When will our youth ever learn?
April 18, 2004 | 12:00am
The concern in this campaign season over the Communist Party’s front organizations in our political system should never have surfaced. It is the height of naivete to assume that the Communist Party does not have such fronts. And because the Communist Party is a revolutionary party, it is also naïve to assume that it does not have men under arms – and this, of course, is the New People’s Army. But since we presume to be a democracy and after decades of denial have finally accepted the Communist Party as "legitimate" – then we must not lose sight of such appendages and hidden baggages that come with its legitimization.
Which brings us to the subject of nationalism. The Communist Party through skillful politics and propaganda was able to expropriate so many nationalist perceptions. Many of those who believe in nationalism now realize the incompatibility of the Communist Party with nationalist goals. Its record in the recent past has confirmed this contradiction.
On the other hand, I reiterate my admiration for the old time revolutionaries like Luis Taruc, the Lava brothers, the late Fred Saulo – all leaders of the Huk uprising of the Forties, and even Pedro Calosa who led the Colorum revolt in Pangasinan in 1931. I met them all, wrote about them, not so much because they were genuine revolutionaries. After all, they failed, and we don’t have the ironic tradition of nobility in failure as the Japanese do. My admiration for them became even more deep, as I read just now the reminiscence of a former student activist of the Sixties, how he joined the rebel movement that was then sprouting from the University of the Philippines campus. Some of his contemporaries pilgrimaged to China to imbibe more Mao thought. They suffered the rigors of revolutionary life, but then, they grew tired of it, finished college, and now, this particular ex-rebel is comfortably ensconced in a university. Other colleagues joined the moneybags in Makati, and still others became big wheels in government. He then concludes that in this election, he would vote for the candidates of the administration which his friends had joined.
Goodbye revolution.
His story is instructive; it evokes the common saying that if one is not a communist when he is in his teens, he has no heart, but if he is still a communist in middle age, he has no head. If this be so, then why be a rebel at all when you are young? Look at your elders who were. Better to join the establishment in your youth and spare yourself the agony. Or possible assassination as had befallen some of them.
I am reminded of my own youth in the late Forties when the Huk uprising started. I was then on the staff of The Commonwealth, the Catholic weekly, together with Eggie Apostol and Pocholo Romualdez. I covered labor. I often visited the office of the CLO – the Congress of Labor Organizations, at Azcarraga and met the communist leaders Mariano Balgos, Capadocia, Amado Hernandez. And when Luis Taruc came down from the hills in 1948 and stayed at the old Quirino house on Dewey Boulevard, I interviewed him, too.
In that village where I was born, I knew tenant exploitation, and later on, the agrarian discontent that shaped the 1896 revolution. Then in the Fifties Ramon Magsaysay emerged to energize a faltering government. I admired the man not because he defeated the Huks but because he championed the peasantry, offered them bright alternatives. Moreover, he was scrupulously honest. But even with his vaulting popularity, he couldn’t usher a land reform program in the scale that the Huks wanted. Congress, after all, was dominated by landlords just as it is to this day. Then in 1972 Marcos as dictator outlawed tenancy in the rice and corn lands – and for this, I admired him – but only for this. It soon turned out that he was not at all interested in genuine agrarian reform, least of all, abolishing corruption and destroying the oppressive oligarchy. He created one himself.
A new Communist Party led by Jose Maria Sison developed, and with it, the New People’s Army.
Sison’s greatest mistake, which doomed the NPA, was being a puppet of the Chinese communists. He ignored the pro-American sentiment of most Filipinos and our latent hostility toward the Chinese – a hostility which is pervasive in all of Southeast Asia.
If it was wrong to be pro-American, what made it right to be pro-Chinese?
I was approached by student activists who told me how right I was. They had gone to the provinces to conduct teach-ins, and they had brought along Mao’s red book. One villager asked if Mao was Chinese and when they said, yes, but he did not come from Taiwan – he was from the Mainland, the immediate reply was Basta’t Intsik.
And then again, a Marxist professor related how his group went to San Pablo, Laguna and in their meeting, they attracted little following. Somehow, their attacks were diverted to a local Chinese merchant and the lid of anti-Chinese feeling was lifted – the teach-in that was supposed to last only a day, lasted two days instead.
At the time, I had already traveled in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and saw how the communists denied the people their freedom without giving them either justice or the good life. Indeed, it was not American power that defeated them – the seeds of destruction were in their own poisoned soil.
I liked the Americans but was opposed to parity and their bases. I was grateful to be liberated by them from three years of harsh Japanese occupation. For being pro-American, for such views on revolution, and communist totalitarianism they branded me a CIA agent, my little business a CIA front.
For all their mistakes, I sympathized with the NPA during the Marcos years, hoping that its leadership as well as its members were more nationalist than communist as had happened with the Vietcong who got assistance from both the Russians and the Chinese but were never dictated upon by them. After all, well ahead of the NPA formation, I had accepted the necessity of a nationalist revolution – a continuation of 1896, directed at what I considered the enemy then, which I consider still the enemy today – the Filipino oligarchy.
Then EDSA I – and that was when their true colors showed. Ideologically, the communists were correct in boycotting the election that preceded EDSA I – what was the difference between Marcos and Cory Aquino? They both represented the oligarchy. But the "objective reality" which they completely ignored was that the masa were for Cory. At EDSA I, they were not there. Their barnacled ideology blinded them to the surging vigor of a masa they were supposed to lead and represent.
Yes, EDSA I was a real revolution with the masa, the middle class and the Makati radical chic welded as one, but that revolution was, I have always pointed out, transformed into a restoration of the old oligarchy by Cory Aquino because she was true to her class, though she declared a revolutionary government, she did nothing revolutionary.
To learn from the old guard, I used to visit the Lavas at their home in Mandaluyong, and late last year, once again I visited Ka Luis at his modest home in Quezon City. During the Marcos regime, Ka Luis was vilified for lending support to the Marcos land reform program. What his detractors did not understand was that he did this for a quid pro quo – assistance and recognition for the Huk veterans. No, Taruc did not enrich himself as did so many others. Now, close to 90, he is no longer healthy but there is still a lot of sprightliness in the old revolutionary. Once again, he taunted me for not doing more.
I had, of course, long ago rationalized my position. I believed and I still do in a nationalist revolution, and would promote this belief by writing. I sometimes doubt this course. Deep within me, I know words are futile, and never enough. I know, too, that much as I would like to see the destruction of this rotten structure, I cling to its fringes, I benefit from it. Why could I not do more? I never had the physical courage of men like Ka Luis and the Lavas. Moreover, I like my little comforts – they can be so seductive, so shamefully self indulgent – how I often wish I were made of sterner stuff.
When the NPA celebrated its 35th anniversary the other month, reports indicated that it has grown bigger and had more men under arms than five years ago, and that young recruits are coming in, although not in the droves that it attracted in the Sixties. But an observer of radicalism in our universities says that the recruits and recruiters are caught in a time warp – they are mouthing the same hoary slogans that were in vogue 35 years ago.
When will our youth ever learn?
Our revolutions failed primarily because their new acolytes do not learn from mistakes in the past. Among these is the factionalism inherent in all our political activities–a factionalism bred by intense individualism, by personal egos that cannot be transcended by the higher purpose of justice and nation. But the deeper cause of their failure lies in their incapacity to sustain the dream because they are so easily seduced by the good life. And like our ex-rebel now in a cushy niche, they don’t realize the gravity of their betrayal. Taruc, Fred Saulo, the Lavas – even after many years in prison – they did not compromise.
Indeed, as the rebel Pepe Samson says in my novel, Mass: "We are a nation of traitors... History is a continuum... Diego Silang, Apolinario dela Cruz, Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, Emilio Aguinaldo – they were all betrayed... We are a nation of failed revolutions... "
Whoever wins in this election, there is one certainty – there will be no dramatic changes. As usual, we will plod along, blissfully until an implosion shatters us – then there will probably be a military coup, and after that, the deluge and civil war.
Believers in lost causes are perennial optimists. Hopefully then, the nationalist revolution will follow.
Author’s note: A communist is a member of the Communist Party; a Marxist is a believer in the writings of Karl Marx.
Which brings us to the subject of nationalism. The Communist Party through skillful politics and propaganda was able to expropriate so many nationalist perceptions. Many of those who believe in nationalism now realize the incompatibility of the Communist Party with nationalist goals. Its record in the recent past has confirmed this contradiction.
Goodbye revolution.
His story is instructive; it evokes the common saying that if one is not a communist when he is in his teens, he has no heart, but if he is still a communist in middle age, he has no head. If this be so, then why be a rebel at all when you are young? Look at your elders who were. Better to join the establishment in your youth and spare yourself the agony. Or possible assassination as had befallen some of them.
I am reminded of my own youth in the late Forties when the Huk uprising started. I was then on the staff of The Commonwealth, the Catholic weekly, together with Eggie Apostol and Pocholo Romualdez. I covered labor. I often visited the office of the CLO – the Congress of Labor Organizations, at Azcarraga and met the communist leaders Mariano Balgos, Capadocia, Amado Hernandez. And when Luis Taruc came down from the hills in 1948 and stayed at the old Quirino house on Dewey Boulevard, I interviewed him, too.
In that village where I was born, I knew tenant exploitation, and later on, the agrarian discontent that shaped the 1896 revolution. Then in the Fifties Ramon Magsaysay emerged to energize a faltering government. I admired the man not because he defeated the Huks but because he championed the peasantry, offered them bright alternatives. Moreover, he was scrupulously honest. But even with his vaulting popularity, he couldn’t usher a land reform program in the scale that the Huks wanted. Congress, after all, was dominated by landlords just as it is to this day. Then in 1972 Marcos as dictator outlawed tenancy in the rice and corn lands – and for this, I admired him – but only for this. It soon turned out that he was not at all interested in genuine agrarian reform, least of all, abolishing corruption and destroying the oppressive oligarchy. He created one himself.
A new Communist Party led by Jose Maria Sison developed, and with it, the New People’s Army.
Sison’s greatest mistake, which doomed the NPA, was being a puppet of the Chinese communists. He ignored the pro-American sentiment of most Filipinos and our latent hostility toward the Chinese – a hostility which is pervasive in all of Southeast Asia.
If it was wrong to be pro-American, what made it right to be pro-Chinese?
I was approached by student activists who told me how right I was. They had gone to the provinces to conduct teach-ins, and they had brought along Mao’s red book. One villager asked if Mao was Chinese and when they said, yes, but he did not come from Taiwan – he was from the Mainland, the immediate reply was Basta’t Intsik.
And then again, a Marxist professor related how his group went to San Pablo, Laguna and in their meeting, they attracted little following. Somehow, their attacks were diverted to a local Chinese merchant and the lid of anti-Chinese feeling was lifted – the teach-in that was supposed to last only a day, lasted two days instead.
At the time, I had already traveled in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and saw how the communists denied the people their freedom without giving them either justice or the good life. Indeed, it was not American power that defeated them – the seeds of destruction were in their own poisoned soil.
I liked the Americans but was opposed to parity and their bases. I was grateful to be liberated by them from three years of harsh Japanese occupation. For being pro-American, for such views on revolution, and communist totalitarianism they branded me a CIA agent, my little business a CIA front.
For all their mistakes, I sympathized with the NPA during the Marcos years, hoping that its leadership as well as its members were more nationalist than communist as had happened with the Vietcong who got assistance from both the Russians and the Chinese but were never dictated upon by them. After all, well ahead of the NPA formation, I had accepted the necessity of a nationalist revolution – a continuation of 1896, directed at what I considered the enemy then, which I consider still the enemy today – the Filipino oligarchy.
Then EDSA I – and that was when their true colors showed. Ideologically, the communists were correct in boycotting the election that preceded EDSA I – what was the difference between Marcos and Cory Aquino? They both represented the oligarchy. But the "objective reality" which they completely ignored was that the masa were for Cory. At EDSA I, they were not there. Their barnacled ideology blinded them to the surging vigor of a masa they were supposed to lead and represent.
Yes, EDSA I was a real revolution with the masa, the middle class and the Makati radical chic welded as one, but that revolution was, I have always pointed out, transformed into a restoration of the old oligarchy by Cory Aquino because she was true to her class, though she declared a revolutionary government, she did nothing revolutionary.
To learn from the old guard, I used to visit the Lavas at their home in Mandaluyong, and late last year, once again I visited Ka Luis at his modest home in Quezon City. During the Marcos regime, Ka Luis was vilified for lending support to the Marcos land reform program. What his detractors did not understand was that he did this for a quid pro quo – assistance and recognition for the Huk veterans. No, Taruc did not enrich himself as did so many others. Now, close to 90, he is no longer healthy but there is still a lot of sprightliness in the old revolutionary. Once again, he taunted me for not doing more.
I had, of course, long ago rationalized my position. I believed and I still do in a nationalist revolution, and would promote this belief by writing. I sometimes doubt this course. Deep within me, I know words are futile, and never enough. I know, too, that much as I would like to see the destruction of this rotten structure, I cling to its fringes, I benefit from it. Why could I not do more? I never had the physical courage of men like Ka Luis and the Lavas. Moreover, I like my little comforts – they can be so seductive, so shamefully self indulgent – how I often wish I were made of sterner stuff.
When the NPA celebrated its 35th anniversary the other month, reports indicated that it has grown bigger and had more men under arms than five years ago, and that young recruits are coming in, although not in the droves that it attracted in the Sixties. But an observer of radicalism in our universities says that the recruits and recruiters are caught in a time warp – they are mouthing the same hoary slogans that were in vogue 35 years ago.
When will our youth ever learn?
Our revolutions failed primarily because their new acolytes do not learn from mistakes in the past. Among these is the factionalism inherent in all our political activities–a factionalism bred by intense individualism, by personal egos that cannot be transcended by the higher purpose of justice and nation. But the deeper cause of their failure lies in their incapacity to sustain the dream because they are so easily seduced by the good life. And like our ex-rebel now in a cushy niche, they don’t realize the gravity of their betrayal. Taruc, Fred Saulo, the Lavas – even after many years in prison – they did not compromise.
Indeed, as the rebel Pepe Samson says in my novel, Mass: "We are a nation of traitors... History is a continuum... Diego Silang, Apolinario dela Cruz, Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, Emilio Aguinaldo – they were all betrayed... We are a nation of failed revolutions... "
Whoever wins in this election, there is one certainty – there will be no dramatic changes. As usual, we will plod along, blissfully until an implosion shatters us – then there will probably be a military coup, and after that, the deluge and civil war.
Believers in lost causes are perennial optimists. Hopefully then, the nationalist revolution will follow.
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