From a Red’s eyes

The New People’s Army is commemorating its 42nd founding anniversary a day after Christmas this year.

Four decades is an astonishingly protracted campaign for a group that is considered as the biggest threat to Philippine security but, at the same time, dismissed as a ragtag band of 5,000 fighters whose preferred targets are isolated police or military units or unprotected business establishments.

Nevertheless, there are a few who remain confident of the movement’s relevance in our era of touch-screen technology and social networking.

Ka Wako

He is 44 years old and soft-spoken, quiet eyes framed by short-clipped hair. A mid-level commander of the guerrilla unit in Surigao del Norte, he helped lead the raid on the Taganito Mining Corp., the NPA’s biggest and most recent triumph.

He’s served the movement for half his life and had been in multiple operations but the raid on TMC was particularly sweet.

After a month’s surveillance and a week’s trek to the site, the attack on TMC was swift, bloodless and victorious.

The guerrillas were whooping with the conquest.

It was, to them, a punitive action against a company violating the environment and workers’ rights. Wako spoke with the TMC manager himself to explain why the mine was targeted.

The hours following the raid were tense. Wako and the men were poised to engage soldiers responding to the attack but none came.

He says they expect security to become tighter after the attack but it doesn’t bother him. He explains that ‘even if they add security, comrades will just try to find out what the weak point is and exploit it.’

‘More security wouldn’t make a difference,’ Ka Wako points out.

Ka Momay

She is 38 years old and has spent 20 years with the NPA. Her husband is also a Red fighter. They have four children under the care of support organizations.

She learned of the movement in an evacuation camp after her family was forced from their home in Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur.

Being active in the movement is difficult, she admits. She’s missed meals, lugged her “house” on her back in recurrent relocations to avoid being located by the military, been exposed to the elements while walking at night in treacherous conditions. She’s had to walk barefoot, hungry and under the rain.

Asked what keeps her in the movement and away from her children, Momay explains that she hasn’t seen any change in Philippine society now and when she first joined.

She says that “the same feudal system is in effect and the crisis is only getting worse.”

Ka Shielo

She is 18 years old, just a year older than Ka Momay when she joined the revolution. Technically, though, Ka Shielo grew up with the movement.

She was born in a community in Llanga where the NPA is not viewed with hostility or suspicion. In fact, her parents welcomed visiting guerrillas in their home.

From time to time, Ka Maria Malaya—who now serves as regional spokesman for the revolution—babysat a young Shielo while her parents were in the farm.

It was only natural for Shielo to join the movement. Her parents were sympathizers and all her friends from the village also joined the revolution.

She serves as a medical officer for her unit and hasn’t seen battle. Shielo hopes to prove herself by participating in combat, though.

Asked why she has that much respect for the movement, Shielo explains that the NPA is the country’s last defense against stronger economies and foreign companies raping the Philippines and Filipino pride.

Theirs are three voices in around 5000 from a population of 94 million that hardly sound representative of the majority of Filipinos.

However, the trio shows that the NPA survives to this day because the social inequities and injustice that brought forth the NPA’s birth in 1968 remain—even only in pockets—till today.

In villages like where Shielo grew up, the NPA serves as a de facto government institution that dispenses justice, peace and order and even education and health services.

If Wako, Momay and Shielo sound like mouthpieces of the communist movement, that’s because they are. They appear to genuinely believe in the NPA’s cause; they would have deserted long ago had it been otherwise. –Johnna Villaviray-Giolagon, Manila Times

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