Bandilang Pula (SDK)
Written by: Popoy Valencia;
Published: Bandilang Pula (SDK), Aklat Blg. 1 No. 1, Pebrero 1971;
Source: Bandilang Pula (SDK), Aklat Blg. 1 No. 1, Pebrero 1971;
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
In a sense, the Diliman Commune was an inevitability. Its rise in the University of the Philippines Diliman campus after a military invasion of the area was conditioned by the peculiarity of the University’s position in society.
Events and the polarization of forces in the UP have always anticipated later developments in the national scale. UP had historically developed as an advanced base of the cultural revolution for the national democratic struggle. In the early 60’s, the anti-communist witchhunts launched by the Congressional Frankenstein called Committee on Un-Filipino Activities were directed against the liberal elements of the University. Reacting, the progressives of the University, concerned not merely with ensuring “a free market of ideas” but with winning the ideological war in favor of nationalist ideas, turned a bad thing into a good thing — the anti-Red Inquisition led by Congress and gleefully hossanaed by the campus clerico-fascists became mobilizing factor which galvanized 20,000 constituents into holding an anti-fascist demo. The realization by many intellectuals was that even the University’s pretensions to liberalism cannot be realized if the University continued to exist as intellectual service center of a semi-colonial, semi-feudal dispensation. From this initial skirmish emerged the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines whose members will later sire several national democratic organizations.
From then on, the national democratic cultural wave took an upswing in the University and elsewhere. Early in the second half of the 60’s, after the first riotous demo — the historic October 24, 1966, a convulsive split in nationalist ranks caused a slight recession. The resulting isolation of the boys and girls identified with the Lava feudal court gave the movement the purifying purge necessary for pushing the national democratic wave even higher. When the first months of 1969 unleashed a landslide of college strikes against rising tuition fees and for better study conditions, the vanguard character of the University manifested itself in the primarily anti-imperialist tone of the UP strike. The issue of Americanization generated such national attention against American imperialism that the UP administration had to cancel several colonial contracts with Dow Chemicals (which produces poisons used by American against Vietnam), US Air Force, and Asia Foundation.
If the CUFA witchhunts fueled the rise of SCAUP and other broad mass organizations, the anti-imperialist strike of early 1969 was the launching pad for greater struggles. January 26, 1970 came. Protest classes were held in the UP, until January 30, and after. The storm of marches, congresses, and mass meetings that popularized the triad of evils: “imperialism, feudalism, and fascism” had as storm center Vinzons Hall where the Movement for a Democratic Philippines met. The cultural revolution was now a gigantic tidal wave of new revolutionary concepts putting forward the slogan of resolute struggle against foreign and local ruling classes: MAKIBAKA, HUWAG MATAKOT.
In the aftermath of this giant storm of protest came the landslide of victories for nationalist candidates in the campus elections of 1970. The first victory occured in UP Los Baños, Vie Ladlad of the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan and Rie Umali of the Kabataang Makabayan won the council chairmanships of the Colleges of Agriculture and of Forestry. Next in line was UP Diliman’s Eric Baculinao. Victory after victory followed for the activist groups. These progressive chairman in turn gave birth to two new aggrupations, STAND (Student Alliance for National Democracy) and NUSP, Progressive Bloc. Meanwhile, the Philippine Collegian, UP’s campus organ, which had been singled out by Fuehrer Marcos as proof that “UP is a breeding ground for communists”, came out with the first chapter of Amado Guerrero’s “Philippine Crisis” and the Political Report of the Communist Party Politburo.
One tracing the dialectical development of the struggle between the two opposing forces in our society — the progressive classes and the reactionary classes — as manifested by their respective conscious elements the nationalist groups and the government bureaucrats — notices a pattern. Each anti-nationalist and anti-people move of the government only served to generate a new awakening and a new militance among the masses. The CUFA witchhunts produced nationalist groups, post October 24, 1966 saw the purge of the bourgeois opportunist Lava cliques from the mainstream of the nationalist movement, January 26 and 30, 1970 were midwives for MDP, STAND, and NUSP, Progressive Bloc.
Analogous to this, militarization in the countryside only caused the rise of a New People’s Army, purged of Lavaism and Tarucism.
This apparent rule, plus the vanguard position of UP vis-a-vis the development of national democratic consciousness and of nationalist confrontations will explain the emergence of the Diliman Commune.
Reactionaries are said to dig their own graves, American imperialism dug its Philippine grave several spadefuls deeper when it decided to raise fuel prices early in 1971 with a Presidential tariff hike for fig-leaf. It could not have come at a worse moment. The student ranks had hardly quieted because of the blacklisting of activists and writers by school authorities in the Last Quarter Storm of 1970 and were preparing for the 1971 True State of the Nation rally. With the active support of young activists, the jeepney drivers launched the first marathon transportation strikke. The finale for this was a Plaza Miranda demo on the 13th of January 1971 a new Marcos-created monster, the WIOG, inaugurated its firepower by killing three activists. In the same demo, Metrocom attempted to assassinate SDK National Chairman Sixto Carlos. In Los Baños, the first barricades were being raised in the same period.
The strike which extended to Central, Southern Luzon and Visayas plus the massive indignation of the nation over the murder of the three activists forced Malacañang to order a temporary rollback of oil prices pending more legitimation of the price increases. The Price Control Council kangaroo hearings, instead of serving to cover up imperialist dictation, only heated up the simmering youth-driver front. Despite threats and constant harassment, the True State of the Nation rally went off on Jaanuary 25 peacefully, exposing the pro-fascist and cowardly attitude of Manglapus’ ilk who batted for a stay-at-home non-demo. January 30 was observed with a marathon teach-in at Plaza Miranda extending to dawn of January 31. But the momentary peace could not possibly last long, the Price Control Council came out with its “decision”: all but two of all oil products can raise their prices. The simmering confrontation had reached boiling point. The jeepneys will not roll unless prices were rolled back, said the drivers.
UP would again seize the spotlight as battlefield where social conflicts were extrapolated. February 1, a barricade was raised on University Avenue. President SP Lopes of UP ordered the UP police to remove the barricade but the activists resisted, including Sunny Mesina, SDK applicant.
Events in the University of the Philippines always have had a poetic consistency. As an advance base of the cultural revolution, the principal battles in the University were fought among the constituents of the academic community themselves. Attacks by external elements like the Marcos regime, the Quezon City police, and the CUFA were just catalysts that became points of departure and conflict between the anti-nationalist students and faculty members on one hand and the nationalist stunents, workers, and members on the other. These two opposing elements made up the unstable unity in the campus which erupted into open war (of manifestoes, teach-ins, demos, etc.) as often as basic issues came into focus via particular concretizations like the CUFA probe and the anti-Americanization strike.
The transportation stoppage against the American imperialist oil companies which caused the rise of the barricade at University Avenue, Diliman brought these consistent parallels to a logical final confrontation. After having been stopped in his first try at breaking the traffic blockade, Inocente Campos, a professor wih a long reactionary record and a known Marcos Ilocano loyalist, came back in his car carrying three guns, wearing a medieval helmet-visor, and an armored vest. The murderous gunfire he unleashed on the barricaders felled 16-year old Sonny Mesina, who would die three days later. Thus, the recurrent confrontations between the internal forces of the University which were the reflections of social forces contending in the national level reached the fateful extension of violent confrontation. The Campos who murdered Sonny was no mere madman, he was motivated by the most pro-fascist, pure law and order ideas. The man was known to be a most vociferous crusader against activists. He used the classrooms to vilify activists, he sabotaged boycotts, toted guns around campus one of which he once poked at an activist. It was almost predictable as an equation that he should be the vehicle for the first fascist murder inside the University. Rounding out the tableau was the covey of UP police who laughed vulture-like while Campus discharged his guns. This act of the UP police was practical proof of the young revolutionaries” theory of state and law: that “law and order” was only a catch phrase used by the exploiting classes to serve their interests, that “law and order” was conveniently shelved if the interests of American imperialism, feuadalism, and bureaucrat capitalism so dictated. This justified the symbolic insurrection which gave rise to the Diliman commune.
Tuesday, February 2, was the day of the Battle for the Ladies’ Dorms. The previous day was not only the day of the felling of an activist but also the day of an afternoon attack on the barricades by Karingal’s police because “saving face” meant more than saving lives (“Sinasabi ng tao, hindi raw namin kaya ang taga-UP,” Karingal supposedly said.) A reinforced barricade rose anew and as the PC-police forces threatened attack, more barricades rose inside. The threat of a University invasion shifted the issue from the jeepney strike to the time-honored sanctity of the University from military intrusion. Of course, this tradition could not possibly last long in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society teetering on armed revolution. But it was a tradition dear to all true University constituents.
As news that the cherished virginity of the University was about to be defiled by the barrel of the Armalite, all sectors were galvanized into action. Quiet bespectacled chemistry and physics scholars were producing explosives, once-feudal-minded dorm girls formed a molotov assembly line, even faculty members were contributing gasoline. As the fascist robots waged a two-pronged attack from two sides of the University students and community residents heroically fought back with pill. boxes and molotov and hurling back tear gas canisters. Even fratmen, new ROTC officers and once-smug sectarians were fighting. This sudden unity of hitherto diverse and even antagonistic elements of the University confirmed the revolutionary proposition that the intensification of the social revolution would weld all sectors around the vanguard element.
“Revolution undoubtedly teaches with a rapidity and thoroughness which appear incredible in peaceful periods of political development”–Lenin (Two Tactics of Social Democracy).
The fascist intrusion brought the revolution in practice into the University. Long in theoretical unity around anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, the surfacing of an attenuated version of the armed struggle in the campus brought more elements to the side of revolution “with a rapidity” no amount of teach-ins and readings could have accomplished.
The primacy of practice over theory, as Mao Tsetung would put it, was proven by social practice — the only criterion for truth.
The concrete lesson for revolutionaries is that a limited realization of the revolutionary confrontation which entrusts the masses with a measure of revolutionary power educates and mobilizes them far greater than so much discussion groups can effect.
The subsequent liberation of the DZUP and the University Press upon proclamation of the Diliman Commune teaches us that a revolution is a dynamic process for which no agitator can metaphysically prescribe developments but that it moves along particular laws of motion that revolutionaries must learn and master. It is true that excesses were committed by some participants but these pale in comparison with the conscious brutalities of state authorities on the masses. What strikes us more is that the hoary theory of “violence as a dehumanizing experience” was actually disproven. Revolutionary violence engaged in by the University constituents actually developed among them a discipline and comradeship no number of Emily Post texts could have given.
The Diliman “insurrection” liberated the creativity of the community masses — the liberation of DZUP and its revolutionary broadcasts showed the spontaneous capacity of the masses to turn a bad thing into a good thing, in this case to turn the invasion of UP into an opportunity to deal more lethal blows against American imperialism and the Marcos fascist puppet regime. The task of a revolutionary is to direct the enthusiasm and creativity of the masses along a revolutionary programme. In so doing, it is far better to allow for the commission of some errors in a limited scale knowing that the masses are capable of learning by themselves rather than stifle the new-found revolutionary creativeness with strait-jacket directives. “From the masses, to the masses” is the guide even with the question of errors and excesses.
The revolutionary, instead of weeping over the disenchantment of some petty bourgeois elements with the Commune, should jump at the opportunity for prolonging certain moves started by the masses which have a revolutionary potential at the same time that the loose ends are tucked in — the BANDILANG PULA — born of a liberated UP press is one such project.