero famously put it in PSR,  the students' "keen political sense" for it to include YS in its national strategy.

NDF-YS

Thus, in early 1976, the CPP leadership, in consultation with MR, began broaching the  idea of forming “NDF-YS,”  which was to begin this long-term work. It envisioned NDF-YS to eventually become the CPP’s “National Youth and Students Bureau” (NYSB) which was so successful and powerful in the immediate years before martial law. NYSB was the CPP organ which ran the big radical student organizations like Kabataang Makabayan (KM), Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), and Malayang Samahan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Makibaka) which gave Marcos a lot of sleepless nights. 

There was a bit of nostalgia going on here. Many in the CPP leading organs who received directives from the NYSB as student activists, were whimsically longing for the return of the NYSB to bring back the glory days of student power.NDF-YS was named such because it was under the supervision of the CPP’s Preparatory Commission for the National Democratic Front (Prepcom NDF). Prepcom NDF was a national CPP organ, which acted as its united front commission. Formed in 1973, its job was to gather as many non-communist allies as possible to the CPP fold. The rationale for the NDF-YS being placed under Prepcom NDF was that the personalities and organizations that were going to assist NDF-YS were in the main non-CPP entities who were contacts or sympathizers of Prepcom NDF.

NDF-YS’ top priority was to assist the different CPP regional committees around the Philippines  establish their own YS underground commitees in the schools and communities. In doing this, it used the various chapters of existing nation-wide organizations found in the catholic and protestant churches as legal covers. Needless to say, without these reliable legal covers, the exposed student organizers would have invited suspicion and eventual arrest. 

In the Catholic Church, the organization of choice were the Student Catholc Action of the Philippines (SCAP), and the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA). The CPP also had a hard time going into SCAP, as it was also controlled by the PDSP, or, as it was commonly called, the "Soc-Dems." In the protestant churches, it was the Student Christian Movement (SCM), the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF), and the Division of Youth Ministry (DYM) of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP).  MYF was the youth arm of the United Methodist Church (UMC) in the Philippines.

Setting Up NDF-YS

By the second quarter of 1976, the cadres for NDF-YS had been picked, with a veteran cadre selected to chair it. This cadre, in his late twenties, was a former KM member, who had participated in the violent rallies in 1966 against the Manila Summit Conference. When he was picked for the job, he headed the CPP’s Civil Research Department (CRD), which was directly under the CPP central committee. The CRD was basically an economic research group.

A UP student leader competent in alliance building was selected as a member, along with a UP law student with a vast experience in underground organizing. Another UP student adept at touching base with the so-called “anti-Marcos reactionaries” joined the committee ocasionally as a political officer (PO). The three-man committee underwent several extended orientation meetings, and began to do the tedious spadework. 

The major areas of CPP activity in the YS sector as of mid-1976 were, therefore, conducted by the following organs:  the enlarged party branch in the University of the Philippines (UP), the new party branches in the newly breached tertiary schools in GMA, and the National Democratic Front- Youth and Students (NDF-YS).