Subversive Lives. Susan F. Quimpo
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The word confused and bothered me. In the past, I had associated the term only with Mussolini and Hitler. I was further disturbed when I learned that Marcos, in his January 30 meeting with moderate student leaders, had refused their demand for him to sign a pledge not to run for a third term in 1973. Elected in 1965 and reelected in 1969 in what was reputed to have been the costliest, dirtiest, and bloodiest election in Philippine history, he was constitutionally prohibited from running again. However, even then, near the start of his second term, suspicions were rife that he was plotting to remain in power beyond 1973.
In the weeks that followed, youth and student rallies, “people’s marches,” and other protest actions followed one after another in quick succession. On days of major demonstrations, the Department of Education called off classes and shopkeepers on the main routes of the rallies closed shop early, boarding up their glass doors and windows. Violent clashes between cops and activists became a common occurrence. Most of the battles took place in the evening or at night in the vicinity of Mendiola and the University Belt. The area around the U.S. Embassy on Roxas Boulevard also became a frequent scene of violence. On February 18, demonstrators stormed the embassy, smashed windows and set a bonfire in the lobby, burning chairs and tables. In subsequent rallies, they pelted it with stones and pillboxes. Meanwhile, the military raided the campus of the Philippine College of Commerce in the University Belt, which they suspected of being a center of leftist activity. As the tumult in the streets continued, Marcos publicly warned that he was seriously considering declaring martial law or suspending the writ of habeas corpus. I wasn’t much bothered by Marcos’s threat, because I had only a vague idea of what martial law meant, and I didn’t understand what habeas corpus was.
After my first rally, I took no part in other street actions through the rest of the period that activists dubbed the First Quarter Storm of 1970. Apart from being under the watchful eyes of Dad and Mom, I became preoccupied with studying for my final exams and preparing for graduation. However, the rallies constantly reminded me of the events of January 26 and 30.
Once, when I stayed overnight with a friend, I had a graphic reminder of the need for caution. Gerundio (Bogs) Bonifacio was a colleague in the debating club; his family’s apartment overlooked Mendiola Bridge. A rally that afternoon had turned by evening into another melee. I peered out the window, curious to see an actual skirmish between police and activists. The streets were deserted except for a bunch of cops with gas masks, truncheons, and shields on one side of the bridge. Lighted by streetlamps but shrouded in teargas, Mendiola Bridge took on a strange, surreal quality. Suddenly, a young militant darted out of a side street near Legarda and threw what must have been a pillbox. Blam! The cops charged after him. I leaned out to see if the cops had caught him. Bogs yanked me away from the window. “Don’t be a fool,” he said, closing the shutters. “You can get hit by stray bullets.”
In between my studies, I helped organize school forums and discussions on the burning political issues driving the rallies. Some of us had heard about teach-ins and “DGs” (discussion groups) conducted by activists, usually outdoors, on campuses or in slums and poor neighborhoods all over Metro Manila. They were supposed to be an alternative to the formal classroom lectures provided by the Philippine “neocolonial” educational system. In the teach-ins, one learned about all the bad and the good isms: imperialism, neocolonialism, feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, fascism, socialism, and communism. Along with mass protest actions, the teach-ins were part of the process of politicization to “raise one’s political consciousness.” For the biggest forum we organized, the student council invited the NUSP, other youth and student groups, and farmers’ and workers’ organizations to speak in front of all the high school students at our basketball court. To enable students to attend, we secured the suspension of classes for a few hours from the school administration. Though we had not been out on the streets again, we felt very proud of our first large teach-in.
I SYMPATHIZED A GREAT deal with the activists. The country was going to the dogs; life seemed to be growing more and more difficult for most Filipinos. Yet no one seemed to be doing anything about it.
My family felt the pinch. Still, we were better off than many other families. Every day, on my way to school, I walked by a small, congested community of shanty dwellers squatting on land they did not own. Aling Conching, who came thrice a week to do our laundry, lived there with her two sons in a one-room, 2-by-3-meter barong-barong fashioned out of discarded pieces of wood and galvanized iron, with no running water, no toilet, and no bath. A narrow strip of barong-barong also occupied the other side of an estero (creek) right next to San Beda. From our classroom on the second floor of St. Anselm’s Hall, we could sometimes smell the stink from the creek, heavily polluted by the garbage from a public market a few hundred meters upstream. I couldn’t imagine myself living in such conditions and inhaling the stink the whole day.3
To me, the urban slums were blatant evidence of an unjust and inhuman social order. From school and from the newspapers, I learned the statistics of social injustice. The richest 20 percent of the population controlled 56 percent of the country’s total income, 16 times the share of the poorest 20 percent. The country’s poverty incidence stood at 67 percent. Millions of farmers didn’t own the land they tilled, working for landlords with vast tracts of land, who took as their share up to two-thirds of their crops. A typical factory worker was paid eight pesos a day, a pittance compared to the huge profits of the factory owner, and grossly inadequate to feed an average family of six.
Since I had not gone out to “integrate” with farmers and workers, the figures remained abstract to me. But the sight of the slums pierced me to my heart. I would compare those barong-barong to the plush mansions of Makati’s beautiful people, with their spacious, air-conditioned rooms, manicured lawns, swimming pools, and security guards. Some of my classmates would be chauffeured from these mansions to school every day. Uniformed yaya (nannies) had accompanied them when we were in elementary school. Amid the city’s poverty, the rich flaunted their wealth; their stylish clothes, sleek limousines, armed bodyguards, lavish parties, and junkets were written about in the society pages and gossip columns of newspapers.
In the weeks after the rallies of January 26 and 30, I found out more about the various youth and student activist groups and the differences in their ways of thinking, their goals and means. The groups competed fiercely for recruits and hurled insults and pinned labels on one another. There were clerico-fascists, pacifists, rightists, centrists, leftists, ultra-leftists, Maoists, and revisionists. The main divide appeared to be between reformists and revolutionaries, or moderates and radicals. Groups such as the NUSP were moderate; they worked for social reform through peaceful, parliamentary means. The moderates were mainly based in religious-run schools, but they also had followings in some state-run and private non-sectarian schools. The radical organizations included KM and SDK, which advocated a complete overhaul of the unjust social order through armed revolution. They drew many members from state-run universities and colleges such as UP and private, non-sectarian schools, including the substandard diploma mills that produced graduates en masse at great profit for their owners. The radicals also attracted young workers and poor out-of-school youth. The government regarded these groups as mere fronts for illegal, subversive organizations such as the Communist Party of the Philippines.
During the First Quarter Storm, none of us in San Beda High School actually joined an activist group. Those sympathetic to the activists were drawn toward the moderates, but not I. Perhaps my family situation affected me. Perhaps Jan had influenced me. Within a few weeks, I lost any hope of meaningful social change through purely parliamentary means. Still, I was not a revolutionary; I was still hopeful of averting a violent conflict that could cost countless lives. I believed that extralegal actions short of revolution were necessary to break out of social apathy and generate meaningful change. Some degree of violence in the struggle against social injustice was regrettable but understandable, and perhaps even justified.
DELIVERING THE VALEDICTORY before the Class of 1970 of San Beda High School, I veered away from the nonviolent credo espoused by the Church and by the moderate activist groups. I said:
Belonging to the country’s upper and middle classes, we—or most of us, at least—have lived sheltered, comfortable lives. We live in fine houses or apartments and eat three full meals a day. We study in an exclusive