Rebolusyon

by Benjamin Pimentel

In 1969, Ferdinand Marcos won a second term as president, in one of the dirtiest campaigns in Philippine history. That same year, Edgar Jopson was elected president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines, in a campaign to keep the Communists out of the student movement. Thirteen years later Jopson was gunned down by the military during a raid on an underground safehouse. He was by then one of the most wanted people in the country, with a price on his head, a leading Communist Party cadre and member of the urban underground. Jopson was an unusual individual, and his story is a fascinating one. Yet his experiences were those of a generation of student radicals that came of age in the 1970s, and galvanized a country to action in the 1980s. Thus this book is not just the biography of one person, it is the history of a generation.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jedd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Figured this book served as the backbone of UG: An Underground Story published later on in Anvil Press/Ateneo Publishing. Always wanted to learn more about Edgar Jopson — grocer's son, Atenean, Management Engineering grad turned underground communist labor organizer. Was not disappointed — super interesting to see how much of his management education bled into his life as a labor organizer and political cadre in spite of his convictions (see use of an index card filing system to keep track of membership records and memos, employment of what pretty much amounted to market study/market research techniques as part of his means of organizing and getting to know political territories, rigorous accounting of organization expenses, assessment of cadre performance using quantitative KPIs, etc.). He died young, and didn't get a chance to really sink his teeth into the art of governing as other more prominent Asian nationalist-revolutionary-pragmatist-technocrat-administrators in his mold did, such as Deng Xiaoping or Wan Li in China. A shame we didn't get to see what he was made of in a position of real administrative power. The rare historical figure that would have been just as at home in a multinational corporate board room as in a picket line.

[kulisap · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an outstanding life, and what an immense loss.