August 6, 2018
The Katipunan Ng Gurong Makabayan (KAGUMA or Alliance of Patriotic Educators) is a clandestine revolutionary organization of teachers under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)
One is neither born an NPA nor brainwashed to become one. A person decides to be an NPA because of the dire conditions in Philippine society and the desire to precisely change these conditions.
KAGUMA denounces Duterte’s covert and overt promotion of an all-out war policy against the filipino people. Duterte’s yet another veiled war-mongering stunt came in the form of a raucous demand on the NPA to abandon its 50-year old project of mass base building, agrarian revolution, and armed revolution, the aim of which is to realize land redistribution and national industrialization. These are indispensable steps toward the redistribution of wealth and the creation of conditions toward eliminating economic and social inequality. This national-democratic revolution toward socialism is the continuation of the great anti-colonial and anti-feudal revolution of the Katipuneros led by Andres Bonifacio. The same armed revolution was made successful by teacher-Katipuneras like Teresa Magbanua whose legacy inspires thousands upon thousands of filipino teachers across the archipelago.
As revolutionary teachers, we in KAGUMA own up to our duty to correct Duterte’s impoverished understanding of our revolutionary history as a colonized people whose rights are severely violated by corrupt and murderous pro-imperialist puppets and bureaucrats like himself. Dutere’s very poor appreciation of the current anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle waged by the NPA leads him to believe that he can simply offer revolutionized farmers, workers,students, church people, teachers and other professionals who have chosen the path of armed revolution a cheap livelihood showcase to be on his side: “I promise you, surrender ka sa pulis o sa military, then I’ll give you a job, automatic. At bigyan kita nga bahay kagaya ng sa Mindanao.”
Duterte’s absurd offer to the NPA is merely a covert act of war by a cowardly president who refuses to negotiate peace through comprehensive reforms with a revolutionary force that has been working 24/7 to make lives better in the countryside. In fact, the NPA’s duties also involve organizing work, invisible non-military activities such as mediating in local community conflicts, collective labor arrangements like the lowering of land rent, elimination of usurious practices by landlords, increasing the prices of farmers’ produce, and the provision of social welfare such as health, education and other socioeconomic projects in areas that government has neglected for so long.
Duterte should know that our farmers and workers may have led a life of poverty in rural and urban areas prior to participating in the armed revolution but it is precisely their goal of eliminating the root cause of poverty that has made them join the NPA. There are even members of the NPA who decided to leave their comfortable lives in order to wage a revolutionary struggle, which Duterte further cheapens and diminshes by wrongly believing that those who share a communist view of the world and act upon the same are merely pawns of one single leader: “You’re fighting for a bankrupt mind. Isang tao lang ang nag-iisip. There’s only one person [Sison] using his g****** grey matter between his ears. Para kayong robot kung ano ang inuutos. Mabuti pa itong mga pulis pati sundalo, ‘pag agrabyado, nagsasabi pa, ‘Mr. President, hindi na pwede iyan.’ Kayo parang mga robot.”
Anyone who has read any of the vast and illuminating writings of Jose Maria Sison, whom counter-revolutionaries derisively refer to as the “idol” of filipino communists, would know about his emphasis on the power of a collective proletarian struggle and how this power rests on the revolutionized consciousness of the most oppressed and exploited in Philippine society. Nowhere in the writings of Sison can anyone find self-aggrandizing statements and self-centered authoritarian demands, characteristic of Duterte’s very own pronouncements.
KAGUMA therefore calls on our members to conduct an enhanced and reinvigorated study of Jose Maria Sison’s revolutionary thought whose brilliant daring and originality resonates with great revolutioanary literature across the world. Each KAGUMA cell can start with basic texts like Sison’s “Struggle for National Democracy” and “Foundation for Resumng the Philippine Revolution.” Sison’s writings on human rights, imperialism and internationalism are a great resource for teachers and school administrators who are currently reconfiguring their school curricula.
Contrary to Duterte’s harsh and dishonest description of our fellow educator, Sison is not merely a theoretician who imposes his thoughts on people. Sison is recognized all over the world as a revolutionary intellectual and a great comrade whose contributions to the international proletarian struggle remain incalculable.
Revolutionary teachers scattered in many elementary, secondary, tertiary and post-graduate institutions nationwide are currently exposing and opposing Duterte’s bankrupt alternative to Peace Talks. His bankrupt alternative merely parrots the infamous Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) psywar ops, which have never been successful in frustrating people’s revolutionary projects worldwide.
Currently, this psywar ops involves the aforementioned cheap offer of a job and and a house and lot for each red guerrilla. The other way in which Duterte actually yet covertly wages war while riding on our people’s painstaking efforts at peace is through the AFP’s solution: localized peace talks (LPT). LPT merely subverts each and every important peace document already agreed upon by the GRP and the NDFP since 1992. LPT rests on a fantasy that by negotiationg with local commanders of the NPA, the Duterte government may gain easy access to NPA territories and lure its leaders and members to surrender. This tack is no different and has no other goal but to heighten violent attacks already being carried out by the PNP and AFP against communities suspected of “NPA influence.”
We condemn Duterte for using the Peace Talks as a covert instrument of war!
Resume the Peace Talks!
The NPA is on our side, cherish the New People’s Army!
