Very rarely in our people’s history do individuals stand out for their great practice of service to their fellow Filipinos, even in the midst of the utmost repression and adversity.
It is with honor that the members of BAYAN USA salute the life and work of Monico “Sir Nick” Atienza, a professor of Filipino literature at the University of the Philippines (UP), who quietly passed away last night after being comatose for more than year.
People like Sir Nick live on in the people they inspire to continue with the revolutionary task of arousing, organizing, and mobilizing the Filipino people to struggle for basic social change in the Philippines. In his case, Sir Nick inspired not only scores and scores of his young students at UP, but even his contemporaries as a young student activist with the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) during the tumultuous eve of Martial Law known as the First Quarter Storm (FQS) in the late 1960’s into the 1970’s. For his work as a student leader and activist, Sir Nick went underground in 1972 upon the declaration of Martial Law. In the underground, he was simply known as Ka Togs. His work and friendship with then-CPP Chairperson Jose Maria Sison placed him in the CPP’s Central Committee.
In 1974, Atienza was arrested and detained by the military. He underwent unspeakable physical and psychological torture, including an overdose of truth serum. After he surfaced back to the above-ground movement, he continued on by helping to found the Partido Ng Bayan (PnB), the first truly progressive partylist of its time and a precursor of Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela Women’s Party today. In an ambush on PnB leaders by a suspected military death squad in 1987, Atienza was seriously wounded, together with PnB senatorial candidate Bernabe Buscayno who was a leader of the New People’s Army (NPA) during Martial Law. Even a severe injury to the head and leg that never fully healed did not deter Nick from continuing on with his activism. When asked decades later by one of his students why he did not apply for the compensation offered to victims of torture under the Marcos Regime, he simply replied “No amount of money could ever make up for what they did to me.”
Sir Nick continued on with his activism as a UP Professor and President of the First Quarter Storm Movement (FQSM) till the day of his death. He had suffered a severe heart attack last year as well as a surgical extraction of a mysterious mass found growing in his throat. The impact of both had placed him in a coma for the last year of his life.
We in BAYAN USA, although thousands of miles away from our motherland and from the homefront of our struggle, will learn great lessons from Sir Nick’s selfless example and strive to continue with his legacy of great and humble service to our compatriots.
MABUHAY SI SIR NICK! MABUHAY ANG FQSM!
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