AS THE lives and fortunes of former student activists go, Elso Cabangon’s trajectory has been typical: spanning a long and sometimes wavy arc, never too long in any one place or any one job, but invariably—wherever and whatever he was—interesting if not important.
I first met Elso in the early 1970s, when he was an editorial writer and columnist for the student paper of the University of the East, the UE Dawn. When martial law was declared, he joined the resistance, and was captured in 1974 by the Southern Luzon Military Intelligence Group, after sustaining four gunshot wounds. That led to his detention in Camp Aguinaldo, Camp Vicente Lim in Canlubang, and Camp Crame for more than two years.
Upon his release, he found a job with EEI as a personnel officer. The boom in jobs in the Middle East had just begun, and Elso joined that exodus, sent by his company to Saudi Arabia in 1978 and to Kuwait as administration manager in 1983. He came home briefly after EDSA 1 to work with the Manila Chronicle as an editorial and features writer from 1987 to 1989, but soon Elso was back in the Middle East—in Saudi Arabia as brand manager for a trading firm dealing in perfumes and cosmetics, moving to Dubai in 2007. In 2009—then 63—Elso came home for good. That’s when we reconnected, by email, after more than 30 years. Elso wanted to know where everyone else was, and how they were doing. I wasn’t the only one he asked—writers Al Mendoza and Sol Juvida were also on his list, which soon grew.
That list was made up largely of alumni from the pre-martial law College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP). Founded in 1931 and later led by the likes of Angel Baking—editor of the University of the Philippines’ Philippine Collegian who was twice imprisoned for his political views—the CEGP had already had a long tradition of militancy even before we joined it.
And there seemed to be no better time to join both the Collegian and the CEGP than 1971, on the cresting wave of the First Quarter Storm. I was 17, an industrial-engineering freshman whose ambition at that point had been to get into the staff of the Collegian as soon as I got into UP, inspired by the examples of Vic Manarang, the Collegian editor who had been my Physics teacher in high school, and Joey Arcellana and Gary Olivar, who my English teacher Mrs. Vea touted to be among the best student writers she’d ever come across. My own high school heroes—Mrs. Vea’s son Rey (now Mapua president and former UP engineering dean) and Mario Taguiwalo (later health undersecretary)—had gone ahead of me and were already writing for the Collegian. How could I not follow? I sought and got the editorship of my high school paper, the Science Scholar, thinking it would be my ticket to the Collegian; I suppose it helped.In June 1971, I joined a group of Collegian staffers on a trip to UP Los Baños, where the 40th National Congress of the CEGP was being held. On top of our agenda was the election of Tony Tagamolila, the Collegian’s editor in chief, as CEGP president. It was a classic match between the progressives and reactionaries—the other side offered a bus to a free screening in Manila of the hottest ticket in town, Love Story—but our forces prevailed. I felt dizzy with revolutionary fervor, even as I cringe today when I read the purple prose of my account (in Filipino!) of that election, published in the Asia-Philippines Leader the following month. Later that year, we all took a boat to Bacolod, then a bus to Dumaguete, for another CEGP conference on the Silliman University campus. I wore a jacket emblazoned with the slogan “Pierce the enemy with your pens!”; in my bag, Chairman Mao’s Quotations had to share the space with an 8” x 10” framed photograph of my first and now former girlfriend, whom I was still pining for.
In such encounters were lifelong comradeships forged. The CEGP and a parallel but more explicitly progressive organization, the League of Editors for a Democratic Society (LEADS), became many a young student writer’s introduction to the profession of journalism. In the decades to follow, our paths and even our views would diverge—Tony Tagamolila, Babes Calixto, and Jack Peña would die fighting the dictatorship; Jessica Sales and Leticia Pascual would become desaparecidos; Manolet Dayrit would join the World Health Organization in Geneva; Gary Olivar and Sonny Coloma would become presidential spokesmen; Jimi Flor Cruz would become CNN’s bureau chief in Beijing; Mercy Corrales would become a Starbucks executive; Jo Ann Maglipon would edit YES magazine; Diwa Guinigundo would become deputy governor of the Bangko Sentral; Judy Taguiwalo would become Faculty Regent at UP; Ding Marcelo and Al Mendoza would become two of the country’s top sports journalists; Willie Nepomuceno, a Collegian staff artist, turned to comedy; Jack Teotico now publishes an art magazine and runs an art gallery; Obet Verzola would become one of civil society’s most important voices; Edd Aragon would become a prizewinning editorial cartoonist in Australia. Whatever they did and wherever they went, these CEGP-LEADS alumni seemed to have an uncanny capability to do well and to excel.
And now, thanks to Elso Cabangon, all these people will have a chance to get together again after almost 40 years, in a CEGP-LEADS reunion to be held on Sunday, October 10 at the La Colina function room of the Valle Verde Country Club in Pasig City. Registration will start at 3 pm. All editors and staff members of campus publications during the pre-martial law period (1969-72) who were also members of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines are welcome to attend, and they can sign up as well with the LEADS-CEGP egroup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/leads-cegp/, which was set up by US-based Gerry Socco and which now counts almost 70 members. They can also email Elso at kasoels@yahoo.com or text him at 0917-7274064 for more details.
I frankly don’t know what to expect—at 17, I was the Benjamin of the group then and forever will be, although I’m sure I’ve more than made up for that with my present poundage—but I’ll be there, perhaps a touch less fiery but no less curious about life and my fellow travelers in time.