Conflict Tearing Social Fabric : A Call for Revenge Echoes Rising Filipino Violence

The aging warlord shook with rage as he stared into the coffin containing the body of his godson.

Suddenly, the old man looked up, and his eyes moved quickly around the group of men in dark glasses who stood with him at the church’s altar.

“You will not forgive this death,” the godfather said, his voice just above a whisper. “Nor will you forget the cause.”

Moments later at the cemetery, as the family of Leo Enriquez III prepared to place his coffin in the family crypt, Ramon Durano, godfather and warlord to tens of thousands on the island of Cebu, bent over and kissed the glass over the lifeless face. It was the kiss of revenge, he said later.

Then, from the tops of tombs throughout the cemetery, leaders of a right-wing vigilante network that Enriquez and the old warlord helped create let off a five-minute volley of gunfire, using shotguns, machine guns, rifles and pistols.

“What all this means,” vigilante leader Jun Alcover said, “is that we will avenge the death of Leo Enriquez.”

Even before the funeral was over, a right-wing assassination squad was organized in Enriquez’s name.

The script could have been written in Chicago in the 1930s, but the Oct. 18 funeral for Leo Enriquez III, in this right-wing stronghold on Cebu, 560 miles south of Manila, was pure 1987 Philippines.

Lawlessness, murder and the guerrilla war have all intensified this year, further rending the country’s social fabric. The life and death of Leo Enriquez mirrored the deterioration and rising violence of a country struggling to balance democracy against anarchy.

The story of Enriquez, who died Oct. 10 when a Communist death squad put a bullet through his head, is a sort of window on the human side of the struggle between the forces of the far left and right.

Enriquez, 38, was a reporter for a Cebu daily, the People’s Journal, and his political commitment to the ultra-right anti-Communist movement colored his reporting. He spent most of his time with the armed forces. He wore military combat fatigues and carried a pistol.

But in addition to using his job as a tool of his ideology, Enriquez went a step further. Quietly, he helped organize--and served as the chief information officer for--a growing alliance of nationwide vigilante groups that are using the Communist guerrillas’ own tactics in an effort to defeat them.

‘Man of Principle’

“To me, Leo was really a man of principle, someone to be admired,” said Felix Basadre Jr., the English-language editor of the People’s Journal. He continued:

“In normal times, in normal places, objectivity is desirable, but these are not normal times. A lot of the journalists here stay in the middle not out of ethics but out of fear. If you’re leaning to the left, the rightists will get you. If you lean to the right, the leftists will get you.

“Leo is one of the few who really committed himself. And he was killed for it.”

Enriquez knew he was going to be killed. “It is only a question of where and when,” he told The Times earlier this year. This was in April, in the course of one of the many trips Enriquez organized for foreign journalists covering the vigilante movement.

Noting that he spent 17 years as a member of legal Communist organizations before he “became disillusioned” and switched his allegiance to the political right, Enriquez said: “They cannot allow me to live. I know too much. I am their worst enemy.”

Psychic’s Prediction

Enriquez virtually predicted his death in an article that appeared in the People’s Journal on the very day he was killed. Under the headline “Media Man to Die,” Enriquez quoted Jojo Acuin, a psychic, as predicting that “a media man in Cebu will figure in a very tragic accident or will die before the end of 1987.”

Enriquez wrote that the psychic would not identify the reporter, but added that he and two other reporters had received death threats from the Communist New People’s Army and were the most likely targets for assassination.

“Two weeks ago,” Enriquez noted in the article, “sons of this reporter, ages 7 and 3, foiled an attempt by NPA suspects to burn down their home.”

Cerge Remonde, a radio reporter who is one of the two others reportedly targeted for death, said in an interview that the psychic had confided in him that it was Enriquez who would be killed.

“Leo also knew inside that it would be he,” Remonde said. “But his commitment to the cause was more important than his life. He just wouldn’t take precautions.”

At 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 10, just as the newspaper containing Enriquez’s article was hitting the streets, the reporter left his home for the office. Enriquez, who did not own a car, was on foot.

As he approached his bus stop, three young men who according to witnesses had been “hanging around” since 7 a.m., approached Enriquez from behind. One produced a .45-caliber pistol, jammed it against the nape of Enriquez’s neck and fired.

The assailants did not flee immediately. They turned Enriquez’s body over and took his watch, ring, wallet and pistol. Then they placed the spent cartridge case in the center of Enriquez’s forehead.

Before fleeing, they pointed their weapons at the dozens of bystanders who had seen the shooting and shouted, “If you talk, you will meet the same fate.”

There is no doubt that the killers were members of one of the Communist death squads known as “sparrow units,” so-called because they strike and fly swiftly away.

Death Penalty ‘Meted Out’

The provincial commander of the New People’s Army issued a statement declaring that the guerrillas had “meted out the death penalty on Leo S. Enriquez III for his direct participation and leadership in the fascist Armed Forces of the Philippines’ counterinsurgency campaign, specifically in the formation and operations of vigilante groups in the province.” The statement went on:

“The revolutionary movement has constantly warned Enriquez on his anti-people activities. The warning was done not through phone calls nor threat letters but through channels that we are sure could clearly explain to him the basis and context of the warning.”

One of those channels, presumably, was Enriquez’s younger brother, Kit.

Like many Philippine families, the Enriquez family was deeply split ideologically. Philippine sociologists are concerned about this development; they fear that the war is increasingly threatening the family, a powerful institution in Philippine society.

When Leo Enriquez left the Communist movement four years ago, his brother Kit apparently did not. In an interview at Enriquez’s wake, Kit said he still supports the “armed struggle” but that his brother’s killing is now forcing him to re-evaluate the movement.

Kit, who is 35 and the leader of a legal leftist group that represents political detainees, said: “I am in turmoil now on how to reconcile all these things that are happening. I still have the belief in the justness of the cause, but the men who are running it should be changed.”

Specifically, he said, he was enraged by the way the killers looted his brother’s body.

‘Noncombatant Crusader’

“They never used to steal from victims,” he said. “Stealing, they have always told us, is wrong. They are justifying this now by saying that these things--the watch, ring and wallet--are war materials, but Leo was not a combatant of the right; he was a noncombatant crusader.

“His pen was his weapon. The pen, they say, is more powerful than the sword, and now I think that is true. They had to use the sword to eliminate his pen.

“I am just so confused about all this right now. They (the New People’s Army) are just intensifying this war so much now. It is too soon for this. The people are not ready for this.”

Regardless of whether Enriquez’s slaying was a sign that the left has intensified the war, Enriquez’s associates have pledged that his death will trigger an escalation from the right.

Vigilante leader Jun Alcover, who worked closely with Enriquez in creating a right-wing organization modeled on the Communists’ National Democratic Front--the umbrella group that includes the Communist Party and the New People’s Army--said steps have already been taken to plan the right wing’s revenge.

Alcover, who served as a Communist guerrilla commander for years before switching his allegiance, as Enriquez did, to the military, said that right-wing groups are creating a special assassination unit called “The Leo Enriquez Brigade.”

The brigade, he said, will target known leftists nationwide and execute them in the same manner the Communists have used to kill hundreds of policemen and politicians.

“We will be using the same tactics used by the enemy,” Alcover said. “There will be groups operating under the name Leo Enriquez Brigade. They will be underground and illegal. There will be vengeance.”

Alcover traveled to the United States earlier this year to appeal for aid in speeches and in meetings with Pentagon officials and, he concedes, CIA officials. He has frequently been accused of being a CIA operative.

Communist leaders and leftist politicians have charged that the CIA has been supporting the move to arm vigilante groups. Alcover, who says vigilante strength is now more than 3,000 on Cebu alone, would neither confirm nor deny the charge.

“When I met with some people in Washington, I said I had been branded as a CIA agent,” Alcover said. “So, I told them that since I’m already supposed to be one, you should send us some of this money now--money to finance a pro-vigilante information campaign. I am still waiting for that.”

Before he was killed, Enriquez said that propaganda is the key to winning the insurgency. He urged officials in Washington to supply his right-wing movement with sophisticated visual aids and money with which to seek anti-Communist support in the news media.

‘Hearts and Minds’

“This is why I have chosen this profession, first when I was with the left, and again now that I am with the anti-Communists,” Enriquez said last April. “It’s simply winning over the hearts and minds of the people.”

The New People’s Army apparently agrees. In the statement accepting responsibility for the slaying, the guerrillas appealed to “all genuine media men not to be afraid.” Enriquez’s killing, they said, “was not aimed at silencing the media. . . . We call upon you to exhibit objectivity and fairness in your professional endeavor.”

Nonetheless, many Philippine reporters say they are afraid now. Remonde, who is reportedly next on the death list because of his anti-Communist broadcasts over a station owned by a conservative labor alliance, conceded that he is frightened.

“I really expect more blood to flow,” he said, “more troubled days ahead, especially because the military is not really doing enough to keep the peace. We would feel better, more secure, if we felt the police were really trying to solve this crime. And some people in the media really are intimidated by this. I must say, it has intimidated us.”

Remonde said he has been getting two or three death threats a day, and he said he has difficulty sleeping at night.

‘In Hands of God’

“But, really,” he said, “I have placed everything in the hands of God. If God wants me to continue what I am doing, then he will let me live. And so I will continue. If Leo’s death is to mean anything, then we must use it strengthen ourselves and our cause.”

Enriquez’s associates tried to do just that. Alcover had planned to bring hundreds of his vigilantes down from their mountain villages to attend the funeral in a show of force.

But the Enriquez family, especially brother Kit, objected. Instead, only Alcover and top vigilante leaders attended. The family cringed when the volley was fired.

“The way I see it,” Kit said, “Leo has done so much already for this cause. He has even given his life. Why use his funeral for propaganda, too? I would rather Leo’s death be a different kind of message--that the killing has gone too far.”