Subversive Lives. Susan F. Quimpo
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course for all freshmen. Invention consisted of essays compiled by Fr. Joseph Landy, an American Jesuit at the university. Nine Filipino faculty members teaching English issued a manifesto objecting to Invention’s “colonial and reactionary” viewpoint and declaring the book a hindrance to Filipinization.
I fully agreed; I found it to be a typical Western-oriented English textbook, despite the inclusion of a few articles by Filipino authors. I felt that the editor had been insensitive to, or perhaps even unaware of, the rising nationalist and anti-neocolonial consciousness sweeping the country.
For me, as for other NatDem radicals, the issue was not just the Western orientation of the book. The summer before entering Ateneo, I had avidly read some essays of the nationalist historian Renato Constantino and had become convinced of his view that the entire Philippine educational system was neocolonial. The use of English as the medium of instruction, a part of the American colonial legacy, had created a huge gap between an English-speaking elite and the great majority of Filipinos. The Western content and orientation of textbooks added to this alienation of the educated. I could still remember learning to read and write through stories about middle-class American children—John, Jean, and Judy, their dog Spot and Judy’s teddy bear, Tim. We learned about apples and pears, cowboys and Indians, Thanksgiving and Halloween, snowmen and Santa Claus, all of which were alien to the concrete realities of a tropical Third World country.
KM-Ateneo, SDK-Loyola, KKK, and Lakasdiwa issued position papers criticizing Invention as fostering a colonial mentality. With the student council’s endorsement, the freshman council asked for a revision of the book and called on students and teachers to “struggle against the neocolonial system of education.” But when it came to campaigning against Invention, my colleagues in the freshman council balked. I found myself, with Tom, a radical-leaning freshman who had come from a public high school, thrust into the forefront, speaking to class after class and gathering signatures on a petition. The protest culminated in a symbolic burning of a pile of books and an effigy of Uncle Sam in the college quad. We could not afford more than one copy of Invention to burn, but, appropriately the other books were old textbooks distributed free to public schools by the U.S. Information Service.
Eventually, most freshman English teachers replaced Invention with a hurriedly assembled compilation of essays, Perspectives. I expected my English teacher, Fr. James Donelan, to insist on using Invention. An Irish-American Jesuit, Father Donelan had been one of the most affected by the Filipinization movement. He had been president of the university until 1969, when he was pressured to resign in favor of a Filipino Jesuit. Instead of retiring, he went back to teaching. Kind and gentle, Father Donelan had a quiet dignity. He was fair and even indulgent toward everyone, including me, even when he knew that I was radical and one of the leaders of the anti-Invention campaign. He asked the class to vote on what we wanted to use. We voted for Perspectives, and Father Donelan accepted our choice.
The campaign against Invention was a turning point for me. It was the first time I had taken a public, leading role in a major campus protest. I did not regret this, though I did feel a bit disturbed about having burned books. Another council member pointed out that Hitler, in the 1930s, had stirred up the public with bonfires of books deemed poisonous to the ideals of Nazism. I was not sure if we had stepped over the line of legitimate protest into extremism and intolerance.
Before Ateneans went off for the Christmas break, KM-Ateneo, KKK, and Lakasdiwa picketed the Ateneo alumni homecoming luncheon at the plush Hilton Hotel, which we viewed as an ostentatious and crass display amid the country’s poverty and social turbulence. The alumni, in their fancy attire, driving up in their chauffeured, air conditioned cars, were greeted with placards, leaflets, boos, and taunts. One placard read: “Down from the hill, up to the Hilton!” It was quite a spectacle, though the alumni were not amused.
WHEN CLASSES RESUMED after the Christmas break, KKK, after months of soul-searching, had deserted the moderates and come over to the radicals. To coordinate efforts in our growing ranks, our three Ateneo radical groups established a loose confederation, the Makabayang Katipunan ng Ateneo (MKA) or Nationalist Confederation of Ateneo. I sat on the MKA council as one of the representatives of KM-Ateneo. We all immediately plunged into preparing for a rally to commemorate the first anniversary of the First Quarter Storm.
At that point, the government announced an increase in the price of gasoline. Drivers of public utility jeepneys went on strike and paralyzed jeepney services throughout Metro Manila. Denouncing the “imperialist” oil companies for “extracting superprofits” from Filipino consumers, activist groups joined the jeepney drivers in organizing a protest rally scheduled for January 13. The MKA, not bothering with a student council endorsement, mobilized a busload of Ateneo students. From different points of Metro Manila, the marchers—jeepney drivers, students, workers, slum dwellers, and vendors—converged on Plaza Miranda and over several hours cheered a battery of speakers. All of a sudden, we heard explosions—pillboxes, then gunshots. Armed Metrocom soldiers and policemen appeared from out of nowhere to break up the rally. I saw everyone around me running, but I could see no one from Ateneo. I sprinted down the Quiapo underpass and into a side street, and that was the end of my part in the rally. Later, I learned that four young demonstrators had been killed and over a hundred were injured.
Nationwide protests followed. MKA put up a red and black banner in the college quad in memory of the four dead demonstrators and hung effigies of Uncle Sam and Marcos from an acacia tree. We held successive teach-ins and discussion groups. On January 15, we mobilized 200 Ateneo students and jeepney and tricycle drivers for a short march within and around the university, stopping briefly at San Jose Seminary, the Loyola House of Studies, the dormitories, and the administration building and ending in front of the Loyola Center.
The anniversary of the First Quarter Storm was only days away and tension mounted throughout Metro Manila. Activist groups braced for another major confrontation with the police. A week before the scheduled January 25 commemorative rally, the moderate groups—NUSP, KASAPI, Lakasdiwa, the Federation of Free Farmers, and the Federation of Free Workers—changed their minds about joining and decided to hold an alternative rally two days ahead. They feared another outbreak of violence and the growing possibility that Marcos would use it as an excuse to declare martial law. NatDem radical groups stuck to their plans, scoffing at the moderates’ faint-heartedness. The Ateneo student council decided, by a close vote of 8–6 with one abstention, to join the January 23 rally and not to support the January 25 rally. But both rallies turned out to be peaceful.
Amid the hubbub over the violence at the January 13 rally and the threats of violence at the FQS anniversary rally, the issue of the oil price hike got somewhat sidelined. Gasoline prices were not rolled back.
BEFORE THE TENSION of the January events could subside, a new political storm broke out. Oil prices rose again, and jeepney drivers again went on strike. Activist groups once again denounced the greed of the oil multinationals and declared their support for the strike. The nation’s attention soon became riveted to UP Diliman, where students, led by the radical student council, protested the oil price hike by barricading all the main campus roads. As tempers flared, an irate professor shot and killed a student who was a former classmate of Jan (as recounted in Chapter 4). Student resistance broadened and hardened. Keeping police at bay, students took over parts of the campus, occupying university buildings and using the university radio station and printing press to denounce the government. This Diliman Commune held out for nine days, longer than the jeepney strike itself.
In Ateneo, the student council called for a boycott of classes on the first two days of the jeepney strike. However, only 150 or so students joined the boycott and marched down Katipunan Avenue to link up with striking jeepney drivers. On the third day, Ateneo’s activist groups took over. Gathering fallen tree branches, pieces of wood, old automobile tires, and large chunks of trash, we put up a barricade across Katipunan Avenue at Gate 3, blocking a public jeepney route. Soon, armed Metrocom soldiers and police arrived on the scene. We jeered, cursed, and ridiculed them. Tension built, until Fr. Joaquin Bernas, the dean of the college, and Rafael Chee Kee, the dean of students, intervened. The soldiers were allowed to remove the roadblock and then they departed, leaving