Content Warning: This article contains discussion of physical abuse. 

Both state and family spared no expense to hound Anakbayan's Alicia Lucena, leaving her almost no space to breathe. However, while years of abuse, red-tagging hearings, and solitary confinement have taken their toll, her resolve to resist and organize has not dimmed.

No less than her own mother appeared at Sen. Bato Dela Rosa’s hearing last August 6 purporting student organizations to be hubs for recruitment into armed rebellion. Her mother continues to work closely with the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and her story demonstrates how the vilification of activism can start at home, where the youth should feel safest.

Yet she continues to show that in the face of terror, camaraderie with her companions and the masses only intensifies her fight against injustice.

Unsheltered Childhood

Alicia’s struggles began at home. At three years old, her mother Relissa first struck her with a belt, starting a pattern of physical abuse that would last until the day she escaped her family’s residence in 2021. Alicia remembers how her parents would hit her for answering her schoolwork incorrectly, developing a motivation to aspire for better grades born out of fear. 

“Nag-invest sila sa akin, [at inaasahan nilang] ibalik ko [ito] sa kanila. Parang sinasabi nila na investment lang ang [isang] anak,” said Alicia in a press conference in 2019.

Short of parental figures she could rely on, Alicia learned to take care of herself early in her life. She extended this ethic to her siblings—helping prepare their food, fetching them from school, and even enrolling them. Throughout her childhood, Alicia felt she had to raise herself and her siblings alone. 

So Alicia sought to study far from her parents’ grasp, attending Far Eastern University Senior High School. Over time, her experience began to fill her with questions. She asked herself why, commuting daily between Pasay and Manila, she continued seeing children and the elderly scraping by in the gutters of Recto Avenue. They had neither homes nor anything to take home, yet the state seemed blind to these realities. In time, those questions led her to Mendiola—and eventually to factories, farmlands, and terminals.

As she grew in experience, she helped found Anakbayan Morayta in 2018. The chapter participated in campaigns against tuition fee increases, martial law in Mindanao, and in solidarity with over 900 striking Sumifru workers amid the killing of an organizer and the arson of their union offices. 

When her parents found out, their abuse only escalated. “Dahil doon, naging marahas sina Relissa at Francis Lucena. Kinukulong nila ako at dinadala ako sa mga kampo ng militar, at ipinapakausap ako sa kanila pati na rin sa mga intelligence agent at sa NTF-ELCAC,” said Alicia. 

By May 2019, Alicia had already been confined at home twice, hindering her from being active in her mass organization. 

Rounds of Repression

Alicia was doubly targeted by home and state, and that her parents already disapproved of her activism was no surprise. Relissa belongs to parents organization Hands Off Our Children, which coordinates closely with the NTF-ELCAC, notorious for red-tagging activists.

Between forced visits to school officials, military camps, and prisons, Alicia’s parents exposed her to people who attempted to persuade her into the state armed forces. When 18-year-old Alicia fled from her parents for the third time in July 2019, Dela Rosa encouraged the police to assist Relissa and forcibly take her daughter back.

Pressure only grew. At Relissa’s behest, the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) filed kidnapping charges the following month with the Department of Justice (DOJ). Named as respondents and red-tagged in the complaint were Anakbayan and eleven progressives, including then Kabataan Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago. 

Eventually, the DOJ junked the kidnapping charges for lack of sufficient evidence. The Supreme Court also denied additional writs of habeas corpus and amparo filed by her parents, stating her escape “did not qualify either as an actual or threatened enforced disappearance or extralegal killing.”

The case shows how the filing of trumped-up charges against activists continues to form part of a state playbook against dissent. Activists not only face outright violence but the state weaponizes laws and courts against them. 

Abductions also mount: Francisco “Eco” Dangla and Joxielle “Jak” Tiong were nabbed and tortured by state agents, before resurfacing after a few days. The two activists have long been red-tagged and harassed by the state prior to their abduction.

Alicia was subjected to similar state tactics. On April 19, 2021, she left Anakbayan’s national office for what she thought was a routine randomized swab test at a barangay hall. However, when she arrived, she was suddenly surrounded by the police and NTF-ELCAC members, accompanied by none other than her parents.

She was forced into a van and hurried to her family’s Pasay home. Padlocked in a dirty room in conditions akin to solitary confinement, Alicia peered out of window grilles with only a mattress and a cat’s litter box—meant as a toilet—for company. “Araw-araw struggle siya na manatiling buhay,” Alicia said.

But her courage and determination in the face of hardship allowed her to persist, recalled Karl Suyat, a close friend of Alicia. Slowly, memorizing the routines of those in the house with her, she got ahold of a small device, using it to contact a habal-habal. That morning of August 16 marked her seventh escape.

Sheltering her in the aftermath were fellow activists and friends. Four months had passed by since her parents and the state kidnapped her, contrary to their claims of keeping her safe. Nevertheless, she chose to continue organizing.

Reasons to Struggle

Now an experienced organizer in her own right, Alicia recognizes the continued need for the youth to decry state harassment everywhere it arises. While Dela Rosa’s August 6 hearing brought in Relissa for testimony, Alicia did not back down.

“Hindi mo ‘yan madaling mauuto kasi mabuti siyang tao, pero hindi ‘yan magpapaapak,” said Suyat.

Messages of solidarity and support poured in for Alicia as she responded in a Facebook post to her mother’s accusations of brainwashing and pointed to the actions of a state whose intransigence begets resistance.

“Hindi sila [NPA] terorista dahil ipinagtatanggol nila ang mamamayan at nangunguna sa pagbabago ng lipunan. Ang rekruter ng NPA ay kayo: Marcos Jr., Bato, ang estado at ang marahas at mapagsamantalang lipunan na 'to,” she wrote.

Alicia’s ordeal demonstrates the same contradictions of state and family. But the load becomes lighter when activists unite with basic sectors against state terror, she stressed. Somehow, she has found her true place and family in the arms of her comrades and the people she serves.

“Mahal na mahal ko ang masa dahil sila ang mga kaibigan ko, mga kapatid ko, mga pamangkin, inaanak, mga nanay at tatay ko sa komunidad,” she said.

Three years on from her kidnapping, traces of fear and trauma still linger for Alicia—but alongside fellow activists and basic sectors fighting for their rights, no longer is she trapped behind windows with grilles. With every visit to schools, factories, farms, and fisheries, she reminds herself: The masses are her family, and no amount of ridicule will stop her from joining their steadfast fight. ●