“If freedom is to be preserved, fascism must be destroyed at all costs.”

These are the timeless words of the hero Pedro Abad Santos, born 150 years ago on 31 January 1876. He was a fighter for the welfare of his people even early in his life.

Abad Santos stopped going to school to join the Katipunan, where he eventually held the rank of komandante or major. He fought in 1899 as the aide-de-camp of the great Gen. Maximino Hizon in the war against the invading American forces.

Pedro Abad Santos was “an elderly nationalist lawyer” from a landowning family in Pampanga. He was called “Don Perico” by his clients, “a term of both respect and endearment, the formality of ‘don’ and the familiarity of the nickname.” He offered “his legal expertise pro bono to protect the rights of peasants and workers, which composed a third of all his cases.”

Don Perico founded the Socialist Party of the Philippines. As the history book A Past Revisited tells us, “From 1935 up to the outbreak of the war, the recognized leader of the peasantry in Central Luzon, center of the deepest unrest and the highest militancy, was Pedro Abad Santos.”

Don Perico was the older brother of the patriot Jose Abad Santos who, though not a radical like his kuya, was “the attorney for [the Indonesian communist] Tan Malacca in deportation proceedings” and who, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and head of the caretaker Philippine government, was executed by Japanese fascists for refusing to cooperate with the occupiers.

Don Perico recoiled at hero worship. “We believe in mass action,” he said, “to secure our end, the welfare of the masses.” The mass action he envisaged did not include armed struggle, which he considered suicidal having witnessed the tragic revolt of the Sakdalistas, which was led by a fascistic demagogue.

“If the masses are to be saved it . . . [should be] “by their own efforts to organize, to unite, and their only weapon is [to] Strike,” said Don Perico. “Every strike must be a school, even if it is lost.”

A longer more detailed version of this post can be read here.