Alexander Belone II (Ka Tandis)

Ka Tandis was born on June 23, 1952 in Via Gainza, Naga City and named Alexander Belone II. Alex was the son of Alejandro Belone of Jolo and Naga and Victoria Abonita of Bato, Camarines Sur. An elder sister is Elizabeth.

He studied at the Naga Parochial School from 1958 to 1965 where he was an honor student. He went to study at the Philippine Science High School and then at the University of the Philippines, both in Diliman, Quezon City. In 1970 he became an activist of the Kabataang Makabayan at a time of the First Quarter Storm and upsurge of the mass movement in the cities.

He returned to Naga City and resumed his studies at the University of Nueva Caceres. At the same time he also continued his activist work with the Kabataang Makabayan. It was while a student at the university that he wrote this poem (untitled):

Can the choicest words
and the harshest sounds
provide power to a people
long oppressed under the yoke
of feudal and imperialist tyranny?

Shall we not cast aside
the broken pen that knows all terms
and the paper pure prepared for lines?

Shall we not transform
angry words into moving force
pointed pens into sharpened bolos
spurting ink into barking bullets?

Come now literary laureates
turn your scripts and your books
into mass bases of the revolution
and your pens and typewriters
into automatic rifles of the revolutionaries
that will write the great epic
of the Filipino race.

Alex did his KM work first in Naga City and later in the whole of the Bicol region. Upon the declaration of martial law in 1972 he joined other activist students who went to the countryside to work with the New People's Army.

From 1972 to 1980 he performed various tasks in the CPP-NPA-NDF. He became a member of the Regional Instruction Bureau and later a member of the Provisional Regional Party Committee in Bicol.

He was killed in an encounter on October 11, 1980 in Coguit, Balatan, Camarines Sur at the age of 28. His body was desecrated by the military who tied a rope around his neck and had a trimobile drag it.

The photographs were taken from the book, PULANG HAMTIK, published by the Bikol Agency for Nationalist and Human Initiatives, Inc. (BANH)

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