WITH THE NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY IN THE
PHILIPPINES:REPORT FROM A GUERRILLA FRONT
PART I: THE NPA UP-CLOSE
Revolutionary Worker #951, April 5, 1998
Our van had been climbing a coastal road. Now
it came to a sudden stop. My companion and I got out. It was a
beautiful night. The sky was clear, the moon
and stars were shining. Below me, not far off, I heard the sea washing
up against the shoreline. But before I could
take in more of the scene, someone nudged me: "Quick, up the hill."
We darted off the road onto a path and began
heading inland and upland. My heart was pounding with
anticipation. Our journey into the guerrilla
front was beginning.
The path led to a supporter's house. Inside,
my guide Camilo and local contacts made an evaluation of the security
situation. After a few minutes we left and
started walking again. A little past midnight we arrived at a peasant's
hut.
I was taken around back. From out of the darkness
a voice lifted: "Comrade, welcome, we've been waiting a few
days for you." I looked more closely. Two
people were squatting and talking in hushed tones--one was lying in a
hammock, another was standing, rifle in hand.
The moment I had been waiting for: I was finally meeting up with
the New People's Army, the NPA. For 10 days,
I would be in the company of this unit.
The enemy kept watch on this area, so we had
to be careful about our movements. We got a little rest and set off
while it was still dark. On the trails, I
was only allowed to use my flashlight for quick bursts of assistance. Three
hours later we reached another peasant's hut
where we would camp for two days.
A Visit to a Peasant Supporter,
Getting to Know the Red Fighters
We were staying at the household of Cesar.
Cesar allows the NPA unit to use his hut when it passes through the
area. He and his wife went about their daily
activities, while the NPA fighters went about theirs: washing clothes,
doing maintenance on their weapons, cooking
(the squad prepared meals both for itself and for the family), and
going off on patrols. I wondered what led
this peasant to welcome the "red fighters" into his hut. An interview was
arranged, with Camilo translating.
Cesar is a middle peasant. He lives a hard
life but his conditions are nowhere near as severe as those of the
landless poor peasants and agricultural laborers
in the region. Cesar told me that he grows coconuts, bananas, and
some vegetables on several hectares (a hectare
is about 2.5 acres) of land.
"So when did you come in contact with the NPA?"
I asked Cesar. "I first met the NPA," he told me, "in 1985. I
have many relatives in the mass organizations."
What, I asked, impresses you about the NPA? He replied without
hesitation: "The NPA is good. They drive out
the robbers and help the peasants with production. They help the
poor." I asked him if he thought the NPA's
vision of putting power in the hands of the oppressed and exploited
was realistic. "Yes, the poor can run society."
Do the government forces harass you? "They have come here
several times and questioned me--I tell them
nothing."
I wondered whether the party's political campaigns
had filtered down to this level of the grass roots. Cesar
explained, "I know about rectification, people
have explained to me the defeats and errors of the past." As our
conversation went on, Cesar told me that he
had heard of Mao Tsetung and the Chinese revolution.
Time was limited, and Cesar had things to do.
As Cesar went off to the fields, Camilo, in his humorous,
down-to-earth way, quipped, "Cesar is what
you might call a `latter-day saint'...he got involved in the struggle late
in life."
I passed the afternoon talking with some members of the unit about their family backgrounds and political history.
Emilia, who is in her early 20's, is from a
peasant family in the region. She kept account of the unit's supplies and
expenses. Carlo and Lino were two of the unit's
newer recruits. They were from the cities. Both had been
involved in underground trade union activity,
organizing transport workers. Tess is 20. She also came out of the
urban movement. Her father, a union leader
in Manila, had been murdered by paramilitary thugs in the late 1980s.
Tess has done courier work and organized peasant
youth. Jose, still in his teens, is the youngest member of the
unit. He comes from one of the indigenous
peoples of this region.
Then there was Isabel. Isabel is in her early
40's and has spent most of her adult life underground, working mainly
in the countryside. Her children have been
raised and cared for by relatives living in a town--although,
occasionally, secret family visits are arranged.
Isabel is a party leader in this region and has held various positions
in the political and military commands of
this guerrilla front. Isabel had wide knowledge of the situation "on the
ground" and radiated enormous energy and optimism.
I would have many in-depth discussions with Isabel and
learn much from her revolutionary experiences
and insights.
Two things already struck me about the people
I was getting to know: their dedication to the revolution and the
great camaraderie among them. We addressed
one another as "ka," short for kasama, the Tagalog word for
"comrade" (Tagalog is the most widely spoken
language in the Philippines). Even Doy, the dog that went
everywhere with the unit, was "ka Doy!"
Camilo announced dinner plans to me: "Cesar
enjoyed talking with you and has donated a few chickens for
dinner." It was a good meal, and good to have...because
a difficult hike lay ahead of us the next morning.
The Campsite
Where were we headed? Isabel smiled, "We're
going to where even the carabao won't go" (the carabao is the
Filipino farmer's trusty water buffalo--cumbersome
but versatile). Actually, we were making our way to a remote
mountain campsite that was being readied for
a month-long study retreat for the NPA fighters.
We hiked through dense thicket. Vast, spreading
foliage provided a natural canopy. The air was steamy, the paths
were muddy, and the climbs could get quite
steep. The squad members, rifles strapped to their backs, moved
quietly and steadily in single file. I concentrated
on my footing but still had plenty of slips. I laughed to myself. Luis,
the squad leader, had told me that NPA fighters
are trained to maneuver in jungle and mountains at night...and
now I noticed that Tess was wearing sandals.
The landscape changed. We entered woodland.
Hollowed deep into the slopes were trails down which carabao
hauled timber and up which they hauled supplies.
We crossed several streams. And as the last shafts of sunlight
broke through the green forest cover, we reached
the campsite.
The camp had two lean-to-like shelters. Bamboo
was the basic building material for the roofs, walls, and tables.
The larger shelter had a hearth where meals
were cooked. During my stay, the camp was busy with activity, even
in the most torrential rains. Some fighters
had construction tasks; others gathered wood and vegetables and fruit;
some left on assignments. Weapons were always
carried, or kept in close reach. As night fell, the fighters would
string their hammocks to the supports of the
shelters.
Plain living and self-reliance have long been
hallmarks of the NPA. But life here, and I spent more than a week in
the camp, was anything but grim. I am not
just talking about the sense of purpose and commitment that was so
palpable. It was also the atmosphere--the
lively political discussion, the lighthearted joking, the revolutionary
songs. I remember one night someone sang a
beautiful ballad about two comrades in love but unable to be with
each other because of their political assignments.
The song told of longing but also of a deeper closeness that
came from the awareness of what their lives
are dedicated to.
Getting Some Perspective
on the Armed Struggle
The NPA is overwhelmingly a peasant army. But
the NPA is led by a vanguard party of the proletariat--the
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
The CPP is leading the Filipino masses to wage a new-democratic
revolution. This revolution confronts the
"three mountains" that weigh on the people: imperialism,
bureaucrat-capitalism, and semifeudal landlordism.
The heart of the new-democratic struggle is the armed agrarian
revolution in the countryside.
By waging protracted people's war in the rural
areas, the revolutionary forces can eventually surround the cities,
win nationwide victory, and completely overthrow
the semicolonial and semifeudal system. The new-democratic
revolution is the direct prelude to the socialist
revolution.
The part of the Philippines we were in--this
was southern Luzon--is quite poor. It is overwhelmingly agricultural.
There is little industry to speak of besides
some small processing plants. It is a region where landownership is
highly concentrated; where tuberculosis, malaria,
and gastrointestinal diseases remain significant health problems;
where illiteracy is still widespread. For
the same kinds of reasons, this is also a region where the armed struggle
has been going on almost continuously since
the first organizers arrived in 1971.
For over 25 years, the revolutionary forces
in the Philippines have carried out agrarian revolution. Where the
armed struggle has been strong, new organs
of people's democratic power have been established. By the
mid-1980s, the armed struggle in many parts
of the Philippine countryside, including the region I was in, reached a
fairly high level. But for several years now,
the fighting has been at a fairly low level. Why?
Beginning in 1992, the revolutionary forces
initiated what is called "recovery work." They were "recovering" from
difficulties and setbacks suffered in the
late 1980s and early 1990s. What kinds of difficulties? The government
unleashed campaigns of "total war" to wipe
out the revolutionary forces and to terrorize the peasants (and many
peasants were forced to flee their villages).
And at the same time, a wrong political line, a revisionist line, had
emerged in the CPP, and it led to serious
losses.
In response to this situation, the NPA has
worked to regain strength and influence in areas they had to abandon
when the government unleashed its "total war"
tactics. And the NPA has worked to regain the support and trust of
the peasants in those areas where the wrong
line had sown confusion in the peasants' minds. These circumstances
greatly affected the course and level of the
armed struggle.
A leading comrade who was staying in our camp
for a few days made a presentation to me. He explained that
"armed struggle is the principal form of struggle"
in the Philippines and that the people's war has "three
indispensable components--land reform, base-building,
and armed struggle. Armed struggle is principal, but [for
the last few years] we have been paying attention
to strengthening our mass base--developing vigorous mass
movements and mass organization, addressing
the problems of the people, and doing political education among
the peasants....We are strengthening the rear
for guerrilla struggle."
But there can be no mass work without the NPA.
Isabel was emphatic: "If there is no NPA there is no revolution.
The masses will be terrorized if there is
no NPA, and the NPA protects the masses." The NPA also engages in
what are called "tactical offensives"--ambushes,
raids, sniping operations, actions against thugs and agents, etc.
When I was in Manila I could pick up a daily
newspaper and occasionally read of a daring NPA assault on a
police station in a small town. In the region
I was visiting, a military patrol had recently been ambushed by the
NPA guerrillas. The comrade I was talking
with explained that the scale of tactical offensives would increase in
the
near future.
So for several years, the NPA has stressed
educational work and grass-roots organizing in the countryside. This
was how the revolution's leadership saw the
needs of the situation. More recently, the revolution has set out, in the
words of a March 1997 message to the NPA from
the CPP, to "intensify guerrilla warfare on a wide scale, on the
basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass
base."
A statement issued in December 1997 (this was
after I had returned from the Philippines) by Armando Liwanag,
Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPP,
puts what I am describing this way:
"The need for
a new-democratic revolution through a protracted people's war is more than
ever
clear and urgent....
The mass base is most important for sustaining tactical offensives and
frustrating
enemy retaliation.
It arises from painstaking mass work, arousing, organizing and mobilizing
the
masses according
to their basic demands in the new-democratic revolution....
[A]ttention is
paid to the correct balance between mass work and tactical offensives.
Putting
revolutionary
politics in command, Party cadres and members and the Red commanders and
fighters
need to undertake
study and train in guerrilla warfare. Tactical offensives must be launched
according to
capability."
Two-Line Struggle
and Rectification
Every revolution must learn from setbacks and
mistakes. Every revolution must wage struggle against incorrect
lines and approaches to the tasks and challenges
before it. Maoists understand that these struggles temper and
educate both the revolutionaries and the masses--the
more so as the political and ideological issues are dug into
and clarified. The Philippine revolution is
no exception.
At this point it might be helpful to discuss
the rectification campaign launched by the CPP in 1992. This way the
reader can get a better handle on the twists
and turns of the Philippine revolution in recent years.
I mentioned that an incorrect line had arisen
in the CPP. The people promoting this line argued that the nature of
Philippine society had changed, that capitalist
development was eliminating semifeudal (landlord-peasant)
exploitation in the countryside. They said
that the Philippines was becoming a more and more urbanized-industrial
society. In their eyes, Maoist protracted
people's war, and the doctrine of surrounding the cities from the
countryside, was no longer appropriate to
Philippine conditions.
They advocated shifting the focus of the revolutionary
struggle to the urban areas. They set out to create larger
and more regular military formations in the
countryside, the idea being to launch big offensives against government
forces in order to help stimulate and support
uprisings in the cities.
This wrong line sounded very revolutionary.
It claimed that victory could be achieved quickly and that the decisive
battles would be fought soon. But it was not
a line that could lead to revolution. The people championing it were in
fact looking for a short-cut to revolution.
They put weapons above politics. Isabel explained: "Political and
ideological work among the cadre, in the NPA,
and among the masses was sacrificed." They increasingly cut
themselves off from the lives and struggles
of the peasants. And over time they began to doubt the ability of the
peasant masses to make revolution.
In studying some of the writings of these forces,
I could also see how they blurred the distinction between
socialism and revisionism. They looked at
the social-imperialist Soviet Union as a socialist country. Some of them
wanted to drop Mao Tsetung Thought.
But during this period, the CPP as a whole
had some ideological shortcomings. It had failed to take a stand
against the revisionism of Deng Xiaoping.
Its understanding of Soviet social-imperialism had weakened; and it saw
the Soviet Union as a potential source of
support and aid.
As I mentioned, in the late 1980s and early
1990s, the government military forces struck hard and viciously at the
NPA and its peasant base. This was a brutal
onslaught. In areas where political work among the peasants had
slackened, the NPA sometimes found itself
facing the enemy alone. When the situation in the cities failed to
develop as the advocates of this wrong line
had hoped, some of them did a flip-flop. They began to see the
imperialists and reactionaries as all-powerful
and lost faith in the armed struggle.
The proponents of this line were defeated in
inner-party struggle. They are no longer in the CPP. Many of them
have since gone over to open reformism, and
some have even collaborated with the government. But their line
caused serious damage--political, organizational,
and military.
The leadership of the CPP summed up the experience
of this period. It also made self-criticism for having strayed
from the Maoist path. In 1992, the party launched
a major "rectification campaign."
Rectifying the situation has required the NPA
to recover, consolidate, and expand strength and influence among
the peasant masses. The CPP decided this should
mean a period of "prolonged mass work."
Rectification has also required party and NPA
members to raise their ideological and political understanding. The
NPA fighters I was with study materials dealing
with the issues of this struggle. An important party document calls
for "reaffirmation." Isabel explained: "We
are reaffirming basic principles--the analysis that we are a semicolonial
and semifeudal country, and that we must wage
protracted people's war." During my stay with the guerrilla front,
several veteran fighters told me that Mao's
teachings had not been as diligently studied in the 1980s as had been
the case in the early 1970s. Isabel said,
"We are also going back to Mao's materials, back to basic principles of
Mao Tsetung."
The fighters I spoke with were enthusiastic
about rectification and recovery. They had stories to tell about the
revolution sinking deeper roots among the
peasant masses.
As mentioned earlier, the leadership is calling
for intensified armed struggle. According to the December 1997
statement by Armando Liwanag, "the party leading
organs are shaking off the inertia of conservatism induced by
prolonged mass work without tactical offensives....We
must combat `Left' and Right opportunist errors. We must
intensify the armed struggle as the main form
of struggle and coordinate revolutionary struggles in both urban and
rural areas....There is no way out of the
oppression and exploitation by the imperialists and the local exploiting
classes but the new democratic revolution
through protracted people's war."
The situation is complex and full of challenges.
But this much can be said. The Philippine revolution has struck real
blows against imperialism. How the armed struggle
for nationwide power in the Philippines further develops and
advances, and how the revolution further strengthens
itself politically and ideologically, building on its Maoist
roots--all this is tremendously important
to the people of the world.
A Revolutionary Army Is
a People's Army
Through my many discussions, and seeing the
NPA up close, I gained a much more living sense of how radically
different a revolutionary army is from a bourgeois
army. The experience and example of the NPA, like that of the
Maoist fighting forces in Peru and Nepal,
contains lessons for the oppressed and exploited in the U.S. I say this
even though our road to power, and the armed
struggle that must eventually be launched, has different features.
The NPA fights the enemy and serves the people.
It is an army that is closely integrated with the masses, learning
from and relying on the masses. In this region,
about 70 percent of the people recruited into the NPA come from
the local peasantry. It is an army that puts
politics, the politics of revolutionary struggle and transformation, in
command. It is an army that is mobilizing
the masses to change the world and to change themselves.
Today, as part of the recovery process, the
great majority of NPA forces are spread out in small groups engaged
in mass work--although there are also some
squads which are relatively concentrated in the central areas of the
guerrilla fronts. The basic NPA formation
is a squad of 7 to 12 members, which functions as, or subdivides into
smaller, "armed propaganda units." The average
age of the rank and file is about 18 to 21, that of officers about
30 to 33.
I asked about the tasks of a typical squad.
It was explained to me that among its main tasks are: ideological
training, study, and reproduction of propaganda
materials; political organizing, educating, and mobilizing the
masses, especially for the agrarian revolution;
economic work, helping the masses to improve agricultural
production and incomes; organizational work,
including communications, personnel and recruitment; and military
operations.
Members of the units are trained to become
what are called "comprehensive fighters." This means developing the
skills to fight, educate, and do propaganda--"so
that," as ka Lino explained, "if one of us dies, another can take
their place." Political training is principal.
As Isabel put it, "a guerrilla without ideology is no good."
I was curious about what writings by Mao people
might study. Tess told me about the wide use of what they call
the "5 Golden Rays"--Mao's famous short essays,
like "Serve the People," and "In Memory of Norman
Bethune"--which emphasize the principles of
serving the people, hard work and self-sacrifice, and
internationalism.
Each squad or unit has a concrete plan of activity and engages in regular assessment and criticism.
The squad I was with works among peasants in
15 to 20 barrios in this guerrilla front. A barrio is the basic village
unit in the Philippine countryside. The barrios
this squad has responsibility for are regularly visited, and some of the
squad members will stay in them for a few
days. "When we knock on the peasants' doors at midnight," Carlo
explained, "they let us in, and we talk to
them about the armed struggle. But when the peasants look out their
windows and see the enemy coming, they keep
their doors shut--or maybe they'll let them in just for water,
because they are threatened."
Luis, an NPA officer and leader of this squad,
told me more about the work: "We organize against cattle-rustling
and protect the peasants against illegal logging
and fishing [which harm the peasants' livelihoods and cause
environmental damage]. We fight the abuses
of merchants and of the military. We help the peasants with planting
and agricultural cooperation. We look into
the situation of enemy agents and spies in the barrios--and when the
time is right they are punished."
I was told that women make up about a quarter
of the personnel of the NPA units in this region but that the
percentage is higher elsewhere. From my own
observation, I found the relations between the men and women
fighters to be extremely comradely. People
worked together, rotated between cooking, guard, and other tasks,
and treated each other as equals. Political
and personal problems are collectively discussed out. In talking with the
fighters, I also found an awareness of the
economic and social issues and problems facing women in the
countryside.
Isabel, as I mentioned, is a regional party
leader. Yet here she was working and traveling with this squad. I
learned that one of the policies adopted as
part of rectification has been to link leaders more closely with the units
doing mass work. The revolution is also trying
to cut down the bureaucracy that had grown under the influence of
the revisionist line.
Naturally, I was here to find out as much as
I could about the struggle in the Philippines. But the Filipino comrades
also peppered me with questions about conditions
and the struggle in the United States. They knew that I was a
supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party,
USA, and were keenly interested in hearing me talk about
revolutionary strategy and tactics in the
"belly of the beast." I was also asked to make a presentation about the
people's war in Peru.
What Luis Had To Say
Early on during my stay at the camp, I had
the opportunity to talk more with Luis, the squad leader. I wanted to
hear his assessment of the situation.
Me: What is the greatest strength of the enemy?
Luis: Its many guns and its intelligence [surveillance, networks of agents, etc.].
Me: What is the enemy's greatest weakness?
Luis: Its lack of support from the people, its blindness and arrogance.
Me: How do you assess the immediate situation in this area?
Luis: We are strong in propaganda work, but
our mass base and recruitment have to be strengthened. There are
still areas we had to abandon that have to
be recovered.
Me: How will the U.S. respond if the situation heats up?
Luis: We are taught that we will face U.S. imperialism.
Me: The NPA has been fighting for almost 30 years. How do you maintain morale?
Luis: We follow principle. We try not to repeat
mistakes. We teach people about protracted people's war. When
rectification first started, there was some
decline in morale. Now things are better overall. But we need to do
more political study. I want to raise my political
level.
Me: Can the revolution win?
Luis: Yes, there are more people wanting revolution than there are reactionaries.
Me: But what about the enemy's military strength?
Luis: The people are decisive.
Our discussion was winding down. It was time
for lunch. Which suited me just fine. Over the last few days I had
acquired a taste for the gabi (a green whose
stem and leaf are cooked in coconut milk), morsels of dried fish, and
rice that awaited us.