A Revolutionary is not a 'Terrorist'

Book Review of Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World (Portrait of a Revolutionary), Conversations with Ninotchka Rosca

What comes through is a remarkable portrait of the revolutionary, steeled by relentless struggle, suffering in prison, and faith in the ultimate positive outcome of the national democratic and socialist revolution.

By Elmer A. Ordoñez

Sunday Times Magazine

The Other View

August 15, 2004

Posted by Bulatlat

Ninotchka Rosca, internationally-acclaimed Filipino novelist now based in New York, will launch her sixth book with the above subtitle on August 19 at the PowerBooks in Greenbelt, Makati at 6 p.m.

The subject of the book is Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant to the National Democratic Front now in the process of resuming peace talks abroad with the Philippine government. He is also the founder of the re-established Communist Party of the Philippines (1968) and the author of several documents on party rectification, Struggle for National Democracy (1967), Philippine Society and Revolution (1971), and other books including two on poetry.

He is listed in A Bibliographical Dictionary of Marxism (London, 1986) as among the most important 210 Marxists since the 1848 Communist Manifesto. Historian Teodoro Agoncillo himself acknowledged Sison as one of the three most influential revolutionary leaders after Andres Bonifacio and Crisanto Evangelista.

As Rosca puts it, Sison “based his leadership on changing the way people look at the world, look at themselves, and their relationship to that world. He has done this and does it through his poetry and political analyses and through the way his own life has been lived: in the organizing of, and in leading and guiding, every significant Filipino activist group, as well as the entire revolutionary movement itself.”

What is less known perhaps is the fact that Jose Maria Sison is an acknowledged poet, receiving the Southeast Asian WRITE award conferred by the King of Thailand in 1986 for his book Prison and Beyond: Selected Poems from 1958 to 1983. He continues to write poetry while on exile in The Netherlands. This latest book includes some of his poems.

Sison graduated from the University of the Philippines, cum laude, majoring in English (not political science as most people think). I remember Sison as one of the entering freshmen when I left for study abroad in 1957.

Sison suffered incarceration and torture in a Marcos jail for ten years (18 months under solitary confinement and chained to his cot). His poem “Fragments of a Nightmare” detailing the tortures he underwent is one of the poems in Prison and Beyond. His best known poem “The Guerrilla is Like a Poet” is a favorite in poetry readings held by activist groups here and abroad – along with the revolutionary poems of Andres Bonifacio, Carlos Bulosan, Amado V. Hernandez, and younger activists, living and martyred.

Today, Sison is branded as a terrorist by the U.S. and the European Union and as a result has lost the benefits such as housing, health care, and a meager allowance, of being a political refugee since his passport was cancelled in 1988. He is in a kind of limbo, under constant threat of assassination here and abroad, living on support from comrades and friends. He has remained steadfast in what he does best – writing political analyses and poetry and giving interviews.

Rosca’s book gives us a summary biography of Sison (known variously as JMS, Joma, Joe Mahoma, or to close friends Marya) but the bulk of the book is the interview where Sison provides substantive answers to the in-depth questions asked – including those about the Plaza Miranda bombing (hearsay) and Kampanyang Ahos which led to the second rectification movement led by Sison. What comes through is a remarkable portrait of the revolutionary, steeled by relentless struggle, suffering in prison, and faith in the ultimate positive outcome of the national democratic and socialist revolution.

As Rosca says, the revolutionary is not a terrorist. Sison is “not despondent over being unjustly denied asylum” for he “enjoys doing research, writing, participating in conferences and seminars…and being with many compatriots and Dutch friends.”

He tells Rosca: “I have enjoyed abundant political support from many thousands of signatures gathered over the years by the International Campaign for the Asylum of the Sison Family. Supporters include prominent personalities and ordinary people in various fields of activity. With their kind of support, I feel at home in the world.”

He has given up smoking because of threatening emphysema but in a light note he says that all the aggravations and provocations of the U.S. and the Philippine governments (e.g. unjustly accusing him of Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo’s killing and calling him a terrorist) could not make him reach for a cigarette.

Come around and get your autographed copy, the author of which is a recipient of the American Book Award for Excellence in Literature. (Editor’s note: The book will have its third launching on Aug. 24, 5 p.m., in Balai Kalinaw, UP Diliman, Quezon City.) Posted by Bulatlat

Elmer Ordoñez, Ph.D., is former chair of the University of the Philippines’ Department of English, a former vice president of Lyceum University and Board Chair of IBON Foundation. He has also written several books.

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