One of five children,
Ka Juaning traces his roots in Bacolor, Pampanga where he stayed with his
family until he was eight years old. He said that they were forced to go
to Sta. Rita, Tarlac during the Japanese occupation in 1942 when food
became scarce in Pampanga. As schools closed down during the war, Ka
Juaning and his brood only learned from a katon (a community
teacher who thought Catechism and Kapampangan, this town’s native tongue).
Agrarian
revolution
Ka Juaning said that
the townsfolk were used to the “50-50” sharing scheme between landlord and
tenant at the time of the NPA's founding. Under this scheme, the landowner
and the tenant equally share the harvest, but the tenant shoulders the
cost of labor and production. This scheme therefore favors the landlord
and has resulted in bloody disputes, Ka Juaning said. As an example, he
said that a landowner's katiwala (overseer) was killed by the HMB
and a big tract of land was left uncultivated for some three years.
THE OFFICE: Ka Juaning
points to the former site of a tunnel which served as CPP founding
chairman Jose Maria Sison’s office in the early days of the NPA
PHOTO BY DABET CASTAÑEDA
|
"Noong mayroon
nang NPA, namagitan kami at napagkasunduan ng panginoong may-lupa at mga
kasama na tatrabahuin muli ang lupa pero sa hatiang 75-25. Ang 75% ng ani
ay pupunta sa kasama at 25% ang pupunta sa may-ari ng lupa,” (When the
NPA was established, we intervened and the landlord and tenants agreed
that the sharing scheme will be 75-25. Seventy-five percent of the harvest
will go to the tenants while 25 percent will go to the landowner.) he
said. "Gumanda ang buhay ng mga magsasaka mula
noon
sa tulong ng hukbo." (Life became better for the farmers since then
with the help of the army.)
The new sharing
scheme promoted by the NPA was soon adopted in many villages in the
province. The NPA became known as an army for the poor peasants and gained
respect and popularity, he said.
|
"Ang mga katuparan
ng rebolusyonaryong agraryo ay nagpapatunay na may mga tagumpay na ang
rebolusyon at ang masa," (The fulfillment of agrarian revolution
proves that there are already gains of the revolution and the masses.) he
said.
Major campaigns
At the early stages
of waging guerilla warfare, Ka Juaning said that he handled some major
operations of the NPA when he became head of the Military Commission in
1976. This was a position he inherited from Bernabe Buscayno, also known
as Kumander Dante, when the latter was arrested on August 26, 1976. Sison
was arrested three months earlier.
Ka Juaning said that
he supervised the team that raided the Philippine Military Academy (PMA)
in Baguio where they brought along during their retreat Victor Corpuz and
Crispin Tagamolila, the first military officers to defect to the NPA in
1971. He also had vivid memories of three sea expeditions involving arms
and ammunitions donated by the People’s Republic of China then under the
leadership of Mao Zedong.
The first voyage was
named Operation Plan Karagatan (Oplan Karagatan; “karagatan” is
Filipino term for “seas”) in 1971 where around 70 individuals were tapped
for the operation. They had about 40 sacks of rice "para hindi sila
magutom sa paglalayag," (so that they will not go hungry during the
voyage) said Ka Juaning. "Maliit lang yung barko, halos palubog-lubog
na. Habang tumatakbo, may naglilimas ng tubig sa loob ng barko para hindi
ito lumubog." (The boat was just small, and it was almost sinking.
While traveling, there are comrades who removed water on the boat so that
it would not sink.)
Karagatan
carried some 1,200 M14 rifles and
8,000 rounds of ammunition, Ka Juaning said, but only 200 rifles made it
to shore.
The rest, he said,
sank with the ship. They deliberately sank the ship because they were
traced by the military. "Hindi nila alam kung saan sila dadaong. Tapos
dumating na yung jet (ng militar) kaya minortar na nila yung barko para
lumubog," (They did not know where to dock. Then the military’s jet
arrived so they had to destroy the boat through mortar shells so that it
would sink.) he said.
The next two shipping
expeditions with the same intent never made it back to Philippine shores.
"Na-stranded sila sa China. Yung ibang tao nakabalik dito, yung iba dun
na nakapangasawa," (They were stranded in China. Some were able to
return, some got married there.) he said.
Anti-infiltration
drive
The arrest and
detention of Sison and Buscayno, the top two CPP leaders, in 1976 did not
demoralize them, Ka Juaning said as he recalled how they were able to
recruit red fighters and expanded to different regions. In 1979, the CPP
has fully recovered from the loss of the two key leaders, said Ka Juaning.
A big number of young
people, mostly students from Manila, went into full-time guerilla work in
the countryside when then President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law
in 1972. Ka Juaning said, however, that the biggest wave of recruitment
into the NPA happened in 1983 when Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr. was
assassinated.
But the strength of
the NPA drastically dropped, Ka Juaning said, when it implemented an
anti-infiltration drive called Kampanyang Ahos (ahos is Visayan
term for garlic) in the 1980s. He personally saw how suspected
infiltrators were tortured in Bicol where he was transferred in the latter
part of 1980s.
Ka Juaning disagreed
with the killing and torture of comrades. "Ang ibig n’yo sabihin mas
higit pang mahusay na mag-organisa ang kaaway kaysa sa atin? Ibig sabihin,
tatlong taon na sa atin, tayo ang nagpalaki, nag-organisa, tayo ang
nagrekrut, sa isang saglit lang makukumbinsi ng kalaban? Napaka-imposible,"
(Do you mean that the enemy is much better than us in organizing? I mean a
comrade has been with us for three years, we raised, organized, recruited
him or her and in just an instant he or she can be convinced by the enemy?
Very impossible.)
"Napakahirap ang
pumatay ng kasama. Hangga’t hindi nakagawa ng pinsala at nagkautang ng
dugo, hindi mo maituturing na kalaban," (It is very hard to kill a
comrade. As long as he or she has not done any damage and incurred any
blood debt, you cannot consider him or her an enemy.) he added.
This, among others,
led Ka Juaning to request that he be brought back to the Central Luzon
region in 1986. But to his disappointment, he said that the deep
penetration agent (DPA) hysteria also affected the region. "Mas grabe
ginawa nila rito. Humukay sila ng malalim, parang tunnel, tapos doon
nilalagay ang mga tao. Isang platoon, mga 30 katao naroon sa ilalim. Hindi
ko sinasabi na walang impiltrador pero yung dami na yun hindi ko
pinaniniwalaan." (What they did here was worse. They dug a deep hole,
similar to a tunnel, and they put there the people. It was one platoon,
about 30 people who were there in the hole. I am not saying that there
were no infiltrators but the sheer number of them is not believable.)
He pointed out that
the practice was against the principles of the NPA that has no provisions
for torture.
The CPP had publicly
recognized the error and corrected them with what it called the Second
Great Rectification Movement in 1992. In documents published on the
Internet, the CPP said that the anti-DPA hysteria inflicted greater damage
on the ranks of the revolutionary movement than actual battles with
government troops.
Relevant still
In 1987, Ka Juaning,
suffering from lung ailment, was arrested in Sta. Rita while in transit
for medical treatment in Manila.
He was detained in
Camp
Crame without charge for seven months
until he was transferred to Camp Olivas in Pampanga where he spent almost
three years in jail on charges of subversion. He was freed on Aug. 30,
1991, a day after his 57th birthday.
For health reasons,
Ka Juaning decided to go back to his home in Sta. Rita where he now lives
with his wife. He now tends his family’s four-hectare farm, located on the
same spot where the first squad of NPA guerillas put up its first
headquarters in this town.
Although living a
more quiet life today, Ka Juaning still considers himself a revolutionary.
He believes that armed struggle is as relevant today as it was 37 years
ago. "Walang matagumpay na pagbabago kung walang armadong pakikibaka,"
(There is no victorious change without armed struggle.) he said.
Bulatlat
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