When the student ferment of the early 1970s reached Iligan City, Venerando’s older

brothers joined the Kabataang Makabayan. He too joined later. Owning a booming
voice, he was soon making fiery speeches before crowds. He was tall at 5’11”and he
carried himself well, and so was easy to see in a crowd.

Hoping to become a detective, he enrolled at the Philippine College of Criminology in

Manila. He also studied the martial arts. He continued to be active with the KM. As the
political turmoil intensified he decided to leave school and join the underground. In 1972
he left for Isabela with a batch of other activists from the Visayas and Mindanao. He
went through a short military training, and was later given the task of developing new
recruits. He was also assigned to help organize barrio people to undertake health and
education projects, give political lessons to the local community, and help the locals
work out solutions to their local problems. He also gave occasional lessons in the
martial arts. He became proficient with Ilokano and used it during his political lessons.

Under the martial law regime, Isabela became heavily militarized. It became the
relentless target of daily artillery bombings, ground attacks, and intelligence and psywar
operations, all seeking to destroy the fledgling rebel force in the province. The military
declared a part of the province’s forested areas as “no man’s land,” and ordered more
than 50,000 residents out in order to deprive the guerrillas their means of support. The
guerrilla force had to undertake constant evasive action, and became isolated from the
local population. When they decided to escape the encirclement, Venerando, then
called Ka Ibarra, was one of several leaders who organized the retreat, getting the
guerrillas, armed activists and barrio people out of immediate danger. The escape took
an entire year’s march, a trek of 370 kilometers, across three provinces and 25 heavily-
militarized towns.

Throughout this difficult journey, Venerando kept up the spirits of the evacuees, telling
them not to lose hope because they had supporters in the struggle against the Marcos
dictatorship. He helped comfort and care for the sick and wounded and often shared
with others his own limited ration of food.

After this phase, Venerando moved to Mindanao, where his family hailed. He took up
political work that included building the people’s strength so they could launch protest
actions and responses to agrarian problems among farmers and farmworkers in the
banana plantations of Davao and in the coconut industry. One of the strong campaigns
that resulted was the campaign against the coconut levy, a tax taken from coconut
farmers but mainly benefiting Marcos cronies. Venerando took the names Ka Benny
and Ka Miguel.

Again in Mindanao, Venerando witnessed the forcible relocation of tens of thousands of

people into hamlets in the military’s effort to deny mass support to the rebel guerrillas.
Rather than escape, however, they decided that the proper response this time was to
rise in protest. As a result, huge demonstrations were organized to protest the
displacement and the worsening militarization. Venerando and his group of activists
helped in the mobilization in the Compostela Valley region. Protest actions were also
organized against the Catalunan Grande massacre, the bombing of the San Pedro
Cathedral, the hamletting in Davao del Norte, the killing of Edgar Jopson, and the
arrests and torture of Fr. Dong Tizon, Karl Gaspar and Hilda Narciso.

Venerando also became a part of the protests that erupted in the aftermath of the
assassination of the late senator Benigno Aquino Jr., helping build the Justice for
Aquino and Justice for All movement in Mindanao, preparing streamers, placards and
leaflets with slogans such as “Oust the dictator!“ “Marcos resign” and “Dismantle the
U.S.-Marcos dictatorship.” On occasion Venerando’s baritone voice would be heard
calling on people not to be afraid of the dictatorship.

Venerando became one of the dictatorship’s most wanted men in Mindanao.

In the mid-1980s, Venerando spent some time again in northern Luzon, leading military
resistance as well as expansion efforts in that area.

In 1985, he and his small family were on a trip to Manila when Venerando was
abducted. He tried to resist his abductors until one of the men stuck a barrel of a gun to
the head of his daughter, at which point he allowed himself to be taken away. His wife,
family and friends launched a long campaign that even extended overseas to have him
found. The regime denied having him in custody although the family was surreptitiously
told that the team that undertook the abduction was led by Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo of the
Philippine Constabulary. Venerando was never found.