QUEZON CITY --- Addressing a crowd here of illustrious men and women and relatives and friends of the victims of the bloody “Dekada 70”, Naga City Mayor Jesse M. Robredo underscored that the lives sacrificed by our heroes and martyrs during the dark years of Martial Law would not be in vain if we, the living, continue the fight against deceit, decadence and oppression which are once again threatening the nation.
Robredo has been invited as guest of honor and speaker at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani annual celebration honoring this year’s martyrs and heroes last Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 2, 2008.
The site of the celebration was the Bantayog Memorial Center located at the intersection of Edsa and Quezon Avenue here where the names of over 170 heroes and martyrs are etched on the black granite Wall of Remembrance near a 45-foot sculpture by Ed Castrillo that depicts a defiant mother holding a fallen son.
This year’s honorees are: Prudencio Nemenzo, Sedfrey Ordonez, Lucio de Guzman, Alfredo Jazul, Bayani Lontoc, Catalino Blas, Nimfa del Rosario, Pastor Mesina, and Alex Torres.
An estimated 10,000 Filipinos, mostly young students, are believed to have suffered and died during the Marcos dictatorship that ended in 1986.
“Perhaps the reason [why I was invited] here is that I come from Naga, a small city of Bicol martyrs and heroes in the time of rage against a dictatorship,” Robredo told his audience that include former Sen. Jovito R. Salonga, chair emeritus of Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation, and its Chairman, Alfonso T. Yuchengco.
He said Naga City is in the heart of Bicolandia that in the time of Marcos was a forsaken land in search of liberation from poverty and oppression “where the blood of a hundred or so young heroes and martyrs were spilled over its abandoned hills and barren farmlands”.
Robredo said he could remember the names of some of these heroes from Naga and Bicol: Tony G. Ariado; Jemino L. Balaquiao, Jr.; Floro Balce; Alex Belone; Dr. Juan B. Escandor; Romulo Jallores alias Kumander Tangkad, and his brother Ruben, also known as Kumander Benjie; the brothers Ramon, Jesus and Tomas Pilapil, and; Nanette Vytiaco, among others.
“Some of their names, I believe, are etched on this Wall of Remembrance,” the mayor said.
Robredo said he was a second year high school at the Ateneo de Naga when the wounded Romulo Jallores, alias Kumander Tangkad of Ocampo, Camarines Sur was cornered and peppered with 22 gunshots by Philippine Constabulary agents inside his relative’s apartment along Ateneo Avenue in the afternoon of December 30, 1971.
Ka Jemino Balaquiao, too, died a horrible death in the hands of Marcos soldiers. While lifeless, his face was desecrated and his bloodied body dragged by a tricycle on the way to the Army camp.
His brutal death in 1980 prompted a Naga-based local paper to strongly condemn it. His fellow students at the Naga Parochial School where he finished his elementary grades before entering the Philippine Science High School and UP honored him so deeply. They kept vigil over his sealed body at the Naga Metropolitan Cathedral where he used to be a student-altar boy.
During those times, even Naga’s and Camarines Sur’s prominent political leaders were fiercely anti-Marcos. These men included human rights lawyer Joker Arroyo, constitutionalist lawyer-priest Joaquin Bernas, House Minority Floor Leader Ramon H. Felipe, Jr. the late Justice Francis Garchitorena, then Concon Delegate Ramon Diaz, and local practicing lawyers Luis General Jr., J. Antonio Carpio, and Ramon San Andres. Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros was then a young activist who edited an underground news magazine.
Acknowledging the heroes’ courage and unwavering love for liberty and freedom, the mayor said their deaths were for a higher purpose that should be carried on by the present generations by continuing to serve the people in the best way that they can.
“Let us all be heroes [like them], more so in the absence of tumult and war,” Robredo stressed.
