By NINOTCHKA ROSCA
Author, "At Home in the World:
Portrait of a Revolutionary.
Conversations with jose Maria Sison"
Universite de Quebec a Montreal
May 29, 2004
At the end of the day, the question is always that
most famous one: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? It seems that the forces
of reaction ranged against those who would bring basic rights
and freedoms, and who would expand our ideas of what human and
civil rights should be – it would seem that forces opposing
those who would do this are formidable and impossible to conquer.
As a woman of the Philippines, though long exiled from that country
by such forces and by circumstances beyond my control, I turn
as always to the Filipino people for inspiration and guidance.
In the recent elections, the national democratic movement fielded
six parties to challenge a partylist field chockfull of reformists
and reactionaries, some of them of the most rabid type. These
six parties represented classes and sectors which rarely have
a voice in Philippine politics and in the power structure of the
country: workers and peasants, women, youth, Filipino Muslims,
migrant workers and a coalition of progressive forces in the country.
They faced an unbelievable battle, perhaps not as dramatic as
the siege of Fallujah in Iraq but a struggle nevertheless.
They were labeled “communist fronts,” accused of
terrorism, cheated out of votes, harassed and suppressed. The
act of suppression began long before even the campaign period
itself, with the murder of a vice-mayor in Mindoro, a woman affliated
with GABRIELA Philippines. Since then, 43 men and women have been
killed in the effort to ensure that those who have been “invisible”
in Philippine politics will have a presence.
Despite reaction’s full-court press against the six parties
led by Bayan Muna, three have garnered the mandatory 2% vote,
with another one inching towards it, to have representation in
congress. This is remarkable achievement in itself. In two years’
time, the three representatives elected under BAYAN Muna have
become six – a gain of 100%. Let those who aver that the
Left has been marginalized in the archipelago eat their words.
The elected representatives represent a vote of over 2 million
voters.
Two million in support of the national democratic movement. Looking
at this from the point of view of the beginnings of the people’s
revolt against the US-imposed socio-economic system in the Philippines
in the post-WWII era, I am thinking of the 5,000 students who
scuttled the hearings of the House Committee on Un-Filipino Affairs
back in the Sixties. Five thousand compared to over two million.
I am thinking of the 70 men and women who founded Kabataang Makabayan.
70 compared to two million. I am thinking of the very small group
that re-established the Communist Party of the Philippines and
founded the New People’s Army. And I am inclined to begin
enthusiastically patting everyone on the back. Think of it: two
million. Two million people! Never in our wildest dreams…
But then of course I think of time. From 1969 to the present
is a long chunk of time, a lifetime for many of us. Last month,
there were celebrations in the Philippines marking the 45th year
of service to the movement by Jose Maria Sison. Kalibre 45 was
the name given to this series of homage for the man whose case
we have been discussing over this weekend. Forty-five years of
service equal a lifetime.
A character in one of Andre Malraux’s books says: “It
takes fifty years to make a man and when he’s a man, he’s
only good for dying.” I have heard Jose Maria Sison say
that reaching his 60th birthday was like receiving a death sentence.
Nevertheless, he lives and continues to be of service to his people.
As we all do. We persevere, because the alternative of surrender
to reaction and imperialism is impossible to contemplate. If we
surrender, then though we breathe, we are truly dead.
When the movement begun post-WWII – and I emphasize this
because the impulse towards independence has had many, many beginnings
in the history of our country – when it begun, most of us
were convinced we would not even reach the age of 30, that a murderous
state supported by an oppressive imperial power would kill us.
That was why we recruited and organized with all due fury, increasing
the number of the aware four-fold, ten-fold, in as short a time
as possible.
Memory and the present bring me to this point. I look at the
two million and think, had they been three, four, five, six or
ten million… Well. Perhaps I wouldn’t worry so much
about global warming and the seas rising to drown the islands,
and of the need for arcologies to preserve what we now call Filipino.
I will digress somewhat and recount a story I read when I was
seventeen years old. I think it was written by Bertolt Brecht.
Though the authorship escapes me now, the story remains vivid
in my mind. It was about a group of workers in a remote swampland
who had a little money which set aside to celebrate the birthday
of Lenin. They talked about parades and feasts and dinners, all
of them trembling because they were afflicted with malaria, every
single one of them. At the end of a long discussion, this is what
they decided: that they would take the money set aside for the
commemoration of Lenin’s birthday; they would purchase kerosene
and pour this into the infected swamps, to kill the larva of the
malaria-bearing mosquito. Then they would have a quiet dinner
and speak of the significance of what they have done.
I am only a simple storyteller, a writer, but it seems me to
me that the best homage and the best support we can provide Prof.
Sison is one that will increase our strength, add to our determination
and increase our ability to combat imperialist terrorism and oppression.
To do that over the next 12 months, each of us must bring the
message of struggle and liberation even to just five more men
and women. Just five more to become aware, to comprehend to understand
and to act along with us against the forces of oppression and
suppression. Just five more to reject the terrorist label attached
to Prof. Sison; just five more determined souls to walk the path
of light towards equality, democracy and freedom.
And so I leave you with this call for a collective and personal
resolve: to increase our forces five-fold within the next year
and for each of us to recruit and organize JUST FIVE MORE.
Earlier, Ms. Coni Ledesma quoted a line from a poem by Dylan
Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I have another line from him. Just five more and as Dylan Thomas
wrote: Death shall have no dominion.
Thank you.