Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo died in Manila, Philippines, Dec. 19, at the age of 89. “He was highly respected as a longtime president of the University of the Philippines. Throughout his life he was well-known as a socialist who stuck to his principles,” a Dec. 24 message to his lifetime partner, Ana Maria Nemenzo, known as Princess, said. It was signed by Ron Poulsen, along with Linda Harris and Janet Roth from the Communist League in Australia and Mary-Alice Waters from the Socialist Workers Party, who the Nemenzos called their “friends from Pathfinder.”
Nemenzo was a supporter of Cuba’s socialist revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro. He was a central figure at the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of Solidarity with Cuba, held in Manila in April 2017. The Cuban Revolution, he told the gathering, taught Filipino fighters that “if the Cubans were able to stand up to U.S. imperialism, why couldn’t we?”
Nemenzo joined the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP) in the 1960s. In 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, using the army to brutally suppress political insurgents, labor strikes and protests. The PKP supported Marcos, leading Nemenzo and others to split and form the Marxist Leninist Group.
The Stalinist PKP retaliated by setting out to assassinate members of the opponent group. Unlike many of his comrades, Nemenzo was ironically saved from execution by being arrested and thrown in prison by the dictatorship’s forces. He spent two years behind bars.
After his release he returned to the University of the Philippines, eventually becoming president. His view was that the university “should always be an arena for contending schools of thought,” not dominated by any one ideology.
Nemenzo appreciated the lessons of the 1917 Russian Revolution led by V.I. Lenin. In 2017, on the 100th anniversary of the revolution, he gave a lecture in Manila on the global significance of the Bolshevik victory.
Francisco and Princess Nemenzo encouraged efforts to bring books by revolutionary leaders to the Philippines. They welcomed Pathfinder Books in Australia’s participation in the Manila International Book Fair in 2018 and 2019, and the extension of their reach more broadly.
A meeting to honor Francisco Nemenzo’s life and legacy was held at the University of the Philippines in Manila Dec. 27.