My Friend, Sixto Carlos Jr. (Feb. 27, 1947 - Sept. 5, 2021)
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Jun Carlos during a Pandacan historical walking tour stop at the monument to the poet Francisco Balagtas, beside the fabled Ilog Beata.
Jun descended from a German businessman who, like several European commercial adventurers, settled in what was then a sleepy byway in Manila. The Carloses struck old roots and became a respected family among old-time Pandaqueños. He was a passing acquaintance when we were growing up, but we weren’t childhood friends. Unlike his older brother who rambled about in the streets, Jun, by his admission, kept to himself within the genteel surroundings of their comfortable home. How this solitary youth acquired an abiding compassion for people who have so much less in life; how he managed to endure time in the underground, torture and isolation in a political prison, I never asked him. By his actions as a grown man he never needed to explain himself. I just presumed that his fortitude came from a highly moral upbringing that insisted on fairness and justice.
Jun came from a somewhat politically puzzling family. His father served as army judge advocate general at the height of the anti-Huk prosecutions; his older siblings mingled with high society; yet, both his parents openly supported his leftwing politics, even welcoming discussion groups in their leafy garden at the height of the First Quarter Storm. Once, as an adolescent in the late ‘50s, I even witnessed his uncle, the neighborhood family doctor, defend the Soviet Union’s side of the Cold War to barbershop hangers-on who usually just came for the tsismis or the salacious crime stories in Tiktik magazine. His family’s complex political profile meant that no one in the neighborhood was surprised when Jun later emerged as an outspoken leftist. “He’s a Carlos, and too intelligent for his own good,” I once heard a local scold say.
We became friends in the ‘70s when we both were already students at the University of the Philippines. We sometimes bumped into each other on the bus to UP. He knew I was a journalism major and we often parsed current events. At some point, I believe I asked him why he thought there were so many poor people in our country. There began brief and periodic, personalized bus-ride “Jun seminars” on imperialism, capitalism, feudalism and socialism. The closer was a pictorial pamphlet on how revolutionary Cuba was trying to provide housing for its people, and how was it that our government could not do the same for ours? It was Jun, the once sheltered youth, who initiated me to the call of the times, recruited me into the Left movement, the SDK in particular, and the rest is my own life history.
Jun was among the SDK’s top leaders, along with Ellecer Cortez and Tony Hilario. One evening in the early ‘70s, at the SDK HQ near V. Luna Hospital, we rank-and-filers saw all three of them emerge from a very long meeting on the second floor. Two other leaders had glumly, even angrily, preceded them and permanently left the organization. Boy Cortez and Tonyhil, however, seemed relieved, but Jun was in tears. We learned the next day that they had decided to heal the rift with the Kabataang Makabayan and, I now presume, to join the CPP. This political reunification unleashed a tremendous energy for the movement, leading to the semi-insurrectionary First Quarter Storm, serving as an important lesson against unforgiving schisms. Boy and Tonyhil would later die in battle, Jun would go on to become a high-ranking member of the Party.
We lost touch when I went abroad and he took a path to the underground. We reconnected some 15 years later, in the Netherlands. We always saw each other during my visits to Manila. We never spoke of the differences that might have briefly alienated us from each other when he was in charge of international work and we in the States worked to gain support for our common cause based on our own stratagems. Neither did we speak about the causes of our eventual, shared alienation from the “vanguard.” It seemed enough to realize that we had freed ourselves from stifling dogma, to renew an old friendship, and to not let old disunities get in the way. And always there was joyful, laughing Jun, generous with his bracing welcome. He was happiest after finding a new love in Hope; there was an extra sparkle in his eyes and more abandon in his laughter.
“How this solitary youth acquired an abiding compassion for people who have so much less in life; how he managed to endure time in the underground, torture and isolation in a political prison, I never asked him. By his actions as a grown man he never needed to explain himself.”
He apparently had chosen a smaller field of political work to accommodate the creaks in his bones. But what a whirlwind of “local work” it was that spun a growing sphere of friends among the civic minded in our community – a hard-fought but successful campaign to eject the Pandacan gasoline terminals that had spoiled our environs and haunted our community with fears of potential conflagrations since the American Period; the lobbying to make authorities refresh local historical markers and monuments; the organizing of communal efforts to set up libraries for the youth; the institutionalization of a cultural association and a youth theater group; the historical walking tour to inspire today’s residents and visitors with the legacies of Pandacan’s artistic and political pioneers and heroes—Fr. Jacinto Zamora, Francisco Balagtas, Atang de la Rama, Dr. Paz Mendoza Guazon, Ladislao Bonus, my granduncle Jacinto Ciria Cruz, and others. I like imagining a revolutionary method to his maddening energy for local reforms. But I’d be happy if In the future, the historical walking tour would include a stop at Jun Carlos’ ancestral home, and the guide would speak respectfully of his legacy.
Sixto “Tosong” “Tosix” (add other underground names) “Jun” Carlos embraced a meaningful task for our postwar generation to take. His ceaseless work up to his passing signified his wish for new ones to take up the cudgels for a people long denied of justice and a better life. May your wish be granted, Jun, and thank you for all you’ve done for our cause. Rest now, see you later.
