LOSING MY RELIGION I was born in a very religious family. When I was young, my parents were considered well-to-do - they had big fish ponds in Bulacan [province] and they had a photographic studio. My father was a former military man and a former sprinter, [he represented the Philippines in] the Far Eastern Games of the 1930s.
My parents could not support my transport expenses to UP [University of the Philippines], in Quezon City. I was forced to stop [in the first semester] and I enrolled in the University of the East with the help of my elder brother. After one semester, some friends led me to study at the Philippine College of Commerce, which was branded the Philippine College of Communism at that time, because the president, Dr Nemesio Prudente, opposed [President Ferdinand] Marcos fearlessly. I was exposed to social injustices, the teachings of Marxism and Mao Zedong - and I was converted from Catholicism to atheism. For several years, I was a radical activist. I majored in economics and minored in finance and I taught economics, finance, political science and political economy for seven years.
I was twice imprisoned during Marcos' time, fighting for the cause of students and workers.
RADICAL CHANGE I used to teach that there is no God - if there [were], how come millions of people are languishing in abject poverty? I told the people that what we needed was to unite the masses and spark a democratic revolution. I was very sincere, but sincerely wrong, because there is God.
My parents [and others] were victims of a land-grabbing syndicate. The backers were generals, cabinet members and congressmen. [Opposing them] I was alone as a student leader.
The complainants used to cry every morning in our house. And I told them, 'Don't feel hopeless - if we cannot get justice, I'm planning to go up to the hills and join the New People's Army; [the armed wing] of the Communist Party of the Philippines. But once in a while I'll come back and assassinate the people responsible for the suffering.' That was my plan, until my sister in the [United] States, who used to be an activist at UP but had been born again, started writing to me: 'Eddie, change your attitude. Once you are killed as a radical activist atheist, you'll be damned to hell.'