Honoring unfamiliar people

YELLOW PAD FILOMENO S. STA. ANA III

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If only Soliman Santos, Jr. pursued a career path in history - he's a lawyer and a retired judge (his last stint being the Regional Trial Court Judge of Naga City) - he could have been the most eminent historian chronicling and interpreting the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its movement.

Sol or Booj (as he is fondly called) has written several books and numerous articles about the different aspects of the revolutionary movement. He has the creds. He was part of the movement and experienced its flow and ebb. He became an activist more than 50 years ago, when he was still a high school student at the Philippine Science High School. He later became a propagandist and a cadre. And his loyalty is to a "militant and groovy" mass organization called Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan.

Although Sol can be described as an amateur historian (he has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, cum laude, from the University of the Philippines), he writes his narratives with objectivity, intellectual honesty and rigor, and a healthy dose of skepticism. What Sol lacks in the inimitable craft of an Agoncillo, De la Costa, or Ileto, he compensates with "labor of love" (his words).

Sol has a huge collection of documents authored by the CPP. These documents, together with other memorabilia, eats up space in the cozy Santos home located in a small, quiet village in Canaman, Camarines Sur. His wife, Doods, has threatened to dump them. But for Sol, this is not stuff that belongs to the garbage heap of history. Good or bad artifacts are kept as a reminder of a "continuing past."