22/09/2026
Fifty-four years after the declaration of Martial Law, the ๐๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ฉ๐ก๐ ๐๐ข๐ ๐ฆ๐ ๐
๐ซ๐๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ง๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ remembers five brothers who resisted the dictatorship.
๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐ฆ ๐๐ข๐ง๐๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐๐ ๐ '๐๐-๐ was born to an American father and a Filipino mother, and renounced that citizenship when he turned twenty-one. Arrested after the declaration and released from Fort Bonifacio in 1973, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines to keep a promise to his father that he would finish college, and joined the fraternity that same year. He left for the countryside the following year.
"I cannot in conscience continue my academic studies, nor do I have any ambition to live a nice, peaceful and secure life," he explained in a letter to his parents. "For this in effect would mean a compromise of inaction in the face of intensifying economic crises and repression as well as monopolization of political power by a fascist dictatorship."
In March 1975, during an encounter with government troops in Echague, Isabela, he was shot in the leg and told his comrades to leave him behind so that he could cover their escape. He was apparently captured alive, and when his body was recovered, it bore the marks of severe torture. He was twenty-four.
He was neither the first of us nor the only one.
๐๐ง๐ญ๐จ๐ง๐ข๐จ "๐๐จ๐ง๐ฒ" ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฆ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐ฅ๐ '๐๐-๐ edited the Philippine Collegian and in 1971 was elected national president of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines. When Martial Law shut down the press he had led, he left for Panay to continue the fight on the island where he was born. In February 1974, government troops killed him in Libacao, Aklan, at twenty-four.
๐๐จ๐ฌ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ซ๐จ๐ง ๐๐ซ. '๐๐-๐ was a political science major who organized through the Nationalist Corps of the UP Student Council and the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan. He marched through the First Quarter Storm, then left the university in 1971 to continue the struggle in Isabela, where government forces killed him in San Mariano in May 1974, at twenty-two.
๐๐๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฌ "๐๐๐ฌ๐ฌ" ๐
๐๐ซ๐ง๐๐ง๐๐๐ณ '๐๐-๐ joined the Student Alliance for Nationalist Democracy in 1971, while still in high school, and remained an organizer until his death in 2007. He helped rebuild the student movement at UP from 1972 to 1976, when student councils and campus papers had been abolished. In 1983, he brought thousands of students across the country into the protests against the dictatorship.
๐๐๐๐ข๐ง๐จ "๐๐๐" ๐๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ซ. '๐๐-๐ was a campus activist who became an anthropologist, and worked alongside the poor until his death in 2013. He organized among the urban poor and the batilyo of Navotas. He also documented human rights violations and farmers' land struggles with the Diocese of Ilagan's Social Action Center. For that work, he was arrested in 1982 as one of the "Vizcaya 13" and held until 1985.
All five are enshrined at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani.
Fifty-four years on, the accounting remains unfinished. The freedoms they fought for are ours to defend.
Never Forget. Never Again to Martial Law.
๐๐ฅ๐๐ฒ ๐ฌ๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐๐ฒ๐๐ง๐๐ง.
