Alex Gonzales grew up in Pandan, Antique. His father was a fiscal and his mother took care of all eight children of which Alex was the fourth. As a teenager, he loved to party, drink, and hang out with friends. In college, he first enrolled at the University of the Philippines in Iloilo but transferred the following year to UP Los Baños where took up Agricultural Engineering. The student movement was very much alive in the UPLB campus at the time. A critical thinker, Alex joined discussion groups on the national and local issues and read books like The Struggle for National Democracy and the Philippine Society and Revolution. He joined rallies and demonstrations in Manila and even got clubbed by the anti-riot police.
In the early 1970s, when Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus, student activists streamed back to their home provinces to organize in communities and “learn from the masses.” Alex went back to his hometown in Pandan to live in farmers and fisherfolk communities, teaching them interesting things like how to set up communal gardens. He also organized in communities in Iloilo City, where poor people like sales clerks, vendors, dock workers, and calesa drivers lived.
When Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and arrested many members of the opposition and other organizations, Alex saw he could no longer work as an activist in the open. He chose to join the underground. “Better dead than to rot in jail,” he told his father.
Most of the time he spent in the Panay countryside, among the residents in Tapaz in Capiz and in Calinog in Iloilo. There he met other activists led by Pablo Fernandez, who was a reserve lieutenant in the Philippine Army. Alex mainly served as a courier and helped keep a network of other couriers ferrying mail and other supplies to the underground network connecting Panay, Negros Occidental and Metro Manila.
In 1973, a big Army operation called “Four Roses” was launched to pursue the activists in the mountains of Iloilo. They found Alex’s group in the boundary of Calinog and Bingawan towns. Alex was hurt in the ensuing clash. One account says he sustained a wound in the stomach and died. Another account says Alex bled to death. His sister Rose saw rope marks around his neck and believes her wounded brother was dragged down.
Five other young activists were killed in the incident – Pablo Fernandez from the Central Philippine University, Renato Ganchero from the Western Institute of Technology, Elmer Junsay from the University of San Agustin, Rio Casaria, and an unnamed nephew of Coronacion Chiva, known locally as Kumander Walingwaling.
During his wake, his family and relatives gave Alex a tribute. “Alex died fighting for his principles,” his father said. Alex’s remains were first buried in Iloilo City but later transferred to Pandan, his hometown. Like fellow Bantayog honoree Ganchero, Alex had been but a few months in the mountains of Iloilo when he was killed. He died a few days before his 21st birthday.
