Antonio Zumel

In 2016, he was posthumously declared a hero of the Philippines by Vice President Leni Robredo, who attended the unveiling of his name and those of other revolutionaries on a monument at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani.

In 2016, he was posthumously declared a hero of the Philippines by Vice President Leni Robredo, who attended the unveiling of his name on a monument at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes).

In 2016, his name was added to the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, recognizing his role as a veteran journalist and key personality in the NDFP.

In 2006, the Antonio Zumel Center for Press Freedom produced and released a documentary film about his life, titled He Never Wrote 30. It was screened at the 18th Cultural Center of the Philippines Awards for Alternative Film and Video.

Shortly after his death, the Antonio Zumel Center for Press Freedom was established on August 10, 2004, with the goal of "keeping Antonio Zumel's memory, journalistic examples and ethics alive." It also conducts training programs and research into the conditions of journalists and press-related issues.

A book of his writings was also released in 2004, entitled Radical Prose: Selected Writings of Antonio Zumel. The anthology includes articles from his time in the Philippines Herald and Manila Daily Bulletin, his writings while in the revolutionary underground, and selected works while in exile in the Netherlands.

His health continued to fail in the next years, before he died from kidney failure and complications due to diabetes on August 13, 2001. He was survived by his wife Mela Castillo, and two of his children, Veronica and Malaya.

In 1998, Zumel suffered a severe stroke that caused partial paralysis. He underwent rehabilitation for a few months before he could move again. In 1999, the College Editors' Guild of the Philippines conferred the Marcelo H. del Pilar Award, its highest honor, to him.

In 1990, he was elected in absentia to the position of chairperson of the NDFP, which he served until 1994. In 1994, he was made honorary chairman of the NDFP and senior advisor of the NDFP negotiating panel. He was living in exile during the events of the Second Great Rectification Movement, where he worked tirelessly to explain and clarify the re-affirmist position. He would go to forums organized by rejectionists and "counter-revolutionaries" to defend the re-affirm position and to "reach out to those whom he considered to be open to the correct line but who were temporarily confused or misled by the counter-revolutionaries."

In 1989, following threats to his family, Zumel was assigned to the Netherlands to undertake international relations work on behalf of the NDFP, as well as to seek medical assistance. He brought along his wife, Mela Castillo and their daughter, Malaya, with him to Europe, where he kept a semi-underground profile. However, in 1990, Philippine authorities caught wind of Zumel's activities and, after much publicity, fearing arrest should he return to the country, sought political asylum in the Netherlands. The request was granted by the Dutch government in 1997.

In the aftermath of the first People Power Revolution in February 1986 and the removal of Marcos from power, Zumel and other former journalists surfaced. He represented the NDFP as part of the first negotiating panel in 1986-7 in talks with the new Corazon Aquino government. Negotiations broke down however and Aquino pursued a total war strategy in dealing with the opposition.

As a journalist working for the Herald, Zumel was awarded a house-and-lot unit on Newsmen's Row in Project 8, Quezon City. However, Zumel opted to allow a bedridden colleague live in the house. Zumel recounted in 1986 that he was divorced from his first wife Virginia V. Zumel "due to a lack of political and personal compatibility, in large part because of [his] own faults and shortcomings." They had a son Antonio C. Zumel III.

As early as July 1976, Zumel was slated to take on the reins of the CPP's official news publication, Ang Bayan and replace Sison as its editor-in-chief. However, complications including the arrest of New People's Army commander-in-chief Bernabe Buscayno in August 1976 hindered the formation of a new editorial staff. Zumel would officially become the editor-in-chief during the last quarter of 1976, expanding the editorial staff and recruiting former journalists like Malay.

In 1975, while part of the revolutionary underground, Zumel married Mela Castillo. They had a daughter, Malaya.

Zumel went underground that same night. Once underground, he assumed the nom de guerre of Ka KP and began working with the staff of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines' publication Liberation as early as October 1972, as well as its news agency, Balita ng Malayang Pilipinas. He was also part of the preparatory committee which established the NDFP on April 23, 1973. He also edited other regional newspapers such as Dangadang.

On September 22, 1972, Zumel received a call from Joe de Vera that Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile had been ambushed. Zumel said that "the whole thing sounded like a lot of bullshit," and told de Vera to get more details. That same night, he was drinking beer with friends at the National Press Club bar when soldiers locked down mass media offices, including the Bulletin. Marcos had declared Martial Law.

When President Ferdinand Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1971, Zumel helped form the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties alongside personalities such as Senators Jose W. Diokno and Lorenzo Tañada in protest. Members of the NPC, including then President Amando Doronila of the Daily Mirror were marching in rallies alongside MCCCL.

Zumel opened the NPC to the growing mass movement, eventually allowing it to become some sort of a headquarters of the Movement for a Democratic Philippines. During and after the First Quarter Storm of 1970, the NPC served as a refuge for mass leaders from police and military assault, and as an open space for press conferences. He also passed a resolution "aligning the NPC with our people's movement for fundamental change in our society" in the NPC's 1970 national assembly, shortly before he was re-elected for a second term.

After the strike, Zumel worked in the Herald for two and a half more years, for a total of 16 years. In 1965, he accepted an invitation from Ben Rodriguez, editor-in-chief of the Manila Bulletin. He would work in the Bulletin until the declaration of Martial law in the Philippines.

In 1962, the Herald was sold to the Soriano family, who owned San Miguel Corporation. Zumel's union registered with the Philippine Association of Free Labor Unions, headed by Cipriano Cid at the time. Zumel was vice-president of the union. In response, the new Herald management created a company union and affiliated it with the Philippine Transport and General Workers' Organization, headed by Roberto S. Oca.

Tensions rose, giving way to a CBA deadlock in September 1962, which led to a strike. The strike lasted three months and was unsuccessful, and ended with union members returning to work. Zumel took an active role in leading the strike, and one point, laying down on the road with fellow journalist Rey Veloso to block delivery vehicles from going out. Herald management, on the other hand, hired "armed goons from Bulacan and criminal elements from the urban poor community in Intramuros to create trouble at the picket line." In one incident, Zumel challenged a Captain Abad of the Soriano-owned security forces to a gunfight, which Abad refused.

By the 1960s, the Herald union led by Teddy Benigno had become inactive. Benigno had left the paper and those who remained had little interest in organizing work. Zumel took it up to himself to try and re-organize the union, alongside a "small core of close friends" from the Mabuhay and El Debate, two other publications also owned by Vicente Madrigal alongside Herald. Management caught wind of the idea and talked to Zumel, talking him out of pursuing a collective bargaining agreement for salary increases.

In the 1960s, Zumel also had an active role in the National Press Club. He managed to serve in its board of directors at least 12 times, before deciding to run as President in 1969. As President, he became involved with the national democratic movement, then at its infancy. He campaigned for the release of arrested staffers of Dumaguete Times, a publication in Negros Occidental. Three of these staffers, Hermie Garcia, Mila Astorga, and Vic Clemente, turned out to be members of Kabataang Makabayan and furnished Zumel with political materials from time to time, or sitting down for political discussions.

His coverage of police, labor, and other political stories would inform his political views. Manuel Almario said of him that he "sympathized with the workers" as he covered stories for the Congress of Labor Organizations. From 1955, Zumel and his associates were active in the National Press Club, becoming "fixtures at the bar or restaurant."

After two years, Zumel was promoted from copyboy to proofreader. He dropped out of college, believing it unnecessary since he already had a good job. He worked in the Mechanical Department of the Herald and became close with the workers there. Two years later, in 1953, Zumel became a reporter and covered mostly crime and political stories.

In 1949, his aunt's boarding house business wasn't doing well. Zumel thought of dropping out of school when his uncle, Salvador Peña, got him a job as a copyboy at the Philippines Herald. This gave him the opportunity to continue on to college, working the day shift at the Herald while attending night classes at the Lyceum of the Philippines University. Zumel was barely 17 at the time and lied about his age to be able to work.

In 1947, Zumel moved to Manila to study high-school in the Far Eastern University, while living with "a spinster aunt" who ran a boarding house.

Zumel's father died in 1945 when he was 13 years old. His father's death left a toll on the family, and his mother struggled to raise him and his siblings. Basilisa de Leon had to sell her jewelry, and eventually, parcels of land that the family had bought over the years.

Antonio De Leon Zumel II (August 10, 1932 - August 13, 2001), also known by his nicknames Tony, Manong, Ching and Antumel was a Filipino journalist, activist, and revolutionary. He was two-time President of the National Press Club of the Philippines before going underground in 1972 at the start of the Marcos dictatorship. In 1990, he was elected Chairperson of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in absentia, and was a senior adviser to the NDFP negotiating panel from 1994 until his death in 2001.