Up in the mountains, I still remember -1

SIX months before martial rule interrupted a million Filipino

lives, I packed my bags in our house in Davao City and headed

for Mati, Davao Oriental.

I was going to become a pastoral worker, to help in the

establishment of Gagmay'ng Kristohanong Katilingban (Basic

Christian Communities). I was then a young man of 25.

Earlier, I was in the South, teaching economics and sociology at

the Cor Jesu College in Digos, Davao del Sur. I had finished my

M.S. Economics at the Asian Social Institute in May, 1971. The

following month, I joined the faculty at the Cor Jesu, mainly

because that year, the college was applying for Paascu

accreditation. Having graduated from high school at the Cor

Jesu, I wanted to be back to my alma mater.

Apart from teaching, I was assigned adviser of the

Socio-Economics Society (SES), a school organization which

encouraged the students to deal with the hot social issues of

the times.

There were about 50 members and many of them had

involvement with activist organizations on campus like the KM

(Kabataang Makabayan), SDK (Samahang Demokratiko ng

Kabataan) and the Khi Rho.

When I asked them what they wanted to do, a good number

proposed that we helped politicize the students and the masses

through street theater. I was quite receptive to the suggestion

since, the year before, I had attended a seminar-workshop

conducted by members of the Philippine Education Theater

Association (Peta) in Tagum.

This was the very first workshop Peta conducted outside

Manila. The Peta artists included Cecile Guidote, the late Lino

Brocka, Jonas Sebastian and Lorli Villanueva.

Our first production was titled ''Unsay Kaugmaon sa atong

Nasud, Manang Takya?'' (What is the future of our country,

Manang Takya?). It was a collage of improvisations; a

collection of vignettes culled from newspaper headline stories.

It was the first time that a theater piece tackled controversial

social issues and the dialogue was in Cebuano.

Harassment begins

Naturally, in the activist period of the late l960s and early l970s,

it was a hit. We got invited to a number of municipalities around

the Davao region to stage the play during mass demonstrations

or the campaign of the progressive political parties.

A year before martial law would be declared, our theater group

experienced military harassment. We were going to present our

play in Malalag, Davao del Sur. When we reached the town

center, a military squad met us, informing the group that we

could not stage the play there. I could still remember my

dialogue with the colonel:

Me: There is still no martial law, so why are you preventing us

from staging the play?

Colonel: Because I order you not to do so.

Me: We are still a democratic country and we are free to stage

our play here.

Colonel: You better get back on the bus and return to Digos if

you don't like anything bad to happen to you and the students.

I didn't want anything bad to happen to the students. I was

accountable to their parents. In fact, I had to approach a number

of them before they would allow their children to join our

presentations outside Digos. That was my first brush with the

military. There would be more while Marcos was in power.

Even as I enjoyed my stay at the Cor Jesu, I realized that I was

not cut for the academe. I longed to be out in the mountains not

in the poblacion. I ached to be integrated among the ordinary

people in the villages and not in the middle-class atmosphere of

a Catholic college.

Part of the reason was that, at ASI, we were encouraged to work

at the grassroots. This was why we studied community

development, community organizing, cooperatives, research for

people empowerment, and the like.

Long before the word ''exposure'' was coined, we were already

spending time with peasants, fisherfolk and the urban poor.

Since I was in Manila at the outbreak of the First Quarter Storm,

I was drawn to the challenge of working with the masses.

An opportunity arose through Ed Gerlock, then a Maryknoll

priest in Tagum who was my classmate at ASI. He was working

with the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF). In the course of their

organizing work, they manifested their resistance to the

expansion of the banana plantations in Davao del Norte. This

would eventually lead to his deportation when martial law was

declared.

Through Ed, I heard that Fr. Jack Walsh, the Maryknoll parish

priest in Mati, was recruiting members to compose the parish

team. Their primary work was to strengthen the GKKs. He had

three local pastoral workers already and he needed three

outsiders. I applied for the job and he hired me.