TRIBUTE TO ATTY. HENRY V. BRIGUERA

Catching up with Atty. Henry V. Briguera (middle) at his home on 6 January 2024. To his left in the photo is retired Judge Sol Santos holding Henry's 2010 martial victim book STALAG 1. To Henry's right in the photo is retired Literature Prof. Doods Santos.

As my TRIBUTE TO ATTY. HENRY V. BRIGUERA who passed away at age 79 on 12 September 2025, I am submitting for your posting my ATTACHED Foreword to Henry's 2024 book STALAG 2 and BICOL BREEZE: Further Notes of a Martial Victim (cover ATTACHED). -- Judge Soliman M. Santos, Jr., (Retd.)

FOREWORD

Filipino journalism and literature great Nick Joaquin is often famously attributed in the Philippines for the saying that journalism is “literature in a hurry,” though this has outside the Philippines been otherwise attributed to the English poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold. The saying may have also sparked further notions of journalism as “history in a hurry.” Stated otherwise by Washington Post President and Publisher Philip L. Graham, journalism is the “first rough draft of history.”

Veteran Bikolano and Nagueño broadcast and print journalist Atty. Henry V. Briguera makes another such contribution to Kabikolan’s martial law and contemporary history with this new book that is a sequel to his 2010 book BICOL BREEZE… STALAG 1: Notes of a Martial Law Victim. This new book completes the early martial law story of political detainees at the old Philippine Constabulary Camp Canuto in Sagurong, Pili, Camarines Sur. In the detention building christened “Stalag 1” by the detainees were the group of mostly prominent and critical local print and broadcast journalists, of which Henry was the most junior, the still insecure bagito or rookie among those detained local journalists. Another detention building christened “Stalag 2” held the group of student activists, labor leaders, and other less prominent persons.

After covering the Stalag 1 people in his 2010 book, Henry admittedly felt guilty for not yet giving due recognition to the less prominent Stalag 2 people who were just the same victims of martial law by way of arbitrary arrest and political detention. And so, this sequel new book with a PART I on “STALAG 2,” an effort started in early 2024 when Henry was already at the ripe old age of 78, and semi-paralyzed from a heat stroke. As he could no longer type or encode like before as a print journalist and private law practitioner, nor able to read printed material and even cell phone messages due to poor eyesight, his Preface and the ten Chapters in Part I on Stalag 2 of this book had to be painstakingly dictated on a tape recorder and then transcribed by his secretary. In a way it was like the old radio broadcasting days of his younger years.

When Henry wrote up his 2010 book on his fellow Stalag 1 political detainees of 1972, about 38 years after the fact, his writing their stories as fellow martial law victims, though done in his easy-to-read journalistic style, cannot be said to be writing “in a hurry” to beat newspaper deadlines. Though there were also no newspaper deadlines this second time around for this 2024 book on his neighbor Stalag 2 political detainees, this time 52 years after the fact, there was however a different kind or element of time “hurry,” that which is called in senior citizen parlance as “pre-departure time.” To quote the Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas, Henry had to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Otherwise, the stories of otherwise unknown victims of martial law, just like the proverbial “unknown soldier,” would remain untold and therefore unknown.

Henry thus does the service of giving us a “first rough draft” of one small part though it may be for the history of Kabikolan as well as the history of martial law in the Philippines. Philippine history must also be a history “from the regions,” not only the National Capital Region of Metro-Manila, for it to be truly a national history of the Filipino people. Let the historians, especially the emerging younger breed for Bikol history, mine and polish such nuggets or “diamonds in the rough [draft of history]” by Henry and other local journalists, and do the further research and rigorous writing that is not “in a hurry” whether for an academic or professional purposes or otherwise. There is actually much local journalism material not only for history but also for other cognate disciplines like political science, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and law.

To be sure, there is also much personal catharsis or closure for Henry in pouring it all out, as it were, to round out or complete the whole Stalag (1 and 2) story which is also a significant part of his own life story. For him, he has had to let out a life-long angst of not knowing really the reason why he was detained. And though detained for only a few months, like most of his Camp Canuto co-detainees, this unfortunate event became a stigma or trauma for him and most of them that adversely affected their lives, families and careers at that juncture and even later. For one, it delayed his law studies and becoming a lawyer. But the adversity of the University of Hard Knocks somehow also had its silver linings. It strengthened his knees, so to speak, as a lawyer and as a journalist, the latter more “forever” as both vocation and avocation than the former. One thing common though to newspaper and court trial work is catching deadlines, though in the latter work one can move for any needed extensions.

Not just as a martial law victim but also as a lawyer, Henry gives some particular attention to Republic Act No. 10368, the Human Rights Victims [during the Marcos regime] Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013. The importance of both such reparation and recognition impels him to advocate the extension or reactivation of the now defunct Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board (HRVCB) and the provision of reparation funding for the “many more martial law victims who did not have the means and capacity to pursue their claims.” And also for their victimhood to at least be memorialized in the Roll of Victims by the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission (HRVVMC). This is a challenge or call to those still unofficially recognized victims, their families, friends AND others who know of or documented their victimhood to come forward to the Commission.

This new book’s PART II titled “BICOL BREEZE” is actually a sampler of the usual journalism “in a hurry” to meet newspaper deadlines. The newspaper Bicol Mail is currently Bikol’s leading local weekly newspaper. Henry once wrote an opinion column therein named “Bicol Breeze.” The six Appendices in his 2010 book were selected column pieces in 2005 and 2010. This second time around in 2024, his pieces from Bicol Mail are multiplied ten-fold (60 in all). They are not his column pieces but all editorials during the pandemic years from 2020 to 2022. But his column name and trademark “Bicol Breeze” is used for the title of Part II, because of the refreshing breeze (something Henry appreciated more after several months of the stifling hot confinement in Camp Canuto) of his opinion pieces, not only readable (like his “Stalag” stories) but also reasonable. Opinion pieces, especially editorials, guided by the values and principles of truth, reason and justice. More so in a time straddling the successive Duterte and Marcos Jr. administrations, that were like a déjà vu to the dark years of martial law. One particular passage in the editorial “Yesterday best mentor of today and tomorrow” may suffice to illustrate Henry the editorial writer:

Decades have already elapsed since the collapse of the military rule and for this reason men and women bearing olive leaves have to play a vital role. A very general call for peace and unity is empty and may even be hypocritical.

Violation of human rights has also been very prominent during the immediate past administration. While it sought to rid the nation of drug users, it also created an equally disturbing grave abuse of power and therefore set aside due process.

The call for national unity had been a very effective political propaganda. Now that reality has already set in, it is time to uncover the details leading to national unity.

Being too simplistic in asserting that the people’s dreams are BBM’s too, is bereft of reality-based pronouncements. Time to wake up and be realistic in going to the drawing table armed with the complete grasp of the past for it to be used for today and tomorrow. Otherwise, unity shall remain a dream, hopefully not hallucinations.

Prescient? Editorials can be said to be of a higher level of journalism than opinion columns. The late Nagueño great Atty. J. Antonio M. Carpio once said of another late Nagueño great Atty. Luis General, Jr., longtime editorial writer of Naga Times, Balalong and Handiong, the best Bikol local newspapers of their time: “Luising was the conscience of our community. This is shown especially by his editorials. For an editor bares his soul in the values he and his paper uphold.” Henry the bagito or rookie among the group of detained local journalists in Camp Canuto shortly after the Marcos martial law declaration in September 1972, has since over five decades graduated from being a news beat reporter or newscaster to an opinion columnist and finally to an editorial writer. It was no fluke of history therefore that he was in the same good company of the best Nagueño journalists at the time like General, Carpio and the likewise late Atty. Alfredo Tria and Ramon Brillante in Stalag 1.

Judge Soliman M. Santos, Jr. (Retd.)

Naga City, 30 August 2024

[or 21 September 2024]