8 August: Day of Remembrance for Fidel V. Agcaoili
Migrante Canada
Happy Birthday, Ka Fidel.
Migrante Canada remembers Fidel V. Agcaoili and holds an important and revered space for him in the history of migrant organizing in Canada. We look back on August 25-27, 2000 in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the National Consultative Forum where Ka Fidel was the keynote speaker in what was the first ever consultative forum of Filipino Canadians and Filipino workers. At this historic event, more than 150 Filipino Canadians and Filipino workers forged their unity in the history and comprehensive understanding of their roots of migration to Canada, in their current situation and struggles, and in their commitment to protect the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants in Canada. More importantly, it was also to link their struggles as overseas Filipinos to that of their home country.
Before his untimely demise four years ago, Ka Fidel was the Chairperson for the Committee on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and a member of the NDFP panel at the peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.
Today, August 8, would have been his 80th birthday. In the National Day of Remembrance for Ka Fidel, we print in full a poem he wrote on May 24, 1979, when he was in detention at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan. In 1974, he was arrested and became the longest detained political prisoner under Marcos, being imprisoned for 11 years.
To someone behind bars | Fidel V. Agcaoili
Must you sit all day
watching the seasons pass
and writing paeans
to birds in flight?
Can’t you hear
the forest beckon
with the sharp crack
of snapping twigs,
soft drift of morning dew
and cool murmur
of cascading streams?
Does not your hand
feel empty
of plow upturning the soil,
sickle stashing stalks
and rifle venting
our people’s wrath?
To pierce walls of pen
suffices not
to vault and wield
a fiercer spear
in the arena
of our people’s epic struggle
is the gut logic of prison. ###
Photo shows a younger Fidel Agcaoili at the TFDP National Office, San Juan, early 1980s.