bantayog.foundation

bantayog.foundation

SUMILANG, Michael J.

sumilang

Michael Hiram Sumilang was studying mechanical engineering in Manila when demonstrations, rallies, boycotts of classes and other forms of protests erupted there in the 1970s. Sumilang interrupted his schooling in 1972 (he was in 3rd year) and returned to his Southern Tagalog hometown of Tayabas.

He went into business exporting handicrafts, and got married. He was in his mid-20s when he ran for municipal councilor in 1980, and won. He headed various committees to improve the business and trade sectors as well as the agricultural sector in Tayabas. But the Marcos dictatorship was still in effect, and the young politician was aware of the many abuses of martial rule that had been going on for years.

Sumilang increasingly became identified with the province’s militant opposition especially after the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. He helped to found the Quezon chapter of the Concerned Citizens for Justice and Peace (CCJP) in 1984. Under the CCJP, he organized marches and rallies seeking justice for victims of militarization and calling for the release of political prisoners. He joined factfinding missions organized by the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines to document military abuses in Quezon.

Chosen to be the municipal chair of the Unido party in Tayabas in 1985, he joined opposition stalwarts in touring the province to campaign for Corazon Aquino during the snap presidential elections. Bobong Sumilang was an effective campaigner. He had a movie actor’s good looks, a deep booming voice, the ability to make audiences laugh, and strong convictions. He was the youngest in the group of veteran politicians, and was soon being referred to as the "rising star" of Quezon politics.

Only a few days after the snap presidential elections, late in the evening of February 10, 1986, Sumilang was driving a friend’s jeep on the way home from attending a meeting with other political leaders. Just past the boundary betweenTayabas and Lucena City, a car blocked his way. Sumilang told his four companions to get off and run. The ambushers aimed their guns and shot him dead. His remains were brought to the municipal hall. Thousands came to express their sorrow and recall the good deeds of Bobong Sumilang.

PARENTS                             Mario Sumilang and Romana Jardiniano

SPOUSE / CHILDREN       Myrna Mojica / 4

EDUCATION                       Elementary: Tayabas East Central School

Secondary: St. John Bosco Academy, Tayabas

College: Adamson University, Manila

PONCE, Rodrigo

In November 1985, with mass protests against his regime breaking out all over the country, President Marcos was pressured to call for elections that, he hoped, would allow him to claim renewed legitimacy for his dictatorial rule.

He had “lifted” martial law and gotten himself a six-year presidential term in 1981, but as far as the Filipino people were concerned nothing had changed. They had had enough. So strong and so loud was their call for Marcos to be ousted that the United States government, his chief international backer, at last considered letting him go because he had become a big liability. President Ronald Reagan sent a personal representative to Manila to conduct secret negotiations, after which Marcos announced on American television that he was calling for special elections to be held in about three months’ time.

Although many believed that the snap presidential elections would be another manipulation of the people’s will and called for a boycott, many others thought that this was a chance to show and further solidify their opposition to the Marcos regime. Corazon Aquino, widow of the assassinated senator Benigno Aquino Jr., reluctantly agreed to run for president, with Salvador Laurel as her vice-president. They were pitted against Marcos and his vice-presidential candidate Arturo Tolentino.

Headed by church and business leaders, the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) had first participated in the regime’s elections in 1984, accredited as the citizens’ arm of the Commission on Elections or Comelec. For the 1986 snap presidential elections, over 500,000 volunteers participated in its effort to safeguard against the expected massive electoral fraud.

Rodrigo Ponce was a NAMFREL volunteer in Capiz who was killed by unidentified persons during the canvassing of the results in Bating Elementary School. According to the scant information available, three armed men and a young woman arrived and seized the ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia. They had apparently come from another school where they had also taken the ballots away.

Apparently, Ponce was killed because he recognized one of the group. He was then told to step out of the room, ordered to lie face down on the floor, and simply shot dead. The autopsy report showed six bullet holes fired from two different guns.

In many parts of the country, especially in rural areas where tyrannical local politicians enforced obedience through “guns, goons and gold,” election volunteers were killed because they were perceived to be either independent or against the ruling authorities. Thus, there was widespread consensus, even internationally, that the snap presidential elections had been conducted fraudulently.

Two days after the February 7 elections, computer programmers of the Comelec walked out of the vote canvassing, denouncing the ongoing falsification of election returns. But the Batasang Pambansa issued a resolution proclaiming Marcos and Tolentino to be the winners. Aquino and Laurel refused to accept this decision, and they were supported by the majority of the people.

On February 22-25, four days of tumultuous people power at EDSA culminated in the final ouster of Marcos. He was forced to leave Malacanang, with his family and cronies, aboard military helicopters sent by the US government. On March 24, the Batasang Pambansa passed a resolution nullifying the results of the snap presidential elections, and proclaimed Aquino and Laurel as the winners.

DIED                                      February 1986 in Mambusao, Capiz

SPOUSE                                Elma Ponce

GREY, Eugene David C.

grey, eugene

The first Grey to set foot in the Philippines was an officer of the British Royal Navy who opted to stay in the country after Spain and England settled their hostilities in the Philippines. The British defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in 1762.

Fernando Grey was the captain in Emilio Aguinaldo's revolutionary army who reported the start of hostilities at the Pinaglabanan Bridge that led to the Philippine‑American War.

After the end of the Spanish era, the Greys established themselves in the elite districts of Manila. Eugene David Conejero Grey, the fifth of seven children, grew up amid gentility. His father was a marketing manager for Caltex Philippines, and Eugene spent his high school years in Bauan, Batangas, where he lived in a compound exclusive to families of Caltex’s executives. He was sociable, talented, and popular. He excelled in sports. He spent his weekends swimming with the neighborhood children or playing tennis or golf, in which he won several tournaments. He taught himself to play the guitar, playing his favorites, the Beatles, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan.

In the mid 1960's, Eugene's father Edgardo, then a leader of the Caltex Filipino Managers' and Supervisors' Association (CAFIMSA), joined the first-ever strike against Caltex on the issue of racial discrimination. Eugene tagged along with his father during the strike.

Enrolling at the Lyceum of the Philippines in 1967, Eugene became drawn to the growing campus movements calling for reforms in the educational system. He participated in discussion groups, fora and symposia that decried anti‑student policies. Soon, he was a leader of campus protests.

He became one of the leaders of the Kabataang Makabayan (KM).

Eugene, or Gene to friends, was a wide reader and an exceptionally articulate speaker and debater. Friends recall how intensely he punctuated his arguments, often citing sources that astonished his listeners.

During the First Quarter Storm of the 1970s, Eugene earned the respect of his comrades for his tirelessness, dedication, and resolve. He helped organize rallies and demonstrations, wrote press releases for the KM, and held television interviews. He joined laborers at the picket lines. He visited poor communities and talked with out‑of-school youths. He spoke at mass actions. He awed and amazed his comrades, who called him “unstoppable.”

When the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by Ferdinand Marcos in 1971, Eugene’s name was in the list of students wanted by the government. He decided to go underground and leave for the rural areas.

He was killed in January 1973 in a dawn raid by the Philippine Constabulary on the house where he and his friends were staying, in Bo. Ibas, in Mt. Banahaw, along the border of Quezon and Camarines. Eugene was asleep when he was killed. A firefight ensued, which resulted in the killing of everyone in the house.

He was 23 years old. Eugene’s remains were never recovered. The family was devastated, deciding to leave the Philippines for good. But Eugene’s friends have continued to remember this exceptional young man’s intellectual drive, commitment and selflessness. His friends say that he could very easily have chosen the easy life, being bright and coming from a wealthy family. Instead he chose the more difficult path.

PEREZ, Dante D.

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He wanted a life spent in the service of others so that his death would be meaningful, the young Dante Perez told his brother Romeo. He had just experienced the fulfillment of helping the victims of the Ruby Tower disaster, when a multistory building in a busy part of Manila collapsed due to an earthquake, burying numerous people.

Helping others was something Perez liked to do. Before spending days and nights at the site of the ruined Ruby Tower, he had also raised funds to support relief operations when Taal Volcano erupted. It was a personality trait strongly influenced by his mother, who always found time to help the unfortunate despite her own busy schedule (she managed her own chemical company). Mrs. Perez helped care for child patients in a government hospital, initiated rehabilitation projects for jail inmates, and brought material assistance to victims of natural disasters. She used to bring her son along to help feed sick children, distribute relief goods and go caroling during the Christmas season to raise funds for charity.

Perez was in his first year of college when the First Quarter Storm swept the country. He was then a member of the National Union of Students of the Philippines , advocating peaceful reforms, clean and honest elections, and so on. The two brothers, Dante and Romeo, started living with jeepney drivers, writing manifestos, and preparing food and giving medical aid to striking drivers. Working closely with his friend, Reynante Andal from Mindoro, founder and president of the Samahan ng mga Kabataan Para sa Ikauunlad ng mga Tsuper, Dante worked until the wee hours of the morning preparing study modules for students and drivers.

When martial law was declared in 1972, Perez abandoned his reformist ideas and turned to the guerrilla underground in order to fight the dictatorship. Together with old friends from Kasapi and the Kilusang Kristiyano ng Kabataang Pilipino, he joined Andal in moving to Mindoro Oriental where they started organizing for the anti-dictatorship struggle.

Just a few weeks later, on November 3, 1972, Perez was killed by the military. He was with a group inside a hut one evening when they heard a voice outside telling them to surrender. Andal thought it was a joke and shouted back to stop the fooling. Gunshots followed. Andal was hit in the abdomen and Perez in both legs; his wife, Teresita Lioanag, (a student from Maryknoll College), rushed outside and called on the attackers to stop firing. The soldiers then entered the hut and pumped more bullets into Perez, who was still alive. Later the National Bureau of Investigation would find Dante negative for powder burns and his body riddled with 32 gunshot wounds.

All the survivors were taken to jail. Perez's parents came and took his remains back to Manila. Lioanag was kept in jail for more than a year but the others were released after several weeks in detention.

PARENTS                             Amador M. Perez and Remedios Dizon

SPOUSE                                Teresita Lioanag

EDUCATION                       Elementary: Ateneo de Manila, Quezon City

Secondary: Ateneo de Manila University; De La Salle High School, Lipa City

College: De La Salle College, Manila; University of the East

QUINTERO, Eduardo T.

quintero_2

In 1971, a Constitutional Convention was called to draft a new basic charter to replace the 1935 Constitution. President Marcos was then nearing the end of his second term in office, and the law expressly prohibited him to run for reelection. He saw an opportunity to perpetuate himself in power if the new Constitution allowed him to do so. He tried to ensure that as many of the delegates elected to the Convention would support him.

But there was also strong opposition to Marcos’ continuing monopolization of power. Many delegates were prepared to block Marcos’ plan to shift to a parliamentary form of government in which he could be prime minister, and where an opening could be made for his wife’s own ambitions. Meanwhile, a set of transitory provisions would prevent block legal objections to the planned changeover.

Eduardo T. Quintero was a retired ambassador who had been one of the first to be recruited into the country’s diplomatic service. A native of Tacloban and distantly related to Imelda Romualdez Marcos, he was said to have been elected to the Constitutional Convention as delegate of Leyte province’s first district with the family’s support. At 70, he was older than most of the other delegates.

In May 1972, before all the assembled members of the Convention, Quintero unexpectedly made a public disclosure that the media called a “bombshell.” He had been receiving, he said, money in envelops, amounting to over P11,000 which almost certainly came from Marcos’wife. He set all the envelops aside, waiting for the right time for him to speak out. “I want to do the correct thing,” he said.

Later exposés revealed that other Con-Con delegates were similarly bribed by the Marcoses, or acted as their agents, in order to get their votes. Public opinion believed Quintero, the “whistle blower.”

Marcos launched personal attacks against him, and Imelda Marcos tried to gain sympathy by claiming she had suffered a miscarriage due to the scandal. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided Quintero’s home and seized bills amounting to P390,000. Charges of perjury, bribery, and graft and corruption were slapped on Quintero. But many came to his defense, and he did not waver in his testimonies against the presidential couple.

Several months later, Marcos imposed martial law as he had threatened to do many times before. In ill health, Quintero was allowed to return to Leyte quietly, and in 1977 was able to leave for the United States with his family. There he kept in touch with the America-based anti-Marcos opposition, and wrote a book which was to be entitled “The Envelops of Imelda Marcos.” Today, the manuscript remains unpublished and certain chapters are said to be mysteriously missing.

After the Marcos dictatorship was ousted, Quintero was vindicated by the Supreme Court in 1988, when finally it ruled that the NBI raid on his house was orchestrated "from beginning to end" to destroy him.

Eduardo T. Quintero died poor at the age of 84 in San Francisco, USA.

PARENTS                             Eduardo Quintero Sr. and Baldomera Torcelo

SPOUSE                                Tarcila Pariña / 3 (No. of children)

EDUCATION                       Elementary: Leyte Intermediate School

Secondary: Leyte High School

College: University of the Philippines, Philippine Law School

TIERRA, Noel C.

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When Noel Tierra died at the age of 21, some people shook their heads and wondered why he had to become a rebel when he came from a well-off family: his parents had good jobs and they owned some land in Quezon, planted to rice and coconuts.

In fact, Tierra was a typical teenager who got good grades especially in mathematics and science, loved the Beatles, played the piano and guitar. What was notable about him, however, was his concern for others in need. He liked to give away things – from empty bottles and old newspapers to a piece of land – which he thought could be of better use to other people. “I learned from him,” his mother said. “I realized that he was showing more compassion than me.”

It was in college at the University of the Philippines in Diliman that he encountered the ideas that explained why people were poor and exploited, and what needed to be done. He joined the Nationalist Corps, and later the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan. Soon, he was joining rallies, and exposure trips to different rural communities. They would engage the community members in dialogue, learning and teaching at the same time.

During the summer of 1970, Tierra and two of his friends went on their own to Atimonan, Quezon to try and organize the young people there. They were not too successful. But the group got to hold a protest rally with a handful of participants, and some placards, at the town plaza.

Soon he dropped out of college to go fulltime into community organizing in Quezon City. Now he looked like the activist of cartoons, not caring much about looking smart, always hungry.

“When I heard that Noel had become an activist, I said…we should be thankful that we have young people like that,” his former scoutmaster said. “If all of us thought only of ourselves, how can there be change? We must be thankful for young people who offer their lives for the sake of social change. If they did not wake us up, we would still have our eyes closed. Noel became an activist not because he was poor but because he used his intellect and he studied the situation."

Shortly after martial law was declared, Tierra was arrested in Quezon and detained for some months at Camp Vicente Lim in Laguna. He was arrested again by the military in a “zoning” operation in the town of Tagkawayan in January 1974. This time he was heavily tortured; for the next two weeks, with hands tied behind his back and starving, he was paraded around the barrios and put on display as a captured rebel. Apparently he refused to give any information to his interrogators. Later he was taken back to the constabulary camp in Bagong Silang II, Guinayangan, and shot dead. His body was then left on a basketball court in the town center. His parents, only then informed, came at once to claim his body.

Noel Tierra said goodbye to his parents in a letter written in February 1972. “As long as exploitation of man by man, of one nation by another nation persists on this earth, there will be many sons and daughters who will leave their homes. That’s why I leave now. I, my comrades, and all the oppressed peoples of the world will rise like a mighty storm to end exploitation – forever. In this way there will be no more sons and daughters who will leave their homes. There will be no more mothers to cry. In the new day…the spirit of serving the people will pervade the earth.”

VELEZ, Jose Mari U.

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Jose Mari Velez was not yet 30 when he was elected to represent the 1st district of Rizal in the 1971 Constitutional Convention, where most of the delegates were seasoned politicians and prominent professionals. As a delegate, he proved himself to be an uncompromising defender of constitutional democracy. He opposed the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by Marcos and the establishment of political dynasties in the country.

His sense of what was good or bad for the nation was probably sharpened by the years he spent as a broadcast journalist. In 1966, he broke into Philippine television when he was chosen to be the sole anchor for the news program “The Big News.” Nightly he delivered information that was credible, committed to the truth, and professionally presented, earning a series of awards for the program. He also hosted a talk show, interviewing personalities about the hot issues of the day.

Velez began his career in mass media as a disk jockey in radio station DZHP, while he was still studying for a political science degree at the University of the Philippines. It was a “graveyard shift,” from 12 midnight to 5 am, but he needed to support himself and his young family. After graduation, he went on to study law, which he finished in 1970.

When martial law was declared in September 1972, Velez was ordered arrested along with several other delegates to the Constitutional Convention. He and journalist Napoleon Rama, also a detained Con-Con delegate, were allowed to vote on the “ersatz Marcos Constitution," as Velez called it. A "yes" vote would have meant release from detention and membership in the martial law legislative assembly. With "every fiber in (his) body," he voted "no."

By early 1973, Velez was released from detention but instead placed under house arrest for another two years. After this, no one wanted to employ him for fear of the Marcos regime. He himself vowed never to return to broadcasting until the dictator was ousted from power.

In the meantime, he reviewed for the bar, which he passed, and pursued a master's degree in economics, after which a friend asked him to work in one of his business firms. After that he became vice-president of Associated Bank.

But Velez continued to be active in the opposition to the regime. He helped found and chaired SELDA, an organization of former political detainees. He refused to accept the Marcos Constitution and assailed the corruption of the dictatorship. He called for a boycott of the 1984 elections and joined the opposition party, Laban, in the 1986 snap presidential elections.

In February 1986, Velez was among the first to go on air, announcing the flight of Marcos and his family from the country. The "country’s number one TV newscaster" was at last free to return to broadcast journalism. His first post-Marcos stint in mass media was on Channel 7 with Tina Monzon Palma. President Corazon Aquino also appointed him director of the Development Bank of the Philippines.

It was Velez and American lawyer Robert Swift who together filed the first class suit against Marcos before a court in Hawaii, USA, He was lead plaintiff in the case of thousands of victims whose human rights were violated under the dictatorial regime.

In 1989, Velez became the first awardee for service by a journalist given by the Ninoy Aquino Fellowships for Professional Development. In presenting this award, the then US Ambassador to the Philippines Nicholas Platt read the following: "It is most appropriate that this honor should go to a man who was imprisoned with Ninoy when freedom of the press was under the harshest attack in the Philippines."

He died of lung cancer at a hospital in New York City in 1991, at the age of 50.

PARENTS                             Fernando Velez and Juana Uhler

SPOUSE                                Marilu Syjuco / 4

EDUCATION                       Elementary: Ateneo de Manila

Secondary: University of Santo Tomas

College: University of the Philippines Diliman; Center for Research and Communication,

Pasig City

EDRALIN-TIGLAO, Raquel

raquel edralin tiglao photo 2016 for the book

Raquel Edralin was born in Manila but spent most of her childhood in Mindanao because her father was assigned there with the Bureau of Lands. Her mother was a nurse and a traditional wife and mother but she was a strong woman who raised eight children.

Raquel, known as Rock to friends, studied for an AB Psychology degree at the University of the Philippines. In the late 1960s, she joined the militant Kabataang Makabayan and became involved in anti-Marcos activities, often a frontliner at rallies and demonstrations. She helped organize the first women workers’ unions in 1970.

When martial law was declared, Raquel found her name in the wanted list and she decided to quit her studies and go underground. Later, she was captured, together with husband Rigoberto Tiglao, and then charged with sedition and rebellion. The couple, together with their daughter Ria, was kept in prison for almost two years at Fort Bonifacio. After their release, they were placed under house arrest. Rock tried to resume her studies in UP but the constant military surveillance bothered her. She quit college a second time.

She went on organizing communities, and providing counseling and keeping in touch with her activists friends. In the early 1980s, she helped  put up a community daycare center for children of political activists, becoming its chief officer for two years. She gave Lamaze childbirth instructions to couples.

Rock took up women’s rights issues when the women’s movement saw a resurgence in the 1980s. She took courses in psychology and women’s studies in Harvard, joining husband Bobi who won a Harvard fellowship in 1987.  She surveyed battered women’s centers in the US and did an internship at the Boston Public Health and Hospitals and exposures at New York hospitals to develop protocols for battered women and rape survivors. She trained in feminist counseling.

When she returned to the Philippines, she helped put up a women’s center, intended for military rape survivors. Rock became the center’s consultant and trainor, and later executive director for ten years. She steered the Women’s Crisis Center into the country’s premier hospital-based and crisis-care facility for women victims-survivors of gender-based violence.

She spent the rest of her life dedicated to pursuing women’s issues and concerns. She died in 2001 after a long battle with cancer.

Parents : Leo Edralin and Teresa Aricheta

Spouse : Rigoberto Tiglao

Children : Andrea Raquel, Alexandro Kalayaan, and Ben Siddharta

Education : College - University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, AB Psychology

GILLEGO, Bonifacio

gillego, bonifacio

Bonifacio Gillego was an officer and a gentleman. He gave dignity to public service and honor to his uniform.

As a soldier, Bonifacio Gillego, called Boni by most, saw action in the Korean War and served in the Operation Brotherhood in Laos. Before that he was also part of the resistance during the Japanese occupation. He worked in the military intelligence officer of the Philippine armed forces in the 1950s.

As a congressman, Boni championed a radical type of land reform (zero retention) and spoke against human rights abuses by the military. He studied Marxism and made friends with leftist intellectuals.

Boni served as a delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention which gave rise to the 1973 martial law constitution that gave dictatorial powers to President Marcos. Boni denounced and opposed this constitution.

Because of his independent views, Boni made an enemy out of the Marcos military but he was also distrusted by the left because of his background in military intelligence. In 1978, Boni escaped to the US, where he joined the Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP), headed by Raul Manglapus. Boni continued to support the martial law opposition forces from exile.

Boni is most remembered for his diligent and scholarly research on the fake World War II medals claimed by Ferdinand Marcos. He painstakingly interviewed former war guerrillas and pursued Marcos’ records in the US army archives.

Gillego’s article on the fake medals was prepared for The Washington Post to be published in time for the Marcos US state visit in 1982. But Marcos got wind of the article and threatened to sue the Post, which decided to withhold publication temporarily.

In Manila the Malaya newspaper decided to print Gillego’s article. For this, it was shut down, and its editor and staff arrested. Nevertheless, the Malaya story whetted the appetite of the foreign press to dig further.

The Marcos files were eventually released from the US army archives into the US National Archives, where another independent researcher, Alfred McCoy, found them. McCoy published his findings in The New York Times.

Boni was instrumental in getting the portrait of Marcos removed from an exhibit of the awardees of the US Medal of Honor in New York. Boni had challenged the officer-in-charge to show proof of the validity of the inclusion of Marcos' portrait.

Boni and the late senator Benigno Aquino Jr. were close friends, and had worked together in the Movement for a Free Philippines. Boni was one of the last persons whose counsel Aquino sought before making his irreversible decision to return home in 1983. The involvement of the Philippine military in the latter’s assassination was a source of disappointment and anger for Boni.

Boni died of natural causes in 2002. He was 81 years old.

QUIMPO, Ishmael Jr.

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Friends of Ishmael Quimpo Jr. remember him as the talented college dropout who chose to work for the poor and devote his life to the cause of the downtrodden.

Jun Quimpo was exposed early to the student demonstrations that characterized the turbulent days of the early 1970s. His family lived inside Manila's university belt and he himself went to school at San Beda, a stone’s throw away from the seat of the presidency, Malacan͂ang Palace. Only 13 when the First Quarter Storm erupted, he was caught in the spirit of his time. He wanted to participate, and started by getting involved in community organizing. His first experience of an urban poor community was at Constitution Hill in Quezon City (then a squatters’ relocation area, now the site of the Batasang Pambansa).

When martial law was imposed and student councils were banned, students thought of other means to assert their right to self-organization. At the University of the Philippines, they put up a Consultative Committee on Student Affairs, and Quimpo, then a freshman, joined its youth committee. Yet community work seemed to be more attractive to him.

Tatalon was another huge slum community in Quezon City and Quimpo became a member of the Alyansa ng Maralita sa Tatalon. With a small allowance from the Share and Care Apostolate for Poor Settlers, he went about his organizing work, discussing politics with the local residents, prodding them to turn away from the hopelessness and idleness of their daily lives, at least cut down on their beer-drinking sprees, and to take responsibility for their future.

Often it was through song that he expressed his views and dreams. With a guitar, he would sing the hours away, inspiring people and making them feel strong.

After being arrested and detained for 10 days in 1976, Quimpo decided to give up college and join the anti-martial law underground. For the next five years, he lived in the rural areas of Luzon where he organized farmers as a cadre of the New People’s Army.

In December 1981, in the village of Kalisitan in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, Quimpo was killed treacherously – shot from the back several times – by someone he had trusted, a member of his unit. He was unaware that this person was already working with the military. (Hailed as a “hero” by the latter, the killer was said to have committed suicide sometime later.)

Jun Quimpo was then 24 years old. His family put together a collection of his songs titled "Ang Awit ni Jun," in his honor and memory.

PARENTS                             Ishmael Quimpo and Esperanza Ferrer

SPOUSE                                Maria Cristina (Tina) Pargas

EDUCATION                       Elementary: San Beda College, Manila

Secondary: San Beda College, Manila

College: University of the Philippines Diliman

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