Cagayan Valley:
Overcoming conservatism and advancing anew

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

In its March-April 1999 issue, Ang Bayan published an article on how the Central Visayas region successfully struggled against conservatism in the armed struggle. The following article based on material submitted by Cagayan Valley (Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino) also shares valuable lessons on the region's experience in struggling against and overcoming this problem.

Despite promptly embracing and upholding the rectification movement since 1992, the revolutionary movement in Cagayan Valley failed to advance in the different aspects of its work.

There was an earnest desire to rectify the military adventurism and urban insurrectionism of the past but conservatism prevailed in the armed struggle and the legal democratic movement due to insufficient grasp of the dialectical relationship among the various aspects of revolutionary work.

Prevalence of conservatism

After military adventurism and urban insurrectionism had been successfully rectified, conservatism prevailed since 1997 as the foremost obstacle blocking the advance of revolutionary work in the region.

The revolutionary forces failed to take advantage of objective conditions that were becoming more favorable. Instead, there was a contraction in the number of villages and towns within areas of operation. The number of Red fighters, New People's Army (NPA) formations, cadres, members, local Party branches and the mass base also dwindled. For years, there were no tactical offensives.

There was failure to grasp the line of extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare based on an ever-expanding and-deepening mass base, and the fact that it was correct and necessary to launch tactical offensives that could be won. This is done along with aggressively arousing and mobilizing ever-broader sections of the people for the revolution.

In rectifying the verticalized formations that engaged full-time in military work, all NPA units were deployed in equal-size units for mass work, without assigning a unit that would serve as the center of gravity.

There were very few recruits. Among the factors responsible were the contraction of areas of operation, the lackluster conduct of agrarian revolution, unenthusiastic organizing work among the youth and, in some units, the adoption of higher standards for recruitment.

On the whole, the minimum program of agrarian revolution was sluggishly implemented as the key link in revolutionary work in the countryside. This, despite the persistence and intensification of the feudal and semifeudal exploitation of the peasant masses and the wealth of experience in agrarian revolution in vast areas of the region's countryside.

Only land problems among the masses were attended to, with not enough stress given to forging the unity of the peasant masses against the landlords.

There was a prevalent idea that before agrarian revolution could be launched, it was necessary to set up the revolutionary mass organizations and popularize mass courses extensively. There was failure to grasp that revolutionary tasks, organizing, mass education and mobilization had a dialectical relationship at every stage of development of the mass movement.

In setting overextended areas of responsibility for NPA units, the latter were unable to reach many areas or neglected them. On many occasions, the level of revolutionary work in villages was lowered to that of an organizing group (OG) despite the presence of factors appropriate for a higher level. There were also cases where additional requisites for organizing an OG were adopted, where organizing committees were abolished or where organizers refused to set them up -- all of which slowed down the pace of expanding and consolidating the mass organizations.

In urban areas, only underground organizations were set up, with the building of legal formations abandoned, in an effort to rectify past errors in organizing.

Opportunities to launch mass actions were missed because of the erroneous idea that such actions could only be conducted after revolutionary mass organizations had been set up over a wide area. There was failure to grasp the dialectical relationship between mobilizing and organizing.

Renewed advance in revolutionary struggle

It was in the last quarter of 1998 when the Party regional leadership identified conservatism as the foremost obstacle to revolutionary advance. A call was issued to struggle against it and advance in a big way. The call was enthusiastically heeded by the revolutionary forces. By the third quarter of 1999, initial advances had made their mark on guerrilla fronts and on the movement in cities and town centers.

An increasing number of NPA units are now able to cover their entire area of responsibility. In areas where agrarian revolution was advanced as the key link in reaching out to, arousing, recovering and organizing the people, the mass base has rapidly been expanded and recovered. Underground organizations of peasants, women and youth are rapidly being set up in entire barrios and large districts.

Mass struggles to lower land rent, raise farm workers' wages and resist landgrabbing by bureaucrat capitalists are stirring.

In the first half of 1999 alone, the number of organized masses doubled from its size at the end of 1998. The number of activists also doubled. The number of organizing committees has almost doubled and conditions have become ripe for setting them up in more areas. Underground cells among the middle forces in the countryside have also been organized.

The Party has again been taking root at the basic levels. The growing number of local Party branches being organized or reactivated is adding to those that have already been set up.

NPA recruitment is picking up, especially in areas where antifeudal struggles are already being waged. It is the youth who have been organized in underground or open movements who are most enthusiastic to become Red fighters.

It was the successful raid on a PNP detachment in Barangay Pilitan, Tumauini, Isabela in June 1999 that broke the prolonged cessation of tactical offensives in the region. After this, successive tactical offensives have been launched to meet concrete needs in the tasks of recovery and reconstruction.

In accordance with current needs, military actions primarily target spies or so-called civilian informers who have incurred blood debts to the people and the revolution and former NPA members who have stolen firearms and collaborated with the enemy.

Five punitive actions were undertaken from July to October. Those punished were first tried in the people's court. Three spies were also punished.

In an encounter in Jones, Isabela on September 7, nine troopers from the 45th IB were killed. An NPA fighter was slain in the firefight where an NPA squad battled with a platoon of AFP troopers. It was a demonstration of the Red guerrillas' fighting spirit.

Advance of the legal democratic movement

The legal democratic movement is once more on the advance in Cagayan Valley. Successive mass actions launched from June to October were preludes to bigger advances in mass struggles.

Thousands of peasants, youth and students, professionals and church people joined mass actions against the monopoly of land by landlords, the plunder of the country's resources by imperialists and bureaucrat capitalists and their destruction of the people's livelihood, the relentless and intensifying fascist violence in the countryside, the Estrada regime's attempt to revise the constitution of the Republic of the Philippines and the commercialized and repressive educational system.

From June to July 1999, hundreds of peasants in various parts of the region joined successive mass actions to oppose the reactionary government's foreclosure of lands covered by Operation Land Transfer. Seven barangays immediately benefited. The speciousness of the reactionary government's land reform program was exposed before broad sections of the people.

A large number of middle forces were mobilized to join the mass movement. The open progressive movement extended its influence to other areas.

In August 1999, more than 200 students rallied in front of the Commission on Higher Education in Tuguegarao, Cagayan to assert students' democratic rights and oppose higher tuition fees. It was the first organized student mobilization since 1995.

On August 21 and September 21, 1999, hundreds of peasants, youth and middle forces participated in various forms of protest against the Estrada regime's attempts to rewrite the constitution of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

In the third week of October 1999, thousands of peasants, middle forces, youth and church people launched various forms of mass actions to condemn the construction of a carbon plant and mine that would encompass several towns in Isabela.

These are but initial advances in Cagayan Valley. Bigger advances are sure to come with the dawning of the 21st century.

January 2000
English Edition

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