A Clandestine Fete
Like No Other
The anniversary of the Communist Party of
the Philippines was an occasion for peasants, masses, revolutionaries and
journalists to get together and celebrate the 36-year-old revolution.
By
Amabelle
Plaza
Bulatlat
ROSARIO, Agusan del
Sur – Many of them came by foot, trekking the mountains for hours. Some
came on Elf trucks, their children in tow. Many have come for the first
time, eager to witness a different kind of celebration up in the mountains
of this province.
Leonora, a
46-year-old mother of eight, was one of them. Although she is not alien to
the Communist revolution, having a brother who is a member of the New
People’s Army (another brother was also a guerrilla but he was killed last
year in Davao del Sur), it was the first time for her to visit an NPA
camp.
“This is for us, the
poor,” she said when asked why she attended the clandestine fete.
The occasion was the
36th anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines and
the Guerrilla Front 14 of the NPA’s Northeastern Mindanao Operational
Command hosted the event.
Around 300
supporters, peasants, sympathizers and journalists attended the
celebration and the press conference called by Ka Oris, the spokesman of
the National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao.
Ensconced in the
forest here, reachable through an old quarry road, was a guerrilla camp
that had been fashioned into a “hall” for the feast and the press
conference. The guerrillas built a huge hall covered with a plastic tent.
Banana stems bedecked with red flowers decorated the platform; guests sat
on newly-built wooden benches.
The images of Mao
Zedong, Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin loomed large on the backdrop. Below
was a message from the party, in the Visayan dialect: “Avail of the
worsening crisis and intensify the guerrilla offensives to advance the new
democratic revolution!”
For the NDFP-Mindanao,
the party’s 36th year was a cause for celebration. Reading from
a prepared statement of the NDFP’s Mindanao Commission, Ka Oris cited the
60 tactical offensives conducted by the NPA in Mindanao,
in which some 150 high-powered firearms were confiscated. The NPA, he
said, operates in Mindanao’s 20
provinces, 200 towns and 1,500 barrios. The party’s membership, Ka Oris
added, increased by as much as 33 percent.
The celebration
started around lunchtime. Opening the event was a formation of three
groups of NPA fighters numbering about 45 led by a young guerrilla who
carried the flags of the NDFP, NPA and the CPP. The army wore green,
black and blue peasant shirts and freshly scrubbed leather shoes and
boots. They sang a new and longer Tagalog version of “The Internationale.”
“Our future is
bright. The difficulties and sacrifices are temporary,” Ka Oris told the
crowd.
Successful
struggles
A cultural skit
followed, with the actors displaying placards that read: “Lupa hindi
bala.” “Ipatupad ang tunay na reporma sa lupa.” “Itaas ang sahod.”
(“Land not bullets.” “Implement genuine agrarian reform.” “Increase our
wages.”) The short drama depicted the violence against peasants, citing
the recent Hacienda Luisita massacre. The play also recalled the arrest
and incarceration of 50 workers and the retrenchment of 4,000 employees of
the paper mill Picop, which is operating a logging concession in the
Caraga region.
The CPP anniversary
celebration, incidentally, was held within the 470,000-hecatere Picop
concession, the largest in Mindanao, said Ka Maria Malaya, the
spokesperson of the NDFP-Northeastern Command.
Dramatists from the
two platoons of the front also depicted the peasant dislocation in the
area. Picop allegedly bulldozed some 20 houses and razed two hectares of
farmlands.
Ending the skit was a
depiction of the relative successes of the NPA in the area: the
confiscation of high-powered rifles between 1998 to year 2001, the raid of
the Picop armory that yielded 97 firearms for the NPA.
Ka Oris told the
audience: “If the CPP was not there, there wouldn’t be an effective
struggle of the people to attain genuine democracy.”
Ka Maria also
addressed the crowd, saying that the NPA, along with the revolutionary
masses, were able to successfully negotiate for an increase of the
workers’ daily wage, from P50 to P120. The hemp price was increased from a
measly P16 per kilo to P30 per kilo, she said.
She also said that,
“through effective party leadership,” the peasant masses were able to
enter the Picop concession and engage in small farming.
NPA and logging
Ka Maria also scoffed
at Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s accusation that the NPA, by allegedly
coddling illegal loggers, was responsible for the forest denudation in the
country. In fact, Ka Maria said, the NPA implements a total log ban in
their “areas of jurisdiction” and has spearheaded reforestation as early
as in the 1980s by encouraging the peasant masses to plant fruit trees in
the Picop concession.
She added that the
revolutionary tax obtained by the NPA from logging concessionaires should
not be interpreted to mean that the NPA is coddling them. “The amount has
been used to reforest the areas and other services beneficial to the
masses,” Ka Maria said.
During the press
conference, Ka Oris criticized the Arroyo government’s hypocrisy, saying
that “legal logging,” as in the case of the Picop and concessions owned by
politicians like the Dys, Enriles and Angaras, has been responsible for
forest denudation. The military- and the government-sanctioned logging
concessions are the “real culprits,” Ka Oris said.
“Why single out the
Lumads and peasant masses who engage in small logging for paltry incomes?
These are just loose change compared to the millions raked in by big-time
logging concessionaires backed by the military and the previous and
present regimes,” Ka Oris said.
He also lambasted the
recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995
saying that “because our forests are gone, the big capitalists and foreign
investors are now intent in extracting those below our forests in wanton
violation of our national sovereignty and patrimony.”
Women fighters
Women fighters
performed during the celebration. Dancing to the tune of the classic
feminist aria, “Babae Ka,” the NPA women showed their mettle, dramatizing
that the “armed struggle could not be won without the participation of
half of the population -- the oppressed women.”
Ka Maria told
Bulatlat that although women party members are present in all regions
in the country, they have more women in top-level cadre positions “owing
to their conscious effort of educating NPA ranks to respect, organize and
mobilize women.” Each guerrilla front in their region, for instance, has
no less than 10 women party members, with at least three women heading the
guerrilla fronts.
“Comrades would
naturally pamper women NPAs, give them tasks that are ‘fit only for
women’,” Ka Maria rued. “We have to painstakingly educate them that women
have to be liberated and they can do any task based on their own
capacities.”
“Still puny”
Ka Oris admitted that
compared to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the NPA’s strength is
“still puny but because of broad and increasing mass support through the
years, the NPA is capable of conducting intensifying guerrilla struggles
beneficial to the masses.”
According to Ka Oris,
Mindanao has 39 guerrilla fronts,
with at least platoon-sized fighters, some with company-sized army
formations. They undertake agrarian revolution and “mass base building” as
part of the “middle stage of the strategic defensive stage of the national
democratic revolution.”
“The few setbacks
that it has suffered have not sidetracked the revolution. The
revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the party continues to
surge forward,” the NDFP’s statement pointed out.
Media hailed
The 24 journalists
who attended the press conference were also hailed by the NDFP, which said
that it recognizes the journalists as “allies in the national-democratic
struggle.” Ka Oris denounced the “liquidation” of media practitioners --
26 under Arroyo’s term – “who were known to support the causes of the
masses.”
“Elements of the
fascist police and military are often behind these atrocious killings;
they are often sent out by powerful local despots to liquidate these
crusading journalists,” Ka Oris said.
One of the reporters
gave a heartfelt message, saying they could not sing and dance in
solidarity with the guerrillas because they were still grieving for their
fallen colleagues. Nevertheless, the somber mood changed as a duo of
broadcast journalists sang “Skyline Pigeon” while another performed a
stand-up comedy.
“The legacy of
(Antonio) Zumel and the journalists whose lives have been enriched by the
revolution – and vice versa -- lives on,” Ka Oris told the reporters and
photographers present.
Ka Oris also told
them that the NDFP respects press freedom. “We are more than willing to
talk to any media practitioner, even those known or who are used to
attacking the revolutionary movement because we value your contribution in
the advancement of the revolution,” he said.
To invitees to the
celebration, it was an eye-opener. Jessie, a small-scale gold trader from
a nearby city, said he and his wife came “to see for ourselves the unity
of the NPA fighters.” Jessie said he was not disappointed with what he
saw. “The NPA is truly united. Its fighters appear consolidated. They seem
to have an orderly system of going about their things, their ideals and
goals.” Bulatlat
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