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Kaguma’s
33rd anniversary:
Educators as Revolutionaries
A
growing number of college and public school teachers have left their classrooms
not to look for jobs abroad but to teach where they believe they are most
needed: in remote rural villages, in indigenous communities, in mountainous
areas. They are deeply involved in literacy and numeracy campaigns in NPA turfs
where basic education is as important as mobilizing the masses for their
decades-long revolution.
By
Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat.com
Kaguma
members stage a lightning rally March 28 in Manila
in celebration of its 33rd anniversary.
For about three minutes last March 28, in front of Bustillos church in Sampaloc,
Manila and in full view of a group of some barangay tanod (village
security force), about 20 persons wearing dark glasses pierced the air with
shouts of tribute to the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s
Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).
“Viva CPP-NPA-NDF!” they chanted. “Long live the CPP! Long live the NPA!
Long live the NDF!”
A
team of journalists and cameramen sprinted to cover the media scoop. Church
devotees, bystanders and shoppers looked in surprise but were otherwise
otherwise awed by the daring political event.
Then,
just as quickly as they had hit the pavement, the rallyists were out of the
scene. But not without leaving a big placard proclaiming their organization’s
anniversary that day and a few photocopies of an article from the latest issue
of Ang Bayan, the CPP’s official organ.
They were members of the Katipunan ng mga Gurong Makabayan (Kaguma or alliance
of patriotic educators), a clandestine revolutionary organization of teachers
under the NDF. Kaguma chose to celebrate its 33rd anniversary that day with a
lightning rally—its first ever.
 Kaguma
is one of 16 revolutionary organizations under the NDF that include priests and
nuns, Igorot, Moro and Lumad groups.
Kaguma,
according to its National Council chair Ka (short for kasama or comrade)
Cesar Magturo and National Secretariat member Ka Gary, lives its commitment to a
revolutionary education by embarking on literacy and numeracy campaigns in rural
provinces influenced by the NPA, employing its members’ teaching skills to
propagate the science and values of revolution, and collecting material support
for the armed revolutionary struggle. Aside from that Kaguma organizes teachers
in fighting for their sectoral concerns within the over-all context of the
CPP-NPA-NDF’s armed revolutionary struggle.
Revolutionary teaching
Kaguma members, says Ka Gary, work with units of the NPA in carrying out their
literacy and numeracy campaigns. “There are many NPA fighters who have
benefited from Kaguma’s literacy and numeracy programs,” says Ka Gary,
“together with the peasant masses.” Many of the NPA’s fighters are poor
peasants who, until they joined the NPA, had been unschooled due to poverty and
limited access to public education.
Ka Gary reveals that based on reports that have recently reached Kaguma’s
national office, these literacy and numeracy programs have progressed greatly in
many areas of the country, while there remains much work in Negros, Caraga,
Davao, Bicol, Northern Luzon and other regions - especially the localities with
large numbers of indigenous peoples in Ilocos, Cordillera, and Cagayan.
Ka Cesar explains that even now, Kaguma is pinpointing areas where its literacy
and numeracy programs are urgently needed. “Southern Luzon is among these,”
he says, “with its large number of upland farmers and indigenous peoples who
need education.”
Kaguma’s services are also widely used in the so-called “National Democratic
Schools” in the countryside, where the masses as well as the revolutionaries
working with them engage in discussions on history, society, political economy,
and other subjects from the revolutionary point of view. “It is in these
schools where we put into practice the kind of education we advocate for the
Philippines,” says Ka Cesar.
Ka Cesar and Ka Gary point out that Kaguma’s educational program, which they
say has been part of the revolutionary movement’s program from the beginning,
effectively deals with the government’s failure to provide the people with
decent educational services. “There are many who, at 60 and above, are
learning how to read, write, and count for the first time,” reveals Ka Gary.
But while a good number of Kaguma’s members have chosen to work full-time in
the countryside, many of its members continue with their teaching jobs in the
cities and town center. Ka Cesar himself has been a public school teacher for 22
years. And they do their part in teaching the science and values of revolution
even in the cities.
“We are ever conscious of the need to challenge the prevailing system of
education,” says Ka Cesar. Kaguma considers the existing educational system as
a bankrupt one which serves the interest of U.S. imperialism and its local elite
henchmen, the comprador bourgeoisie and the big landlord class—which the
revolutionary movement points to as exploiters of the Filipino people.
“And
we find creative ways of incorporating our responses to that in our work as
teachers—even in subjects like mathematics,” Ka Cesar says.
Role in the struggle
In the late 1980s Jose Maria Sison, who worked as a college professor before
going underground in the late 1960s and whom Kaguma looks upon as a great
revolutionary teacher, wrote in his book The Philippine Revolution: The
Leader’s View that teachers make up the largest profession in the
Philippines.
Ka Gary says Sison’s data on the size of the teaching profession in the
Philippines is correct even today. Ka Cesar agrees, saying that at present,
there are 500,000 teachers all over the Philippines.
Ka Cesar and Ka Gary are one in saying that the size of the teaching profession
in the Philippines has deep implications for the role of teachers in the
revolution.
“When you are a teacher,” Ka Cesar says, “it is not only the students you
are able to influence. You are also able to influence their parents.”
As Ka Gary sees it, “In so far as the community estimation is concerned,
teachers are the equivalent of town mayors or parish priests. Considering that
kind of influence and the number of teachers in the Philippines, if teachers are
organized for the revolution they could play a significant part in it.”
Brief history
Starting out as a legal organization of prominent college and lower school
educators, Kaguma was outlawed and forced to go underground upon the declaration
of martial law in 1972. Many of its members joined the NPA, while others engaged
in clandestine resistance work in the urban centers, thereby contributing
significantly to the fall of the Marcos dictatorship. Some of them were
eventually caught by Marcos agents; a number of them were tortured or killed.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kaguma committed what Ka Cesar and Ka Gary
call strategic and tactical blunders such as reformism and, on the opposite
extreme, insurrectionism. These errors, say Ka Cesar and Ka Gary, weakened
Kaguma, but the organization was able to recover, they say, through the Second
Great Rectification Movement initiated by the CPP in 1992.
As of its Third Congress, held in May 2003 in a guerrilla zone somewhere in
Central Luzon, Kaguma counts more than a thousand members, according to Ka Gary.
“Considering that Kaguma almost vanished during the period of
disorientation,” he says, “we can say that Kaguma has now recovered
greatly.”
“Here again”
According to Ka Cesar, the decision to hold a lightning rally for the first time
in its 33-year history is Kaguma’s way of showing that: “The revolutionary
teachers’ movement is here again.” It was also a support activity for the
NPA’s 35th anniversary celebration, which fell the next day.
In its 33rd anniversary statement, Kaguma paid tribute to its martyrs: Jessica
Sales, Evelyn Pacheco, Deodoro Buatis, Manuel Guianga Ola, Rafael Quejada, Luz
Pagobo, Jun Geronimo, Rey Rubin, Ka Toy, Gabby Gaveria, Nona Santaclara, and
July Mendoza. Ka Cesar adds to that list a young public school teacher who was
recently killed by the military in a province somewhere in Southern Tagalog. Bulatlat.com
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