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FOUNDATION FOR SUSTAINED
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE
PHILIPPINES
By Jose Maria Sison and Julieta de Lima
Published in Serve the People: Ang Kasaysayan ng Radikal na Kilusan sa
Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, edited by Bienvendo Lumbera, Judy Taguiwalo et
al (Manila: IBON Foundation, CONTEND & ACT, 2008)
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
Ba?s 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 Ba?s 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 ?urely anti-Marcosand 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. ### |
|
UP will forge through risk-filled
neoliberal terrain; so will militant activism persist: An Outsider’s View
of the University of the Philippines
Satur Ocampo
(The speech is part of the UP Centennial Lecture
Series, one of the events marking 100 years of UP)
Before we begin, may I invite everyone to stand up for
three minutes of silence in honor of the former students of the University
of the Philippines who gave up their lives in the continuing struggle for
national liberation, economic emancipation, social justice, equitable
development and genuine and lasting peace for the Filipino people.
Thank you. I also thank you for inviting me, through President Emerlinda
R. Roman, to be one of the speakers in this Centennial Lecture Series. I
hope that my sincere and humble efforts to cope with your expectations
will be met with relative satisfaction. If not, I’ll ask for another
chance, but please not in the next Centennial.
Your first speaker representing an “Outsider’s View,” the businessman and
civic leader Ramon R. del Rosario Jr., banteringly attested to his being
“truly an outsider” as a “true-and-through Green Archer” whose encounters
with UP to this day have been to root for the De La Salle team against the
UP Maroons during UAAP basketball games. Then he delighted you with his
proud declaration that his two daughters graduated from UP with academic
distinctions.
I am an “outsider” not in the sense that Mr. del Rosario is, he having
freely chosen not to study in UP but acquiring his education here and
abroad in his field of choice. On my part, I dreamed of studying in UP as
early as my high school days in the early 1950s in my hometown of Sta.
Rita, Pampanga. For reasons I’ll explain, I never got to do so. My college
education was rough-edged, and I never got a college diploma. I am proud
to say, however, that the alumni association of the Polytechnic University
of the Philippines (formerly the PCC or Philippine College of Commerce)
chose to consider me an outstanding PCC alumnus in 1999 for pursuing my
political advocacy.
My boyhood dream of studying in UP began when my father’s cousin happened
to bring a copy of The Philippinensian to our home. I leafed avidly
through its pages. Gazing at the photographs of student leaders at that
time, I thought I could also be like them in UP. I soon realized that it
was an impossible dream. Still, some years later, enrolled at the Lyceum
of the Philippines, the influence of UP intellectuals there — notably
Sotero H. Laurel, who was the president of the Lyceum, and Dean Jose A.
Lansang of the school of journalism — reinforced my nationalist
orientation and honed my analytical skills. Yes, you could have that
experience outside of UP – just as today our young people continue to be
taught by UP products in many of our institutions of learning, at least
those UP graduates who have chosen to commit themselves to this country
(and they are many).
The youthful hope of being able to enter UP fired me up to study hard even
as I continued to help my parents and siblings with the work on the farm.
Thus, finishing high school as class salutatorian was a cruel blow,
because being valedictorian would have entitled me to a UP scholarship.
That was one of my earliest frustrations in life and I remember it with
pain to this day. But then again, my parents would not have been able to
afford the other expenses entailed by having a son in UP, even on a
scholarship. (Let us note that more than half a century later since then,
the new UP Charter now explicitly mandates the University to take
affirmative action to enhance the access of disadvantaged students to its
programs and services.)
There are thousands upon thousands of poor boys and girls for whom the
doors of the state university failed to open in the last 100 years. Former
Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban was one of them in the early 1950s,
who although he had been granted a UP scholarship had to enroll instead at
the Far Eastern University. As the head of the FEU student council, he
recently reminisced, he “specially prized” the friendship of fellow
student leaders from UP because they were trained to think and behave
independently and upheld student rights at the risk of their own studies
and careers. In my own encounters with UP student leaders at the time, I
held most of them in high regard for their intellectual keenness and
boldness in taking the initiative. I also encountered some who annoyed
others by their intellectual arrogance and hubris, and yes, frivolousness.
My first experience of student life in Manila was at PCC – the
quintessential college for the poor, with its overcrowded classrooms in
cramped wooden buildings. It was at various student conferences, held
annually, that the budding politicians and fledgling writers among us met
each other. At a YMCA conference held in Baguio, I was put in charge of
the daily newsletter, one issue of which came out with two steamy poems by
UP’s Sonny San Juan (now a staid but unrepentant academic in America).
This earned me an upbraiding by the conference adviser, a well-known
guardian of conservative politics.
At another conference, I met other UP students among them the writer Pete
Daroy, who invited me to a colloquium in Diliman which I was too
intimidated to attend. Then Jose Ma. Sison invited me to join several
small group discussions with members of the Student Cultural Association
of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP). Being unfamiliar with the UP
Diliman campus, I would meet somewhere else with the poet Jun Tera and he
would lead me to Little Quiapo and other nooks. In the group were Luis V.
Teodoro, Vivencio Jose, Ferdinand Tinio and Reynato S. Puno, now Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, who was the group’s authority on issues
surrounding the RP-US military bases agreement. From those SCAUP
discussions emerged the publication of the Progressive Review, a radical
quarterly, and subsequently the Kabataang Makabayan which was organized in
1964.
So much for the musings of a frustrated UP alumnus. Allow me now to begin
my main discussion by paying the highest tribute to those who gave their
best efforts and sacrificed their lives – most of them in the prime of
their youth – to the revolutionary cause. While many of these heroes had
studied in UP there were others, more numerous in fact, from other schools
and from all walks of life, who contributed to the national-democratic
revolutionary movement since the mid-1960s and early 1970s.
Similarly, let me salute the thousands of activists today, the older and
the young, from UP and elsewhere who, with commitment, enthusiasm and
hope, carry on the revolutionary struggle shoulder to shoulder with the
masses — through its multifarious ramifications, means and methods and up
to its highest form.
Regardless of how some people, or perhaps a good number of people, may
view its continuing relevance to our national life, or its prospects of
succeeding in its avowed goals, the national-democratic revolutionary
movement is undeniably alive. It is persevering to advance and to win. In
the process of waging life-and-death struggle against the forces seeking
to destroy it, the movement is endeavoring to establish a genuine state of
the people from its basic units in the countryside communities. It has had
its ups and down, its ebbs and flows. It has suffered setbacks from
serious errors committed at various levels of its leadership, the most
serious of which took place in the 1980s. A painful campaign was launched
to rectify the errors, which has been largely successful, although some
manifestations do appear now and then indicating that lessons from the
past have yet to be completely comprehended and assiduously applied.
There are those who believe that armed struggle has become passé in this
day and age. They include some who used to be involved in it and who still
yearn for revolutionary change in our society but have opted to contribute
towards that end only through peaceful and legal means. Certainly that is
a positive, worthy undertaking. Having been part of the legal democratic
mass movement all these years, I have found rich meaning in my own work in
the parliamentary arena despite its numerous pitfalls and limitations. But
let us listen to the insight of Angel Baking, editor of the Philippine
Collegian in 1940-41, twice jailed for political offenses. In a university
convocation at the Abelardo Hall on January 23, 1970, shortly after being
released from prison the first time, the grizzled revolutionary said:
“Not all those who desire revolutionary change in the existing order
subscribe to armed struggle, and the majority perhaps to this day, believe
they are contributing their share to the over-all revolutionary struggle
through peaceful and legal means. But this does not negate the reality of
the armed struggle going on in our midst, and whatever settlements might
be arrived as resolutions to the basic conflicts in our society can no
longer be said to have been resolved independent of this armed struggle.
This is an important aspect of our concrete historical situation which
renders theoretical discussion of means academic.”
Sometimes, indeed, it has been necessary to set aside the consideration
and discussion of theoretical or academic issues due to the urgency of
continually defending one’s life and fundamental rights against vicious,
murderous attacks. But through it all the movement lives on. As the
Macapagal-Arroyo regime itself acknowledges, it remains the most
formidable and most consistent challenge to the sense of security and the
survival not only of the current government but of the entire ruling
system that continues to rot and decay.
What was UP’s role in the beginning of this movement – or rather, its
self-renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, for the present revolutionary
struggle stretches back to the 1930s — and how can it continue to be a
relevant part of this great collective effort towards radical
transformation? I need not go through many details of how the
national-democratic mass movement spread nationwide after the formation of
the Kabataang Makabayan in 1964, with key founding leaders mostly coming
from UP, and the consequent flowering of national-democratic oriented
youth and student organizations in secondary and tertiary level schools
and in communities of the urban poor across the country on the heels of
the First Quarter Storm of 1970.
While the resurgent revolutionary movement will always be associated with
the student activists, it is important to remember that even earlier, UP
was already a seedbed of new ideas, where nationalists and freethinkers
like Teodoro Agoncillo, Cesar Adib Majul, Ricardo Pascual, Leopoldo Yabes,
Renato Constantino and others did research, published their books, engaged
in intellectual combat, and took promising young people under their wings.
Books written byAgoncillo, notably “The Revolt of the Masses”, and
Constantino’s “Dissent and Counter-consciousness” and “A Past Revisited”
were among the staple readings of the activists. Academic freedom, so
strenuously defended, ensured that acrimonious debates nevertheless
produced good fruit on all sides. Even we who did not enjoy the luxury of
these sharp discussions vicariously benefited from it.
Student activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s thrived on any and all
issues: foreign monopoly of the oil industry and oil price hikes, the US
war of aggression against Vietnam, the presence of US military bases,
graft and corruption, foreign domination of the economy, police brutality
and fascism, even beauty pageants. In 1971 UP experienced its own Diliman
Commune – spurred by the students’ support of jeepney drivers striking
against the increased cost of fuel and police intrusion into the campus —
when for nine days the campus was barricaded with classroom tables and
chairs and activists operated DZUP round the clock. Students dropped out
of school to go fulltime into mass organizing, supporting labor strikes
and other revolutionary work. The movement very soon spread to other
schools, then to the provinces.
And when Ferdinand Marcos attempted to solve the political crisis by
imposing martial law in 1972, UP students and faculty alike were put to
the test. Would they resist, putting theory into practice, or would they
search their books anew to justify compliance if not subservience?
Historic choices were made, the nation moved forward, while some were left
behind.
Armed only with their theories and a few unreliable weapons to defend
themselves, the students who fanned out to the countryside found that they
would be learning their own lessons from the peasant masses, much more
than they would be teaching. At the same time, the sincerity and
dedication of these youth, almost all in their teens, inspired the people,
who then found their own ways of supporting and undertaking the struggle
for change, and making it their own.
It has become commonplace to point out that the issues that spurred
student unrest and militant protests forty years ago are still burning
issues today, but they have become part of the landscape, so to speak. We
remember how three-centavo increases in the price of diesel would spark
strikes in protest; today gasoline is still rising from sixty pesos per
liter but many now simply resign themselves to walking or taking the
train. The US war of aggression billed as a “war on terror”, domination of
the Philippine economy, its renewed military presence since 2002 – it’s
the same, and yet not quite the same. If in the past hackles were raised
by the “Americanization” of UP, today it’s about “commercialization of
education” and “privatization” of the University that critics within and
outside UP say are some disturbing aspects of the new UP charter.
Under RA 9500, aside from its usual academic, research and service duties,
the UP as the National University will have an enhanced fund-generating
corporate structure, orientation and operation. It is also mandated to
“regularly study the state of the nation in relation to its quest for
national development in the primary areas of politics and economics, among
others”, identify key concerns and formulate responsive policies on these
and give advice and recommendations to Congress and the President of the
Philippines. Is this not the responsibility of the National Economic and
Development Authority (NEDA), to which many UP economic professors have
been seconded or named to head it over the years? Can the UP give advice
and recommendations that would be counter to established policies or
programs of the government?
What to do with this charter now will be a big challenge to the UP
community. How will it maintain the highest possible level of academic
excellence and academic freedom, and without impairing these roles ensure
the financial viability of the corporate entity that it will now become? I
share the apprehension of many of you that the reorientation and expanded
roles of the UP will surely align it to serve the requirements of global
capital via neo-liberalism or globalization with its three prescriptions:
liberalization, privatization and deregulation. The destructive impact of
unbridled globalization over the last 18 years in every part of the world
has been widely acknowledged: first among the poorest countries, such as
those in Africa, then among the less-developed countries including the
Philippines, and now in the heartland of capitalism itself, the United
States. What then is the sense in proceeding along this perilous path?
The UP is thus forewarned of the risks it faces as it sets out to forge
its path through the neo-liberal terrain. For now the adherents of
neo-liberalism are dominant both in the Macapagal-Arroyo government and
within UP itself, and they are much more optimistic than me. Still we all
know that the road will not be easy to traverse. The militant activism
that underwent the ups and downs of ideological and organizational
struggles in the last decade, even as it was able to mobilize a
significant part of the UP community to oppose tuition fee increases and
commercialization of education, can build up strong opposition. The
debates, the struggles over policies and programs will play out in the UP,
as they have in the long tradition of the University, with the “iskolar ng
bayan” and their supporters in the UP community vigorously asserting their
right to have a bigger say in how the university will be run.
Undoubtedly, all these issues provide a legitimate basis for militant
activism to persist and spread throughout society and specially within the
campuses of colleges and universities, including the UP. On the other
hand, the University can maintain its social relevance only by
continuously taking part in the dynamics of the larger society. It must do
this not only through the militant participation of the UP community in
political questions of the moment, but also through the concerns that
guide its teaching and research activities – among the most important of
which, today, are the delineation and affirmation of our Filipino identity
in the midst of globalization, and speeding up the broad democratization
process.
In this regard, there have been criticisms that the present-day
national-democratic activists tend to sound outdated in their political
sloganeering. One such criticism from the UP, way back in 1993, referred
to the activists as “a dwindling breed who isolate themselves by ranting
obsolete slogans and re-enacting the First Quarter Storm.” The old slogans
of the 1970s, for instance “Imperyalismo, Ibagsak!”, may grate on the ears
of many people, but this cannot negate the continuing validity of the
slogan’s message. Even if US imperialism now sports a new name, its
essential exploitative character has not changed – in the era of
neo-liberal globalization this has only worsened. It is true, however,
that more creativity on the part of the new generation of activists would
be highly appreciated. I have personally witnessed the emergence of new
cultural forms or themes of protest in street marches, rallies and
cultural presentations all over the country. It seems to me that the
cultural activists are now becoming more adept at comprehending the social
and economic conditions and the struggles of the people and are expressing
these in various ways that appeal to a broad audience.
Another criticism raised against present-day activists is actually an old,
recurring complaint — that they tend to be arrogant and self-righteous, a
weakness that turns off many people (especially from UP!) who would
otherwise be more open to the movement’s analyses and proposals. Already
in 1970, Angel Baking pointed this out in his lecture at Abelardo Hall,
and he suggested that “the recognition that the masses are really the most
powerful controlling elements in a revolution, the most stable base and
the profoundest source of revolutionary wisdom” should be an effective
antidote to such self-importance. “All too often,” Baking observed,
“intellectuals without firm links with and faith in the masses tend to go
astray, unable to maintain the clarity of their vision and the
steadfastness of their affiliations.”
Apparently, Baking was aware that the “diverse distractions and
preoccupations of students” and the periods of lull in their activities
might make it difficult for them to maintain their revolutionary ardor and
momentum. “To solve this difficulty,” he counselled, “it would be
necessary to relate in a sustained manner the activities of students to
the problems and struggles of the masses especially of the organized and
revolutionary masses. This would dissolve the psychological barrier which
makes student activists think there is no value in their work if it is not
dramatic enough to attract wide attention.” In effect, Baking was saying,
and I concur, that a sustained relation between the activism of the youth
and students and the work of the revolutionary masses would make the
former more relevant and enhance the latter.
In that same speech Baking paid rhapsodic tribute to the masses of the
people that he pledged to serve even as he endured bitter disappointments
and crushing failures. “In the most difficult of times,” he said, “it is
the revolutionary masses that never lose sight of the revolutionary goals
and keep intact the hard core of unity and organization. It is their ardor
which keeps aflame the fires of revolution even when everything seems
lost. The reassuring warm hand one feels on the shoulders during darkest
moments of temporary defeat is often the hand of a peasant worker. This is
a tested lesson derived from revolutionary experience….” It was this
lesson that he wanted to get off his chest, as soon as he could, to the
young people who were eagerly listening to his every word.
As I come to the end of this talk I think of Ka Angel Baking, UP engineer,
intellectually gifted, who gave up a promising career in the foreign
service to serve the Filipino people through revolutionary struggle,
enduring imprisonment for almost two decades, and lending his brilliant
mind and experienced hand in the movement’s self-renewal. If during his
time they were but a handful to take the difficult path of revolution, the
two succeeding generations have produced a bountiful harvest of capable,
intensely motivated patriots who have taken up the challenge to carry on.
I am now nearly the same age as Ka Angel was in the early 1990s when I
used to visit him and ask for his advice. I am proud to have marched along
the same road with him, and I can say to him now with confidence, “Tumula
ka, Abe. Be glad, comrade, because the youth will not fail us.” ### |
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