To honor Edgar “Edjop” Jopson as merely the most important Atenean student and later underground leader during the Marcos Period sells his legacy short. We must emphasize that Ateneans, especially students and young graduates, made important contributions to the underground. More importantly, however, we must emphasize that they represented the moderate thought leaders of their time, and the underground was hardly a united, homogenous movement. Indeed, when Joma Sison spoke in the Ateneo, a young Edjop found himself unattracted to what seemed empty rhetoric. On the other hand, before joining the CPP, Edjop was strongly resented as a clerico-fascist, a reactionary and a tool of the establishment by more extreme militants.
Edjop thus represents the most important moderate leader of his time, and in that sense embodies what we may honor as a still genuinely Atenean response to an extreme period of Philippine history. And because Edjop was opposed to violence and was not a leader of the underground’s armed wings but instead contributed using superior organizational and analytical skills, personal humility and charisma, and a clear thought process, he embodies the very best an ME graduate could have been during martial law.
Jopson also joined the anti-dictatorship network and was soon a ranking leader of the revolutionary movement which opposed the different forms of abuses and violations against human rights which were seen during the Marcos regime. Because of his abilities to assess and organize, he became a valuable piece of the resistance movement, especially in reviving mass movement in different cities. He openly stood up against the government to help the plight of Filipinos then despite putting his life and wellbeing at risk every single time he demonstrated this.
