Repression and Armed Resistance
A few months after the reestablishment of the Party, we founded the New People´s Army on March 29, 1969. We the proletarian revolutionaries from Manila linked up with the healthy remnants of the old people´s army that had a mass base of 80,000 peasants in Tarlac province. We started with only nine automatic rifles and twenty-six inferior firearms, like single-shot rifles and handguns.
We were determined to wage revolutionary armed struggle because the Marcos regime had been escalating violence against the workers, urban poor, the peasants and the youth in numerous incidents since 1965. These included massacres and brutal disruption of worker strikes and protest rallies. In 1968, I was subjected to a knife attack by covert agents of the regime. From year to year, there were increasing signs that Marcos would perpetuate himself in power through military force and other extraordinary means. The US was supporting his regime with increasing military assistance and training the police for surveillance and crowd control.
In 1971 Marcos masterminded the Plaza Miranda bombing and scapegoated the CPP, the NPA and his arch political rival Benigno Aquino in order to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. This was a direct preparation for his proclamation of martial law and imposition of a fascist dictatorship on the people in 1972. He prated that the communists, the Muslim separatists and the intrasystemic opposition were out to overthrow the government by force and that it was his duty to save the republic and undertake reforms in order to build a new society.
The US further increased military and economic assistance and facilitated foreign loans to the Marcos fascist regime in exchange for the further entrenchment and expansion of US economic, political and military interests in the Philippines. It expected the fascist dictatorship to destroy both the legal democratic movement and the armed revolutionary movement. But the consequences were contrary to the expectations of the US.
As Chairman of the CPP Central Committee, I was among those who initiated the founding of the National Democratic Front (NDF) on April 24, 1973. The NDF was formed as the united front organization of the revolutionary forces of the toiling masses of workers and peasants and the middle social strata for promoting the revolutionary struggle and mobilizing the people in their millions. It included the CPP, NPA and various types of mass organizations, especially those driven underground by the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
From year to year, the CPP, NPA, the NDF, the underground mass organizations and revolutionary organs of political power increased nationwide. By 1982 the US had become worried about the growing strength of these revolutionary forces and wanted to replace Marcos with Aquino. The subsequent killing of Aquino by the military minions of Marcos in 1983 resulted in sustained protest mass actions, culminating in the overthrow of Marcos in 1986.
In 14 years of struggle against fascist dictatorship, the CPP struck deep roots among the workers and peasants nationwide. The NPA was able to create scores of guerrilla fronts, covering thousands of villages, hundreds of municipalities and scores of provinces. In these guerrilla fronts, revolutionary organs of democratic power, mass organizations, militia and self-defense units were formed to support the people´s army. The revolutionary mass base included millions of the people.
My capture in 1977 did not lessen the momentum of the revolutionary movement. Together with so many other gross human rights violations committed by the fascist dictatorship, the various forms of torture that I suffered in prison and my steadfast defiance helped to inspire the revolutionary forces and people to intensify their struggle. Upon the fall of Marcos in 1986, the charges of subversion and rebellion against me under the military commissions were nullified by the Aquino regime. I went back to the University of the Philippines to teach political science in the Asian Center of Graduate Studies.
Then I decided to go on a global university lecture tour in the latter half of 1986. While I was still in the Asia-Pacific region, the military establishment did not like what I was saying abroad in the exercise of my fundamental right to think and speak freely and pressed Cory Aquino to cancel my passport and force my return to the Philippines. She yielded to the pressure of the military, canceled my passport and went along with the filing of a false charge of subversion against me in 1988. Thus, I had to apply for political asylum in The Netherlands in order to avoid the sword of the military in Manila.
The reactionary regimes that have succeeded the Marcos fascist regime have pretended to be democratic but have continued to suppress basic democratic rights and use brute military force against the revolutionary movement without having to declare martial law. But the revolutionary forces have continued to fight and win victories in the fields of political struggle, tactical offensives, land reform and cultural work. The new democratic revolution has proven to be indestructible in the last more than 44 years because of the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside in the protracted people´s war.
The general line of new democratic revolution and strategy of people´s war have been strengthened as a result of a nationwide rectification movement to correct major errors committed by “Left” and Right opportunists in various regions at different times during the decade of the 1980s. The rectification movement was an educational campaign to criticize, repudiate and rectify major errors and set forth creative tasks for revitalizing and further strengthening the Party and entire revolutionary movement. It was enthusiastically carried out by the Party rank and file from 1992 to 1998. It was resoundingly successful and guided the further development of the revolutionary forces. It has come to be known as the Second Great Rectification Movement, which alludes to the First Great Rectification Movement of 1967 that led to the reestablishment of the CPP in 1968.
At the moment, the Party has a membership of 100,000 and is active in all the provinces of the Philippines. The NPA has thousands of Red fighters with high powered rifles and operates in 110 to 120 guerrilla fronts. These cover extensive areas of 70 provinces and more than half of the 1500 municipalities of the Philippines. The local Party branches, the units of the people´s army, the political organs of democratic power, the mass organizations, the people´s militia and self-defense units are thriving. The mass base in both urban and rural bases includes millions of people.
Under the leadership of the CPP, the local organs of political power have working committees in charge of mass organizing, public education, land reform, production, finance, health and sanitation, cultural work and arbitration. Mass campaigns for the benefit of the people are carried out with the support of the mass organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, cultural activists and children. Contradictions among the people are settled through education and arbitration. The people´s democratic government, which embraces the local organs of democratic power, has functions of administration, policy-making and trying cases through a people´s court system.
The people´s war is now in the middle phase of the strategic defensive. And the CPP plans to advance from the strategic defensive to the strategic stalemate in the people´s war. This involves raising the Party membership to the level of 250,000 and the number of guerrilla fronts to 180. Every guerrilla front optimally has a total force of one NPA company, which has a platoon as center of gravity and the rest of the company dispersed within a wider radius in order to cover more people and territory. The organs of democratic power, mass organizations, the people´s militia and self-defense units are also planned to increase.