Celebrating love feels strange when you’re almost a year into a pandemic, with no real end in immediate sight. For the first time since the internet became ubiquitous and instant messaging, the default, connections and interactions have suddenly become scarce. Most of us have been working from home and staying home for nearly a year, with outside interactions limited to work, chores, and the rare gathering with select family and friends.
“It was not instant,” admitted Butch Abad in an email interview with Rappler. Butch and Dina Razon first met in 1974, during a joint reflection session at the Ateneo de Manila University for the organizing work they were doing.The bridge Butch is referring to isn’t the tiny pedestrian walkway that connects Ateneo's Loyola Heights campus to its Katipunan neighbor, Miriam College.
After earning their degrees, they’d continue working as trade union organizers, helping found the Workers’ College in Ateneo. Butch would later join the Federation of Free Workers. Butch and Dina’s story is, well, storied, to say the least. From this point forward, I’ll let Butch talk and explain how their love – which faced threats from a dictator and the scrutiny of being in government service – survived thanks to the values they both held dear.Rappler: You and Dina were activists during the Marcos regime. What was that experience like?
After our release from jail, we continued our anti-dictatorship activities full time and once again, police were pursuing us. We moved from one province to another up north, until Episcopalian priest-friends offered to hide us in Sagada. It was in this cold, mountaintop hideaway that our eldest child, Julia, was conceived. She was born in 1979.
During Martial Law, life as an activist was uncertain and dangerous. You could be picked up anytime and just disappear. Our life was irregular and there would be days and weeks when we would not see each other. It got even more complicated when Julia was born. It was stressful when we both got arrested and Julia had to live apart from us with my parents-in-law. It was not a good time to start and raise a family. I think Julia still carries the trauma of living in those dark years.