Isagani Serrano, or “Gani” to most, was born and raised in rural Bataan, coming from a long line of farmers. His family struggled constantly with poverty. Often there was not enough to send all the children to school.
Gani turned out to be a bright and strong-willed young boy. He nearly failed to graduate in high school after he and several of his classmates protested a school decision to strip them of officer rank in the Philippine Military Training (PMT) for reasons not clear to them. “We thought that was an injustice,” he later wrote. (The same school would cite him in 2013 as “most outstanding alumnus” during that year’s reunion celebrations.)
He completed a degree in education at the University of the East in 1967, receiving cum laude honors. During the graduation ceremonies, Gani remembered how proud he was that his medal was pinned on him by someone he very much admired, then President Marcos himself.
He went on to take a masteral course at the University of the Philippines. As soon as he entered UP, he joined the UP Christian Youth Movement and the Bertrand Russel Peace Foundation, making him a “peacenik” first, he would say.
But his new awareness of the US war in Vietnam was to him a turning point from which there was no turning back. The Bertrand Russel Peace Foundation organized an international tribunal that indicted the US for its war crimes in Vietnam and Indochina.
As he grew more political he joined the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and then the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), becoming one of the latter’s stalwarts. Writing of that time, Gani says he became an activist in 1967 and stayed so for the rest of his life. It was this activism, he wrote, that drew his focus away from his studies. He did not complete his masteral course, and instead trained to become a community organizer and a trainer of other community organizers under the Philippine Ecumenical Committee on Community Organization, or PECCO.
Marcos’ declaration of martial law found him working as an organizer in the communities around Tondo, Manila. Despite the restrictions imposed under martial law, Gani went on with his work, which did not go well with intelligence officers assigned to the area.
In May 1973, he was arrested for the first time. He he was taken to Camp Crame along EDSA, where he was tortured inside the headquarters of the 5th Constabulary Security Unit (5th CSU). He was so badly beaten his wounds took two weeks to heal. Visitors including then Bishop Mariano Gaviola and several nuns who worked with him in Tondo, were not allowed in to see him. After some time, Gani was moved to Fort Bonifacio (which prison) and then released in 1975.
Out of prison, Gani was relentless. He rejoined the movement resisting the Marcos dictatorship. Activist Ric Reyes, who worked with Gani during this time, talked about Gani’s extraordinary leadership. He proposed innovative ideas and approaches. He allowed for mistakes to happen. He worked out new ways of teaching and organizing, and proposed creative tactics to allow people to fight openly even while under tight government control. These efforts, says Ric Reyes, led to the establishment of many organizations working openly and testing boldly the limits of the dictatorial rule such as the Alyansa ng Magsasaka sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL) and the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).
Gani Serrano served as adviser in a research program organized by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines on the rural situation in the Philippines, published in 1982 titled Countryside Report, exposing the many fallacies sold by the regime about the “emancipation of farmers and peasants” from land bondage.
In September 1982, President Marcos ordered a big crackdown on leaders and groups connected with this burgeoning mass movement. This led to the arrest of several people, including Gani and Ric, labor leaders Bert Olalia and Crispin Beltran, and Medardo Roda of the Kilusang Mayo Uno.
Gani was confined at the Camp Crame stockade. Being a returned prisoner, Gani thought he might be spending the rest of his life in prison — and now with a wife and two children who would suffer with him. He wrote a poem of this dark time in his life.
… Sunrise in prison – sunlight touching window bars like a warm kiss.
… Sundown in prison – is never seeing the sun kiss the horizon.
Still he fought against losing hope. He led his fellow political prisoners and even those with criminal cases in taking action like hunger strikes to demand better prison conditions and the release of political prisoners especially those sick, pregnant, those mentally affected due to torture and others on humanitarian grounds. He used his well-honed organizing skills to mobilize any available resources to support the cause of prisoners and their families.
He spent another four years behind bars, released only after the Marcos dictatorship fell and the new president, Corazon Aquino, ordered all political prisoners released.
In the post-dictatorship period, Gani helped in what he called the post-Marcos democratization process. He pushed for the implementation of a genuine agrarian reform, cofounding the Congress for a People’s Agrarian Reform (CPAR), the alliance that fought for the passage of a comprehensive agrarian reform law in Congress. He joined the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), and helped establish and build organizations such as the Social Watch Philippines and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. His advocacies included the environment, the fight against poverty, agrarian reform, sustainable agriculture, and climate-resilient development. He joined many international conferences and developed a broad international network trying to continue the fight against poverty.
“I’ve been called a Marxist-Lennonist,” Gani had written of himself. He thought maybe this was because he saw a parallel in the ideas of the communist theorist Karl Marx and the Beatles’ band member John Lennon. He compared Lennon’s song “Imagine” with the communist anthem “Internationale,” as both expressing the hope for a world that promotes fairness and sharing. “Maybe because I’m a dreamer of more equality and fairness in this violent and fragile world, imagining no possessions, greed or hunger, and all the people sharing all the world.”
In the middle of these, Gani was battling with lung disease. He finally succumbed to it in 2019.
By his example, Isagani opened the eyes of his family over the social realities and encouraged them to get involved in community activities. His father became a leader of the Samahan ng mga Magsasaka ng Bataan for a number of years until he passed away in 2017. Other relatives also became active in various organizations, with others giving support. Isagani’s wife Evelyn became deeply involved in work among political prisoners and their families, and later in broad human rights work, while his children joined actions where issues of political prisoners and victims of rights violations were raised. Gani also inspired the communities he helped organize. His farmhouse in Bataan became a hub for these groups.
On his death a two-week wake was held for him, one at his hometown in Bataan and another at the PRRM Office in Quezon City. During the wake, thousands came to pay tribute — farmer leaders, urban poor leaders, local officials, fellow development workers, members of the human rights community, social entrepreneurs, lawyers, bankers, journalists, technocrats, childhood friends, schoolmates, artists, youth leaders and many others sharing testimonies of how he touched their lives.
“Soft and gentle but firm and decisive. His vision of a fair world is clear and he makes others believe that another world is possible.” said one teacher. “What seems to be difficult to understand, when Gani explains it, it becomes easy to understand. What’s more, what seems to be hard to do for us, for Gani, it’s as if anything is possible. He’s a dreamer but he is also a hard worker. If one strategy does not work, try another. Try and try until you get what you aimed for. That’s Gani.” ”said a fellow development worker.
Hearing these words during the wake, his son Karl responded: “I never understood why he was always away when we were growing up. Sometimes I resented the fact that my playmates had their fathers with them at home and in school and we did not. After hearing your stories, now I understand. And I feel proud that he is my father.”
The late Mila Aguilar, poet and Gani’s former comrade-in-arms, gave tribute to Gani. She remembered a momentous moment happening for her at one meeting in 1980 when Gani presented his analysis of how class relations in Philippine society had changed under the dictatorial rule of Marcos. She said that Gani got to his remarkable and unconventional conclusions because he read widely and critically. Gani inspired her to “look at facts and data on the ground instead of relying on the pronouncements of propaganda, whether the other side’s or our own.”
“He deserves to be recognized as a hero of the Second Philippine Revolution,” Aguilar wrote, adding that if his ideas had been heeded, “we might be in quite another state now.”
