Resisting and surviving martial law

I have always associated the month of September with the anniversary of the declaration of martial law. The First Quarter Storm (FQS) which started in 1970 was a period of heightened student activism. My own personal life was deeply affected by the events before martial law and afterwards. I was familiar with student activism because I was president of the La Salle Student Council only a couple of years before the FQS. After I graduated from the Asian Institute of Management in 1970, I worked in ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation handling special assignments as assistant to the president. These assignments ranged from doing financial analysis and projections to being the field coordinator for the Bilang ng Bayan, which was the equivalent of the Operation Quick Count for the 1970 and 1971 elections.

One of the most memorable assignments I had was when the then general manager of ABS-CBN assigned me as the liaison between the student activists and the network. One project I remember was when the activists were given some airtime for a TV documentary program that they would handle. I had a chance to meet many of the top officers of the student activist organizations and some of them were declared wanted persons.

One of the most unforgettable persons I met was then editor in chief of the Philippine Collegian. When I read the book “Serve” published by Bughaw and edited by Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, the collection of 19 stories brought back my own personal memories of the martial law era. Maglipon, in her Introduction, wrote that the stories were written by “fearless college editors from 1969-1972” and how the course of their young lives were profoundly changed by martial law. They belonged to the College Editors Guild of the