Joel Saracho
Joselito "Joel" B. Saracho is a Filipino activist, actor, and former journalist. He is credited with coining the name "Magdalo" for the group of soldiers that engaged in the Oakwood mutiny in 2003.
Career
In the mid-1980s, Saracho served as a reporter for the newspaper Malaya during the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. In December 1985, Saracho formed the group Discussions of Writers and Artists with A. R. Pascua, which sought to bring together journalists and artists from various fields to collaborate with each other.In 1990, he formed Bagong Dugo, a theatre group that staged plays themed around politics and human rights.
In July 2003, while serving as a news writer during ABS-CBN News's coverage of the Oakwood mutiny by aggrieved soldiers, Saracho suggested using the name "Magdalo" to describe the group, citing the red armbands the soldiers wore that had a white sun at the center. Although his attribution for the red armbands to the flag of Katipunan's Magdalo faction was mistaken, with the group itself actually using the name "Bagong Katipunan", the name "Magdalo" became widely used among the media to refer to the soldiers. Naval officer Antonio Trillanes IV, one of the spokespersons for the Bagong Katipunan during the mutiny, later acquiesced to using the Magdalo moniker for his own senatorial campaign in 2007; organizations representing members of Bagong Katipunan would also use the name, such as the Samahang Magdalo civic organization in 2008 and the Magdalo Party-List in 2010.
As a member of T'bak Inc., Saracho assisted Ferdinand Llanes in the compilation of stories set during the martial law period under President Marcos for the book Tibak Rising: Activism in the Days of Martial Law, a project initiated in 2004 which would later be published in July 2012.
In February 2020, Saracho was accused of narrating the video series Ang Totoong Narcolist that claimed president Rodrigo Duterte to be involved in the illegal drug trade, being charged by the Department of Justice with conspiracy to commit sedition alongside former senator Antonio Trillanes and Eduardo Acierto. After he posted bail in October, Saracho was joined by Trillanes in filing a motion to quash before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 138.