Mariano Lopez was quiet and soft spoken, very bright. He was a government scholar from high school to college. He was among the first students who qualified for the Philippine Science High School in 1964, graduating fifth of the batch five years later.
One day in February 1976, Lansang was in a car with five others, bringing rice and food supplies to Quezon from Manila. Apparently, they were being trailed by constabulary forces that caught up with them in Barangay Cagsiay I in Mauban town. Lansang and three of his comrades, one of them a pregnant woman named Leah Masajo, were shot dead and buried in a common grave in Lucena City. He was 19 years old.
Under martial law, she joined several of the groups that formed the budding opposition, among them Joaquin P. Roces’s Taza de Oro group. With journalist Jose Burgos Jr. she helped revive the College Editors Guild (which had been abolished) as the Metropolitan Association of College Editors.
Edgar Jopson became a symbol of the modern idealistic Filipino youth who faced the realities of their time without flinching, gladly giving all, including their lives, for the country and the people.
There was much work to be done, for the jails were full of persons who had been unjustly detained by the police and military. Jimenez was a very effective human rights worker. She cajoled and argued her way into detention camps, bringing with her food, medicine and handicraft materials for the prisoners
He was already gravely ill at the time, but President Marcos must have feared him so much that Enrique Voltaire Garcia II was among the first ones ordered to be rounded up and jailed when martial law was imposed in 1972. In the 1960s, even before student activism gained momentum among the Filipino youth, Garcia was Read more about GARCIA, Enrique Voltaire II[…]
Fernandez felt she needed to continue her commitment to the poor. She went to Isabela as a clandestine youth organizer.
Even as a young boy in high school, Gerardo Faustino was already interested in current affairs, and his opinions expressed progressive and nationalist ideas.
Diokno was among the first to be arrested when Marcos declared martial law in 1972. He was imprisoned for two years without charges, including several months of solitary confinement in Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija.
The martial law regime took note of the couple’s activities, and they were labelled as subversives. Threats to their safety became more and more apparent, and friends urged them to leave Gandara.