Lean Alejandro

Student leadership under martial law

Leandro “Lean” Legere Alejandro was born in Tanza, Navotas, on 10 July 1960. At the University of the Philippines, writing, research and organising developed together: he joined the Philippine Collegian as a features writer in 1979, chaired Youth for Nationalism and Democracy in 1980–1981 and worked as a junior fellow at the Third World Studies Center in 1981–1983.

He chaired the university student council in the 1983–1984 school year and became the student representative on the Board of Regents the following year. These were distinct roles: one led elected student representation, while the other brought a student voice into the university’s governing board.

Sources for this section: [1]

The 1984 Mendiola march

In May 1984, Alejandro led UP students to Mendiola Bridge in Manila to protest tuition increases. Bantayog’s account records the march ending peacefully and describes its importance against the memory of violent confrontations during the First Quarter Storm of 1970.

The episode connects a concrete university issue with the wider struggle over public protest. Student organisers had to bring people together, negotiate a route and maintain participation under an authoritarian government. Alejandro’s later national role grew out of this practical work, not simply a reputation as a speaker. The memorial’s assessment of the march is a retrospective interpretation, rather than a complete police or participant record.

Sources for this section: [1]

From campus mobilisation to national coalitions

Alejandro helped organise alliances including the Coalition of Organizations for the Realization of Democracy and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or BAYAN. His work connected student activists with former detainees, labour organisers and older opposition figures. A multisectoral alliance could coordinate these groups without making their different organisations identical.

Bantayog’s account of fellow organiser Bal Pinguel identifies Lorenzo Tañada as BAYAN’s founding chairperson, Alejandro as secretary-general and Pinguel as deputy secretary-general when the alliance emerged in 1985. That distribution of responsibilities makes Alejandro’s institution-building role clearer than calling him its sole founder.

His political programme went beyond removing Ferdinand Marcos. After the 1986 change in government, questions of inequality, national sovereignty and popular participation continued to separate the movement’s demands from those of the new administration.

Sources for this section: [1] · [2]

An unsolved killing after EDSA

On 19 September 1987, Alejandro left a press conference in Intramuros and travelled towards the BAYAN office in Cubao, Quezon City. Gunmen ambushed his vehicle near the headquarters. He was twenty-seven; two companions were wounded. His killing came after democratic government had returned, not during Marcos’s presidency.

Bantayog describes the case as unsolved. It records BAYAN’s accusation against the Aquino administration alongside the government’s denunciation of the attack. An accusation and a condemnation are not findings of criminal responsibility. The available account does not identify a convicted perpetrator, and this biography does not present suspicion as a judicial conclusion.

Sources for this section: [1]

University memory and public commemoration

Bantayog honoured Alejandro in 2004. The July–September 2009 UP Gazette documents the proposal to name the renovated second floor of Vinzons Hall, which housed the student council office, Lean Alejandro Hall. The record also identifies the UP Alumni Association–Hongkong as the renovation’s funder and the originator of the naming idea.

A UP Diliman museum account describes Constantino Foundation murals of Alejandro and Macario Sakay, made with the artists’ group TutoK. Its brief was to depict ordinary Filipinos undertaking uncommon acts, rather than figures elevated above their communities. The student-council space and murals preserve different aspects of Alejandro’s legacy: representative organising and the place of political activism in public memory.

Sources for this section: [1] · [3] · [4]