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PART I: ENTERING NEMENZO'S KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD
The University of the Philippines (UP), apart from being a haven of academic excellence and freedom, has always been regarded as the microcosm of the country. It has its own police force, health service, political parties and government, among others. This is why UP's president has always been considered a powerful entity, as he not only governs the premiere state university, but an entire "republic" as well.
For two years now and still counting, the university had a very unique and complex man at the helm. Dr. Francisco "Dodong" Nemenzo: quintessential man for some, incubus for others.
BRIGHT RED MARXIST�
Francisco Nemenzo is one man whom you can never box into stereotypes. But if there is anything that would best characterize him that would be his being an "unrepentant Marxist." Or so he says.
For him, Marx' dialectic materialism proved to be a viable framework in understanding social phenomenon. "His Das Kapital has brilliant insights that can be applied even in the age of globalization."
Three years before he became Dean of then College of Arts and Sciences (1976-81), this former Communist was still holed up in a detention cell after his house was raided. Captured together with his wife, Ana Maria or Princess, they were released after more than a year in 1974.
In an interview with Quijano de Manila for the Philippine Graphic, Nemenzo said that he had already thoroughly studied the works of Karl Marx even before he finished his bachelor's course in UP. "Marx influenced the articles I wrote for the (Philippine) Collegian when Homobono Adaza was its editor." These articles would also later become the basis for the denial of his U.S. visa when he got a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for Columbia University.
"I got a call from the American consul-general� They thought I was a communist- but I was not a Communist although my Collegian writings did have a Marxist slant, because of which I could not go to the U.S."
But the mortification did not end there, though. As per the invitation of former Congressman Leonardo Perez, head of the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA), he went to the CAFA all set to denounce the U.S. embassy, but instead he found himself being the one accused.
"Congressmen were asking me impertinent questions, irrelevant questions. They were branding me as a card-bearing member of the Communist Party. But the Communist Party does not give out cards!"
According to Nemenzo, he was still in high school when the class-consciousness in him had begun. "�My classmates and I would gang up on boys from elite schools because we were from a proletarian school."
Nemenzo first joined a Communist club when he was taking his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester in 1960. His stint in England served to deepen his understanding of Marxist philosophy and economic politics.
Upon his return, he joined the old Communist Party and became responsible for establishing relations with the Soviet Union.
"I broke with the Party in 1972 because they were trying to make a deal with Marcos and I didn't want to be a part of the deal. I was No. 3 in the Party, as secretary of education and head of the international department."
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