June 7, 2026
Last year, around the birthday week of Atty. Rene in the first week of March, the activist network of the Cordillera People’s Alliance and the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance held a parangal and party for him. Atty. Rene was with us then, already weak and ailing as he had already decided not to do dialysis to extend his life. He listened to our stories and tribute, I believe he was touched, then he gave a very short response, to the effect that we did it all together, we fought injustice together. He acknowledged the dynamic interaction of activism and human rights lawyering.
In the tradition of the activist movement ng pagpaparangal at pagpupugay, we are gathered here today to collectively mourn Atty Rene’s passing, and to pay tribute and honor his life as a people’s lawyer.
Flashback to martial law. When Marcos Sr. declared martial law in 1972, so many activists were picked up without charges, tortured and detained in various detention centers throughout the country, their democratic rights violated and trampled upon. In the early dark years of martial law, one just had to endure this impunity, as I had to, for I am a survivor of this difficult period.
Then, former Senators Jose Diokno and Lorenzo Tañada set up the Free Legal Assistance Group in the mid-seventies. Initially based in Metro Manila, FLAG started expanding to the regions in 1978. Atty. Pablito Sanidad was coordinator for Region 1, the Ilocos region, and Atty William Claver for Region 2, the Cagayan Valley region. Wala pang Cordillera region noon. Baguio City, Benguet and Mountain Province, along with Abra were included with the Ilocos Region, while Kalinga-Apayao ang Ifugao were included with the Cagayan valley region. I remember that FLAG sponsored the first ever Northern Luzon-wide Para-Legal Training in the early 1980s at the Little Flower Novitiate.
Among the early recruits of the Free Legal Assistance Group in Baguio in the late seventies were law partners Atty Arthur Galace and Atty Rene Cortes, and the lawyers in the Pablito Sanidad Law Office. Their offices were located at the second floor of Laperal Building in Session Road (208 and 204). They were among the select group of brave lawyers who were willing to challenge dictatorship and military impunity and who stood in defense of activist clients resisting and defying tyranny. Activists now had somewhere to run to when our rights were violated, as some of their clients will relate here shortly.
In 1982, at a Cordillera lawyers and professionals conference held at Santa Catalina, our keynote speaker Jose Diokno spoke about the need for meta-legal tactics, or the need to push back and continually stretch the limits imposed by the dictatorship in order to reclaim basic democratic rights and fundamental freedoms, that we should not allow ourselves to be restricted by tyranny, that we should go beyond what the laws defined by dictatorship as “legal” to what is just, which do not necessarily align under authoritarianism.
From here, we organized the Cordillera Consultative Committee to work against the martial law regime. I set up the Cordillera Consultation and Research office at the third floor of Laperal building. (CCR later grew into the Cordillera Resource Center for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights). I felt somewhat safer in the 3rd floor, as the offices of the FLAG lawyers were just one floor below, Rooms 204 and 208. I felt confident that they would come to my rescue if anything untoward happened, that the second floor would have to be breached before the third floor could be reached.
So the Baguio activist community and the FLAG human rights lawyers persisted in the growing movement against dictatorship and tyranny. Lumaki ang Baguio chapter ng FLAG with Atty. Rene as coordinator, dumami ang recruits. Bumilis ang organizing, dumami ang organizations asserting and defending human rights. Broad alliances were formed. Protest actions were growing bigger by the day. We can proudly claim that we, the activist community and the FLAG human rights lawyers were all integrally part of the critical mass that formed throughout the country and was finally able to oust the dictator in 1986.
After the people power uprising 1986, many of the FLAG lawyers went into government and other pursuits, but Atty Rene continued with his private practice and people’s lawyering. He eventually became FLAG regional coordinator for Northern Luzon and the Cordillera. He did try to enter Baguio local politics, vying for vice mayor, then councilor, but he was not in the mould of traditional politicians. He soon realized that politics was not for him and that he should stick to what he did best, which was people’s lawyering.
Atty Rene has often said that he would love to see the day when FLAG would become useless, because that would mean that human rights violations would have ceased. But he also knew that this was unattainable and that the noble task of human rights lawyering is never done.
Fast forward to 2004, during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. There was a resurgence of human rights violations – red-tagging and political vilification, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, trumped-up charges and weaponization of the law against activists. There was a felt need to set-up a Cordillera-wide alliance for human rights. We approached Atty Rene and he readily agreed to head the alliance. Thus was the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance born. Atty Rene was chairperson of the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance from December 2004 up to the day of his death.
Atty. Rene, with his office, and with Atty. Jomol, has handled most of the cases of political detainees in the Cordillera and Ilocos regions. He has travelled to the different provinces to argue his cases and defend his clients pro bono. To his credit, he has won most of his cases, resulting in the freedom of many clients who have been charged with political offenses. As a senior lawyer, he gained valuable experience in dealing with the prosecutors and judges for the benefit of his clients.
Atty Rene did not only handle legal cases, he was also there with with us through all of the attacks against the mass movement. I remember travelling with him to Tabuk after the successive extra-judicial killings of Rafael Markus Bangit in June, and that of Alyce Claver and the critical injuries sustained by her husband Chandu Claver in July of 2006. He was driving his Beetle very fast, we were conversing all the while as we made the long trip to be with the families and stand in solidarity with the local organizations that were shaken by the brutal attacks.
Later in November that year, he joined a fact-finding mission organized by the CHRA to investigate cases of human rights violations arising from militarization in Amtuagan, Tubo, Abra. His presence and encouraging words under such dire circumstances helped strengthen organizations and communities under threat and intimidation.
Atty Rene opened up his home to activists. I remember that he brought one meeting of the CHRA regional council to this very house, the Cortes ancestral home. He would listen and be very concerned about the reports of militarization in the provinces and the threats to activists’ lives, liberty and security. I remember that he was very disturbed about the extra-judicial killing of William Bugatti of the Ifugao peasant movement in March 2014, whom he knew and had conversations with in the CHRA regional council. He condemned the frustrated extra-judicial killing of Brandon Lee in Lagawe in 2019.
Atty Rene was with us in several Christmas parties of the activist community, where he would even join in some of the rowdy and boisterous games. Of course we would provide him his favorite bottle. Atty Rene was not perfect. He enjoyed the bottle, smoked heavily, and was difficult to contact on cockfighting days. Nevertheless, he was most consistent when it came to what he did best, which was defending the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed as a people’s lawyer.
Since his death last Thursday, there has been an outpouring of love and gratitude to Atty Rene for a life well lived in the service of the people. What is striking is that so many lawyers have thanked him for his mentorship, which I assume includes his human rights advocacy. A people’s lawyer with the calibre of Atty. Rene is a rare breed indeed. We activists are thankful that through his mentorship, this rare breed is now multiplying. Atty Rene’s best legacy is that he has mentored, motivated and inspired many young lawyers to follow in his footsteps and take on the often dangerous but challenging task of people’s lawyering.
We in the Cordillera People’s Alliance and Cordillera Human Rights Alliance extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to the family of Atty Rene. Thank you for sharing him with the activist mass movement. Let us celebrate his life and honor his legacy by continuing in the struggle for human rights, democracy and a just and lasting peace.
Saludo, Atty Rene Cortes! Rest in peace. Rest in power!