NOTEBOOK: Nick Atienza: A Life Full of Meaning

NOTEBOOK: Nick Atienza: A Life Full of Meaning

(This is a modified version of the email message I sent to the 1964 FEU Boys High egroup upon learning of the death of Monico M. Atienza on Dec. 5, 2007.)

I am deeply saddened by the passing away of a dear old friend and comrade, Nick Atienza.

I had read Romy Macalintal’s* email about Nick’s being in bad shape on Dec. 3 and the replies to that message and wanted to join the exchanges. But the weekend and Monday had been too much for me in terms of community activity. Next time I knew, Nick had passed away on Wednesday, Dec. 5, from an email note from Manila.

I am sure Nick will understand, from where he is now, because what I was preoccupied with in the last few days, are also in line with what he dedicated his life for — the cause of the “comfort women” sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II and the cause of Filipino caregivers in Canada who are treated like modern-day indentured slaves. (www.philreporter.com Dec. 1-15, 2007 issue).

I know that Nick will be the first to encourage me to continue supporting these causes and I do this too to honor people like Nick who had dedicated their lives in the service of the people who are victims of injustice.

On a personal level, I felt a similar deep feeling of loss only a few times in my entire life. One was when I received news, years later, about my elder brother being “salvaged” by intelligence operatives in Manila in 1979 while I was in political detention. Two other times when I lost my parents here in Canada due to illness and old age. Which only shows that Nick was not only a comrade-in-arms in the causes we fought for but also a dear friend and brother in a way.

There were personal friends, comrades-in-causes and colleagues in profession who had passed away and at those times I felt like a part of me left with them because I had shared many moments of joy and sadness with them. One of them was Tony Zumel, a mentor in the fight for press freedom during my initiation years in journalism and who rose to become a national leader in the fight for the country’s freedom. My generation of journalists looked up to him for his integrity and his dedication to truth and justice.

Nick’s life has a special personal meaning for me and many of us who are his contemporaries. I was not surprised to learn from Romy that the mass held at Nick’s home on the UP campus recently was filled to capacity and there were people even outside the house. That was and is Nick. He has a legion of friends, comrades, students, followers and even “fans”. He was an outstanding human being who connected with others not only intellectually but more importantly he connected emotionally, at the gut level. And the most meaningful part of his life was that he used his virtues and talents in the service of the oppressed and the poor. In many ways, he was larger than life. He was a leader and a hero. There is now more hope for a better world because of people like Nick. And the world loved him in return for that.

Nick and I became acquainted sometime in 1961 or 1962 when we were students at the FEU Boys High School in Manila. He struck me as a naturally personable and sociable guy. He was an honor student and a student leader early on even as he was a newcomer in Manila, a “promdi” (as in “from the province” as Nonoy Marcelo would later popularize the term). He was proud to have hailed from Cuenca, Batangas where he also finished his elementary school with top honors. He flaunted his Batangas origins and sometimes boasted about his balisong (“veinte nueve”) that could pierce a five-centavo coin. He wore custom-tailored pants (Manlapat or Eustaquio brands) and his immaculately white Converse “rubber shoes” as we called them then.

He was down to earth and proud of his humble origins yet he rose to the top of the school honors’ list and was a top student leader. He was our class president in our senior year and he was elected president of the student council which we called then the Day Central Student Government (DCSG). (As a reward for being his election campaign manager, I was appointed by him the “Chief Justice” of the “Student Supreme Court” which had no real powers and never held a session. We had a good laugh at this when we were together again as students at UP Diliman a few years later.)

Nick’s and my political consciousness took a turn from “frivolous” to serious when we visited China in 1965 and witnessed socialist transformation with our own eyes for about 45 days. That was before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and long before China took the road to capitalist restoration. When we returned to Manila we were eager to take on the nationalist cause and signed on as members of Kabataang Makabayan.

Nick rose to become the National General Secretary of KM in a few years. When the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in 1971, he went underground because he was included in the wanted list of 73 student activists, labor and peasant leaders, teachers, writers and other leaders. While underground, he was in the leadership of many anti-dicatatorship and people’s organizations both in the cities and the countryside.

Nick was arrested with me during martial law in October 1974. He was heavily tortured and suffered a mental breakdown in prison. Political detainees took turns taking care of him because he wouldn’t sleep for days. He was electrocuted, pressed to an air conditioner while naked, beaten black and blue, threatened to be mauled by a Doeberman while he was made to believe his wife was being raped in an adjacent room. I heard then that he was also subjected to a “truth serum” treatment. God knows what else he was subjected too. This all happened at the headquarteres of the 5th CSU in Camp Crame, close to the offices of then Philippine Constabulary Chief Gen. Fidel V. Ramos. (The account of his torture, among other accounts, served as evidence used by Amnesty International to press for its own investigation of Philippine military torture of detainees in 1976 which led to the putting up of the less oppressive Camp Bicutan detention center.)

Nick was brought to the V. Luna Hospital, brought back to detention and back to the hospital several times until he was released years after his arrest. He went back to the University of the Philippines to obtain his bachelor and masteral degrees. He wrote a book on linguistics and taught at UP for about 20 years until his illness incapacitated him in December 2006.

During all those years after detention he never let up in his political involvement. He was president of the First Quarter Storm Movement, a group of elder activists (circa 1970s) who mentor younger generations of activists. He was chairperson of the Citizens’ Disaster Response Center (CDRC) which had helped more than three million disaster victims in the Philippines in the more than 30 years of its existence. He was also deep into activities protesting the scandals, abuses and depredations of the current ruling regime in the country, especially the extra-judicial killings that had claimed, since 2001, more than 850 lives of activists, labor and peasant leaders, church leaders, student youth, journalists and ordinary citizens.

Nick’s life was full of meaning. It was a life well-lived. His contributions are at the same level, if not higher, as those of our many heroes in Philippine history. I am highly honored to be a close friend and comrade of his.
When I get to write my life’s memoirs, Nick will be there during my “rites of passage”, my political awakening, my years in political prison, my return to legal “normal” life and into journalism. His wife was a close friend of my wife and they came from the same high school. He was the godfather of my first son and I am the godfather of his first son. It was like a blood compact for us. In our underground years during martial law when together we eluded arrest a few times, we bonded deeply and vowed to our “slogan” which sounded like: “We will survive the world.”

Although Nick has passed away, the memory of his humanity and selflessness will survive and inspire thousands of people whose lives were touched by him.

* * *

As a footnote, last Saturday, Dec. 8, an event called “Huling Parangal” for Nick was held at the UCCP on EDSA in Quezon City where hundreds came on short notice. Speaker after speaker paid tribute to Nick, many of whom were academicians, artists, writers, labor, peasant and student youth organizers, comrades, friends and “fellow travellers”. See www.arkibongbayan.org

*Romy Macalintal, a classmate of mine and Nick’s at the FEU Boys High School in the early 60s. Now a prominent lawyer in the Philippines, he is part of the 1964 FEU Boys High egroup. See his eulogy on page 13.