Jun Verzola
Hunyo 5 nang 10:11 AM
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ON THE EVE OF MARTIAL LAW IN 1972, the militant youth organization Kabataang
Makabayan (KM) had around a hundred chapters in Metro Manila alone. This is my own
rough estimate based on personal recollections.
In Proclamation No. 1081—the martial law document he signed on Sept. 21, 1972—
Marcos cited figures placing KM strength nationwide as of August 1971 (one year
earlier) at 245 “operational chapters”. Of these, 73 chapters were based in the Greater
Manila Area, somewhat smaller than today’s NCR.
Considering KM’s massive recruitment and expansion drive during those tumultuous
months between August 1971 and September 1972, I’m fairly confident that on the eve
of martial law it must have had at least 90 chapters in Metro Manila alone, probably
more.
How do I know? Because by May 1972, I was among those elected members of KM’s
Regional Council. As far as I recall, KM’s forces in Metro Manila were organized into
five or six districts: Northern Rizal (Caloocan-Navotas-Malabon), Manila, Quezon City-
Marikina, Southern Rizal (Makati-Pasay-Paranaque-Muntinlupa), and Eastern Rizal. I’m
not sure if KM chapters in San Juan, Mandaluyong and Pasig were under a separate
district.
Although I was doing staff work at the KM regional HQ (at the Bonifacio Center along
Quezon Avenue), I also immersed in selected chapters doing mass organizing-
propaganda work in the Quezon City-Marikina (QCM) district. Now QCM was an
enormous district even then, with many community-based and several campus-based
chapters spread across its big territory. Thus the entire KM district had to be subdivided
into four or five CB’s (“coordinating body” for several adjacent chapters).
I recall that CB-1 covered KM chapters in Tatalon, Sta. Mesa, and nearby communities.
Vaguely I remember that CB-2, a community-based powerhouse, covered chapters in
Kamuning, Kamias, Cubao, and Proj. 2-3-4. Each chapter had dozens of members
each. Chapters in Marikina and schools along Katipunan must have been covered by
CB-3—I’m no longer sure. KM forces in UP Diliman, apparently, were sui generis and its
chapters stood on their own.
Although I knew some KM-Kamuning activists, I was most familiar with CB-4, which had
seven chapters. Pagasa-Bagobantay, Proj. 6, Proj. 7, Proj. 8, and Frisco (SFDM) were
all community-based KM chapters even though many of their members were also active
in school-based chapters elsewhere in Metro Manila. I’m not sure if the Phil-Am chapter
was mainly school-based (JASMS) or community-based. Each community-based
chapter had its own HQ—if it was only a tiny one-room shack built from scraps of wood
into the fence of a sympathizing house owner.
PSHS-North Triangle, my "mother chapter", was a mixed school-and-community
chapter, although its urban-poor recruits soon converted themselves into the core of
what would grow into a huge urban poor alliance of neighborhood associations. The
chapter even had two HQs—one in a modest corner of the PSHS-SSG office within the
prefab campus, and another one in a wooden shack astride a rock quarry near the
swampy stream in the middle of the still thinly-populated North Triangle community.
Some KM-PSHS student activists like Bantayog martyrs Lorenzo “Nik” Lansang and
Rolando Cada practically lived in that North Triangle community, which served as a
base to organize other nearby communities. The school’s KM chapter had a separate
propaganda-organizing team (POT) for the school’s SSG and two school papers, which
functioned excellently. It also had two other POT’s: one for the North Ave-Veterans
jeepney drivers, and another for the construction crews who were then working on the
first PSHS concrete buildings to rise on the new site. Why these failed to take off is a
story for another day.
Each chapter, coordinating with others at the CB level—would respond to national,
regional, and district calls for mass mobilization and propaganda actions on issues
affecting the youth and people. During the anti-fascist campaign vs. the Plaza Miranda
bombing and writ suspension in late 1971, for example, on the initiative of its chapters,
CB-4 could hold march-rallies that snaked their way from Quezon Memorial Circle to
Nepa Q-Mart or Cubao. Since many KM chapters in QCM and other districts were
community-based, we did not have huge problems in reaching and mobilizing the
neighborhoods’ youth-students during summer and yearend breaks.
Of course here I’m just talking of one nationwide ND youth mass organization. KM had
sister organizations of comparable strength, namely Samahang Demokratiko ng
Kabataan (SDK) and around six or eight other major youth organizations. I haven’t even
begun to talk of mass organizations of workers, peasants, jeepney drivers, vendors,
urban poor communities, and fisherfolk, whether in Metro Manila or in the provinces.
When Marcos declared martial law, many of these community-based HQs were raided
and their key activists hunted down and arrested. A much bigger number of mass
activists side-stepped into the urban revolutionary underground, or joined the NPA in
the countryside.
Those who remained in the urban jungle quietly created new legal spaces and asserted
old ones. They struck deep roots among the urban communities, workplaces and
schools, produced and disseminated underground newspapers, and consolidated and
expanded new organizations through secret discussion groups and networks of
sympathizers’ houses, offices, even stores that could serve as clandestine meeting
places and “drop houses”. The stockroom of my mother’s gasoline station along
Quezon Avenue, for example, housed a mimeographing machine churning out anti-
dictatorship leaflets.
When schools reopened in late October 1972 until early 1973, campus-based activist
groups boldly launched lightning rallies and conducted OD-OP and leafleteering,
through countless small teams that quickly popped out to undertake propaganda-
agitation among the masses and just as quickly receded back into the faceless crowd.
By early 1973—less than four months after martial law was declared—urban activists,
joining forces with radical priests and nuns, had spread out to do mass work among
Metro Manila’s slums and factory belts. They dared to launch outdoor protests such as
the January 29 “Misa ng Kalayaan” protest mass in the Binondo Church against the
farcical Marcos-organized “citizen assemblies” that approved the 1973 Constitution by
“popular acclaim.” Others, after waiting it out for weeks in secret “quarantine houses” to
ensure safe passage, proceeded to rural areas to join the people’s army.
The decade-long struggle to oust the US-Marcos fascist dictatorship had begun in full
swing.
