Philippines: Struggle of Generations
Diana Dougherty
Written in March 1981, on the occasion of International Women's Day, this article is available from the Philippine Solidarity Network, 707 Wisconsin St., San Francisco,
California 91407, USA.
Raised in the "big city " of Manila, Delia now spends her days in the remote provinces of northern Luzon--the Philippines' largest island. A slight woman in her late twenties, she can be seen negotiating steep mountain trails on her way from one barrio (village) to the next, lugging a backpack filled with her few belongings-some books and writing paper, a change of clothes, a flashinght, toothbrush, towel, soap and a small medicine kit. Fastened around her waist is an ammo belt containing several clips and a grenade, while slung over her right shoulder is her faithful companion--an M-1 carbine.
Delia is a guerrilla. Like scores of other young students from Manila's Many universities, she put aside her studies after President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, to join the ranks of the New People's Army (NPA)-the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The Party and army are part of the National Democratic Front, a broad front fighting to overthrow the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship and replace it with a genuinely nationalist and democratic government committed to the implementation of a ten-point programme, the centerpiece of which is a thoroughgoing agrarian reform.
A veteran of almost a decade of struggle, Delia has seen many military encounters with government soldiers. For one whole year she and her kasamas (comrades) hiked the length of the Sierra Madre mountain range in eastern Luzon, pursued by the military. During this "long march", they subsisted on bananas and edible leaves and berries. They learned the meaning of hunger. Today, Delia serves in the regional Party secretariat, helping provide political guidance to the people's army
In the Bicol region on the southern tip of Luzon, Ka. (short for Kasama) Cynthia reflects on her life in the NPA. With two children, she has taken pains to explain to them that, just because she cannot raise them and care for them herself, it does not mean she loves them any less. She tries to make them understand that their parents (her present husband is also an NPA fighter) are seeking to make possible a better life for them as vwell as for all Filipino children. "If I don't guide them", Cynthia remarks, "when they grow up they may become distant not only from their parents but also from the movement".
Ka. Cynthia too has seen combat and has narrowly escaped death on several occasions. One October day in 1977 eleven Philippine Constabulary (PC) soldiers took her and her three comrades by surprise as they rested in the hut of a coconut farmer. She and two others managed to retreat unharmed, but her first husband, Ka. Diego, was pinned down and then gunned down by the government troops.
Ka. Cynthia has a price on her own head. She has already spent one year behind bars, back in 1973. At one point in her prison ordeal, PC General Fidel Ramos decided that Ka. Cynthia and her thirty female companions should "entertain" the cadets at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio. When Cynthia and three fellow detainees refused to go along with the plan, they vwere sent to the regional commander for Southern Luzon. They still would not budge, so the military finally gave up in frustration.
Ka. Luisa, another woman "red fighter" in the Bicol, fell into the clutches of the security forces in 1976 and by all accounts is fortunate to be alive to tell her story. Returning to the Bicol from Manila by train, she and two other passengers were intercepted by intelligence men. Their "escorts" brought all three--two women and a man-to a "safehouse", where they were continually tortured and the women raped. The soldiers then "salvaged" (secretly executed) Luisa's two companions. They spared her life in hopes of using her as an informer. Some months after her release from detention on "good conduct", Ka. Luisa made her way back to the Bicol, there to rejoin her comrades among the peasant masses, "where I feel my security can be guaranteed".
Ka. Insiang (from the Tagalog word for "patience") explains that she was given the name because of her perseverance in struggle. Once a military patrol took her off guard as she ate a breakfast of gabi (a root crop) in the home of a peasant family. When ordered to surrender, she hurled the boiled gabi at the troopers, who mistook it for a hand grenade and dove for cover. Meantime, she leapt out the window and bolted for cover in the nearby forest.
Each woman "red fighter" has her own story to tell-unique in its details, yet part of a single tapestry woven with the fibers of deep conviction, dedicated service and exceptional courage. Asked if it involves sacrifice to join the NPA, Ka. Liza responds that, sure, it is difficult at first to be separated from her parents, to experience hunger and constant fatigue, to sleep under torrential rains and be eaten alive by insects, and to contract everything from hookworms to malaria. Yet, she continues, these are as nothing "compared to the sacrifices our people have endured and will have to go on enduring if vwe do not fight this oppressive and exploitative system". Liza and others like her are "willing to lay down even our lives in defense of the people's interests".
Several women fighters have already demonstrated this willingness, taking their rightful places alongside such deceased Filipino women revolutionaries as Melchora Aquino, who lives on in legend as Tandang Sora, Gabriela Silang, and Teresa Magbanua. They include Ka. Puri (Purificacion Pedro) and Ka. Lorie (Maria Lorena Barros). Ka. Puri was a social worker-turned-guerrilla who died under torture after her capture in Bataan. Ka. Lorie, a former activist at the University of the Philippines and founder of the first women's liberation organization-MAKIBAKA (which stands for the "Liberation Movement of New Women"), met her fate in an ambush in Quezon province in 1976. The PC commander who led the assault on the peasant hut where she was staying described her last struggle to a Far Eastern Economic flewei/v correspondent
in these terms: "We began spraying the hut with M-16's. We were firing at her as she was standing in the doorway. She was standing and then stumbling all over. Then she would fall. But then she would stand up again. We fired at her for five minutes. Finally she was hit in the head and died".
Ka. Mita, a Communist Party cadre on the central plains of Luzon, recalls that in the early days of armed struggle women played a crucial role in the expansion teams which fanned out to extend NPA influence into such regions as the Cagayan valley and the Bicol. Since expansion is one of the riskier aspects of the NPA's organizing work, casualties were often high. "Many women have fought and died rather than surrender to the enemy. They have proven their worth, "Mita adds.
Eliminating Klale Chauvinist Attitudes
In recent years the ranks of the NPA have expanded rapidly, with the number of full-time guerrillas doubling in the last four years. The majority of new recruits have come from the peasantry and a high proportion have been male. At the same time, the opening up of new guerrilla fronts has proceeded apace. To a certain degree, an implicit sexual division of labor persists in the Party and army inasmuch as women cadres are heavily concentrated in consolidation work and in the "white areas" (where armed units have still to enter), while their male comrades are now engaged in expansion. In the Montaflosa region of northern Luzon, for example, while twenty percent of Party cadres are women, fifty percent of the cadres in the "white areas" are women.
While this division of tasks may reflect in part a lingering feudal attitude of "overprotectiveness" of the "weaker sex". it also makes good organizing sense under the objective conditions in the countryside. For, peasant organizing in "white areas" and consolidated barrios frequently requires that the cadre stay on in a given barrio for extended periods of time and work out in the open. While a new face is sure to attract attention in any barrio, the military and its informers are apt to be less suspicious of strange women walking around the barrio than strange men. Women can always say they are relatives from the city vacationing in the provinces. Moreover, since the peasant men are normally out in the fields during the day, those moving about the barrio proper are mostly women. A female cadre is thus much less likely to stand out
than a male cadre.
The Communist Party nevertheless, aware that male chauvinist attitudes have not been completely eliminated from its ranks or those of the army, has issued guidelines "On the Relation of the Sexes" which-among other things-warn male comrades that, by taking the attitude that they must protect their wives from "harm", they are implying that "the revolution, instead of beingthe great and noble undertaking that it is, is a harm". It also admonishes husbands and wives not to be ashamed to engage in ideological struggle with one another. Some husbands, for example, may still find it humiliating to be criticized by their wives in the presence of other comrades.
Such struggle is regularly carried out in the NPA units, Ka. Zeny points out, w^here lively discussions take place on the role of women in the revolution. "It is always done in a spirit of camaraderie", she adds. She appreciates the fact that her male comrades "are trying to destroy male chauvinism intheir ranks. Men and women help each other to demonstrate to the masses that women have equal responsibility in revolutionary work-in propaganda, organization, as well as armed struggle".
She contends that women do have certain "objective physical limitations""for example, their small stature makes it difficult for them to stack bales of rice straw during the harvest. Yet, even such "limitations""however real at present-are historically and socially relative, largely the legacy of Spanish and American colonial influence. Ka. Cynthia admits, for instance, that while she still finds plowing the fields physically taxing, "other NPA women can handle it". In any case, she exclaims, "what is most important is not that women do every type of manual labor men do, but that they participate fully in discussions and political work".
Women's Liberation Movement Women's Liberation Movement"We are building the women's liberation movement not In isolation from but within the overall national democratic struggle", Cynthia emphasizes. For, while women are "doubly exploited", the roots of their exploitation lie in the "semi-feudal,semi-colonial" social system which also victimizes the vast majority of Filipino men. In Cynthia's words, "women work alongside their husbands in the fields, so they also experience feudal social relations of production directly".In the same way, the growing number of young women producing profits for the multinationals on the assembly lines of Manila and the various export processing zones experience directly capitalist exploitation alongside their male co-workers. As a recent statement by Filipino women workers states, "we are subjected to conditions not any different from those of men and children. Basically we are oppressed and exploited as human beings".
At the same time, as Ka. Cynthia puts it, "in our society men At the same time, as Ka. Cynthia puts it, "in our society men are still the rulers of women". Thus, in the factories a predominantly male managerial and supervisory staff lords it over largely female assembly line operators, who receive low wages and face discrimination in promotions as well as sexual harassment. Among employed workers, for instance, females earn about 44 percent less than males. Some companies especially in electronics-hire only single women so as to avoid paying maternity benefits. In the barrios, meantime, women perform the household chores of cooking, washing clothes,cleaning and childrearing not instead of but rather in addition to such farm chores as planting, transplanting, weeding and harvesting. Because of their dual responsibilities, combined
with the "double standard" which confines women to the with the "double standard" which confines women to the home while the men are free to roam about, women are often more difficult to organize than men, according to Cynthia. Ka. Nena recounts how she used to have to sneak out at night to attend meetings with the NPA before she actually joined."My parents scolded me for staying out late at night just like a male roaming the streets", she says with a chuckle.
"Yet in some ways it is easy to educate the women, especially"Yet in some ways it is easy to educate the women, especially the mothers", Ka. Cynthia continues, "since they are so directly affected by the oppressive system". It is the mothers,for example, who must comfort their infants crying from pangs of hunger-in a country where three out of four preschool children are underfed. It is the mothers who must nurse their babies back to health or helplessly watch them die from pneumonia, influenza, or even diarrhea-in a country where 65 out of every 1000 infants die before their first birthday and where sixty percent of all deaths go unattended by a physician. Customarily, the mothers and toddlers defer to the fathers and grown children when it comes round to meal time, since it is believed that the latter require the greatest nutriment in order to be able to perform the most strenuous labor in the fields. The result of this practice is clearly reflected in the below average nutritional levels of the former group.According to one government survey, while the caloric in take of all adults averages 81 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA), that of infants and pregnant mothers is only 64 percent of RDA, while that of lactating mothers is only 46 percent of adequacy. In short, a vicious cycle of malnutrition is perpetuated as the mother's poor diet virtually guarantees that her babies will face stunted mental and physical development both within the womb and after birth.
Organizing Women
In light of such statistics and the human suffering that lies behind them, it is small wonder that, when the NPA first enters a barrio, the women can readily identify with their
message: that the poor people must organize and fight for a better life for themselves and their children. After their initial social investigation of the history, class structure,
and social and economic problems of the barrio, the kasamas direct the local people in the formation of mass organizations for peasants, youth, women, and even children. The women's organization serves as an avenue for airing the particular concerns of the peasant and other rural women, as well as a vehicle for the education and mobilization of women to deal with these concerns as full participants in the national democratic struggle. The organization also provides a network of mutual support to women who have been socialized to be passive, leaving activism and politics to the men. "The main reason more peasant women haven't joined the NPA as yet", Ka. Mita explains, "lies in our women's attitude toward themselves. They don't think it is the place of a woman to carry a gun and fight alongside men". She hastens to add, however, that "the attitudes of barrio women and also barrio men have changed greatly since the beginning of the movement".
Through their active participation in the women's and other Through their active participation in the women's and other mass organizations, many barrio women come into close contact with women fighters in the people's army. Encouraged by the example of these mostly petty bourgeois women,ed by the example of these mostly petty bourgeois women,more and more peasant women are following their lead. Ka.Nena, for example, joined the youth organization in her barrio when she was still in high school and began to carry communications between NPA units. When she finally be came a full-time guerrilla, she remembers "how glad I was to find out there were some women in the army". Ka.Jingjing is a bashful twelve-year-old, the daughter of coconut farmers. After school she serves as a courier for her "brothers and sisters" in the NPA and looks forward to the day when she too will become one. "The fact that there are women red fighters gives courage to the peasant women",Ka. Cynthia observes. "They tell themselves, 'If those women can do it, why can't wei' ".
Many other barrio women, without actually joining the NPA, Many other barrio women, without actually joining the NPA,receive military training as members of the people's militias.These militias engage in paramilitary operations against government informers and local criminals (like water buffalo rustlers), as well as joint military operations with NPA units.Women also play an important role as health workers, receiving and in turn giving instruction in nutrition, sanitation and other rudiments of public health. These health workers also learn how to dress wounds, administer acupuncture, and perform minor surgery-invaluable services to the people and the people's army. Women also comprise the bulk of the elementary school teachers in the rural areas. In this capacity they have an extremely powerful influence on the moral and intellectual development of Filipino children. By winning over growing numbers of these teachers to the aims of the revolution, the NPA is thus laying a sturdy foundation on which to build in the future. Ka. Julio describes a skit performed by the children at one grade school in the guerrilla zone where he is based.at one grade school in the guerrilla zone where he is based.One child playing a poor farmer informs the child- NPA that a local thief has stolen his water buffalo. The kasama exits and returns a few minutes later triumphantly sitting astride the farmer's work animal. "I only wish it happened that easily in real life", Ka. Julio jokes.
What is happening in real life in the Philippines today, though What is happening in real life in the Philippines today, though certainly not without an intense struggle, is a profound transformation of society in all its aspects. Integral to this process is the progressive equalization of relations between the sexes and liberation of women-a process which all admit will continue even after the national democratic revolution triumphs. As the woman revolutionary Clarita Roja writes:
The ground work has been laid, and as we proceed in The ground work has been laid, and as we proceed in our task of overthrowing the U.S. — Marcos dictatorship,we cannot but go further until having achieved national liberation and democracy, we can start laying the economic and political foundation for the liberation of all Filipino women among the oppressed majority.
Like the national democratic revolution itself, the struggle Like the national democratic revolution itself, the struggle for women's liberation in the Philippines is a struggle of generations. Probably the surest guarantee that future generations will carry on the struggle resides in the Filipino women of today. It used to be that the greatest honor that could befall a Filipino mother was to have a son enter the priesthood or a daughter the convent. Now, in those barrios where the NPA Is already strong, this has begun to change."There", Ka. Julio exclaims, "mothers hope to have a child grow up to become a red fighterl".