December 26: A ‘Joyous’ Day with Peasants and Comrades 

SOMEWHERE IN SURIGAO DEL SUR – It was the day after Christmas and Manong Tinoy saw to it that he finished his farm work early. It was going to be a very important day, he felt. He was going to spend it with comrades from the New People’s Army (NPA).

By Daisy C. Gonzales  
and Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com  

Manong Tinoy’s children and wife, Eda, had already joined the more than 100 villagers, including women and children, and guerrillas milling around the makeshift stage, draped in blue plastic shades, built for the occasion -- the 34^th year anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Manong Tinoy and his family need not trek too far to celebrate. The guerrillas decided to hold the celebration nearby, right beside where they live.  The stage was nestled in the middle of a logging road, in the heart of the biggest tree plantation in Mindanao owned by what used to be the largest paper mill in Asia, Picop. Less than an hour away, through the narrow and rough limestone road, was a military detachment.

“This is going to be joyous because the comrades and the masses are going to get together,” Manong Tinoy told Bulatlat.Com, which was invited along with 20 journalists from the cities of Davao, General Santos and Butuan and Marbel, South Cotabato to cover the event.

A “fancy” drill executed by three platoons of NPA guerrillas and a cultural presentation highlighted the whole-day affair.. Ka Oris, spokesperson for NDF-Mindanao, read a three-page statement by the CPP-Mindanao Commission that called on the people to “fight the terror attacks of the US-Macapagal-Arroyo regime and advance the revolution to greater heights.”

It was the first time in 15 years that the NDF-Mindanao spokesperson held a press conference since the 1987 localized peace talks with the government.   

(Far Left)

Ka Oris

(Left and Top) NPA guerrillas executing fancy drill

Photos by Carlos H. Conde and Daisy C. Gonzales

In his speech, Ka Oris emphasized the “series of victories” of the CPP after it launched its “Second Great Rectification Movement” in 1992. This campaign sought to correct the “wrong” practices in the past that, for one, concentrated the NPA forces in larger formations and neglected organizing and mass work. This resulted in the alienation of NDF cadres from the masses, on whom they rely for support.

The CPP, according to Ka Oris, has now recovered and strengthened in the five regions in Mindanao.The CPP  membership, he added, increased and many cadres were developed from the peasants, workers, youth and students sectors.. He said 35 out of the 120 guerrilla fronts nationwide  are in Mindanao. He described them as “spread in the strategic and favorable areas in 19 out of the 24 provinces in the island.” This means 60% of the towns and cities of Mindanao. 

In the last two years, Ka Oris revealed that more than 100 tactical offensives in Mindanao were launched. These include the ambush in Cateel town in Davao Oriental that killed 18 members of the 27^th Special forces; the ambush on the members of the 62^nd Infantry Battalion in Bunawan, Agusan Sur and in Hinatuan, Surigao Sur; the ambush on members of the 60^th IB in Boston, Davao Oriental; and the raids on a paramilitary detachment in Saranggani Province in South Cotabato and on PNP personnel in Maco, Compostela Valley Province.

Cadres and local residents interviewed here were one in saying that the movement has grown “tremendously” ever since the party launched its “Second Great Rectification Movement” in 1993.

Ka Darwin, a 29-year-old former construction worker, became a full time NPA cadre only six months ago. He said he decided to join the NPA because of the poverty and hardship he witnessed in the urban areas and massive abuses being committed against peasants in the countryside.

“With all the things I was learning about our system, I was increasingly convinced that joining the NPA was the correct path,” the soft-spoken and boyish looking Ka Darwin said, his M-14 rifle slung over his shoulder.

Here, in the mountains with the masses, I became fulfilled, he said. “I realized  there are things  I can do not only to improve myself but to help the poor. I have been helping my comrades teach the masses here how to improve production. We have also been successful in explaining to them why they are suffering in the first place.”

Ka Darwin said that each time he learns of a massacre and other human rights violations by government soldiers of peasants, he becomes even more determined to stay on and fight. “This is my life and I don’t see myself doing anything else in the future,” Ka Darwin said.

Ka Noriel, one of the leaders of the front who has been with the NPA for 20 years, said that the growth of the movement, as well as the continuing attraction by young people like Ka Darwin to it, is explained by the “worsening conditions of a semi-feudal and semi-colonial” country like the Philippines.

Ka Noriel, 37, joined the movement during the martial law years, when the Marcos regime was at its worst and his family was being harassed by the Philippine Constabulary. His father was jailed for several months in 1975 for joining a legal militant farmers’ group. Twenty years after he decided to take up arms, Ka Noriel said he is even more convinced of the validity of the struggle.

“I haven’t seen anything wrong with my decision. The crisis in Philippine society is worsening,” he said. He is also convinced, that his children are beginning tounderstand what the revolution is all about. His eldest, a 13-year-old boy, has shown appreciation at what his father and mother,  also an NPA cadre, are doing. “I’d be happy to see him join us here later,” he said.

In the cities, Ka Oris said mass movements to expose and oppose President Macapagal-Arroyo’s programs and policies have intensified. In the countryside, mass movements, especially the implementation of what he calls “revolutionary land reform” have been “re-strengthened,” he added. 

The last point is important to Manong Tinoy, who saw in it the hope that he and his family, as well as the other peasants in the area, will finally be allowed to till their farms peacefully. Earlier in 2002, he said that he and 10 other households were forcibly removed from their homes and lands inside the Picop concession area. Picop booted them out, claiming that the land was the company’s and reportedly used the “might of the military” in evicting them.

“They said they owned the land but how can that be when my parents and I were born here?” said the 36-year-old peasant.

At present, Manong Tinoy and several other peasants are tilling portions of land still within the concession area as part of the “agrarian revolution program” of the People’s Democratic Government of the NDF. Since the NPA stepped in, the military harassment has ceased, said Manong Tinoy.  Bulatlat.com

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