In the community organizing sector that grew and flourished amid–and despite–the repression of a martial law regime, Manuel Quiambao was a leader and a well-loved figure.
He was a street-smart Tondo boy, having grown up in Barrio Obrero, one of the many working-class communities that crowded the coast of the city of Manila. In high school, he caught the first wave of youth activism of the late 1960s, joining the Katipunan ng Kabataang Demokratiko (KKD). They held intense discussions on Philippine society and revolution, joined protest demonstrations, fanned out to spread the message of radical change. Moving to the Philippine College of Commerce only meant more political activities for him, for the school was a hotbed of student activists.
With the declaration of martial law in 1972, many young people eagerly joined the armed struggle in the countryside. Others became part of the underground networks of the anti-dictatorship movement, even as they found low-profile, low-level employment in government or in private companies.
For Quiambao, another option was community organizing, then just starting to get up on its feet. He and others were recruited to work in church-backed programs – the Philippine Ecumenical Committee on Community Organizing (PECCO) and the Share and Care Apostolate for Poor Settlers (SCAPS) — under the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.
It was here where he formed lifelong friendships with the likes of Isagani Serrano and Oscar Francisco (both Bantayog honorees), Dennis Murphy, and Frs. Teodoro Butalid and Teodoro Añana. Their efforts would lead to the creation of the Zone One Tondo Organization (ZOTO) which would play an important part in the people’s resistance to the government-imposed plans for “development” of the area.
As community organizers, Maning and the other COs also covered the adjacent area of Navotas, where fishport workers and fishing vessel crew members were fighting against frequent and massive layoffs. The people needed as well to defend their modest homes against the threat of demolition by urban developers. Another gut issue was the monopoly of the fish trade by a few well-connected brokers.
Assisted by the COs, two people’s organizations came into being. One was the Samahang Pang Nayon, mostly led by women, which worked for better services like water and electricity as well as against demolition.
Another was the Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Batilyo (SBN) which in 1975 mobilized community leaders who boldly trooped to government agencies to demand the reinstatement of laid-off workers. They then succeeded in registering as a union, ensuring regular working hours and a proper payroll set-up. This was a breakthrough.
Such grassroots work came to wider attention as the community managed to present their case before an international meeting, the Conference on Habitats for Human Settlement, held in Vancouver, Canada.
Not surprisingly, the going was difficult. The regime set up a military outpost on the grounds of the public elementary school on North Bay Boulevard. Court cases were filed against community leaders, for vagrancy and even for subversion. Everybody knew that Imelda Marcos – who had been given by her husband authority over Metro Manila — thought their place looked ugly and wanted their settlements razed to the ground.
Quiambao was among those arrested by the authorities in June 1975. Taken to a military safehouse, he was tortured by notorious officers before being transferred to a regular detention. He was released after six months to the custody of the then SCAPS national director Msgr. Mariano Gaviola, who was also vicar of the Armed Forces.
Undeterred by arrest and detention, Quiambao went on with his fellow COs to put up the Philippine Ecumenical Action for Community Enlightenment, or PEACE Foundation, headed by Methodist pastor Toribio Cajiuat. The aim was to train more community organizers, this time to work in rural areas.
Nationwide organizations that still exist today were founded in the 1980s, with experienced leaders such as Quiambao tirelessly working to build them from the ground up. One of these was the Kilusan ng Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, founded in 1985.
Quiambao was also involved in rebuilding the labor movement despite the regime of dictatorship. The biggest and most militant labor center in the country was established earlier, in May 1980 at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, by a 30,000-strong assembly of trade unionists from Metro Manila and surrounding areas.
Kilusang Mayo Uno quickly became a force that employers learned to take seriously. Allying with another labor confederation, TUPAS, gave the movement enough strength to hold a rally in Metro Manila, 60,000-strong, demanding not only restoration of the right to strike and respect for union organizing – but also calling for the dictatorship to be dismantled. In 1982, workers struck at the Bataan Export Processing Zone, joined by about 13,000 workers from 24 factories.
All this prepared the ground for the massive upsurge of protests after Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, protests that refused to die down and finally culminated in the ouster of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.
Quiambao continued to pursue his advocacies as the country tried to rebuild its post-dictatorship institutions. This time he lent his expertise to partnerships between government agencies and nongovernment organizations in programs involving agrarian reform and rural development.
Ironically, he was suspected of being a military agent, and in 1988 was taken to a New People’s Army camp in southern Luzon where he was tortured and then detained for three months before being released. But Quiambao (popularly known as Maning, Taning, Steve) is lauded by his comrades for his relentless pursuit of the people’s democratic interests.
He liked to expound on what he called the bibingka strategy of creating the broadest alliances possible among diverse forces defending the same causes, from activists working on the ground to reform advocates within the state itself.
From 1998 until the end of his life, he devoted time to the PEACE Foundation as its president. He died in 2012 after a heart attack.
