Carpio took his first two years of law at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and completed the course at San Beda College of Law in 1961. He passed the bar the following year, placing 14th, and not soon after opened his law practice in his hometown of Naga City.
But before becoming a lawyer, Carpio was first a soldier. He joined the Philippine Army in 1953, earning the rank of lieutenant then captain, taking intelligence and counter-intelligence assignments, as well as combat assignments. He was in active military service until he became a fullfledged lawyer, and consistently getting high marks in the military training courses he took.
In the 1965 presidential elections, Carpio voted for Ferdinand Marcos, thinking that the latter would run a government less tainted with corruption compared to the outgoing (Macapagal) administration. He was disappointed with the Marcos administration, however, and expressed this sentiment through biting criticisms that were published in newspapers in the Bikol region.
So sharply written were these commentaries that Carpio found himself arrested during the early days of Marcos’ martial law. He was detained for a few weeks at Camp Canuto in Pili, Camarines Sur, along with his lawyer friend Atty. Luis General Jr. and other Marcos critics. He was released on the intercession of then Archbishop of Caceres, Msgr. Teopisto V. Alberto.
Freed from jail, Carpio pursued his criticisms of the Marcos administration’s abuses even more strongly. He offered his services to those who, like him, were arrested and detained without due process. They included also those accused by the military to be armed rebels or supporters of the New People’s Army. (His daughter Tess recalls occasions when unknown men would stand before the fence in the family home, patiently waiting for her father to come out so they could express their thanks for having been set free with his help.) That he was once part of the military organization did not prevent him from offering such legal services.
Carpio joined the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), organized by the late Senator Jose W. Diokno, becoming its regional coordinator for Bikol. FLAG was the first and eventually became the biggest organization of human rights lawyers in the period. As FLAG member, Carpio found a strong network of support in offering legal aid to those who opposed the Marcos government and were accused as being “subversives.”
The respect he earned among his colleagues became even more evident when he was elected Governor for the Bikol region of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP). The IBP honored him in 1977 with a plaque that noted his “uncompromising espousal of the rule of law [and] respect for human rights.”
But the human rights situation continued to deteriorate in the country, and Carpio found himself joining other political groups. He cofounded the Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino with the late Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. In Bikol, he became part and then the head of the Kilusang Mamamayan Para sa Tunay na Demokrasya (KMTD), a group of local organizations demanding reforms from government. It asked the abolition of a levy on coconut farmers being collected by the Marcos regime. It also sought a raise in copra prices. Coconut and copra, its byproduct, are the region’s primary agricultural outputs and source of livelihood.
KMTD also added its voice to the widespread protests against the national elections called by Marcos in 1981. Marcos claimed to have gotten 80 percent of the votes, which allowed him the pretense of having been reelected through legal means. But while he had supposedly lifted martial law previously, the elections were held with Marcos still wielding near-total government powers, with a censored press, and rights to free speech and association still suspended.
Events came to a head in June 1981 at a farmers’ protest rally organized by the KMTD at the Freedom Park in Daet, Camarines Norte. Some 3,000 protest marchers coming from the province’s outskirts were stopped by 30 troopers of the 242nd company of Philippine Constabulary (PC). The soldiers shot at the protesters, killing four and injuring scores of others. (Later the military claimed they were first shot at from behind by suspected members of the New Peoples’ Army.) The protesters were ordered to kneel and prevented from getting into Daet where the main group of protesters were gathered.
Two weeks after the massacre, Carpio and KMTD coordinator Grace Vinzons Magana were ordered arrested, the order in the form of a presidential commitment order (PCO) issued by Marcos himself on June 26, 1981. No charges were filed against the two leaders. Demands for their release spread in Bikol and also outside of the region.
Senators Diokno and Lorenzo Tañada, and then Atty. Joker Arroyo took up their legal defense, along with other FLAG lawyers as well as IBP lawyers from Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur. Before any hearings could be called, however, the two were ordered released, again with orders coming from President Marcos.
Later the Ministry of Defense’s Human Right Committee led by Jose Crisol exonerated Carpio and Magana. The two were nevertheless still asked to come to court to respond to accusations of alleged murder, but they did not appear. The Regional Trial Court of Camarines Norte has since archived the case.
The four farmers killed in the protest march, namely Jose Esteban Alcantara, Rogelio Salayon Guevarra, Elmer Lis Lagarteja, and Benjamen Buena Suyat have been recognized by the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in 2014 as the Daet martyrs, adding their names added to the Bantayog Wall of Remembrance.
But Carpio would not be stopped. After the 1983 assassination of Ninoy Aquino at the airport, he had become a leading personality in Bikol, organizing protests and calling for justice not only for the assassinated senator but for the other victims of the abusive regime.
He had gotten so disenchanted with the military under Marcos that, informed in 1985 of a pending promotion for him as a reserve with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he told his family he had no desire to be with the armed forces that served an “immoral regime where [the military is used] to repress our own people whom we had sworn to serve, all [to perpetuate] this illegitimate one-man rule.”
After the Marcos regime ended in 1986, Carpio was appointed by President Corazon Aquino as director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). He held the post from 1986 to 1989. Carpio is remembered at the NBI for his investigation of certain difficult cases. Not long after taking over the agency, Carpio found himself investigating the slaying of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) chair Rolando Olalia and his driver Leonor Alay-ay, who first went missing, then found killed in a vacant lot in Antipolo City in 1987.
Carpio himself headed the task force that led the investigation. He found the military involved in the surveillance of the Olalia residence and that military men linked to the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) were actually involved in the assassination. Carpio fearlessly investigated other cases where government officials or men in uniform were involved, earning him accolades and the respect of many of his colleagues.
After leaving the NBI, Carpio resumed his practice of law and his writing for magazines and newspapers in Bikol. He joined his lawyer friends Luis General Jr. and Alfredo Tria in hosting a program called “Trios los Panchos” at Radio LV.
In 1995, he published a book of poems and other writings, titled Viva la Virgen! Verses & Poems and a Pinch of Prose, where he expressed his devotion to his Catholic faith, his enduring love for his wife Edith, and a deep and binding commitment to social justice.
Two of his children became Catholic priests. A daughter, Maria Victoria and her husband Christopher C. Bernido were 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees for teaching science in their family-owned Research Center for Theoretical Physics in Bohol.
Retired judge Soliman Santos, fellow Bikolano, says Carpio was someone that human rights lawyers and anti-dictatorship fighters could be proud of.
The UP Vanguard honored his time as NBI director by giving him a UP Oblation Award in 1987 for being “an exemplar to all his brethren and the youth of the land along the tenets of duty, honor, and country.” He received other citations from the Supreme Court and UP Law Center. For the NBI’s investigation of the Olalia and Alay-ay case, Carpio was awarded a Presidential Commendation by President Aquino in February 1988. Carpio spent his last years quietly in his hometown, passing away in 2010 at age 78.
