Evil cloaked in Greek letters

by Theodore Te

(For those who would read this post, do keep those injured by yesterday's bombing in your prayers, especially Ms. Raissa Laurel and another whose name I am unaware of, who are reported to be the most seriously injured and stand to lose their legs.)

Many, I included, thought at first that it was an extremely loud firecracker; in the nanosecond that it took me to realize that it was louder than most firecrackers, had an echo and that it shook the ground hard, a hush had descended over Taft Avenue.  Where, just seconds ago, there was loud cheering, drums pounding and people shouting, there was now an incredulous, unbelieving, surreal silence while people, I and the UP Law contingent included, started to slowly push backwards.

It was 5:00 in the afternoon, 26 September 2010.  The Bar Examinations of 2010 had officially ended, and the traditional Salubong [greeting and receiving of Bar examinees after last day of exam] was in full swing.
That was when the screaming started: from those on the pavement--mostly women, some half-seated, some lying prone--almost all bloodied--and from those who were scrambling to move out of the way.

That was when it dawned on many, me included, that the Bar Examinations 2010 Salubonghad been bombed.

My first concern was the UP Law contingent which included our guests, the drummers from the UP Pep Squad, and many students--not all of whom were known personally to me by name or by face.  I pushed back some physically to secure places and ordered others to retreat to the nearby McDonald's and stay there; grabbing hold of students I knew were leaders and/or part of  the UP LSG [Law Student Government] as well as my team members from the 2010 Bar Operations, I asked them to make an immediate head count--ask where their companions were, and if they were not physically at McDonald's, to account for where they were; some, like Tim, who was at Starbucks, called in helpful information as to who was there with them.

My second concern was for the parents, alumni, guests and friends whom we did not know personally but whom we knew would be there at the Salubong.  Those parents I knew (or had gotten to know through the four weekends of the Bar), I asked to just stay put at McDonald's.

My third concern was our bar candidates and our contact, Dan Sebollena, who had gone ahead to be closer to the exit gate so that the bar candidates could march out at the same time. We needed to also make a head count before they left, so we would be able to trace where people were because some had left ahead of the agreed upon 5:00 p.m. march out.

All throughout, while this was happening, there was a mad rush of people and muted whimpers, crying, and a general disbelief at what had just happened (though some, tastelessly, continued to cheer and even spray beer and other liquid) even as the police secured the area and carried off those who were wounded.

Looking at the crime scene (while the head counts were being taken) and the bomb blast site, I realized that if the bomb had gone off a few meters to the right, it would have hit UP Law people.  It was that close, and we were that blessed.  As I looked at the bloodied Taft Avenue, with UP Law pennants, fans and tarpaulins and with undistributed flowers strewn all over, I silently thanked God for protecting us even as I prayed for those who were injured.  Even now, as I write this, frantic appeals for blood donations are going out for Raissa Laurel, who faces the prospect of losing her legs as she undergoes surgery at the PGH. (Editor's note: As of posting time, both of Laurel's legs had already been amputated. Click here for story.)

It took us about an hour to account for all our people.  By that time, night was falling and my concern now was to get people home before night fell because the darkness could provide yet another venue for opportunistic criminals to strike.  We moved out in delegations--classmates, sororities, fraternities, the bar candidates and their families, other supporters.  Many stayed for a while at the nearby Starbucks to catch their breath or to simply shake off the disbelief.

That night, as we processed the raw information coming our way through various sources, it became clear that it was related to fraternity rumbles between rival fraternities of a Manila-based law school. Some had seen men in black running away a few seconds after the sound of the explosion. Others fed raw information about the rumbles that were on-going among several fraternities of some of the schools in the university belt.  All of us in that room, didn't find the news surprising as much as shocking.  Many of us knew just how stupid and senseless fraternities can get when it comes  to proving their manhood and their brotherhood to each other. But that night, a new realization came to me--probably also to the others in the room--the savagery of these "Greek-lettered men," who beat each other and others to a pulp, had transcended known civilized boundaries.

There is no justification for lobbing an explosive into a densely packed crowd of people who are oblivious to nothing but cheering for their friends, schoolmates, family and loved ones. Absolutely none.

There is nothing anyone can say to me that will convince me that one who would throw an explosive into a crowd did not deliberately plan to kill other people. Absolutely none.

It was an act done with malice, with premeditation, intentionally with the purpose of inflicting mortal harm.

That Ms. Laurel and the others did not die is a testament to Divine Intervention; that Ms. Laurel will probably end up a cripple is directly attributable to the cowards who hide behind the cloak of Greek letters and the skirts of their "brods."

As one of our students, a frat man himself, has pointed out in his blog posts, it is time to go beyond words and condemnation, and it is a time for more concrete action. I agree.

The fraternities at war yesterday must make the first move: surrender those responsible so that they may be prosecuted.  Otherwise, they reduce ALL Greek-lettered societies, many of them legitimate,  to nothing better than street gangs and organized criminal syndicates.

Other Greek-lettered societies must also do the right thing: more than just condemning the act and saying that "we don't do things like that", they must ensure that in admitting people into their ranks, they are absolutely certain that those with issues, those with homicidal streaks, those with anger management problems, those who are in fraternities for the absolutely "wrong reasons" should not be admitted; and if, somehow, some of these have made it into their number, that they are courageous enough to ensure that they are not let out into decent company, unless on an extremely short leash.

The culture of "my brother, wrong or right" must stop. There is such a thing as fraternal correction and, if necessary, discipline. The Supreme Court, which is in charge of legal education, and the universities and colleges must also take steps to ensure stricter regulation (I do not believe in prohibition as the fraternities will simply go underground and be totally unchecked), on pain of stringent sanctions, including expulsion and criminal prosecution, if warranted. The solution is not  a reflexive reaction of banning the Salubong, but perhaps ensuring that school fraternities' activities during the Salubong are regulated and monitored.  For some fraternities, adult supervision might be required; perhaps, for those fraternities, the dean of the law school needs to be required to be personally present at the Salubong.

September 26, 2010 will enter the history books as the day when the Bar Examinations were bombed and blood was spilled. For a country with notoriously short memories, this day should not be forgotten because it was the day that evil visited the Bar.

Lobbing an explosive at a crowd filled with innocents goes beyond the limits of stupidity, transcends the parameters of senselessness and breaches the borders of barbarism.  Plainly and simply, it was evil.

I recall what our dean said during the last Saturday evening Mass at the Hotel, as we sent off our candidates with the Lord's blessings.  Not known for his religious bent, the dean nonetheless, very presciently, warned  that  "Evil is disguised."  Informing our Bar candidates to be vigilant, the dean mentioned one simple truth--evil will not be revealed in the ways we expect, it will come in forms, hues, shapes and guises that we do not expect.

Prophetic and eerily accurate, the dean's words came true a few hours later.

On September 26, 2010, evil came to Taft Avenue, bearing a bomb and garbed in Greek letters.


(Reposted with permission by Mr. Theodore Te)

________


Source:

Te, Ted. Evil Cloaked in Greek Letters. 27 Sept. 2010. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=443328838971


Photo credit: 

ABS.CBN.


Reposts are licensed to the respective authors. Otherwise, posts by Jesusa Bernardo are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines.

UP History: Sustaining the Cornerstone of the National Democratic Movement

by Jose Maria Sison and Julieta de Lima

The US colonial regime established the University of the Philippines in 1908 in order to attract the cream of the Philippine intelligentsia towards a pro-imperialist and conservative kind of bourgeois liberalism, to draw them away from the anti-colonial and progressive kind of liberal ideas which had guided the old democratic revolution and to train and assimilate the professionals and bureaucrats for a semi-feudal social system in which the interests of US imperialism and domestic feudalism were harmonized.

In the first fifty years of its existence, the UP carried out well its colonial (1908-1946) and then neocolonial (starting 1946) mission of coopting and training the youth that passed through its portals. It maintained its equanimity as an academic institution of the status quo despite occasional controversies between its constituency or its officials and the state or government officials as well as the recurrent efforts of the sectarians of the dominant church to undermine the university's avowed secular and liberal character.

The founding of the Communist Party of the Philippine Islands in 1930, the Great Depression and the anti-fascist struggles in the 1930s and the revolutionary movement during World War II and up to the early 1950s stimulated the study of Marxism and the Philippine revolution among a few UP faculty members and students. But these successive events did not bring into being the cellular multiplication of study circles and revolutionary party groups nor any sustained mass movement, with an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character, among the UP constituency.

The most outstanding of the patriotic and progressive intellectuals produced by the UP before World War II included Jose Lansang, Salvador P. Lopez, the Lava brothers Vicente, Jose and Jesus, Dr. Agustin Rodolfo, Angel Baking, Samuel Rodriguez and Renato Constantino. With the exception of some, these intellectuals would continue to take and express the Left position and face the extreme reaction from the US imperialists and local reactionaries after the war. Some of them would be arrested and detained in 1950 and thereabouts. Those who were released tended to be cautious and expressed themselves in Aesopian language, within the bounds of nationalist and liberal terms. Aside from keeping academic and newspaper jobs, they became speech writers and political analysts for nationalist members of Congress.

Dr. Elmer Ordoñez the best living witness who has written about the anti-communist witchhunt and the resistance that took place on the UP campus from the early fifties to 1957. Even the liberal and logical positivist Dr. Ricardo Pascual was pilloried as a communist by religious sectarians and other anti-communists for supposedly organizing secret cells. Dr. Agustin Rodolfo was among those who formed the Society for the Advancement of Academic Freedom to resist the witchhunt. In those years of severe anti-communist suppression, the anti-imperialist speeches of Senator Claro Mayo Recto kept alive the spirit and hopes of the progressives in the UP from 1951 onwards. Recto was assisted by Renato Constantino. Senator Jose Laurel also expressed nationalist and liberal positions on certain major issues. He was assisted by Jose Lansang. 

When we were in UP Diliman for our undergraduate studies from 1956 to 1959, the Cold War was running high and the rabid anticommunists in our country were still touting McCarthyism, which had already been discredited in the US. The US puppet president Ramon Magsaysay and the like-minded UP president Vidal Tan sought to make the UP a regimented bulwark of anticommunism by using religious sectarianism as its base. Subservience to US imperialism was cultivated among faculty members and students through the US-influenced curricula and study materials as well as prospects of Fulbright, Smith Mundt and other US scholarships and travel grants, or highly-remunerated employment in US and local comprador corporations.

The struggle between the liberals and the religious sectarians was intense. Under the direction of their American Jesuit chaplain Fr. John P. Delaney up to his death in early 1956, the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) and its faculty version the Iota Eta Sigma had made political capital out of some fatal initiation hazing incidents in certain fraternities to discredit and subvert the nonsectarian and liberal character of the UP. They gave an anticommunist spin to their virulent opposition to the influence of the Recto nationalist crusade, the UP publication of Teodoro Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses: the Story of Bonifacio and the Philippine Revolution, the clamor for the study of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, and so on.

The Anti-Subversion Law was passed in 1957 supposedly in order to destroy once and for all the Marxist ideology and the CPP or any of its successor, extension or front by imposing the death penalty on the officers. It was drafted by the American Jesuit Fr. Arthur Weiss and the political officer of the US embassy openly lobbied for its passage in Congress. It was a bill of attainder, establishing guilt by association, and was meant to suppress the freedom of thought, speech and assembly. It would become a constant weapon of anti-communist witchhunt and oppression.

After Magsaysay died in a plane accident in 1957, his vice president, Carlos P. Garcia, assumed the presidency and won it in the elections in the same year. He appointed Dr. Vicente Sinco as UP president in 1958. The latter suspended the UP Student Council after it held a rally against his policy of preventing a religious organization like the UPSCA from dominating the council. He introduced the General Education Program with the objective of giving all college students a well rounded basic knowledge of the sciences and the humanities and developing their ability for critical thinking. He appointed as full professors Hernando Abaya, Teodoro Agoncillo, I.P. Soliongco, Armando Malay, and others who were well known for their patriotic and progressive writings. He also appointed as deans and heads of departments those who were patriotic and progressive. He promoted the colloquia on nationalism among the faculty members and students.

In the year 1958 we gained access to some Marxist books in the UP Main Library. The military had ordered these to be destroyed in 1950 or thereabouts. But the librarian simply put most of these aside, piled up uncatalogued and unclassified, at the basement of the UP Main Library where one of us found them among other donated second hand books. Students of library science were encouraged to volunteer in retrieving usable books from among the dusty piles. These were brought upstairs for cataloguing and classification and eventually added to the UP Library System collections. Thus were many Marxist and progressive books retrieved and made available to those interested in them.

We avidly read and studied these books as well as others that we borrowed from private collections, including that of a non-communist university professor and an Indonesian graduate student. We learned, particularly from Lenin and Mao, that the bourgeois democratic revolution of the new type (under the leadership of the working class) rather than of the old type (under the leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie) was necessary for the people to win victory in the struggle for national liberation and democracy in the era of modern imperialism and world proletarian revolution. We also learned that the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie must unite for the revolution to win victory.

The progressive liberal trend in the UP proceeded well even as an ambiguous side controversy occurred. The UP Journalism Club in early 1959 had invited Fr. Hilario Lim, a recent expellee from the Society of Jesus, to speak on the need to Filipinize religious institutions. We and the faculty adviser Prof. Armando Malay were chagrined by the refusal of the Sinco administration to let Fr. Lim speak on the ground of his being a religious, despite the fact that he was demanding the nationalization of religious and religious-run institutions in the Philippines. A few years later, Lim would step out of the Catholic clergy, join the faculty of the UP history department and become an outspoken advocate of the national democratic movement.


I. From SCAUP Founding to the Eve of KM Founding, 1959 to 1964

By 1959 when we founded the Student Cultural Association of the UP (SCAUP), we who were the core organizers drew from our study of Marxism and the history and circumstances of the Philippines the understanding that the Philippine revolution could be resumed under the leadership of the working class and that such a leadership could bring together the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

We considered the character of the UP and the possibility of developing the national democratic movement within the UP. We had no illusion that SCAUP or even all the UP students could change the character of the UP as a pro-imperialist and conservative liberal institution without the prior victory of the national democratic movement in society at large. But we aimed to build a ?rogressive university within the reactionary universityor develop the national democratic movement among the students, faculty members and non-academic employees.

It was with some sense of humor that we adopted the acronym SCAUP to stress the fact that we were diametrically opposed to the UPSCA as it was then. We also stressed that we were a cultural group, not a religious one. But we were most interested in raising the level of debate in the university from one between the liberals and the religious sectarians to one between the Left and the Right or one between the progressives and the reactionaries on basic and urgent social, economic, political and cultural issues. We used the terms nationalism and liberalism in a progressive way to mean anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, respectively.

We called for a Second Propaganda Movement to prepare the resumption of the Philippine revolution under global conditions of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution as well as under local semi-colonial and semi-feudal conditions. We were for the resumption of the Philippine revolution against US imperialism and the local exploiting classes. We were for national liberation, democracy, social justice and development. We were for academic freedom and civil liberties in the UP and we were definitely for upholding, promoting and advancing a system of education and culture that is of national, scientific and mass character.

We were of the view that that the Marxists and the progressive liberals could and had to unite in order to form the national democratic movement in the university and that they could also ally themselves even with the conservative liberals on certain issues, like academic freedom, civil liberties and welfare for all UP constituents. The SCAUP adopted two levels of education through seminar-style discussions. One was openly done on the principles, program and basic issues of national democratic movement among members and applicants for membership. The other was discreetly done among the most politically advanced SCAUP members because the Anti-Subversion Law prohibited the study of Marxism-Leninism and its relevance to the Philippine revolution.

It was sufficient for every SCAUP member to have a basic knowledge of the national democratic movement. As a form of initiation, applicants for membership were collectively and individually instructed on the movement and were assigned a book, article or a current issue to analyze and discuss. The discussions were carried out anywhere the participants wished, be it in a classroom, cafeteria or in the open air. The discreet discussions on Marxism-Leninism were done either on the campus grounds or in private homes.

The charter members of the SCAUP were graduate and undergraduate students. The organizational policy was to give priority to the recruitment of those who were already holding responsible positions in other campus organizations, who had the ability to write for the Collegian as editors and feature writers or who had the qualifications to run for the UP Student Council in case of restoration. The political and academic quality of the SCAUP was so high that sometimes some SCAUP members immodestly joked among themselves that they could someday take over the reactionary government from within. In fact, some would join and become cadres of the revolutionary movement and others enter the reactionary government and rise to the high positions of cabinet members, governor of the Central Bank, ambassadors, congressmen and senators and justices of the Supreme Court.

SCAUP members were encouraged to debate with their teachers and oppose reactionary ideas inside and outside classrooms. They had a keen interest in attending the colloquia on nationalism and in initiating or joining open forums where they had the opportunity to raise questions and debate with the speakers. Some SCAUP members regularly attended the seminars and informal discussions organized by the graduate assistant Petronilo Bn Daroy on behalf of Dr. Ricardo Pascual, dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences. They went there to test their knowledge of dialectical materialism by debating with the dean who was a logical positivist and to ventilate their political views and seek consensus on current issues with participants who were mostly graduate students and faculty members, including Dr. Agustin Rodolfo who could skilfully transliterate Marxist ideas in liberal language.

The members of fraternities who were members of SCAUP stood above inter-fraternity rivalries and took a common ground in opposing the UPSCA and attended SCAUP study meetings. Because of the vacuum created by President Sinco's suspension of the UP Student Council, they took the initiative in spearheading the formation of the Inter-Fraternity and Sorority Student Council (IFSC). This alliance would later make up for the limited membership of SCAUP and provide the broad organized base for arousing, organizing and mobilizing the UP students in 1961 against the witchhunt conducted by the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA) against the UP faculty members and students.

The CAFA invoked the Anti-Subversion Law and targeted for inquisition the editors of the Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities Review for having reprinted in 1958 the 1946 pamphlet Peasant War in the Philippines: A study of the causes of social unrest in the Philippines--an analysis of Philippine political economy the 1960 Philippinensian for the editorial ?ower of Babeland the Philippine Collegian for the March 1, 1961 feature article ?equiem for Lumumbaunder the SCAUP chairman's nom de plume, Andres Gregorio. The articles had an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal content. The editors were accused of subversion, promoting Marxism and the outlawed Communist Party.

The key leaders of the IFSC, who were also SCAUP members, convened the meeting of all campus organizations to agree on holding a demonstration in response to the CAFA witchhunt. The SCAUP, the IFSC and the Philippine Collegian rallied the students to the defense of academic freedom and civil liberties. The SCAUP drafted the manifesto and organized the machinery for the March 14, 1961 rally against CAFA. We prepared the placards at our rented cottage in Area 14 and at the Stalag 17 (the moniker for the quonset barracks left by the US Army). The SCAUP chairman and the graduate assistant Petronilo Bn Daroy arranged with the JD bus company and signed the rent contract for the buses to ferry the students from Diliman in Quezon City to Congress in downtown Manila.

Five thousand students converged on Congress and literally scuttled the CAFA hearings. This was the first demonstration of its kind, protesting against the anti-communist witchhunt and the Anti-Subversion Law and defending the freedom to express anti-imperialist and anti-feudal ideas, which the targeted publications carried. Following the resounding success of the anti-CAFA rally, the Philippine Collegian published a crescendo of editorials, columns and feature articles that did not only defend academic freedom and civil liberties but also propagated the ideas of the national democratic movement against imperialism and feudalism.

The consecutive editorships of Reynato Puno, Leonardo Quisumbing, Luis Teodoro, Jr., Ferdinand Tinio and Rene Navarro from 1961 to 1962 firmly established the predominance of Philippine Collegian editors who adopted the editorial policy that adhered to the line of the national democratic movement in the 1960s and thereafter. The editors either belonged to or were friendly to the SCAUP and welcomed the contributions of the SCAUP writers. The Philippine Collegian became a highly important vehicle for carrying and ventilating the ideas of the national democratic movement not only in the UP but also beyond. We also aimed to avail of the pages of the Literary Apprentice of the UP Writers' Club and the Diliman Review.

In addition to the Collegian, we had the Diliman-based littlemagazines that were dedicated to the task of stirring up anti-imperialist and anti-feudal ideas. These were the Fugitive Review, Cogent and Diliman Observer in 1960 and 1961. They were edited by such SCAUP writers as Peronilo Bn. Daroy and the SCAUP chairman, and were invariably short-lived for lack of funds to pay for printing. It would only be in 1963 that the Progressive Review could come out as a relatively stable publication, lasting up to 1968. The editorial board consisted of UP faculty members and graduate students.

As a result of the anti-CAFA rally, the teaching fellowship of the SCAUP Chairman was not renewed by the UP English Department. Also before being fired from the department, he engaged the department head in a debate on the pages of the Philippine Collegian regarding the content of a subject called Great Thoughtsin which the study materials were written predominantly by Catholic thinkers, like Cardinal Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Jacques Maritain, Belloc, Gibson, and so on. He demanded that progressive writings, including those of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other Marxist thinkers and revolutionaries, should also be accommodated in the subject.

Having lost his job at the UP, the SCAUP chairman gained time to do political work not only on the UP campus but also on other campuses. As a result of the anti-CAFA rally, students in other universities in downtown Manila took interest in the student movement in the UP. SCAUP promoted the formation of study circles among students in the Philippine College of Commerce, the University of the East, the Manuel L. Quezon University and the Lyceum University in 1961 and 1962. Eventually, the SCAUP members and their friends in the other universities in Manila would constitute a significant part of the student contingent at the founding of the Kabataang Makabayan in 1964.

The general secretary Jesus Lava of the underground merger party of the communist and socialist parties (MPCSP) tried to contact the SCAUP chairman soon after the March 1961 anti-CAFA rally. But the intermediary failed to deliver Lava's message to him. The SCAUP chairman went to Indonesia on a scholarship grant to study Bahasa Indonesia in the first half of 1962 and had the opportunity to study the Indonesian mass movement. From there he effected the flow of Marxist-Leninist reading materials to some faculty members and student activists in the UP and some other universities in Manila. It would only be in December 1962 that he could link with and join the MPSCP.

Soon after the anti-CAFA rally in 1961, we of the SCAUP were already planning to form a comprehensive youth organization by linking up with young workers, peasants and professionals. We joined the Lapiang Manggagawa (LM, Workers Party) and became active in its youth and research and education departments in the latter half of 1962. From this, we gained access to the young workers in several labor federations and major independent unions. We established links with the peasant association Malayang Samahan ng Magsasaka (MASAKA, Free Peasant Association) in 1963 and we visited a number of barrios in Central Luzon in order to encourage the peasant youth to join the projected Kabataang Makabayan.

After the anti-CAFA rally, the SCAUP initiated or joined a number of other mass actions. These included the campus protest action (in cooperation with the UP Student Union of which Enrique Voltaire Garcia III was chairman) against the appointment of Carlos P. Romulo as UP President and off-campus rallies and pickets against US imperialism on the issues of the US-RP Military Bases Agreement, the Laurel-Langley Agreement, US military intervention in Cuba and so on. The political mass actions initiated from1962 to 1964 by Lapiang Manggagawa on various issues were small, ranging from 500 to 1000 participants. The SCAUP promoted and assisted the campaign against the Spanish Law, which required students to take 24 units of Spanish. The campaign culminated in the demonstration of 50,000 people (the majority of whom came from the youth of Iglesia ni Cristo).


National Expansion of the New Democratic Movement, 1964-1968

The national democratic movement that started in the UP in the period of 1959 to 1964 became well established on a national scale in the period of 1964-1968. The UP student contingent took an outstanding role in the founding of the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) on November 30, 1964 and in its further development as a comprehensive youth organization for students as well as young workers, peasants, professionals and women. In turn, the national democratic movement developing in the entire country had salutary effects on the patriotic and progressive forces within the UP. The KM echoed and amplified the call of the SCAUP in 1959 for a Second Propaganda Movement.

Through the KM, students and young faculty members of the UP led by the KM chairman gained access to and cooperated with the Lapiang Manggagawa, which became the Socialist Party of the Philippines (SPP) in 1965, the trade union movement and the Malayang Samahan ng mga Magsasaka (MASAKA, Free Peasants Association). By its own efforts, the KM was able to organize new trade unions as well as community organizations in both urban and ruling areas. Eventually, it spearheaded the formation of the broad anti-imperialist alliance, Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN) on February 8, 1967.

As soon as it was founded in 1964, the KM established a chapter in the UP.. This had interlocking membership and always cooperated closely with SCAUP as a partner. The KM and SCAUP had their respective internal educational activities but they also had joint public activities. The SCAUP held the Claro Mayo Recto Lecture Series every year and the KM members attended these. The KM and SCAUP cooperated with other organizations such as the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (Philippine chapter) headed by Dr. Francisco Nemenzo, Jr. to popularize the anti-imperialist teach-ins, especially against the US war of aggression in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. The KM organized the inter-university Lecture Series on Nationalism.

In most semesters during the 1960s, the Philippine Collegian had as editors and writers either members or close friends of the the KM and SCAUP. It often carried feature articles promoting the national democratic line against imperialism and reaction. When revived in1966, the UP Student Council chaired by Enrique Voltaire Garcia III cooperated very well with the KM and SCAUP in promoting the national democratic line on intramural, national and international issues. It held the National Student Congress for the advancement of nationalism. The delegates joined the KM and gave it a national spread. As UP Student Council chairman and later as Collegian editor-in-chief, Garcia was outstanding in pursuing the national democratic line.

The KM dispatched educational-organizational teams to organize chapters in schools, factories, urban poor communities and rural areas. It also availed of the national conferences of national student organizations like the College Editors' Guild, National Students' League, Conference Delegates Association (CONDA), Student Council Association of the Philippines (SCAP) and the Student Christian Movement (SCM) to recruit KM members nationwide. The students recruited during such conferences were followed up by members of the KM National Council and by organization-education teams and were encouraged and guided to form KM chapters. Until after 1970, the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and the Student Catholic Action of the Philippines were usually run by the conservative and reformist student leaders from the Catholic schools.

The KM played the key role in planning and organizing the youth participation in the omnibus rally of 25,000 people on January 25, 1965 against US imperialism with regard to the Laurel-Langley Agreement, the US Military Bases Agreement and other forms of US control over the Philippines. The people rallied in front of the US embassy and marched in a torch parade to the presidential palace. The youth contingent was larger than those of workers and peasants. The protest action marked a new peak in mass mobilization by the national democratic movement. Some elements of the national bourgeoisie gave support to the mass action.

When US President Lyndon B. Johnson attended the so-called Manila Summit to round up support for the US war of aggression in Vietnam from governments in the Asia-Pacific region, UP students belonging to the KM were among those who picketed the summit at its Manila Hotel venue on October 23, 1966. The following day UP students mustered by both the KM and the UP Student Council composed the bulk of the 5000 students who protested against the summit and were attacked by the military and police. Consequently, the UP Student Council led by Enrique Voltaire Garcia III formed the UP Nationalist Corps to wage a nationwide campaign against state brutality and to conduct mass work among workers and peasants, thus reinforcing the work of the KM ?earn from the Masses, Serve the Peopleteams . The KM chairman had drafted the manifesto launching the UP Nationalist Corps.

In 1967, soon after the establishment of the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN) the MAN general secretary made the first draft and together with Renato Constantino formed a working group to make the MAN report against the further Americanization of the University of the Philippines under the presidency of Carlos P. Romulo. Romulo was acting as chief agent of the cultural agencies of the US government, US corporations and the Rockefeller, Ford and other US foundations. The KM and the SCAUP cooperated with all other patriotic student organizations, student leaders, campus writers and faculty members in a sustained campaign against the ideological and cultural dominance of US imperialism in the UP.

The Philippine Collegian, under the editorship of Miriam Defensor, would expose in 1968 the contract between the UP College of Agriculture in Los Bas and Dow Chemicals Inc. which was notorious for supplying the American armed forces in Vietnam with napalm and defoliants. This was followed by another Collegian exposof the contract between the same college and the US Air Force regarding the study of plant life, which could be used in US chemical and biological warfare in Vietnam and elsewhere. The student protests on the Diliman and Los Bas campuses forced the UP administration to cancel the contracts.

The chairman of Kabataang Makabayan who was concurrently vice chairman of the Socialist Party of the Philippines and general secretary of MAN published his book, Struggle for National Democracy, in 1967. This was a compilation of his articles and speeches on the issues and concerns affecting Philippine society as a whole and its various major sectors. It was avidly read by the activists of the youth, labor and peasant movements and served to consolidate their understanding of the national democratic movement. It stimulated the further advance of the movement for national liberation and democracy against US imperialism and the local reactionary classes.

Within the old merger party of the CPP and SPP, the debates and contradictions between the proletarian revolutionaries and the Lavaite revisionists came to a head in April 1967 when the latter made an organizational maneuver against the former who were the ones actually leading the mass movement. The proletarian revolutionaries had long criticized and wanted to repudiate the influence of modern revisionism centered in the Soviet Union and the major subjectivist and Right and Left opportunist errors in the previous 25 years within the MPCSP. They carried out a rectification movement to prepare for the reestablishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the waging of a protracted people's war against the ruling system.

By 1968 the Kabataang Makabayan had established chapters in the universities, colleges and high schools in nearly all provinces of the country. It provided the organizational framework for building a nationwide revolutionary movement. It established the schools for national democracy. It provided a nationwide broadcast network for the ideas of the national democratic movement. It was the training school of young activists not only from the schools but also from the factories, urban poor communities and farms. It gained repute for the spread of student strikes on a national scale. It was involved in a number of outstanding worker strikes. It struck roots among the peasant youth in Central and Southern Luzon.

As a result of the break of the proletarian revolutionaries from the MPCSP, the Lavaite revisionists formed the Malayang Pagkakaisa ng Kabataang Pilipino (MPKP) which took away a few scores of members from KM in 1968. Also in the same year a group of KM members who opposed a pre-congress proposal to elect Nilo Tayag as KM chairman broke away from the KM and formed the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK). The contradictions involved were not promptly and properly handled because we were then preoccupied with the intensified struggle against the Lava revisionist clique. However, the SDK proclaimed a national democratic line similar to that of the KM.


Mass Movement Against the Rise of Fascism, 1968-1972

What incubated in the UP from 1959 to 1964 and conspicuously spread nationally from 1964 to 1968 helped greatly in paving the way for the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines on December 26, 1968, and the rise of a powerful mass movement challenging the entire ruling system from 1969 to 1972. The national democratic movement grew in strength among the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata as the crisis of the semicolonial and semi-feudal ruling system worsened and the Marcos regime became more servile to imperialism, corrupt and brutal and prepared to impose a fascist dictatorship on the people.

Workers' strikes spread throughout the country in an unprecedented way in 1969. The peasants were likewise restive and demanded land reform, even as the Marcos regime became more intimidating and the religious sectarians, reformists and revisionists tried to lead them astray and calm them down. On March 29, 1969 the CPP founded the New People's Army and launched people's war. In November 1969, peasants from Central Luzon numbering 20,000, joined by their workers and youth supporters, massed in front of Congress in order to demand land reform.

Student strikes continued to spread throughout the country. They inspired the students to join the chapters of the KM and attend the KM schools for democracy. The UP Chapter of Kabataang Makabayan and SCAUP allied themselves with other student organizations to launch a strike in January 1969 and succeeded in moving the university administration headed by UP president Dr. Salvador P. Lopez to give in to most of the demands of the students, faculty members and non-academic employees. Being himself a libertarian and an advocate of the university as social critic, Dr. Lopez showed sympathy for the cause of the students and led the UP administration in preventing the outside police forces from entering the university campus.

Among the reforms demanded by the students and met by the UP administration were the representation of the students in the Board of Regents and the university councils and in the process of electing college deans and department heads, the autonomy of student organizations and optionality of having faculty advisers, transparency of university financial accounts, the spending of students' fees for the very purpose for which these are collected, and so on. Until now, many of the reforms won by the students in the period of 1969 to 1972 have been retained despite reactionary efforts to reverse or undermine them.

The Philippine Collegian under the editorship of Ernesto Valencia serialized Amado Guerrero's Philippine Society and Revolution (PSR) under the title Philippine Crisis in 1970. It was enthusiastically received and closely read by the students, especially with the understanding that it was a further development of Struggle for National Democracy (SND). The first edition of the PSR in book form in 1970 was sold out mainly in the lobbies at UP Diliman. The Collegian under the editorship of Antonio Tagamolila and the Amado V. Hernandez Foundation under the chairmanship of Antonio Zumel cooperated in publishing the second edition of the Struggle for National Democracy in 1971.

The Collegian under the editorship of Victor Manarang,Valencia, Tagamolila and Rey Vea from 1969 to 1972 brought to a new and higher level the adherence of the student publication to the national democratic line by publishing documents of the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines and articles of CPP chairman Amado Guerrero and other prominent progressives and anti-imperialists. Creative works in the form of short stories, poems and plays reflecting social reality and the discontent and revolutionary aspirations of the people appeared in the Collegian, Collegian Folio, Literary Apprentice and Ulos.

In late 1969 the KM and the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) reconciled along the national democratic line, with the former welcoming the latter's formal founding in January 1970.

The reconciliation gave further impetus to the development of the national democratic movement in the UP. It came in time for the preparations for the student strike on the UP campus in the second week of January 1970 and the demonstration in front of Congress against President Marcos' state of the nation address on January 25, 1970. The police brutality inflicted on the 10,000 mainly student demonstrators on this day ignited the First Quarter Storm of 1970.

The KM and other organized forces of the youth and the workers launched militant mass protests of 50,000 to 100,000 people every week (excluding the people who cheered along the streets and from windows of houses) during the first three months of 1970. They formed the Movement for a Democratic Philippines to broaden and strengthen the alliance against the rising brutality of the Marcos regime and at the same time frustrate the attempt of the revisionist party to outflank the progressive forces with the false charge that they were purely anti-Marcos and were not at all opposed to US imperialism.

The First Quarter Storm subsided. But mass protest actions by the student masses proceeded throughout 1970 in provincial capitals where the KM had established chapters. The mass protests resumed in Metro Manila with the May 1 worker-student demonstration and continued in earnest though intermittently through the rest of the 1970s on a wide range of domestic issues such as the superprofit-taking by the foreign monopolies, rising prices of fuel and basic commodities, anti-labor policies and practices and the lack of land reform and also on international issues such as the use of US military bases for aggression and military intervention in Southeast Asia and the escalation of the US war of aggression in Indochina.

On February 1, 1971 the UP students declared a strike to protest successive oil price hikes. The Marcos regime deployed military and police forces against the UP after a pro-Marcos member of the faculty killed Pastor Mesina, a freshman student. These prompted the students, the faculty members, nonacademic employees and other campus residents to unite and resist the hostile armed forces. They took over the entire university from the administration and proclaimed the Diliman Commune. They established barricades and other forms of defense and they improvised missiles and fireworks to discourage the helicopters from landing armed personnel.

They used the radio facilities of the university, increasing its power and range to broadcast to as far as Palawan revolutionary propaganda against the Marcos regime, including the reading of all three chapters of Philippine Society and Revolution. They also used the UP printing press to print leaflets and publish their own revolutionary newspaper. They renamed the buildings of the university after revolutionary leaders. The Diliman Commune promptly captured national attention and gained wide and enthusiastic support. Food, clothing, and all sorts of donations and other forms of encouragement poured in continuously, some coming from far-flung provinces. Workers, public transport drivers, students from other schools and assorted volunteers came to reinforce the barricades.

The Diliman Commune ended on February 9, 1971 only after the UP administration accepted several significant demands of the students and the Marcos regime accepted the recommendation of the UP president to end the military and police siege and declare assurances that state security forces would not be deployed against the university. After the Diliman Commune, the broad masses of the Filipino people continued to engage in legal protest actions on a nationwide scale. The Marcos regime confronted these with increasing violence. On August 21, 1971 it attacked the opposition by lobbing grenades at the Liberal Party miting de avance at Plaza Miranda in order to have the pretext for blaming communists and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. It arrested the leaders of KM and other progressive organizations and raided their offices and homes.

The KM and all other progressive forces in the Movement for a Democratic Philippines recognized the rising threat of fascism and expanded their alliance by forming the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL). This included the reformists, bourgeois nationalists, anti-Marcos reactionaries and religious organizations. Activists most likely to be arrested by the regime either went underground or prepared to go underground. Nevertheless, the legal forces of the national democratic movement continued to mobilize the people in order to make protests and demands.

Under the auspices of the MCCCL, the legal mass protests continued until September 21, 1972 when 25,000 demonstrators denounced the plot to declare martial law. Indeed, Marcos started the mass arrests on September 22, issued the declaration of martial law on September 23, 1972 and imposed a fascist dictatorship on the people for the next 14 years. The legal forces of the national democratic movement went underground but took deeper roots in the UP and in the entire country, especially because the armed revolution raged in the countryside and kept the hopes of the people alive.

Enrique Voltaire Garcia III set the example and established the tradition of pursuing the national democratic line in the UP Student Union and Student Council. But more importantly, the student organizations and the student masses welcomed and followed the national democratic line. Student parties competed for support from the students along this line during the campus elections. By 1970 every student party and almost every campus organization wanted to be recognized as having a national-democratic character.

The KM and SDK were the engines of the student parties that excelled in espousing the national democratic line. They generated the kind of student leadership that culminated in the militant presidency of Gerry Barican of Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan and the student party Partisans and Eric Baculinao of Kabataang Makabayan and the student party Sandigang Makabansa (formerly Partisans) in 1969 to 1971. However, as long as the ruling reactionary system remained, the national democratic line in the UP Student Council could not always remain secure. 

The Marcos regime and the intelligence services pushed the fraudulent election of a reactionary student leader to the presidency of the UP Student Council for 1971-1972 by literally using smear tactics against the Sandigang Makabansa candidates. Famous slogans from the writings of Mao (like ?ppose Book Worshipand ?ombat Liberalism were smeared in red paint on the walls of the university and furniture were thrown out from buildings on the eve of the campus elections. This vandalism was ascribed to the progressive student party in order to misrepresent it  and swing the votes to the reactionary party. It was a coup calculated to cripple the UP Student Council and national democratic movement in the UP in preparation for the Marcos coup d'etat. But in the campus elections of 1972, a few months before the declaration of martial law, the Sandigang Makabansa headed by the candidate for chairman Jaime Tan won by a landslide.

Due to space constraint, we have referred to the principal mass organizations as active factors and indicators in the development of the national democratic movement. Also deserving of attention were those traditional organizations and institutions that adopted in varied ways and degrees the aims of the national democratic movement. Many individual officers and members of the fraternities and sororities became militants of the national democratic movement and tried to reorient their organizations. The Alethea, the Kilusang Kristyano ng Kabataang Pilipino (KKKP) and the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) gained adherents among religious believers. The rabid religious sectarians that were associated with the UPSCA and Iota Eta Sigma seemed to recede.

The years 1969 to 1971 saw a flurry of mass organizing along the national democratic line. Various student organizations arose as affiliates and allies of KM and SDK. They formed their respective cultural performing and visual arts groups, like Panday Sining and Nagkakaisang Progresibong Artista at Arkitekto (NPAA) of KM and Gintong Silahis and Sining Bayan of SDK.There were the mass formations based on certain colleges in UP Diliman, such as the Progresibong Samahan sa Inhinyeria at Agham (PSIA) in the College of Engineering, the NPAA in the College of Fine Arts, the Progresibong Kilusang Medikal (PKM) in the College of Medicine and the Samahan ng mga Makabayang Mag-aaral ng Batas (SMMB) in the College of Law. The propagandists formed the Samahan ng mga Progresibong Propagandista. The UP faculty members had their own progressive organization, Samahan ng mga Guro sa Pamantasan (SAGUPA).

The national democratic movement reached and swept the UP units in Los Baños, Baguio and Tarlac. It was strongest in UP Los Baños because the SCAUP, KM and SDK chapters were formed soon after their Diliman counterparts were established and because this unit had the largest student population among the UP extension units. The progressive students led the student government and edited the student publication. They aroused and mobilized the student masses to support the Diliman Commune and make their own demands. UP Los Baños became the beacon of other schools and colleges in the Southern Tagalog region and the staging base for long protest marches to Metro Manila.

The basis and course of development of the national democratic movement in UP Baguio were similar to those of UP Los Baños . Progressive students and young instructors built chapters of the KM and SDK. The student members led the student government and took charge of the student publication. The teachers espousing the same general line formed the Ugnayan ng Makabayang Guro (UMAGA). UP Baguio became a base for organizing KM chapters in other schools, universities and communities in Baguio City and the provinces of the Cordillera. UP Tarlac also became a base for progressive student organizing in Central Luzon.

National mass organizations came into being, with UP students, faculty members and alumni as members. They included Students for the Advancement of National Democracy (STAND), League of Editors for a Democratic Society (LEADS), Katipunan ng mga Samahang Manggagawa (KASAMA), Pagkakaisa ng mga Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (PMP), Katipunan ng mga Gurong Makabayan (KAGUMA), Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA), Panulat para sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan (PAKSA), Samahan ng mga Makabayang Siyentipiko (SMS) and Makabayang Samahan ng mga Nars (MASANA). The CPP formed party groups in various types of mass organizations and groups of professionals. From these would arise the allied organizations within the National Democratic Front.

The fascist dictatorship failed to destroy the national democratic movement in the university and in the entire country. It only succeeded in unwittingly persuading many of the UP students, teachers and alumni to join the people's struggle for national liberation and democracy. The best sons and daughters of the university became communists and sought to remould themselves as proletarian revolutionaries. Many of them decided to participate in the people's war, contributing whatever abilities they had and ever ready to make the necessary sacrifice in order to advance the revolutionary cause.

From one reactionary regime to another after the fall of Marcos in 1986, the national democratic movement has kept a deeply-rooted foundation in the UP and has always strived to grow in strength against tremendous odds. So long as the semicolonial and semifeudal system persists, the movement goes through ups and downs and twists and turns for whatever reason at any given time. So far, it continues to exist and grow because there is a fertile ground and need for it and the activist organizations and individuals are inspired by the noble cause of serving the people and carrying on the struggle to which so many revolutionary martyrs and heroes from the UP have dedicated their lives. The UP constituents are ever critical of the dire conditions of society and are ever desirous of change for the better.

In the last fifty years, the national democratic movement has become the principal challenge to the pro-imperialist and reactionary character of the University of the Philippines. It aims to overthrow the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system and liberate the university completely so that it can become the shining center for upholding, defending and promoting national independence and democracy, development through national industrialization and land reform, a national, scientific and popular system of culture and education, and international solidarity and peace. ###

(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Joma Sison)

__________

Sison, Jose Maria and de Lima, Julieta. "Foundation for Sustained Development of the National Democratic Movement in the University of the Philippines." In  Serve the People: Ang Kasaysayan ng Radikal na Kilusan sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Ed. by Bienvendo Lumbera, Judy Taguiwalo et al (Manila: IBON Foundation, CONTEND & ACT, 2008)

Photo Credits:

http://fqslibrary.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/photo-gallery-january-30/

http://www.worldendeavors.com/main/programbrochure/programid/38

The Incubation of Activism in the University of the Philippines

by Prof. Jose Maria Sison

The waves of mass protest actions that followed the murder of Benigno Aquino in 1983 and culminated in the overthrow of the Marcos facsist dictatorship in 1986 would not have been possible without the incubation of student activists of the national democratic movement through the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP), starting in 1959.

UP Oblation
(Photo: Liezl Buenaventura)

The student activists originating from the UP stirred up the masses of youth and working people to conduct concerted protest actions, shaking the entire country in the entire 1960s, from the demonstration of 5000 UP student demonstrators that literally scuttled the anti-communist witchhunt of the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities (CAFA) in March 1961 to the First Quarter Storm of 1970 which rocked the national capital region with almost weekly marches and rallies of 50,000 to 100, 000 people against the Marcos regime.

In my undergraduate years in UP from 1956 to 1959, there was already a certain amount of intellectual and political ferment. The controversies arose mainly from the contradictions between the religio-sectarians and the liberal secularists. But it was often the rhetorical device of the latter to complain about the apathy of the students in order to arouse and range them against conservatism and the desire of the religio-sectarians to hark back to medieval and theocratic times.

 
The religio-sectarians of the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) and Iota Eta Sigma were pleased with the UP presidency of the church militant Dr. Vidal Tan. They were riding high in campus politics by harping on some fatal cases of fraternity hazing in the recent past, justifying the need for more religion in the state university and running counter to the separation of church and state. They were opposed among others to the Noli-Fili law and Prof. Teodoro Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses. Emboldened by the Anti-Subversion Law of 1957, they accused the logical positivist Prof. Ricardo Pascual of being a communist organizing communist cells.

The liberal secularists upheld the separation of church and state, the freedom of thought and belief and academic freedom. They had engaged in mass protests against the interference of the Philippine president in university affairs. After the resignation of Dr. Vidal Tan, who was known as a placeman of the dominant church, Dr. Vicente G. Sinco eventually became UP president and tilted the situation in favor of the liberal secularists by suspending the UP Student Council under the presidency of the UPSCAN Fernando Lagua, by giving full professorial tenure to progressive lecturers like Hernando Abaya, Armando Malay I.P. Soliongco and by launching the Colloqium on Nationalism.

In my personal case, I believe that I matured in 1958 as a progressive liberal under the influence of my liberal professors and as a result of reading the scholarly works on the Philippine revolution by Professors Teodoro Agoncillo and Cesar Adib Majul. I considered myself as a Jacobin rather than as a Girondist or a conservative Burkean liberal and I became strongly critical of the pro-imperialist conservative liberal that was bred in the UP by the unceasing ovewhelming influence of the US. Within 1958, I became an exceedingly devoted student of Marxism by gaining access to the forbidden Marxist books in the cellar of the UP Main library and borrowing books from the private collection of some friends.

Within the context of Marxism-Leninism and the world era of modern imperialism and proletarian revolution, I understood that the Philippine revolution needed to be resumed for the benefit of the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata under the class leadership of the proletariat and no longer under the leadership of the
bourgeoisie.

In this connection, I thought that the prevalent contradiction of the liberal secularists and religio-sectarians needed to be elevated to one between the Left and the Right not only on the issues of civil and political rights but on a comprehensive range of issues involving the contradiction between the US-dominated ruling system of big compradors and landlords and the national and democratic demands of the people.

Together with other students, both undergraduates and graduate, we formed in 1959 the Student Cultural Association of the UP. We adopted a two-level program of education for members. The national democratic program was openly promoted. The Marxist program was discreetly carried out. We recruited those students who were already leading other campus organizations, those who could write for the Philippine Collegian and could compete for the editorship and those who had academic marks of 2 or higher for the purpose of someday fielding them as candidates for the student council.

The first big opportunity of the SCAUP to organize a mass protest was in March 1961 in opposition to the congressional witchhunt by the Committee on Anti-Filipino Activities against UP faculty members and students who were accused of writing or publishing Marxist materials in violation of the Ant-Subversion Law. These included the book-length Peasant War in the Philippines in Philippine Social Science and Humanities Review, the editorial Tower of Babel in the Philippinensian yearbook of 1961 and Requiem for Lumumbain the May 1, 1961 issue of Philippine Collegian, written under my pen name Andres Gregorio.

The SCAUP membership was of high quality. It included the Philippine Collegian editor Reynato Puno, key members of fraternities and sororities and graduate students like Rey Punongbayan, Jaime C. Laya, Petronilo Daroy and myself who was the chairman. But the SCAUP was too small. It needed a broad front of leadership to call on the students to join the mass protest in Congress.

The Inter-Fraternity and Sorority Conference (IFSC), which was chaired by SCAUP officer and Alpha Phi Betan Ferdinand Tinio, assumed the responsibility of calling on the students to defend academic freedom and protest against the CAFA witchhunt. Petronilo Bn Daroy, Heherson Alvarez and I signed the contract for the rent of 25 JD buses for the student ride from Diliman to Manila. We were able to muster 5000 students in the first demonstration with an anti- imperialist and anti-feudal character since more than a decade ago.

From 1961 to 1964, the SCAUP took a key role in organizing pickets, strikes and rallies of varying sizes by UP students alone or in combination with students from other universities on such issues as national independence against unequal agreements with the US (especially Laurel-Langley Agreement and the Miliitary Bases Agreement), land reform and national industrialization, workers' rights, civil and political liberties and solidarity with other peoples against US acts of aggression in various countries.

By the time that Kabataang Makabayan was formed as a comprehensive youth organization in 1964, a number of the activist alumni of the SCAUP had already moved into key positions in the Workers Party (Lapiang Manggagawa) and in worker, peasants and teachers organizations and were in a position to convene delegations of young workers, young peasants, students and young professions in order to found the KM. In UP Diliman, the SCAUP and the KM chapter co-existed, cooperated with each other and conjoined with still other organizations in mass protest actions on and off the campus.

S.P. Lopez speaks before UP students at AS steps, after Jan. 26, 1970  rally at Congress

The student activists that originated from UP Diliman played an important role in propagating the line of struggle for national liberation and democracy against the US and the local exploiting classes, in building major national organizations taking such line and in promoting mass protest actions as the instrument of the people for realizing their national and democratic demands. From year to year the youth movement spread and intensified, leading to the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and further developing nationwide up to 1972 when the Marcos regime declared martial law and imposed a fascist dictatorship on the people.

The fascist regime suppressed the urban-based mass movement and caused the detention, torture and murder of the activists. But many thousands of the activists went underground in the urban areas as well join the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside. They were responsible for protest mass actions in urban areas from time to time from 1972 to 1983.

In the 1981-83 period, the urban-based mass organizations of workers, peasants and youth were already openly resurgent despite vicious reaction from the fascist regime against the trade union leaders. But consequent to the Aquino assassination, the regime was utterly isolated and dazed by the public outrage. The mass organizations of the national democratic movement became the core of sustained protest mass actions that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. ###


(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Jose Maria Sison)

_________


Source:

Jose Maria Sison, Bachelor of Arts in English, Class 1959. June 26, 2010. 2010 Yearbook of the University of the Philippines.


Photo credits:

(UP AS, First Quarter Storm). First Quarter Storm Library Site. http://fqslibrary.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/photo-gallery-january-30/

(Book Cover). http://www.defendsison.be/pages_php/0408122.php

(UP Oblation) Liezl Buenaventura site. http://buenaventura.carbonmade.com/projects/98014#11


*********

A professor’s journey*

(* Delivered at a symposium sponsored by the Third World Studies Center, 4 March 2010, email forwarded by Mr. Herman Tiu Laurel)

by FRANCISCO NEMENZO
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

In a short essay published by Inquirer the other Sunday, Gen. Danilo Lim traced his “journey” from a West Point educated officer to a rebel soldier and a political prisoner. Today I shall match his story with the story of my own journey from rabid anti-militarism to an avid supporter of Gen. Lim.

    My narrative starts from the Manila Hotel where, soon after EDSA 1, the Marcos loyalists gathered to clamor for the enthronement of Arturo Tolentino. Having learned from a very reliable source that some of the RAM boys participated in planning that comic affair, I went around frantically warning of an insidious plot from the politicized soldiery or what I termed the “politicians in uniform.”

    That paranoid response stemmed from the assumption that by the nature of their profession, soldiers are essentially reactionary and authoritarian; they should therefore be kept on leash, banished from politics and placed under firm civilian control.

    I began to change my mind when, in connection with a research project for the UN University on “the politicization of the military and the militarization of politics,” I studied several military coups in other parts of the world. I came across instances when the military played a definitely positive role of overthrowing right-wing dictatorships and setting in motion the process of system change.

    To illustrate, let me cite the “carnation revolution” in Portugal. Portuguese fascism was the oldest in Europe, antedating Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. Antonio de Oliviera Salazar founded the first fascist state in 1926. He was ruthless but was more subdued than Hitler and Mussolini. The Salazar regime survived World War II because with the outbreak of the Cold War the United States – the self-appointed champion of the “free world” – coddled it as an ally against communism.

After 42 years in power, the Portuguese tyrant died in 1968; but before going into a coma he was able to arrange a smooth transition to handpicked successors. So well entrenched did the successor regime appear to be that political scientists specializing in the study of Portugal did not expect it to fall any time soon. Yet in April 1974 it collapsed like the proverbial colossus with feet of clay.

This event known as the “carnation revolution” caught the Portugal watchers by surprise because, trapped in the conventional paradigm of political science, they only monitored the puny resistance of the liberal and social democratic parties. They completely overlooked the undercurrents in the armed forces, believing that the military would always be a bastion of fascist rule. As it turned out, it was a military group that crushed the backbone of fascism in Portugal.

The experts were oblivious of the fact that the junior officers, fresh from the African campaigns, had been radicalized by their own experience in the battlefield. They realized that they were duped to fight an unjust war by a government that was also oppressing the Portuguese people themselves. Back in Lisbon, they formed a secret society called Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) and in April 1974 they launched a coup against the dictatorship.

The MFA junta (known as the Junta for National Salvation) adopted a socialist program and released from colonial rule not only the Portuguese colonies in Africa, but also East Timor, a somnolent territory where there was no pre-existing independence movement. Unfortunately, the progressive military regime lasted only for two years. Unlike Col. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the MFA did not build a mass base for its radical reforms. Moreover, they didn’t know how to govern: they mismanaged the economy and were clumsy in the conduct of international diplomacy. Their ineptitude created an opening for the deposed elite to instigate a counter-coup in collaboration with the CIA.

    With such cases in mind, my monograph on the politics of the military already reflected my growing ambivalence. Coincidentally, I presented the monograph to a UN University seminar in Katmandu on the eve of the 1989 coup in Manila. When this erupted, I could not make up my mind. I had lost enthusiasm for Cory Aquino but neither could I be enthusiastic about the coup. I faulted Cory for restoring the old system of elite rule, an oligarchy masquerading as democratic. But the alternative was not alluring. There was a strong suspicion that the coup aimed to install Ponce Enrile and Salvador Laurel; in other words, another reshuffle of personnel at the top that would leave the system of elite rule intact.

    Danny Lim, then a captain of the Scout Rangers, took part in that coup as leader of the Young Officers Union. I did not have the slightest idea of what vision inspired. It was only when he got out of detention that I met him through Haydee Yorac. Our long conversations convinced me that the YOU resembled the MFA of Portugal, that it represented a trend whose political outlook was not too different from mine.
Let me summarize the insights drawn from my studies on the military in the process of social change.

    There never was an instance in the history of any country when a repressive regime was brought down through purely civilian action or “people power.” Regime change through extra-constitutional means invariably involves a military component. Three possible scenarios can be considered in the Philippine context: (1) the military as a whole turns against the regime, as happened in EDSA 2; (2) part of the military breaks with the chain of command and joins the insurgent citizenry, as in EDSA 1; and (3) the mass movement builds its own army and, through protracted war, beats the government armed forces, as Joma has been dreaming over the last four decades.

    At the Katmandu seminar, an Indian scholar reproached me for ignoring the case of India where, he said, national liberation was achieved through non-violence in a purely civilian struggle. In fact, I studied that as well. But my study of the Indian case led me to believe that Gandhi’s satyagraha could not have succeeded were it not for a threat of a violent upheaval. The British conceded to the Mahatma’s demands whenever he went on hunger strike because the alternative to Gandhi was Subhas Chandra Bose, a stern advocate of violent revolution. Were it not for the prospect of Subhas Chandra Bose seizing the leadership of the independence movement, the British might have allowed what Winston Churchill described as a “half-naked fakir” to fast himself to death. Later events confirmed this hypothesis. Once the murder of Gandhi removed his restraining moral authority, the Hindus and Indian Moslems immediately embarked on the worst carnage in history.

    It is wrong to view the Philippine military as one solid bloc. All assurances from the office of Col. Brawner that everything is under control cannot conceal the widespread restlessness among the Filipino soldiers today. True, most generals belong to the conventional mold. They peddle the myth of political neutrality. In truth, the Philippine military has always been politically involved . . . on the side of the power elite, against the peasant movements and the militant trade unions. The predecessors of the AFP were the Filipino mercenaries recruited by the Americans to suppress their compatriots.

    For circumstances too complex to analyze here, a new trend has emerged in the uniformed services. There is a growing network of thinking soldiers who do not blindly obey orders from above. Unlike Tennyson’s foolish light brigade who meekly marched to the jaws of death, believing that their’s is not to reason why but simply to do or die, the thinking Filipino soldiers ask whether the orders are legitimate and moral, and they always stand for what is true, just and right.**

    I will leave it for Gen. Danny Lim to explain how this came about. Just allow me to express a view which he might not like to hear: that his election to the Senate will not in itself make a difference to the future of our country for as long as the system of elite rule prevails. He will be a solitary voice in an elite-dominated and trapo-infested legislature. I have no illusion that he will succeed in passing laws to institutionalize fundamental reforms. But even if such a miracle does happen, the laws he sponsors will be diluted by the President through his/her power to set the implementing rules and his/her control over the release of funds. Ultimately these laws will be perverted by a bureaucracy that is susceptible to elite and American pressures.

    Nonetheless, I will vote for Gen. Lim because he represents a force that, in tandem with the militant mass movement, opens up the prospect for a just and progressive society our people deserve. A vote for him is a slap on the faces of the trapos and the crooked generals who keep him in prison. Sa paningin ko, ang kahalagahan ng election ay symbolic lamang at hindi katulad sa sinasabi ng ABS-CBN na ito ang simula ng pagbabago.

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** Contrary to the impression of Dr. Clarita Carlos, I am not suggesting that soldiers should debate what to do before going to battle. I know the logic of war well enough to see that in the midst of an operation the soldiers must obey the ground commander. I have in mind orders that involve policy issues. For example, the order for the Marine units in Maguindanao to assist in electoral fraud. As Gen. Gudani and Col. Balutan attested, many of the Marine officers found this objectionable, but they were gagged as Gen. Lim is being prevented from participating in our forum today.

Backgrounder:

RP: In Chaos and Darkness