THE CAREFUL COMMUNISTS
Steif, William
The Careful Communists Conversations with Filipino insurgents BY WILLIAM STEIF Over the narrow stairway leading to the second floor of a rickety building is a sign that reads Aniban ng Manggagawa...
...In effect, the funds are protection money and are what keeps the CPP and NPA alive...
...However, Ka-Boy is still a Catholic, as are 83 per cent of Filipinos...
...By December 1979, colleagues were urging Olaguer to flee to the United States...
...Olaguer still awaits his IBM "vindication...
...they want all tactical nuclear weapons removed...
...But we are still studying, we have no primer yet...
...We can solve our problems ourselves, without intervention of any foreign country...
...We are not all corrupt, only some of us, and some of us are just lazy...
...When I interrupt with a word—"Afghanistan...
...The computer still spits out "terrorist...
...We seek social justice," says Ka-Baby, Visa Denied Since February 1986, Eduardo B. Ola-guer, governor of the Development Bank of the Philippines, has applied for a visa to visit the United States four times...
...I can contain my curiosity no longer...
...The CIA...
...The Communist Party wants the bases removed...
...The sparrows' main chore is to assassinate informers...
...In a January 1973 "referendum" held under martial law, 99 per cent voted for the new constitution...
...I'm not sure, but I think so," he says...
...Some bishops were among the drafters of the new constitution, and Ka-Boy says, "Jaime Cardinal Sin [Manila's archbishop] has too much influence on Cory...
...He was a leader of the anti-Marcos Light-a-Fire Movement in the late 1970s, and because of this he spent more than six years in the dictator's prisons...
...At present she is doing a very fine job...
...No lives were ever lost," Olaguer insists...
...at Harvard Business School in 1972, has a pretty good idea of what it's all about...
...We want to remove all nuclear tactical weapons from our islands...
...Urian compares the constitution to a manifesto, and he likes its promise of land reform...
...For six months they were after me to get my check and sign a waiver," he recalls...
...Thanks to good fortune and later to protests from the Catholic community, Olaguer escaped torture...
...Then Ka-Boy arrives...
...He finds such an anti-abortion clause bizarre in a Third World nation whose population is growing by 2.4 per cent yearly and whose infant mortality rate is fifty-eight per 1,000 live births...
...All I wanted—and want now—is an apology...
...But strategically the Americans can't remove them...
...Ri-cardo Cruz drives Ka-Boy, Roger, and me back to Bocaue...
...The Careful Communists Conversations with Filipino insurgents BY WILLIAM STEIF Over the narrow stairway leading to the second floor of a rickety building is a sign that reads Aniban ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura—or, translated from Tagalog, Union for Agricultural Workers...
...Funds extracted from the rich and not-so-rich by the NPA in Luzon and other centers of NPA activity throughout the nation's 7,100 islands are known as "progressive taxation...
...But he was questioned for a month and refused to talk...
...We must have a strong nationalism, like other countries...
...They get money from the rich...
...Jesus Lava of Quezon City, one of the founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the 1940s...
...He acquired these papers in the Soviet Union and Denmark when he led a group of eight Filipinos on a trip there in October...
...The communists seem less threatening than I had expected...
...Commander Baby greets me...
...It is a sparrows' nest...
...He is a devout Catholic and intensely anticommunist...
...We want to educate our children and live peacefully...
...In late November, Aquino asked all cabinet members to resign, slowly replacing those she wished to fire...
...Will Cory Aquino's cease-fire hold...
...We are going to choose good leaders for the next generation," he says...
...He is also William Steif, who recently returned from the Philippines, is a free-lance writer based in the U.S...
...I want global peace, no nuclear war...
...We go to meetings and seminars every week and I learn the political roots of the Philippine economy...
...We are here to visit Cruz's brother-in-law and his friends, who are communists...
...I was released January 16, 1986," Olaguer says...
...he shrugs off my little attempt at irony...
...But he also believes that "we will have to do with less dollar income...
...Now forty-one, he has a son at Santo Tomas University and a daughter in high school...
...He is inclined to vote yes...
...servicemen and women are stationed at Subic and Clark, and the two bases employ more than 40,000 Filipinos at wages that exceed local norms...
...Ka-Baby and his five brothers and sisters inherited 19.8 acres from their parents...
...He is a Marxist-Leninist and, as if to prove it, hands me a fourteen-page transcript of the press conference Mikhail Gorbachev held in Reykjavik after the Iceland summit...
...That's why so many are not content," he says...
...He is province chairman of the Democratic National Alliance, a coalition of groups on the left—the Alliance, he says, is "not yet a political party but some day we hope will be...
...I never did...
...It's been that way since the 1940s, since the original NPA wanted a peace agreement...
...In my opinion," he says, "some organizations will sabotage the cease-fire...
...We drop off the dentist and Roger and enter the tollway to Manila...
...I am against imperialism and multinational corporations," says Ka-Boy...
...Even if the whole Filipino nation says to remove the bases, the Americans won't give them up...
...We are in debt as long as we live...
...It is in English and comes from the Soviet press agency Tass...
...His share is 3.3 acres...
...Ka-Baby became active in the party in the late 1950s, influenced by his uncle...
...Filipinos don't want war...
...We are in the town of Bocaue, in the province of Bulacan, on the rich farming plain of Central Luzon, in the Philippines, and we have just driven in from Manila, forty miles to the south...
...Between 1960 and 1980, he says, he was elected barrio captain, town council member, vice mayor, and also served as acting mayor...
...He thinks Aquino is sincere in her pledges, but frets about what he calls "her shadow government"—Cardinal Sin, the Coju-angco family (her rich cousins), and former cronies of Marcos...
...Ka-Boy explains the different ideological groupings within the NPA...
...The new defense minister, [Rafael] Ileto, has not yet proved what he will do...
...Oddly enough, he still claims "a very high admiration for IBM as a company...
...The Communist Party of the Philippines, according to Ka-Boy, has about 50,000 members in Central Luzon and is organizing all the time...
...Will the draft constitution be ratified...
...He went to college in Manila and now is a barangay justice, a job akin to that of an American justice of the peace...
...He runs a small clinic in the barrio of Bocaue...
...policies: Nicaragua, Israel, Palestine, Libya...
...As the tropical night falls in Bulacan town, I shake hands with Ka-Baby...
...The minister of agrarian reform, Heherson Alvarez, is a bright boy...
...The CIA wants us to keep fighting, to keep the Filipino people divided...
...We borrow from the landlords...
...We drive through Balagtas...
...He is forty-eight, a slim, handsome man whose real name is Romulo de Guzman...
...With the overthrow of Marcos and accession of Aquino to the Philippine presidency, Olaguer was named governor of the Development Bank...
...on Christmas Eve, soldiers came and arrested him and several others...
...Some members of the NPA are hoodlums," he says...
...Instead, his plan to protest the Marcos dictatorship was "a mostly symbolic use of fire to torch institutions of oppression...
...If the constitution is not approved," he continues, "it will be a big setback...
...Will the killing stop...
...Jaime Cardinal Sin, archbishop of Manila, blessed the Light-a-Fire Movement...
...He is the union's secretary and a rice farmer, a tenant on a 3.3-acre plot...
...The communists are very careful...
...Near the stairs is a motorized tricycle, its armed rider guarding the union's entrance...
...He says he understands the American position: "It is practical...
...He is tall and has a shy smile...
...On the first floor, in an open-air restaurant, a woman uncaps Pepsi-Colas for Ricardo Cruz and me as we cool off from the tropical heat...
...The NPA is something of an umbrella organization, harboring factions with differing ideas...
...But that is the government's price, and it buys only about 10 per cent of the rice crop...
...The union office is in two small, dirty rooms...
...With it, Ka-Boy gives me other documents in English: One is from something called the Moscow Trust Group, one is on the letterhead of a group in Sofia, Bulgaria, and one is from the Australia Nuclear Free Zones Secretariat...
...Farming and other work bring him 18,000 pesos a year— $900-"difficult for a family of eight," he says...
...Urian says the same: "Once in a while, I go to church...
...In either case, he was promised a check for 26,000 pesos, about $4,850...
...Many of our people are in the mountainous area...
...Later I learn his name is Roger...
...Filipinos don't want war," he says...
...In November 1986, however, Aquino sacked Enrile and the truce became possible...
...He concedes that the United States will pay $900 million in rent for the bases over the five years ending in 1991 and that they bring important income to Filipinos...
...It is hand to mouth," he says...
...But if the talks fail, it'll be just like martial law again...
...She's doing right...
...Cruz laughs and says, "He carries two guns...
...I had a choice...
...He is the nephew of Dr...
...Under Marcos, if you were poor and went to court, you couldn't win your case...
...His plot annually yields 6,000 kilos of palay, or unhusked rice...
...We had no expertise and there were financial, moral, and ethical considerations...
...IBM general manager Ray Reyes came to Olaguer and told him it would be business-as-usual and that martial law might even be good for the company...
...I don't agree on the parts about the economy, but I'd rather have a constitution than nothing...
...We walk back to the yellow taxi that brought us from Manila, accompanied by Roger, who has still not been introduced...
...At a peace conference in Copenhagen, he learned this: "Ronald Reagan represents the people who make weapons...
...Mikhail Gorbachev represents peace-loving countries...
...The Philippine Supreme Court stayed his death sentence because he had never presented a defense at his trial, and Cardinal Sin worked hard for his release...
...We want to teach people to inform the masses...
...There is some action between the military and peasant groups, some organizations fighting in armed struggle and some paramilitary...
...known as "Ka-Boy" ("Ka" being a Filipino honorific) and as "Commander Male...
...Filipinos are a peace-loving people who want their independence...
...But most important, we are nationalists...
...W.S...
...There'll be talk later, before 1991...
...Myself, I'll vote yes, and I think most party members are going to vote yes...
...There was a double standard of justice...
...But Olaguer, a fifty-year-old economist who got his M.B.A...
...It will be very hard for Cory Aquino to survive...
...Olaguer left IBM and joined the opposition campaign against a Marcos-proposed constitution...
...he is also called Ka-Baby...
...We finish our Pepsis and climb the stairs to look for Ka-Boy...
...It hopes to promote reconciliation and unity among Filipinos...
...I can't accept real terrorism," Olaguer says in his comfortable home in suburban Quezon City...
...so do all militant groups...
...I raise the delicate subject of Subic Bay and Clark Field, the largest U.S...
...Urian speaks up: "Both parties might not fulfill their promises, but for us it is a sign of progress...
...Negotiators for President Corazon Aquino have just signed a sixty-day ceasefire with leaders of the National Democratic Front (NDF), which represents the illegal Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its New People's Army (NPA...
...Every month," he says, "we have a demonstration against feudalism, against the landlords...
...Does he go to church...
...He finds too much Catholic pressure in the draft constitution which, for example, says the government "shall protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception...
...There is no answer yet on what will be done...
...The communists, though still wary, began to open up...
...More than 17,000 U.S...
...Under Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, the Philippine army continued to search out NPA units and suspected communists...
...But he leads me upstairs to his living room, where three of his six children are watching television...
...As we drove, Cruz told me of the exploits of "Commander Dante," Bar-nabe Buscayno, a sparrow-unit leader...
...That is the Pentagon's rule...
...On the walls are organizational charts, a brown photo of the founders of the National Peasants Union (vintage 1946), a poster boosting the Twelfth World Festival of Youth and Students (Moscow, 1985), a poster lauding the Marxist World Trade Unions movement, and other faded photographs...
...to rectify the abuses of the Marcos regime...
...Both men admire Cory Aquino...
...But Olaguer, with what he calls "a visceral antagonism," wrote to Jacques G. Maisonrouge, president of IBM World Trade Corporation in New York, to protest Reyes's attitude...
...Americans don't want to give up the bases," says Ka-Baby...
...I give free dental service to the area," he says...
...The most recent refusal was in November, when Olaguer wanted to go to Washington for negotiations with officials of the World Bank concerning his country's foreign debt, which is approaching $30 billion...
...Ka-Boy does not want to talk about his role as Commander Male or about military actions and weapons, but he cites examples of aggressive U.S...
...We bid Urian goodbye...
...These naval and air bases are about fifty miles from where we sit, less than 800 miles straight across the South China Sea to Cam Ranh Bay, where the Soviet fleet now uses a Vietnamese base built by Americans a generation ago...
...Ka-Baby thinks the legislature to be chosen next spring can patch up the constitution's holes...
...But, says a friend who is a nun in Manila, "Every time the State Department puts Ed's name in the computer, it comes up 'terrorist'—and that's that...
...Our party hasn't taken a position yet...
...Farmers alone in the periphery of Clark Field earn $ 10 million a year," he says...
...Everyone likes Cory," Cruz says...
...Olaguer, a graduate of the University of the Philippines, went to work for IBM in 1965...
...Then he corrects himself: "Or almost everyone—not some of the military, not the Marcos loyalists, but they are fading away...
...He refused and went underground...
...But neither IBM nor the United States is in a mood to reciprocate...
...Filipinos are slated to vote yes or no on a new eighty-page constitution in early February, but many regard the referendum as a vote on Aquino's stewardship rather than as a vote on the document itself...
...He finally collected some money last year, but he's never received an apology...
...Cruz's brother-in-law, Alfredo Tumale, is a dentist from Nueva Ecija, a town about fifty miles north of Bocaue...
...From the four-lane tollway we took from Manila, we could see a mountain in Pampanga Province where small NPA squads called "sparrow units" hide out...
...But I finally said, 'Let's go back to work.'" He found a new job, continued to meet regularly with like-minded Filipinos in his political and economic sphere...
...For seventeen years, the NPA has been waging guerrilla war in this island nation, and the fighting did not stop when dictator Ferdinand Marcos was deposed last February...
...That is destructive to communist theology"—his word, theology...
...he farms and has a mango orchard...
...State Department has said no...
...Ka-Boy nods his head in assent and adds, "Cory is serious about the bases...
...Marcos gave me a New Year's gift, hoping the Cardinal would ease up in his pastoral letter before last February's vote...
...He scatters the children and asks his wife to bring soft drinks...
...In 1984, he was sentenced to death after a military court found him guilty of rebellion, arson, and attempted assassination of Ferdinand Marcos...
...She's fighting graft and corruption," Ka-Boy says...
...And he says he was cheated in the 1980 election when he ran for mayor: "I had a majority of 5,000, but they [Marcos officials] took the ballot boxes away and changed the people's will...
...Ka-Boy wants to take me to see Commander Baby in Bulacan town ten miles further north...
...They are much softer now...
...The party hopes to promote peace," Ka-Baby says...
...And four times, the U.S...
...It was a good move to clean the cabinet...
...If a rich landlord comes in, I collect...
...The bill of rights is good...
...The Maoists use guns more," he says, "and the Marxist-Leninists seek peaceful means...
...After milling, his year's work yields 1,125 kilos worth, at the government price, a bit less than 4,000 pesos, just under $200...
...The Light-a-Fire Movement distributed pamphlets and burned the building housing COMELEC, the Philippine Elections Commission, and a room in a hotel owned by a friend of Marcos...
...I was the one complaining," says Olaguer, "and I was the one convicted of being disloyal to IBM Philippines...
...No defense was allowed and all were convicted...
...Ka-Baby qualifies as middle-class in the rural Philippines...
...A pleasant-looking young man sits silently with him at the table but is not introduced...
...I am a nationalist," says Ka-Baby, "worried about the future generation of our motherland...
...Local millers buy the rest and pay much less: Urian might get as little as the peso-equivalent of $150 from them...
...I ask, "Who is Roger, the man I never met...
...In Bulacan, a town that looks very much like Bocaue, we pull up before a traditional two-story wooden house...
...He also chairs the peace committee of the Philippine Peace and Solidarity Council...
...Embassy in Manila will not comment on the turndowns, beyond the remark by Embassy spokesman Al Croghan that "a decision is pending in D.C...
...Urian tells us there is a "close connection" between the union and the Communist Party, "but I can't be candid...
...IBM sent him to Harvard...
...He says the Soviet Union sponsors about seventy young people from Central Luzon who study at its universities...
...Many sparrow units are there...
...IBM presented me with two letters: a letter of resignation, a letter terminating me...
...military installations outside the continental United States...
...If the peace talks fail, "we will have militarization again," says Ka-Boy...
...They don't want the Filipino people to talk together...
...I've been involved in the movement since 1969," he says...
...The U.S...
...Once in a while," he says...
...If we vote no," Urian says, "we don't know what kind of government we'll have...
...Ka-Boy is more reflective and more doubtful...
...Yes," says Ka-Boy...
...There was talk of imitating the communist-led New People's Army in armed revolt, but Olaguer says, "That was out of the question...
...The money helps Ka-Boy as well...
...Not so Ka-Boy...
...Does he belong to the Filipino people or the multinational corporations...
...If he is given five years, all our demands will be met...
...He is my brother-in-law's bodyguard, with him all the time...
...He was the company's business planning manager in the Philippines when Marcos imposed martial law...
...He helped lead the anti-Marcos campaign," says Urian...
...We never win, we have no capital...
...Asked which organizations he has in mind, he names the "loyalists" who still support Marcos, members of the Philippine army, some elements of the NPA, and the U.S...
...We don't want any intervention...
...He retains his admiration for the United States, too...
...Central Intelligence Agency...
...We thought our lives were in danger and that we ought to take to the hills," says Olaguer...
...Many study science," he says...
...In June 1980, he and five others of the Light-a-Fire Movement were tried by court-martial...
...We are not authorized to talk," says Ka-Baby...
...Sometimes he was called Commander Pussy," Cruz said, "because he was so like a cat...
...Olaguer also says, "Half of Cory Aquino's current cabinet was in on the plans, and also Rafael Salas, now deputy secretary-general of the United Nations...
...Gregorio Urian, a sturdy, white-haired man of sixty-two, greets us...
...Virgin Islands...
...Benigno Aquino was still in prison, but when he was exiled he took over as overall leader...
...The plan was to arrest me again after Marcos won the election...
Vol. 51 • February 1987 • No. 2
