< you might be surprised on how frank i am with this one >
I remember telling somebody once, while I was rambling on philosophy or something I presume myself as well-read on, that the world is full of "pink elephants." She said, "I can't see them." I replied, "You don't want to talk about them."
There are a lot of things we don't want to talk about. Farts, for example, are best left not talked about. You don't see anyone, save for a urologist, talk about herpes. Foreskin: now that's a pink elephant in more ways than one. Crab lice. Animal gynecology.
Enema.
Of course, as much as I like to talk about the many philosophical implications of cat urine, I'd rather talk about something less perverted. Something serious.
I would be lying if I said that as a UP student, I never had an encounter with rebels and subversives of all sorts. In the mishmash and hodgepodge of personalities in the freest university in the country, you would come across one or two people who, for purposes of not disclosing anything you're not supposed to know, have connections with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Just to make everything clear, UP is not a "terrorist madrassah" as a certain Secretary of Injustice would be quoted on national media.
If you come across one of those Marxist professors, you would be all-too-familiar - hell, even bored - with the political history of Communist subversion in the Philippines. If you happen to have a critical mind - or if you happen to be a political science student - you would have an opinion about "armed struggle" and "protracted people's war." You would have an opinion about the half-century-old Communist insurrection in the country. Not too long ago, some people asked me about what I think of Jose Maria Sison on account that I refract some measure (too much, I suppose) of Marxist analysis in airing my views, either in a paper or in class, even if I'm not a hardline Marxist compared to other people I know. I was once dared to disclose whether or not I'm a "re-affirmist" or "rejectionist" (it was my Philippine Institutions 100 class - where we were supposed to be discussing Jose Rizal's homosexual inclinations. Oooh, how fun.) I was very surprised, hell, even shocked, at the frankness of the question. I replied: "I'm a fence-sitter."
That was years ago, when I was still afraid of taking a stand on account that I might be talking to a deep-penetration agent of either the government or the Reds. Anyway I looked at it, if I answered I would probably get shot on my way home. Nowadays I prefer to be frank. The thing is, it's in the news. Why shouldn't we talk about it? Let's get real. I mean, if the government continues to purge NPA rebels at the boondocks, and if walls are being spray-painted red, and if this has been going on for the past half-century, why do we continue to treat it as political taboo? Following the government's logic, we're supposed to be at war. I mean, it's there. People should talk about it. Maybe not in dinner tables: supper is a bad time to discuss politics.
OK, Let's take the news as an example. Party-list groups like Bayan Muna, Gabriela and Kabataan Party, among others, are being tagged as terrorist fronts by the military, on account that they have been critical of the government in much the same way as the CPP releases statements through the underground press. What do I think? I think it's bullshit. In recent memory, social movement sectors like BM have been criticizing the government through legal means. If these legitimate organizations were indeed terrorist fronts as our paranoid military would claim, we would have long been raising red flags and singing the "Internationale" on account that BM - the supposed terrorist front - is the number one party list group in the country. If these legitimate organizations were indeed terrorist fronts, Congress would have been bombed, or maybe Satur Ocampo would be shooting capitalist congressmen in his privilege speeches. Did that happen? No: matter of fact, Satur Ocampo had a warrant of arrest issued against him for a murder charge implicated two decades ago. If you asked me, he's innocent.
The thing is, I'm not surprised at all on why young, intelligent, capable individuals are leaving the cities to take up a gun and live the life of a traveller in the Sierra Madre or whatever. I mean, there's every reason to do so. Revolution is seen by many to be the best way to cure the Philippines out of its ills. Our ills are a lot like hemorrhoids: you don't cure the buggers by taking the course of your mouth, you cure them by taking the course of your ass. And revolutionaries have taken the course of the latter. To them, armed struggle - not parliamentary struggle - is the primary course of action. Take the course head-on.
A military man well-versed in English (hmmm, good luck with that, considering what I've seen of them) would probably talk to himself and say, "Hmmm, this jerk is a Communist, all right." I say, hold it right there. I've got some explaining to do.
As a UP student, I am well-acquainted with the thought of Karl Marx (it's tradition, not dogma). Years of UP education has brought me to a very curious insight: as much as I like Karl Marx the social thinker, I also as much despise Karl Marx the revolutionary. Absolute power may come from the barrel of a gun, but it doesn't have to. You don't take up a gun to threaten: you take up a gun to kill. The guy you kill can't kill you back. Killing, in its manifold forms, is not justice: it's vengeance. And no amount of vengeance can ever compensate for a measure of justice.
Do I think that the character of Philippine society today is based on injustice and inequality? Yes. Do I think capitalism, imperialism and feudalism is to blame? Of course. Do I think that the Philippines is a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society? Absolutely.
Do I think that armed revolution is the proper course of action? Definitely not.
The way I see it, the world has changed. The Philippines has changed. For a half-century, the last believers of the cause of Communism in the world have fought a war that lasted a full half-century based on the premises that the liberation of the Philippines from injustice and inequality lies in armed revolution. And today, we still continue to fight that war. And war, my friends, is good for absolutely nothing. A half-century of war has changed nothing, and we who are aware are sick and tired of waiting. Tired of the government wasting taxpayer money better spent on structural solutions than on guns and bullets. Tired of the underground awash with unfulfilled promises of a better tomorrow.
If you asked me for a solution, I say let's hypothesize, test and conclude. Legalize the Communist Party of the Philippines, I say, and let's see if it will survive. Bring the men, women and children down from the mountains and give them the opportunity to run for office and let's see how they will change things. Let's have them participate in our political system. If you can't beat the hemorrhoid, sit on it. Suffer the pain. You'll get used to it.
OK, the world has changed: the envelope of ideologies have opened up to accommodate change. That's what everybody has been afraid of all along, for both the military and the Communist underground have been operating on that same static, unchanging plane. I mean, I'm speaking out: why can't we all just change?
I'll be honest: I'm just a regular guy. College student, smoker, occasional beer drinker, writer, whatever. I don't have, nor do I claim to have, the answer to the problems of the Philippines, I don't know what it takes to cure the country of its ills, I do not claim to be the Messiah, whatever. All I'm saying is: as much as I don't agree with the government, I don't agree with the Reds either.
Had I written this entry, say, three years ago, people would be pointing fingers at my face and accusing me of everything that a child-molesting rapist from the Church of Satan would be a saint compared to me. I don't know if it's the same case now. I'm probably a condemned man by now, maybe someone would be out to abduct me or kill me, perhaps blow me into smithereens (no, not that kind of "blow") either for being a "terrorist," "brainwashed," a "capitalist coddler," whatever. The point, says Marx, is to change it.
And that, my friends, is that pink elephant in Philippine history that nobody wants to talk about. You don't see it in history books, you don't see it talked about in the streets, you don't see it in op-eds in national newspapers. Communism: a fifty-year-old war waged right in our countrysides and sometimes in our cities. What is to become of it?
I remember asking the same question to that girl I asked about the pink elephants. I never got an answer. And I probably never will.
