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Nimfa Borras del Rosario
"Nona"
PSHS Batch 1971-B
Birth: May 6, 1954
Place: Naga City, Camarines Sur
Death: December 7, 1976
Place: Banaue, Ifugao
Enshrined at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani on
Dec. 2, 2008
Nimfa del Rosario, or “Nona,” was the third of 8 children. Her parents were both government employees, with her mother a teacher in a public elementary school and her father serving with the Department of Public Works and Highways. Both parents wanted to give all their children a good education.
Nona’s family was large, and so she grew up in an atmosphere of fun and noise, squabbling and socializing. She was always cheerful and gregarious, never timid about expressing her opinion, or shy about striking a conversation, even with older people or with strangers. People usually noted her affability. Her brothers and sisters regarded her as some kind of peacemaker. On one occasion, Nona helped an alienated older brother make peace with the rest of the family. Nona was barely nine years old when her mother died, and in that occasion, relatives remember how she showed maturity and fortitude in dealing with the family loss.
Even as a child, Nona showed signs of leadership when she would organize programs and events at the Colegio de Santa Isabel where she completed her grade school. She also showed academic excellence when she passed competitive examinations for admission to the elite Philippine Science High School in Quezon City, and when she won several highly-respected scholarship admission tests for college.
It was at the Philippine Science High School where activist ideas captivated Nona’s intellectual curiosity. She became involved with the Serve the People Brigade (SPB), and later she led the Philippine Science High School Chapter of the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK). In college, she joined the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and led in discussion groups, participated in rallies and other political mass actions, organized youth groups, recruited members, and advocated for socio-political reforms. She quit the university after her second year and started to work full as a political writer for the various organizations she served.
Nona and fellow UP activist Alex G. Torres started a relationship during those turbulent months of 1970 to 1971 which saw the First Quarter Storm and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by then president Ferdinand Marcos. When universities were temporarily shut down during the early days of martial law, Nona, with Alex, went into the communities in various parts of Quezon City and Marikina, helping organize clandestine opposition to martial law among the community youth.
In June 1973, Nona, Alex and Alex’s brother Boy were arrested by intelligence operatives in a combined operation of the 5th MIG-CSU-NISA. At the time of their arrest, they were conducting a teach-in with a group of laborers. The brothers were detained at the CSU headquarters in Crame, where they were tortured under interrogation, then later transferred to Fort Bonifacio’s Ipil Rehabilitation Center, where Nona was also detained in the center’s women's quarters.
Nona was released after a ten-month detention, as were the Torres brothers. The three friends kept in contact with the comrades they left behind in detention, and even secretly supported their escape plans.
As former political prisoners, Nona and Alex, together with Boy, had to report weekly to camp authorities. At that time, Alex and Nona were living with the Torres family in an apartment near Katipunan in Quezon City. After a few weeks the activists felt stifled by their post-detention conditions, and decided to pursue their activist commitment in the countryside.
Alex and Nona moved to the Hapao-Hungduan area in Ifugao, Alex as political officer of an armed unit, and Nona as propagandist.
Although city-born, Nona adapted quite easily to the harsh physical conditions in the mountains, showing none of the usual urban sensibilities. She seemed to revel, in fact, in the new conditions. The local people loved her and her mostly male comrades respected her because she asked for no special treatment as a woman and as a city-bred activist.
She became a writer-contributor to the local newsletter Dangadang. One of the reports she made involved the senseless shooting by soldiers of an 11-year-old boy harmlessly resting in a hut after a days’ work. Nona’s report later became the basis of an incident report on the same case at the TFD Monitor of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines. She also learned to do first aid, herbal and acupuncture treatments, and basic medical work for her comrades and local residents who appreciated the rare medical attention they were getting.
The armed propaganda unit faced danger all the time because they worked in expansion areas where conditions were unpredictable. Around 1975, Alex was taking a trip outside of his work area when he was captured in Kabayan in Benguet. Witnesses claim to have later seen him in military camps in Benguet province and in Quezon City.
When Alex went missing, Nona left her unit for sometime to help in the search, but Alex was never seen again. As the search stretched on indefinitely, Nona returned to Ifugao to pursue her own work. A few months later, Nona herself died in a violent incident.
A village road was being widened near the famous Banaue terraces, mainly to encourage tourism. The project threatened the residents, however, because it would bury ricefields and no compensations were offered. As the tension rose in the area, the New People’s Army sent two propaganda units to investigate the conflict. Nona’s unit was sent to do interviews near the roadside, a particularly risky endeavor. The interviews were made every evening, after residents came home from work, and often long into the night.
Nona had the dawn watch the day she died. It was still dark when she completed her watch, and Nona was preparing to return to sleep when an alarm sounded that soldiers were coming. Nona and a female comrade prepared to flee but shooting erupted at once. Nona got separated from her companion. When her comrades regrouped they could not locate Nona. Upon further investigation, they learned that she had been killed in the attack and that her body had been brought to the Banaue town center by the soldiers.
The death of Ka Mia (Nona’s alias) was mourned by the local people as well as by her comrades. Nona’s body was retrieved by family members and buried in Manila after a long funeral procession attended by scores of friends and relatives.
Nona and Alex left no offspring.
TRIBUTE TO ALEX TORRES and NONA DEL ROSARIO
- written by Renato "Boy" Torres, PSHS Batch 1970, on the occasion of their enshrinement at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (reposted with permission)
I can still remember Alex and Nona, after we were released from political prisons in Fort Bonifacio. Nona and Alex have these jovial personalities, friendly and down to earth, and planning what to do with their lives after 8 to 9 months of imprisonment by the US-Marcos dictatorship.
We all settled in an apartment in Katipunan, near Ateneo, and sometimes went together to Camp Aguinaldo to sign-up and report our whereabouts as part of the military's (AFP) requirement forced upon ex-political prisoners. Even while we were doing this, it was still fresh in our minds when we were political prisoners that our tasks as revolutionaries were to escape from the dictatorship's imprisonment and rejoin the mainstream revolutionary movement. For the next few months, we supported the efforts of comrades to free themselves from IPIL Rehabilitation Center and Youth Rehabilitation Center (YRC) in Fort Bonifacio.
A few months after our release, Alex confided to me that he and Nona decided to be more active with the revolutionary movement by moving to the countryside. He also added that it was more constricting and dangerous for them to organize in the cities while the military was expecting ex-detainees to report on their whereabouts regularly. He asked me to support their plans and assist in paving the way for their transition to armed struggle.
Alex and I were close brothers. Younger than me by one year, Alex and I played together in our childhood years, almost always doing the same things as we grew up. Alex was on the chubby side and because he was the youngest for 9 years after Nanay had another son in 1962, Alex got the nickname "Baby" while I got the nickname "Boy". Our father was a Geodetic Engineer-Surveyor and assigned to several places and overseas during our childhood. Our childhood took us to Cotabato, back to Kamuning where my grandparents live, and to several places in Metro Manila like UP-Diliman, Singalong, V. Luna and eventually to Baguio City before our high school years.
Although Alex and I had our sibling rivalries and fights that made our father mad, I always remember Alex as the less temperamental and more relaxed personality than me. He was always more friendly and made friends easier. Since I can remember when our father taught us how to play chess, I always had a hard time beating him in chess. When we had to help our Nanay and father do some manual computing work to calculate land areas just surveyed by my father in his field work, Alex was very much at ease with his logarithmic e, arctangent, tangent, sine and cosine calculations in our elementary years. I consider Alex as a math and a chess wizard.
Alex concern for the masses is genuine. With our experiences in political prisons, we came to work with various mass activists and revolutionaries whose background varied from petty-bourgeois, lumpen, working class and nationalist capitalists. While some activists whose petty-bourgeois background brought out the worst of their attitude towards the masses and the comrades who are less fortunate in material resources during the difficult living conditions inside political prisons, Alex was very much concerned in sharing food and basic needs that we get from the outside generously with all needy comrades.
In working with him in Morong, Bataan and Sta. Cruz, Zambales during summer "Learning from the People" travels by the U.P. Nationalist Corps and SDK, Alex displayed leadership in a methodical, scientific and sympathetic way of dealing with and organizing the masses. I was also with him in our regular organizing work living and working with the peasants in Samal, Bataan and extending our organizing work with teachers in Iba, Zambalez and peasants in Botolan, Zambales. Months after the First Quarter Storm, Alex and I became active in UP SDK and as part of our organizing efforts, helped "Rock" Mariano Lopez (PSHS 1969) organize the SDK-Kamuning chapter. By the time of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, we were also involved in assisting /organizing SDK-Old Balara chapter, before our rented house in Old Balara were raided by Metrocom-5th MIG when martial rule was declared.
One of the hardest thing for me to do when I rejoined my mother in the U.S. 1978 was how to explain to my Nanay what happened to Alex and Nona. It took me several years to slowly make Nanay understand that Alex and Nona lived a fruitful life. My mother was not new to the revolutionary struggle. She was an active participant and supporter of the Anti-Martial Law Coalition (AMLC) in Guam and supported the anti-Marcos dictatorship activities of KDP (Kilusan ng Demokratikong Pilipino) in the US. When she died 1994 after a lingering illness for 15 years, the National Democratic Front sent a letter in her wake recognizing Nanay Genia's contribution to the revolutionary movement in rearing children for the revolutionary movement, in her active participation against the martial law dictatorship and her untiring help to provide assistance to mass activists and revolutionaries, opening her place in Old Balara to feed and provide shelter to those preparing for the countryside like "Butch" Landrito and others. Alex and Nona would have been happy knowing that their deaths are not in vain, and that they are not alone but with Nanay in the struggle.
Living what Alex and Nona had lived for is not something easy to accomplish in life. Remoulding one's outlook and viewpoint to sincerely serve the people and truly believe that you are wholeheartedly serving the people is an experience that Alex and Nona had undergone. Alex and Nona decided to go to the countryside not to die but live and fight for the people, knowing fully well that there is the danger of death that everyone should be conscious of. It is very easy to quote that death is a common occurrence in everyday life and that a revolution is not a picnic in discussion groups, education sessions and memorial meetings. The point is that many others like Alex and Nona practiced what they teach, remoulded themselves through more practice in service of the people. What they went through life is not the mis-identified idealism of youth, but a scientific and humanist endeavor to practice and live with the masses, for the masses, in ending oppression by humankind.
Had Alex and Nona lived today, they would have found out that the basic and fundamental problems of the Philippine society had not changed much. The inequities in Philippine society still lie in the unequal distribution of wealth and the lopsided ownership of the means of production, the politicians who use their positions as capital to amass wealth through graft and corruption, and in tandem with compradors, despotic landlords and foreign monopoly control, these dregs of Philippine society employ state terror through the machineries of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and its goons to perpetrate these inequities. The only difference today is that millions more of Filipinos have physically left the Philippines and many more millions want to leave the Philippines just to find a decent livelihood and education for their families.
Alex and Nona would have realized also today that it would take several generations and more likely not in our lifetimes, if not several hundred more years, to fight this painstaking and protracted struggle. Such is the historical outlook that we need to consider if we really want to overhaul society permanently. Even when the basic economic, political and military battles are won, there is still a need for vigilance to pursue a continuing revolution to change people's ideas, attitudes and culture for a millennium or more.
Alex and Nona did not live just for the day but set themselves as examples for generations to come. It would have been comfortable and nice to think for some if the basic struggle is conducted through peaceful means and amicable ways. But such is not the case in the Philippines. The ruling elite and oppressors in Philippine society today have used and are still using all the means of state terror and armed force upon the Filipino people. The Filipino people have no recourse but arm and defend themselves. Without a people's army to defend themselves, the people really have nothing, nothing at all. That is why Alex and Nona did what they had to do-lived a full life, defending the people, learning from and serving the people.
Associated martyrs:
brother of Renato "Boy" G. Torres of PSHS Batch '70
Other links
9 Enshrined at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani by Edson C. Tandoc Jr. (Philippine Daily Inquirer)
UP Pays Tribute to 72 Martyrs and Heroes, by GMA News
Note
The contents of this page are based on information obtained from Bantayog ng mga Bayani archives or are available in the public domain. For corrections or inclusion of additional material, kindly contact the volunteer organizers via pagpugay.pahingalay@gmail.com.
Photos
scanned from the PSHS Batch 1971-B yearbook
scanned from the PSHS Batch 1971-B yearbook
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