I encountered Francisco Nemenzo—Ka Dodong to his colleagues and comrades—well before I met him in person. That is, I read one of his papers—isn’t that how we get to know great scholars and thinkers, through the works they have penned? They may be halfway around the world, or they might have passed away long ago, but we converse with them through the words they have put to paper. 

I can still remember the title of Ka Dodong’s paper: “The millenarian-populist aspects of Filipino Marxism.” I was amazed that we would be reading such a radical tract in an undergraduate class at Ateneo de Manila. I was so fascinated with it that I kept the copy. There were no PDFs then, and photocopies were expensive. Instead, we had mimeographed hard copies on cheap and coarse paper. But that copy is still in my archive of documents that I have accumulated through the years.

So, in my first encounters with Ka Dodong, he was either required or optional reading. I was already a “natdem” activist when I read, at my own risk, the vision document of Bisig, or the Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa, which he headed. 

UP president

Many years later I met Ka Dodong in person. He was then president of the University of the Philippines and I was a labor activist. It was my first time to be at the UP president’s office at the top of Quezon Hall, which has a commanding view of the sprawling campus. Being there must have changed Ka Dodong’s perspective in terms of, not shifting his pro-people and pro-student moorings, but what can be done to improve the university using the levers of power. I remember him saying he got flak from student activists then for his proposal to use UP’s idle land for commercial purposes to raise funds for advancing the quality of education.

It would be some time before I saw Ka Dodong again, at the so-called democratic left conference of representatives of political blocs and progressive individuals. The participants later established the original Laban ng Masa. I do not recall having a conversation with him then, but we all spoke at the conference about our different takes on the political situation and what was to be done. 

Such formal settings comprised the “second stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong.

I envied my wife Mich who, as part of the Laban ng Masa secretariat during the tumultuous campaign for a transitional revolutionary government to replace Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, became close to Ka Dodong and his wife Princess. Mich told me of accompanying Ka Dodong to a bookstore to look for a volume, and of having coffee with the Nemenzos and talking about and dreaming of overhauling a broken system, not just ousting a corrupt president.

Informal meetings 

It was well after the heady years of Edsa Dos, Edsa Tres and Oust GMA that I had informal meetings with Ka Dodong. Several times during Noynoy Aquino’s administration, Ka Dodong asked to meet with Partido Manggagawa (PM) comrades for conversations. I guess he also did the same for leaders of other political groups. We usually met in a restaurant at UP Diliman to exchange notes on the political landscape.

He was still in the pink of health as he drove us around campus in his car. He was very interested in knowing about our practical work and the prospects of forging collaboration among various groups. But the changed political geography afforded few opportunities as the mass movement declined and “Edsa fatigue” deepened.

Still, Ka Dodong’s hopes for radical change did not falter. At the height of the labor dispute at Philippine Airlines (PAL) in the early 2010s, he invited a union leader to deliver a lecture to his undergraduate political science class. He asked me for an advance copy of the presentation as he did not want the class discussion to descend to sloganeering. The slide presentation did pass his exacting standards: He said Marx’s theory of surplus value and capitalist exploitation was appropriately explained through the real-life experience of the workers at PAL.

During Rodrigo Duterte’s term, comrades from some political groups gathered a few times at Ka Dodong’s house for late-night conversations. Among those present at the gatherings were PM leaders Rene Magtubo and Wilson Fortaleza. Nothing conspiratorial was hatched in those drinking sessions-cum-informal meetings; the only things we planned to topple were whiskey bottles. A striking aspect I remember was the gender imbalance in those meetings: Princess was the only female participant, but she more than held her ground. 

Up to that time, I did not consider my encounters with Ka Dodong as up close and personal. We were always in the company of other colleagues, and the topic of discussions was mostly political.

Personal conversations

Covid-19 was a game-changer in many ways, even if indirectly in my relationship with Ka Dodong. When face-to-face interactions resumed after the pandemic, he somehow learned that I was teaching at UP Diliman’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations and was also co-convenor of Ed Tadem’s Program on Alternative Development at UP’s Center for Integrative and Development Studies; he wanted to get together with me for one-on-one conversations. I think it must have been because I had one foot in the academe and the other in the activist movement. As others have said in their tributes to Ka Dodong, he thought well of activists who pursued their studies while continuing their advocacies. A public intellectual, he sought advocates who were grounded in both activism and scholarship. My wife Mich recounted that in one of their frank conversations over coffee, Ka Dodong said as much. 

Of course, I was honored to have a chance at private conversations with Ka Dodong, and also privileged to have some of those discussions with Princess who provided her own take on things. It is not surprising that while the Nemenzos shared much, especially socialist convictions, they had their own distinct opinions on certain issues. At times, I invited colleagues to join our meetings. Ka Dodong was very enthusiastic when I showed up accompanied by some young PM members.

In that “last stage” of my encounters with Ka Dodong, we covered a full spectrum of topics, from the life of a UP faculty member to the situation of the world. We talked about, for example, Joma Sison and Popoy Lagman, two revolutionaries that he deeply respected although in varying contexts, both having contributed to the theory and practice of waging revolution in the Philippines. Joma and Popoy remain the only two Filipinos whose works are in the Marxists Internet Archive. One day, I hope to see Ka Dodong’s name as the third Filipino in that authoritative online repository of works by renowned leftists.

I asked Ka Dodong about how it was during his younger days, especially when he and others were laying the ground for the eventual rise of the student movement in the late 1960s and the momentous task of rebuilding the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) after the Huk rebellion was put down in the mid-1950s. He told a lot of stories, some of them I already knew, but remarkably, many were new to me. I now regret not taking notes.

In their tributes to Ka Dodong, both Ed Tadem and Jojo Abinales mentioned Joma as recruiting Ka Dodong into the PKP. That may be so. But I distinctly recall Ka Dodong saying that the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI), then the third largest communist party in the world, had sent one comrade to the Philippines with the mission of revitalizing the moribund PKP. I have forgotten his name, so I think of him as Tan Malaka 2.0. Ka Dodong was among this person’s first contacts at UP. But then, Ka Dodong forwarded Joma as the new contact person for the PKI to relate to, as he and Princess were on their way to Britain for graduate studies. Hopefully, historians will one day sort out the complete story.

Too few, too late

In our one-on-one conversations, Ka Dodong gave me a choice of coffee or whiskey. In the first few meetings, I modestly accepted coffee and told him it was too early to drink whiskey. I soon overcame my shyness and we drank whiskey even if the mid-afternoon sun was still shining brightly. 

I religiously brought food to our meetings. Ed Tadem had told me that Ka Dodong’s favorite was siopao from Ma Mon Luk. But it was too far away and I was able to get siopao only from a convenience store on campus. 

Eventually I would proceed to the Nemenzos’ house even empty-handed. They welcomed me anyway and graciously shared their food. On one occasion, I learned that another of Ka Dodong’s favorites was French onion soup; I gained from him how to differentiate the authentic soup from the wannabe. 

At times our discussions ended late at night and Ka Dodong would offer to lend me their car. I politely refused because I did not know how to drive. I did borrow an umbrella once when it was raining by the time I was ready to leave. Indeed, Ka Dodong and Princess, kind and thoughtful persons, offered help when needed.

I fondly remember those personal meetings with Ka Dodong. Looking back, I realize that they were too few and too late. When his health took a turn for the worse, I was able to visit him twice while he was confined at the Philippine General Hospital in the last quarter of 2024. It was heartbreaking to see him in ill health and unable to share his thoughts.

So, I prefer to recall the times when Ka Dodong was up and about and in the thick of things as a scholar-activist: at the one-on-one conversations and late-night meetings when his mind was sharp and focused; in the historic moments when he headed Laban ng Masa’s mass actions; on campus when he led movements for academic freedom and democratic governance (I saw the pictures at the All UP Workers Union office).

The last time I saw Ka Dodong in action was at a meeting where the publication of a book of his writings was discussed. I look forward to that project’s completion. Current and future generations will benefit from learning from his body of work. No doubt they will be fired by the same interest that gripped me when I first encountered him in one of his papers. 

In their engagement with his writings, Ka Dodong will remain alive.

Benjamin Velasco is an assistant professor at the School of Labor and Industrial Relations of UP Diliman. This piece is an expanded and translated version of a speech he delivered on Dec. 30, the last day of tributes for Francisco Nemenzo who passed on Dec. 19.