(Part 2)
If, as Senator Koko Pimentel advised some days back, only the victims of Ferdinand Marcos’ strongman rule have the right to say “ It’s time to move on” in reaction to Gov. Imee Marcos’ admonition for our people and the country “to move on from the Aquino-Marcos feud”—a kind of shorthand used by martial law victims to insist that the Marcoses apologize for the misdeeds during that period—then Mike Molina and Dads Capellan who also joined our Hong Kong sojourn have every right to declare so.
Well, they have moved on.
Mike and Dads were early recruits from the Ateneo of the Kabataang Makabayan, described by the security forces then as the most radical youth organization under the control of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Together with its twin, Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan, they formed the CPP’s one-two punch in the youth and students sector which readily took the sector by storm crowding out the other Y/S groups in schools and communities nationwide.
Mike and Dads dropped out of Ateneo for a while to “learn from the masses,” organized in the communities and actively led street protests. They were detained a number of times before and during martial law and like many detainees suffered in prison. They protested. Their families cried out for justice as best they could under the circumstances. After denouncing, marching and fighting against an oppressive system with Marcos at the helm in the hope of overturning it to usher a new Philippines, they were overwhelmed and lost. It was a bitter loss made even more tragic by the death of friends and classmates at the hands of the security forces. They did their best but accepted their loss. Unlike others who continued to denounce their fate and demonize Marcos and his regime, they never, as in never, sought any kind of compensation for fighting for their ideals. Instead, they stood up and moved on.
In their own ways they channeled their energies to productive pursuits within the system, always looking for ways to pursue the dream of building a new country by injecting values and practices imbibed before, during and after the martial law years. They managed not to get trapped in the past with all the anger, frustration and bitterness it brought. They licked their wounds and nursed themselves back into solid grounds. They became entrepreneurs, raised good families and managed to impart to a wider circle of people lessons learned from the earlier struggles: Discipline, patience and hard work. They cultivated friends and continued to find ways by which they can, in this fourth quarter of their lives, still contribute to the development of this benighted land and the uplifting of the lives of our people.
The rest of the group—Goody Hernandez, Menow Nivera and Benjie Atilano—may not have been active participants in the FQS struggles but they lived through it and learned the lessons well. They excelled in their own fields, mainly business and finance, and in their own ways contributed in making the country a better place. In his younger days, Goody rose to become a top official of one of the country’s engineering and construction companies, EEI, which employed and continue to employ tens of thousands of our people and built up not only the country’s infrastructure and skyline but many others overseas. Two years ago he also retired after serving as the Philippine Representative to the Asian Development Bank for six years. He now tends a farm in Batangas, keeping a nursery for the farmers within the community and serves as the Treasurer of the Ateneo HS ‘68/College ‘72 Association. It is in that capacity that he was able to cajole many of our classmates to contribute to the Fr. Thomas Steinbugler Scholarship Fund for poor but deserving students enjoined to enroll at the Ateneo.
On the other hand, Menow, ever the dutiful student, graduated with honors amidst the boycotts in Loyola and proceeded to be a professional manager in many local and foreign companies. for a while he lived in Hong Kong and Jakarta as part of a batch of topnotch Filipino managers entrusted with the fortunes and businesses of many of Asean’s tycoons. Now he heads a number of companies one of which being the Canlubang Golf Club where he gets to interact with business owners and managers encouraging them to enhance their workers’ benefits and train youngsters for the life ahead.
As in college, Benjie Atilano is his own man. Singlehandedly he built up his insurance and financial services business from the ground up noting that in college he did things his way anyway ribbing the activists in our group that he always welcomed calls for boycotts then looking at these as opportunities to look around, scout for possibilities (mainly the ladies??) and scoop for news and bond with classmates many of whom later on became his clients. Today, he makes Manila and Hong Kong his home as he supervises a number of companies some of which he has already ceded to his children. He moved on and still snoops for opportunities this time as part of what he calls his giving-back initiatives to the school and the communities he once roamed in.
Multiply those life experiences thousands upon thousands over and you will see that the vast majority of those who dedicated their lives to struggles, whether in or out of school, during the heady FQS days or the dark days of martial rule lived with those memories but decided they will not let that past immobilize them no end. They moved on and took their chances learning from the past. Many of them took the punches and nursed their wounds vowing to make something of themselves even in a society which remained mired in poverty and in the clutches of an oligarchy. They remained unbowed by their detention and sufferings even as they continue to grieve for the lives lost and the forsaken opportunities. But they moved on. And even in the fourth quarter of their lives they continue to shoulder on hoping that somehow by giving the best examples of purposeful lives the next generations will continue to rage against the darkness and in their own ways help build a nation united in the pursuit of development, freedom and justice for all. Moving on, build a nation remains the over riding call as we all face up to the challenges and opportunities of this 21st century.
