Tributes are pouring in for the late National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Negotiating Panel senior adviser Luis G. Jalandoni, praising his more than six decades of service to the poor. Jalandoni died of illness in Utrecht, The Netherlands where he had been living with his family since 1976. He was 90.
His admirers said “Ka Louie” exemplified the best of the revolutionaries of the Philippines. They said he demonstrated all the values a Communist is expected to live by: humility, self-sacrifice, and dedication, among others.
Jalandoni’s life had been unique, his life choices exemplary. It all started in his privileged childhood.
The great divide between the poor and the rich did not escape Louie even as a child. He noticed how different his life was as a landowner’s son compared to the children of their farm workers in Negros Occidental.
He grew up in Silay City’s famed Pink Mansion (now the Bernardino-Jalandoni Museum) while their tenants lived in huts built on land that was rarely their own. After ordination to the priesthood, he dedicated his life to the least of his brethren, beginning by giving away his land inheritance to the people whose toil his social class built their fortunes on: the farm workers.
But Fr. Louie was far from a grim, humorless priest. A former parishioner said: “He was a very good priest, loved by parishioners. The Bacolod Cathedral was always full when he was the celebrant. He was very witty in his sermons,” Vids P. Debulgado wrote, adding he was a high school church-goer whose cousin was Fr. Louie’s sacristan.
Very early on, Fr. Louie exemplified kenosis, the act of self-emptying, like Jesus did, to be born again and serve the poor. His awakening he carried through by becoming a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines for the people’s liberation from the sins of a class society. Like many other clergy under then Bacolod Bishop Antonio Fortich, Fr. Louie Jalandoni eventually blossomed into one of the CPP’s leading cadres. He is credited for co-founding the Christians for National Liberation, one of the oldest allied organizations of the NDFP.
Even Fr. Louie’s love story, with then Social Action Center co-worker Sr. Coni Ledesma, RGS, is considered to this day as one of the most “kilig” in nearly six decades of the CPP-led revolution.
The couple later represented the Philippine revolution to the international community, credited for many foreign governments and international entities recognizing the NDFP. This would later prove useful in having peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) hosted and facilitated in at least four European countries.
“Ka Louie’s warm and affable nature, his acuity for social analysis and complex problem-solving, and his unshakable commitment to progressive and revolutionary principles endeared him to a wide network of peace and justice advocates around the world,” Pilgrims for Peace said in its tribute to Jalandoni. “Even those who faced him across the negotiating table told stories of how they warmed to his generous spirit and appreciated his undeniable love for the masses and his commitment to the people’s revolutionary quest for freedom and democracy, for a just and lasting peace,” the statement said, signed by several Bishops of different churches, pastors, deaconesses, nuns, and leaders of faith-based organizations.
In 1989, the NDFP National Council appointed Ka Louie to its negotiating panel with the GRP. In 1995, he assumed chairpersonship of the NDFP panel.
On the negotiating table, Ka Louie displayed a facet he never showed their poor land tenants, his regular parishioners, and his comrades in the revolutionary Left. While always calm, soft-spoken and smiley, he could be cross when the GRP negotiators were being difficult.
While the local clergy describe Ka Louie as “a gentle warrior for just peace in the Philippines,” his longest GRP counterpart described the NDFP chief negotiator a bit differently. Former Manila panel chairperson Silvestre Bello III described Chairman Jalandoni to be at times “dogmatic and unreasonable.” “[Nonetheless] we both managed to move the peace negotiations forward and almost achieved an interim peace agreement (IPA),” Bello told Kodao.
In the context that the co-belligerents, both he and Jalandoni, respectfully represented, are engaged in a shooting war, Bello probably means Ka Louie did not negotiate for surrender. In the words of Jalandoni’s long-term vice-chairperson and eventual successor, Fidel Agcaoili, Ka Louie “was unbending and unwilling to compromise on matters of principle.”
The “almost IPA” Bello referred to clearly tried to address the root causes of the 56-year armed conflict in the Philippines. It not only contained long-term ceasefires but also surprising agreements on mining’s role in national industrialization, among others. And before former President Rodrigo Duterte cancelled the peace talks in 2017, both the GRP and the NDFP had already agreed on free land distribution to poor farmers, the landlord’s son’s personal lifelong mission.
Still, the group he embraced after his apostasy has vowed to carry on as it showered him with praises. “Ka Louie is remembered for his extraordinary journey from priesthood to revolutionary, for his unwavering principled stand across the negotiating table, for his proletarian internationalism, and for his deep love for the struggling Filipino masses whom he served his entire life,” the CPP Central Committee said in co-announcing their comrade’s passing on Saturday.
“Ka Louie Jalandoni represents the best of our revolutionary movement: principled, disciplined, humble, and unyielding. In a world wracked by imperialist war, exploitation, and reaction, his life inspired and will continue to inspire countless people across generations and continents,” it added.
Raymund Villanueva is the editor of KODAO Productions and a seasoned journalist whose works focus on press freedom, human rights, social justice, peace and conflict, Indigenous Peoples, women and children, and the environment. He is currently the chairperson of the Altermidya Network.
