Mulat Walking Tour

UP Lakad Gunita 2019 #mulat is a 2-hour walking tour around the buildings in UP Diliman which had significant functions in the 1-9 February 1971 Diliman Commune. The commune was a protest rally staged by students, faculty around the campus in solidarity with jeepney drivers’ strike against the price hike of Php 0.03 centavos. A shooting of a student by a stray bullet indiscriminately fired by a mathematics professor irked by the barricade and the entry of METROCOM escalated the conflict.

Tour covered the Quezon Hall which gave a vantage view of the University Avenue towards the West, Carillon, Melchor Hall where graffiti’s were painted on the West wall, site of the DZUP broadcast, Gonzalez Hall or college library where radical publication as Bandilang Pula was printed, Palma Hall, the staging points of class boycotts; Sampaguita and Kamia residence halls where students sought recluse and nutrition ending in Vinzons Hall, site of assemblies and meeting to plan future mobilizations.

Trivias were narrated by Joshua and Nico. President Marcos who was not allowed entry but needing to place a call to a brod had to walk from Quezon Hall to the Institute of Mass Communication to use the pay phone. Helicopter wanting to land at the campus targeted the roofdeck of Melchor Hall failed because students were firing "kwitis."

Facilitated by Kasaysayan and Psychology students (Joshua and Nico), they ably provided the function the structures played in the 1-9 Feb 1971 Diliman commune narrating the activities that transpired on those days. AIT students Jake and Diane escorted us.

UP Diliman Commune is appreciated with the 1st quarter storm in the background. From the description of Professor Jose Marie Sison, founding chairman of Kabataang Makabayan and Communist Party of the Philippines, he described the First Quarter Storm of 1970 as “a series of protest mass actions, which began on January 25, 1970 and continued up to March of 1970. It is chronicled by Jose F. Lacaba’s Days of Disquiet and Nights of Rage and commented upon by Amado Guerrero’s First Quarter Storm of 1970.

At the beginning, ten thousand students, urban poor youth, workers and peasants massed in front of Congress in order to express themselves against the anti-national and anti-democratic policies of the Marcos regime and against the excessive spending of public money to reelect Marcos as president.
Their peaceful demonstration was brutally attacked by the police with truncheon and gunfire upon the signal of Marcos himself after delivering his “state of the nation address”. The demonstrators fought back for several hours with bare fists, wooden handles of placards and stones.””

#UPDLakadGunita2019