Nathan (second right) takes a break with other high school student leaders during a recruitment seminar at the Ateneo de Manila University (1969).

      This council project impressed on me the fact that all the key figures on the council were political moderates, and the others, who were largely apolitical, followed their lead. Though I got along well with everyone on the council, I felt powerless to change the situation. I had little influence as a freshman, a newcomer and the only radical member—and one with only a small support base among students. Inhibited from proposing my own ideas for politicization or Filipinization, I became increasingly alienated from the council with its moderate politics and lackluster performance.

      In the other student clubs I joined, nothing much happened, as I had feared. The exception was Heights, the literary journal, which was dominated by left-wing writers. Still, not having the confidence to contribute literary pieces, I could only attend to technical matters at the journal. The other traditional school organizations, other than the sports clubs, held few meetings and were largely inactive.

      I WAS DRAWN by default to radical student activism. I avidly read leftist leaflets and publications distributed by radical militants. Some of them made favorable, occasionally glowing comments about the outlawed CPP and its guerrilla force, the NPA. A few times I got hold of copies of Ang Bayan (The People), the mimeographed CPP newspaper with a hammer, sickle, and rifle depicted on its logo. This was the first time I had ever seen pro-CPP literature. I had been taught that communism was totalitarian, godless, evil, and subversive, but exposure to unconventional thinking in high school had made me more open-minded and curious about what the radicals and the CPP had to say. Slowly, I absorbed some of what I read. In lively discussions with my dorm mates about politics, I found myself defending radical positions.

      Without my parents’ permission, I joined mass actions of radical groups in downtown Manila, where I sometimes bumped into Jan and his friends. I had to cut classes sometimes to do so. But months of virtually nonstop protest rallies, often marred by violence and little resulting political change, made me begin to doubt the efficacy of limited violence. The radicals were probably right that oppression and injustice were so deeply rooted that only a violent revolution could succeed in eradicating them.

      I had to join an activist organization. The main radical group at the Ateneo, LDA, struck me at that time as lacking national scope or stature. Kabataang Makabayan (KM), the most militant organization of all, appealed to me, but so did Malayang Pagkakaisa ng Kabataang Pilipino (MPKP), which appeared to attract many intellectuals, including a handful of members at Ateneo. Perhaps partly because I wanted more action and adventure, I opted for KM.

      Given the absence of a KM chapter at Ateneo, three dorm mates and I invited a KM leader from UP, Bonifacio (Boni) Ilagan, to explain to us its history and program. Though we did not fully understand all his terms and concepts, we were ready recruits. We set up an Ateneo chapter of KM, with myself as chairman, and started recruiting more members. Only later did I become aware of ideological differences between radical groups, and that I had chosen alliance with the Mao-influenced Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) through KM, over alliance with the old-line pro-Soviet Partidong Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP)¹ through MPKP.

      MEANWHILE, THE STUDENT council was doing no better than before. The mock Con-Con was a big flop. Few Ateneans attended the teach-ins and less than one-third of the students cast ballots in the election for mock Con-Con delegates. The St. Theresa’s College council officers, who succeeded in eliciting much better participation, were aghast. The mock Con-Con itself failed to produce a draft Philippine constitution as had been intended. In the midst of the fiasco, LDA, which had decided at the last minute to participate, scored some propaganda points. “For me, the mock Constitutional Convention is a comedy,” declared one of the delegates, Perfecto (Boy) Martin, in an interview with the Guidon. “It is a preview of what is going to happen in the real Constitutional Convention.”

      The LDA tactics were indeed a preview of what the NatDems were doing nationally, participating in the Con-Con elections mainly to expose the convention as a farce staged by the ruling elite to head off an armed revolution of the masses. NatDems actively supported the candidacy of former UP student council chairman Enrique Voltaire Garcia III, a young and popular leftist. In the actual Con-Con elections in November, Garcia handily won a seat.

      AFTER THE MOCK Con-Con debacle, the membership of LDA grew rapidly, even though its organizing efforts had been focused outside campus. The growing opinion within radical ranks was that a substantial number of Ateneans, possibly even a majority, could be radicalized or could at least become sympathetic to the radical cause.

      Soon the radical groups on campus, including our newly established KM-Ateneo, were conducting teach-ins and discussion groups right in the middle of the college quad. Sitting in a circle on the grass, we would read aloud passages from a leftist publication or manifesto and position papers on the burning issues of the day and debate the fine points for an hour or two. Among our favorite reading materials were Sison’s Struggle for National Democracy and Mao’s little red book. We all called each other kasama (comrade). Sometimes we would proudly wave red flags and banners with group emblems or slogans. A kasama would strum a guitar during breaks when classes would not be disturbed, and we would sing progressive or revolutionary songs. Not to be outdone, the moderate activist groups—Kilusan ng Kabataan para sa Kalayaan (KKK) or Movement of Youth for Freedom, Kapulungan ng mga Sandigan ng Pilipinas (KASAPI) or Assembly of Pillars of the Philippines, and Lakasdiwa (Strength of Spirit)—soon also held quad discussions and group singing. All factions distributed leaflets and publications, and everyone competed at “operation dikit,” painting radical slogans in red on old newspapers and posting them on bulletin boards and walls.

      Perhaps the emergence and growth of our new KM chapter contributed to an LDA reorganization. As I learned then, it had been set up jointly by SDK and the broader KM organization shortly after the First Quarter Storm because two separate chapters seemed too many for our small university. However, LDA was finding it increasingly difficult to carry out the programs and follow directions from two separate, albeit fraternal, national organizations. LDA reorganized to become SDK-Loyola, and four members moved over to join us in KM-Ateneo. We heartily welcomed the four: Rigoberto (Bobi) Tiglao, Ferdinand (Ferdie) Arceo, Boy Martin, and Emerito (Baby Boy) Paulate. Though we now had 30 members, these four were among the minority—about a third—who could be considered active. Our leading members, some of whom were on the dean’s list and were well known on campus, also included writers Manuel (Manolet) Dayrit and Conrado de Quiros.

      By my second semester at Ateneo, despite my earlier misgivings, the NatDem radicals had taken center stage in campus politics. Issues of the Guidon before and after the Christmas break carried, in installments, the third chapter of Sison’s “ The Philippine Crisis,” where he arrived at the point of arguing for a “people’s democratic revolution” to be led by the CPP. The installments had been approved for publication under the new editor, who had topped the editorial exams for the Guidon, KM’s Manolet Dayrit.

      A FUROR AROSE early in the semester regarding