Cecilio A. Reyes

Cecilio Reyes was the second of the five children of Apolonio and Purita Reyes. Apolonio, a lawyer, was originally from Bulacan and worked as a labor arbiter in Manila while Purita was a public school teacher in Davao City, her hometown. At the age of twelve, Cecilio had to leave home to study at the prestigious PSHS which then had only one campus in faraway Quezon City. A whiz at most anything he did — he also sang and played the guitar well – Cecilio, or Cil to friends, was kind and exuded a serious and scholarly mien, aided by the horn-rimmed glasses he wore. Although asthmatic, he was also “surprisingly athletic” recalls his high school friend, Reinaldo Guillermo. “I remember him as a good lefty player of all handball games, as well as an agile forward player in football and basketball.”

In the national scene, mounting dissent against Marcos’ policies was expressed in several rallies and demonstrations in the streets. Cecilio was in his 4th year at PSHS (the school had a 5-year high school curriculum then) when he joined the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK). He found his niche with the Gintong Silahis, SDK’s cultural arm, and took part in many of GS’ stirring plays on the social realities, performing in protest actions, strike areas and other public places to inform the people about critical national issues. Along with the other SDK members, he went to the slum communities near the school to learn about their lives. He participated in the protest actions during the First Quarter Storm of 1970. He helped man the Diliman Commune barricades in early 1971 in support of student demands for reforms. Graduating on April 30 that same year, he was among the students who denounced a perceived government scheme imposed on them – an educational orientation that was grooming the scholars to be scientists and technocrats who will serve foreign and local big capitalists. In a move never before seen at the PSHS, the students sang nationalist songs, wore red armbands and tore up their token diplomas. Cecilio and his co-graduating science scholars raised their clenched fists, and vowed to dedicate their gift of intellect and special education to the interest of the vast majority of the Filipino masses.

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In 1975, he came to be under surveillance. Coming home from work at noon, Cecilio spotted an unfamiliar car parked across their house. A man came and asked for him. While his sister was talking to the man, Cecilio snuck out the backdoor. That was the last time he was seen at home.

The Reyes household was soon subjected to a raid and various threats and harassments allegedly by hired goons looking for Cecilio. He managed to send them letters, from which they learned of his decision to deepen his involvement in the fight against the dictatorship. He had gone away to join the resistance movement in the countryside. But the letters soon stopped coming, and nobody came to inform them of what happened.

By summer of the following year, Cecilio Reyes was reportedly killed in a raid by military men somewhere in Davao del Norte, near the Agusan border. Very little information can be gathered now, but in a picture smuggled out by another activist shown to close college friends in Manila, Cecilio’s remains can be clearly seen, unceremoniously dumped in a municipal hall somewhere in Agusan del Sur. His remains cannot now be found."

- excerpt from the write-up courtesy of Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation