LOUIE JALANDONI, 90
February 26, 1935 – June 7, 2025
By Kat Ulrike
It is with profound revolutionary mourning that the passing of Luis "Louie" Jalandoni is announced. A stalwart of the Filipino people’s struggle, a diplomat of the downtrodden, and a beacon of internationalist solidarity, Ka Louie passed away peacefully at 9:05 a.m. on June 7, 2025, in Utrecht, the Netherlands (3:05 p.m. Philippine time). He was 90 years old.
In his final moments, he was surrounded by his lifelong comrade and beloved wife Ka Coni, family members, and comrades forged across decades of struggle. His departure marks the end of a historic era—but not the end of the movement to which he devoted his entire life.
Born on February 26, 1935, on Negros Island, into a family of landlords and sugar barons, Ka Louie broke from the privileges of his birth. His political awakening came not through theory alone but through contact with sugar workers and peasants in the Visayas. He chose the difficult road of struggle over the comfort of inherited wealth.
As a Catholic priest, he served under the Church in the Barrios program, ministering to the poor in the countryside. This path would bring him to a deeper understanding of structural injustice—and into the heart of the people’s movement. He was a founding figure in the Christians for National Liberation (CNL), a courageous group of clergy and religious workers that stood in firm resistance to the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship.
In 1972, Ka Louie joined the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The following year, the CNL became a founding allied organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). As Marcos declared Martial Law, Ka Louie went underground, aligning his life permanently with the revolutionary cause.
In 1973, he and Ka Coni were arrested and imprisoned at Fort Bonifacio. For nearly a year, Ka Louie was held in a dark, airless cell, crammed with six or seven others. But repression could not silence the movement. Campaigns by religious and international human rights groups led to their release in July 1974.
Exile followed, but not retreat. In 1976, facing renewed threats, Ka Louie and Ka Coni were granted political asylum in the Netherlands, becoming the first Filipinos to receive such recognition. From there, a new phase of struggle began. In 1977, Ka Louie was named international representative of the NDFP, tasked with building solidarity networks, exposing the crimes of the dictatorship, and articulating the vision of national liberation to the world.
In 1989, he became the chief negotiator for the NDFP in peace talks with the reactionary Philippine government. In every round of negotiations—from Cory Aquino to Duterte—Ka Louie held fast to the movement’s line: peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice. His work at the negotiating table was never a retreat from struggle, but an extension of it—firm, principled, and unwavering.
He endured the collapse of talks, political betrayals, arrests of consultants, and state perfidy with calm resolve and dialectical clarity. Never once did he compromise the integrity of the people’s demands. His commitment to a just peace remained unshaken until the end.
Ka Louie’s contributions—diplomatic, strategic, moral—cannot be overstated. He stood as one of the most enduring figures of the Filipino people’s revolutionary history: a priest who became a militant, a detainee who became an exile, and an exile who remained forever bound to the people he served.
His life reminds all that to commit to revolution is to surrender not hope but illusion. His death is a loss—but also a legacy. What he helped build cannot be buried. What he stood for continues to rise.
Ka Louie Jalandoni lives on—in every clenched fist, in every barrio meeting, in every principled stand taken against tyranny. His memory strengthens the movement that shaped him and that he, in turn, helped shape.