Renato Ganchero was born in Jaro, Iloilo City. He was called Nonoy in the family where he was fourth of ten siblings who eventually became engineers, educators, economist, accountant, and agriculturist. His father worked as a salesman of Southern Motors Corporation while his mother took care of their family. He loved to play the guitar and among his favorite songs was “El Condor Pasa.” Cars and trucks fascinated him, and sometimes he would join his father driving around the island of Panay meeting with clients.
Renato graduated valedictorian at Ilaya Elementary School (now Graciano Lopez Jaena Elementary School), and was a scholar at the Iloilo High School (now Iloilo National High School) where he was a battalion commander of the Preparatory Military Training (PMT).
He was a senior in high school in 1970 when he learned that a classmate of his younger sister at the Philippine Science High School in Quezon City, a fellow Ilonggo, was killed during a student demonstration. (The student, Francis Sontillano, is regarded as the first casualty of the student ferment in Manila now known as the First Quarter Storm.) This incident made a strong effect on Renato.
In college at the Western Institute of Technology (WIT) in La Paz, Iloilo City, Renato began joining teach-ins organized by the Federation of Ilonggo Students (FIST). The teach-ins were usually being held across his school, at the grounds of the St. Clement’s Church. FIST was a student federation organized by Manila-based student activists who linked up with students in Iloilo. FIST gained many recruits and led huge demonstrations that protested rising tuition and other political issues. Renato joined many of these rallies which also bannered issues on fair wages for farmers and workers and called for resistance to the Marcos administration’s creeping authoritarianism. He also sometimes gave speeches in these demonstrations.
Many activists went underground after Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in 1971 and ordered a wave of arrests. Renato stayed in school and helped organize a local chapter of the Pambansang Samahan ng Inhinyeriya at Agham (PSIA). He also regularly visited poor families living along Iloilo city’s railway tracks.
When martial law was declared in 1972, his family learned that Renato was about to be arrested himself. Like many other activists in Panay, Renato left the city for the Panay countryside. He became “political officer” of a team working to organize communities of peasants and swidden farmers along the Madyaas Mountain Range.
Meanwhile, army operations were being sent up to pursue those activists like Renato who were reported doing political work among the people in the Madyaas mountains. On that day in June 1973, the soldiers found one such group. Killed in the subsequent clash were Alexander Gonzales, Pablo Fernandez, and three others. Renato was wounded and hid in a nearby hut, but the soldiers found him the following morning and shot him dead when he refused to surrender. Some witnesses claimed he was captured alive then executed.
No investigation was made of the incident.
The family later managed to claim Renato’s body. They too faced frequent harassment from the martial law authorities. Renato’s brother Pablo believes that whatever happened, his brother’s loyalty to the “cause of dismantling an oppressive regime” and that he gave his life for his beliefs cannot be questioned.
These series of deaths of student activists mark one of the darkest periods in the Panay history of resistance against the Marcos dictatorship. FIST founders and other students killed during these dark times, and now acknowledged as martyrs and heroes of Bantayog ng mga Bayani, include Rolando Lorca, Alberto Espinas, Vic Beloria, Pablo Fernandez, Antonio Tagamolila, Jacinto Peña and Virgil Ortigas. Their lives are joined together by their heroic contribution to building the resistance to authoritarianism in the island.
In a letter the family later received from his comrades, Renato was described as a committed activist and freedom fighter who would “live forever in the people’s memory.” His death left a void in the family but several of his siblings became activists in their own right. Naida Ganchero Pasion’s advocacy is reproductive health rights while Albino Ganchero was briefly arrested as a student activist.
Renato had only been nine months in the Madyaas ranges when he was killed — and was six months shy of his 21st birthday.