The book “Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir by siblings + Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo” (Anvil Publishing, 2012; Ohio University Press, 2016) relates the experiences of the members of the Quimpo family, several of whom became involved in the underground resistance to the Marcos dictatorship. They became very involved in the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).
This book is especially relevant these days because September commemorates the month that Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. However, it is also important for the reader in order to fully appreciate the book to remember the leftist struggle in Philippine contemporary history. This is a struggle that had many heroic moments but also moments of internal anarchy within the movement itself.
The story of the Left in the Philippines began with the Hukbalahap or the People’s Army Against the Japanese invaders. After the Second World War, the Huks transformed itself into a Marxist ideological movement. Under the leadership of the Lava brothers, this movement aligned itself with the Communist forces in Russia. It became a major political movement and was only stopped with the rise of Ramon Magsaysay to the presidency.
In the 1960s, a Maoist-oriented student movement under Jose Ma. Sison aligned itself with an armed rebel group under Bernabe Buscayno aka Kumander Dante. This was the beginning of the New People’s Army.
Martial law was declared in 1972 and the NPA gained numerous followers. In the history of “what ifs,” the ascension to power of Corazon Aquino may actually have prevented the ultimate victory of the Maoist group.
This book is unusual because it does not simply tell the story of martial law from the perspective of political activists. The most important achievement of the book is the transformation of political history into personal memory. It asks what happens when political commitment enters a family and transforms nearly every aspect of private life, including parent-child relationships, marriage, sexuality, education, friendship, career and even the meaning of loyalty.
Most writings on the Marcos years focus on institutions like the declaration of martial law, authoritarian government, censorship, military repression, the opposition and eventually EDSA People Power.
The book, through the Quimpos, gives us what it felt like to live through those years. The book’s central achievement is to transform the history of martial law into an intimate history of lived experience. While the book is a testimony against authoritarianism and the examination of the internal contradictions of revolutionary politics, its deeper subject is what happens to individuals and families when political commitments become an all-encompassing of life.
The book’s subtitle “A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years” is especially significant. Rather than presenting a single authoritative narrator, the book is composed of individually authored chapters by members of the family. This 2016 edition describes the contributors as eight siblings plus one by marriage whose account forms a family saga of revolution, persistence and ultimately incomplete vindication.
The family becomes a kind of miniature society. One sibling goes underground, another is imprisoned, another is tortured, another works in solidarity networks abroad. The family’s experience becomes a lens through which the larger history of dictatorship can be understood.
It also documents the movement’s internal failures and destructive consequences. It touches not only military torture, imprisonment and death but also alienated sons, abused daughters, betrayal among friends and revolutionary affection destroyed by ideological differences.
The story of the Quimpo siblings consequently raises a difficult question. The death of Jun Quimpo is emblematic of this complexity. The family eventually discovers that Jun’s death is the result of treachery rather than the heroic battlefield death that a young revolutionary might go through. The revelation became a deep rupture in the family’s understanding of its revolutionary struggle.
Some of the Quimpos became disillusioned with aspects of the revolutionary movement. Ideological disagreements, internal conflicts and the movement’s own failures become part of the story.
Because it is composed of individually authored chapters, there is no single authoritative Quimpo voice. Different siblings remember and interpret events differently, adding to the human interest appeal of the memoir.
It must be said that the Quimpos’ experiences cannot be generalized to represent all Filipinos during martial law. Their story is about one segment of the educated class. However, “Subversive Lives” is particularly worth reading because it is both a political document and a family memoir.
According to my wife Neni who watched the book’s stage adaptation: “A play based on the book opens the Ateneo’s Arete’s 2026 theater season. ‘Sa Parang ng Digma’ directed by Delphine Buencamino is an excellent production on its last weekend run. It is brilliantly executed, culling significant episodes from the lengthy book narrative and performed on a stage that surrounds the audience, making the revolving chairs for the audience a must. The audience is engaged in a deeply emotional manner, angry once more about the many injustices of the martial law regime.”
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