IN ITS fight against Martial Law disinformation, the Ateneo de Manila University continues to emphasize the relevance of history as key to dismantling the deceitful narrative that the Marcoses are pushing. However, digging into the history of the Ateneo’s relationship with the Marcoses reveals hidden truths, especially regarding the school’s role during the period.

However, despite the Ateneo’s previous engagements with the Marcoses, Associate Dean for Core Curriculum Benjamin Tolosa cautions that there must be no presuppositions with regard to the University’s past actions.

“To be able to understand [the Ateneo’s actions], you have to fully understand [and contextualize] the Ateneo de Manila from [19]72 to ‘82,” Tolosa underscored.

Tolosa thus highlighted that the Ateneo and its students must continue to safeguard evidence-based facts from history given that these are not up for interpretation.

A Dark History

To illustrate the importance of facts, during the 50th anniversary of the Martial Law Declaration last September 2022, the Old Rizal Library installed six tarpaulins—showing the two sides of Ateneo’s relationship with the Marcos family.

Leading up to the 1986 People Power Revolution, Tolosa said that there was a growing sentiment of active non-violence within many organizations instead of the initial armed struggle staged by other groups.

“Even people who had [initially] not been involved in the [rallies], meaning [the] business people or middle-class people, started demonstrating daily. In the Ateneo de Manila, there were candlelight vigils and noise [barrages] in Katipunan every day” adds Tolosa.

All of these protests happened despite being under the watch of the University’s administration.

In spite of his restrictive actions, Cruz was not indifferent to students. While he might have supported Marcos, Cruz would still concern himself with the student- activists’ safety.

Further anecdotes from Abad reveal that Cruz freed detained Atenean activists, such as Abad, under the condition that they are housed in Eliazo Hall at the Loyola Heights campus.

The Ateneo Today

Today, Del Rosario believes that the Ateneo is naturally inclined to fight for justice and to preserve the memory of the country’s dark history.

The University has also had other ways of preserving the truth behind the events of Martial Law and the EDSA People Power Revolution.

On July 5, 2014, the University celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the Ateneo Scholarship Foundation Inc. (ASF), which former first lady Imelda Marcos was invited to as a guest.

Former University President, Fr. Jett Villarin, SJ, explained that ASF invited Mrs. Marcos to recognize her donation from the Van Cliburn piano concert in 1974, which aided the scholarship foundation’s formation. He cautioned that the controversy would serve as a lesson to the administration “to be more mindful” of who they invite to future celebrations.

Even through its complicated past and recent controversies, the University has since repositioned itself. Though the 50th anniversary of Martial Law has long passed it continues its socio-political initiatives, preserving the memory of the martial law regime’s injustices and emphasizing that the Ateneo will never forget.

As the Philippines sank deeper into political and economic turmoil, campus journalists around the country stepped up to expose the cause of the crisis.

No matter how much the regime muffled the truth, the disparity in power and friction made stark between the social classes could not be concealed by any form of censorship. Then, among the politicized press were students from the Ateneo.

Breaking Point

In 1968, five Ateneans from The GUIDON hiked the highlands of Baguio to write the “Down from the Hill” manifesto. Jose Luiz Alcuaz, Gerardo Esguerra, Emmanuel Lacaba, Leonardo Montemayor, and Alfredo Salanga wrote the article that proclaimed, “A revolutionary situation exists in the Philippines because the present social, political and economic order does not make for a just society.”

This manifesto became a signal of the increasing radicalization among Ateneans in the years leading up to Martial Law.

In a recent interview with The GUIDON, Montemayor recounted one particular event that pushed him to write the manifesto alongside his fellow students. He said that in his last year of high school, he attended a wedding party—a day that ended up mired in controversy, as one of the displays was a large fountain made of champagne.

The wedding caused Montemayor to question the values the Ateneo was teaching its students and how Ateneans live out these values. “And we said no (Atenean values were not being lived). […] In fact after the Ateneo education […] the leaders that emerged from the Ateneo, reinforced and strengthened the status quo,” he added.

The manifesto that emerged called for the Filipinization of the school, condemning the country’s power elite, demanding a restructuring of political and economic power, and criticizing the presence of American Jesuits in the Ateneo.

However, Montemayor recounts that the Jesuits’ response to the manifesto never reached the public.

Thereafter, The GUIDON’s staffers then made no secret of their revolutionary ideals, discussing in a February 1971 article the indispensable role of students in the struggle for “national democracy and social revolution.”

The staffers stepped up to amplify discussions on national issues. However, not all students approved of The GUIDON’s initiative to probe societal ills. All of this was made clear in “Down from the Hill: Ateneo de Manila in the First Ten Years Under Martial Law”—the book on the Ateneo’s history during Martial Law from 1972 to 1982.

In fact, editors Cristina Jayme Montiel and Susan Evangelista mentioned how then-sophomore Gregorio Castilla (AB ‘73) published an open letter that questioned whether the publication was a “one-sided political paper.”

“[The GUIDON is] lambasting political figures or in [sic] converting dissatisfied non-revolutionary students into active revolutionaries,” Castilla described.

Conversely, AY 1971–1972 HEIGHTS Editor Perfecto Martin would later say that the publishing of the “Down from the Hill” manifesto awakened students to the issues inside and outside the Ateneo.

“‘Yung Down From the Hill [manifesto] naging ‘yun ang starting point ng awakening ng mga estudyante. Dun sila nagising sa mga isyu ng Filipinization sa loob ng Ateneo,” he said.

(The Down From the Hill [manifesto]. That became the starting point of the students’ awakening. That’s when they woke up to the issues of Filipinization within the Ateneo).

Calls for Filipinization in the University then became more intertwined with national issues when the First Quarter Storm broke out in the streets of Downtown Manila, according to Martin.

In fact, in his first article for HEIGHTS, he wrote about the capture of the Kabataang Makabayan National Chairman Nilo Tayag. He would garner criticism from students’ parents and the school administration, yet there were no formal rules or restrictions on what could be written.

After his time as editor of HEIGHTS, Martin would go on to write articles under The GUIDON, many of which were concerned with social issues.

“It (The GUIDON) became not a school publication. It was just like a publication about the Philippines, not really school issues. As far as I’m concerned, gusto ko ‘yun kasi […] it was making Ateneo education relevant to society,” he said.

Period of Censorship

Following the imposition of Martial Law in 1972, The GUIDON ceased publication until August 31, 1973 due to the prevailing ban on print and broadcast media.

When the ban was lifted, however, press freedom was not at all restored. Social commentary from The GUIDON was noticeably suppressed. According to “Down from the Hill,” out of the 567 The GUIDON articles written from 1973 to 1978, only 90 of these became devoted to social issues. It was also noted that none of the articles were explicitly anti-Marcos.

In spite of campus newspapers being allowed to publish, press freedom remained subdued. The GUIDON (1972) member Jonathan Dela Cruz mentioned that articles then were heavily edited and that a faculty adviser worked closely with the students.

Government agents and informants were also reported to lurk on campus grounds, as mentioned in an article by the REBEL PANDAYAN, an underground campus newspaper in the Ateneo during the Martial Law era.

By 1979, the campus saw a resurgence in politicized coverage. “Down from the Hill” notes that at this time, 83 of the 200 articles coded were on social issues.

Anti-Marcos and Martial Law commentaries also began appearing. From 1979 to 1980, 33.3% of the articles were on student involvement in social action, 16.9% on human rights, and 13.3% on democracy.

Amid this surge in political content, an editorial published in The GUIDON’s August 1979 issue still described Atenean students as “a generation of political aliens” bred by a “general feeling of helplessness.”

It added, “school publications including The GUIDON have tended towards an attitude of isolation.” Moreover, it said, “writers had become concerned only with school activities.”

Lingering Echoes

Throughout this period, Marcos Sr. regime’s campaign of suppressing press freedom in the country left an indelible mark on the history of journalism in the country.

This censorship brought death to truthful writing: figuratively, in its suppression campaign; and literally, in the killing of journalists like guerilla-poet and former GUIDON Editor Emmanuel Lacaba.

Despite the heavy blows that Marcosian censorship dealt to press freedom, it is undeniable that student journalism was a small but integral part of tearing down the dictatorship.

Today, censorship and violence continue to endanger the press. Despite this, journalists continue the fight to defend the truth.