By Rubi Del Mundo
Spokesperson, NDFP-Southern Mindanao
Our beloved comrade, Valerio Mante Jr., passed away Monday, September 22 at 6:15 pm at a Davao City hospital. He died of complications arising from kidney failure. He was 58.
Coming from lower middle class origins, Ka Val was a consummate activist, instructor, organizer, untiring mass leader, poet, literary writer, a friend, comrade and a dedicated member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Having spent more than half of his life aboveground as an activist–from being a progressive seminarian and youth activist in the turbulent 1970s to being a human rights worker in the 1980s and as secretary general of the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Davao City, Ka Val decided to move on from the boundaries of legal democratic struggle.
