Remembering Eman Lacaba in these Red-tagging times

MANILA, Philippines — This January marks the beginning 51 years ago of the First Quarter Storm, a series of student-led protests against the regime of then-President Ferdinand Marcos that took place in the first three months of 1970. This period of upheaval, known as FQS, shook the nation, and the sustained protests in its aftermath became an excuse for Marcos to declare martial law in 1972.

FQS and the martial law era awakened many Filipino youth to the abuses of the dictatorship, such as the poet Emmanuel “Eman” Lacaba who was killed six years after the Storm at the age of 27. Eman participated in the FQS as a member of Panday Sining, the cultural arm of the Kabataang Makabayan.

I first encountered stories from the martial law era when I chose to write about Eman for a school project in Grade 3. In reading about his brief and intense life, I learned about the atrocities of the dictatorship.

I had only known of Eman as the activist whose portrait was printed on a shirt we had at home. I later found out that Eman was one of my dad’s research interests for years; my dad was particularly fascinated with Eman’s life and work while writing his graduate thesis in the 1980s.

Eman is largely known as a guerrilla whose life was cut short in an encounter with the military in Mindanao. But he was also a student activist at the Ateneo de Manila University, as well as a prolific poet, filmmaker, playwright, scholar, bohemian and teacher.

Free spirit

Surely a man with his passion and gifts would have flourished as a writer. But his desire to serve the masses was far too strong and, much too soon, he gave his life in the course of the struggle for freedom.

“The significance of Eman’s life is in what he could have been, and yet he sacrificed it all for freedom and the motherland,” said Vernie Atienza, who was in his college batch.

Eman wrote his own life, and as an artist, he turned it into his masterpiece. He was a free spirit, always embracing the unconventional and trying out different things.

According to Men Sta. Ana, an activist during martial law, Eman’s background as a proletarian hippie familiarized him with street lingo and popular culture, making him very different from other activists. Imagine a guerrilla who was also a bohemian and an intellectual.

This was what Eman’s brother, the writer Jose F. Lacaba, said in the foreword of “Salvaged Poems,” his posthumously published book: “For Eman, wading was not enough. He immersed himself totally in the labor movement, and afterwards he moved on to what activists call the highest level of struggle.”

After spending years in labor organizing, Eman felt stifled by the repressive martial law regime, according to his friend A­lice Salanga. If martial law meant that Eman couldn’t write what he wanted to, he felt that he might as well “take to the hills” and join the New People’s Army (NPA) in Mindanao, she said.

Some of Eman’s mentors and friends disapproved of his plan to become a revolutio­nary. The writer Freddie Salanga told him that he would only be endangering himself by joining the NPA. “There are other ways to serve, and a man of your gifts should be writing,” Freddie said.

In Mindanao

But Eman could not be dissuaded.

In Mindanao, he worked as a bus conductor and a janitor at a karate club; at one point, he became a rice farmer. But he never stopped being a poet.

“Awakened, the masses are Messiah/ Here among workers and peasants our lost/ Generation has found its true, its only home,” he wrote in January of 1976, just two months before his death.

From the North Cotabato countryside, he wrote to a friend that this was where he was happy, where he felt he belonged. His friends said he was a different kind of cadre: one who wasn’t obsessed with being ideologically correct, one who sought experiences and immersion.

Eman was killed in March of 1976. According to accounts, an NPA traitor and members of the Philippine Constabulary captured Eman and his team. When the traitor hesitated to shoot him, Eman said: “Go ahead, fi­nish me off.”

He was shot at close range in the mouth; another bullet was fired at his chest.

‘Down from the Hill’

The impact of Eman’s work continues to be felt far and wide. My own experience at the Ateneo had a lot to do with his work, which includes the famous “Down from the Hill” manifesto that he coauthored in 1968.

The immersion and social involvement I experienced as an Ateneo student were largely a result of the manifesto’s call to bring the university closer to the realities on the ground.

With the Duterte administration relentlessly propagating fear, violence, and impunity, Eman’s struggle is more relevant than ever. The abuse of human rights and the extrajudicial killings show us that not much has changed since the brutal years of martial law.

The latest move against dissent, particularly against the student activism that Eman stood for, took place on Jan. 15, when Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana unilaterally terminated the government’s accord with the University of the Philippines (UP) banning the unauthorized presence of police and military on its campuses. Lorenzana claimed that UP campuses had become recruitment grounds for communist rebels.

Just as Eman did in the 1960s, today’s students are challenging those in power and speaking out against injustice. The youth remain cognizant of their ability to incite change and demand accountability from the government.

The crackdown on dissent shows the lingering effects of the dictatorship, but it is clear that Eman’s presence lingers as well. His spirit is embodied in the young activists who, in an era of Red-tagging, continue to put their lives on the line for their convictions and to fight for a better world. —CONTRIBUTED

(Pia Rodrigo is a political science graduate and the communications officer of the policy research and advocacy group Action for Economic Reform. She acknowledges her late father, Raul Rodrigo, who was a columnist and Lopez family biographer, for his preliminary work and research on Eman Lacaba, which contributed greatly to this article. –Ed.)