Back to reality after the 60th annual fiesta of the Leyte Landing

Fr. Santiago "Sanny" Salas
Spokesperson in Eastern Visayas
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
October 25, 2004

For confirmation, contact:
Roy Santos, NDF-EV Media Liaison Officer
Cellphone No. 0918-3112138
E-mail: [email protected]

The revolutionary movement and the masses of the people in Eastern Visayas did not find any cause for jubilation nor participated in the 60th annual bash of the Leyte Landing last October 20. The propagandists of the Leyte Landing fiesta insult the Filipino people by implying they do not deserve national sovereignty and that the Philippines is inferior and remains beholden to the superpower of US imperialism. The main celebrants of the Leyte Landing were likewise not the masses of the poor but US imperialism, the puppet Arroyo regime and the ruling classes of big compradors and landlords. In fact, even the aged and poverty-stricken World War II Filipino veterans who did the real fighting and were bused in for the affair were shabbily treated by being barred from the official luncheon.

It is time for the Filipino people to reaffirm their dignity, stand up and shatter the myth of the Leyte Landing and "liberation" by US imperialism during World War II. The US imperialist did not come to rescue us but to reclaim a colony that had been brutally seized by Japanese imperialism. As a matter of fact, the anti-Japanese resistance movement led by the old Communist Party of the Philippines and the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap) was by 1944-1945 already defeating the foreign occupier in the countryside. But the old Party and the Hukbalahap made the mistake of welcoming back US imperialism, which then proceeded after the war to massacre the communists and people�s fighters that it saw as threats to its recolonization. The rest, as they say, is history as we know it: the US shifted from direct colonial control over the Philippines, to indirect or semi-colonial control through its puppet regimes until today.

The Arroyo regime is today�s most rabid promoter of such a historical distortion of the Leyte Landing and that US imperialism is a friend of the Filipino people. Let us remember that this so-called "friend" is the same one that killed at least 50,000 people in Samar to turn the island into a "howling wilderness" during the Filipino-American War from 1899 until the first decade of the 20th century. Let us be critical about the role of US imperialism in the current economic and financial crisis, in stifling our economic independence and devastating the national economy through imperialist globalization, privatization, deregulation, liberalization and denationalization. These policies so fanatically promoted by the Arroyo regime are bleeding the national economy, killing local production, bankrupting the reactionary government, and starving the people to death.

Let us not forget that while US imperialism and its puppet regime waste the people�s money in another Leyte Landing extravaganza, the poor in the cities and the countryside are dying from eating garbage or from gradual starvation. It is an understatement in a recent survey that 15 percent of the people eat only twice a day; in the hinterlands of Samar, many peasant families make do with one meal a day.

Once more in her speech at the Leyte Landing bash, the puppet President Arroyo slung mud at the Communist Party of the Philippines and the revolutionary movement, alleging ties with international terrorists. Arroyo is making a laughingstock of herself because she is the one who is consorting with the number one international terrorist, US imperialism. If we freely describe "terrorism" as "indiscriminate violence for political ends", then US imperialism is the number one international terrorist for its wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, military intervention in various parts of the world, and the support of repressive puppet regimes worldwide like the Arroyo regime. The Arroyo regime and the number one internationational terrorist are one in ever worsening the exploitation and oppression of the Filipino people through economic hardships, militarization and rising human rights violations, and US military intervention.

It is never too late for the people of Eastern Visayas to reject the myth of the Leyte Landing and assert their desire for national sovereignty and genuine democracy. The people are being awakened by the indiscriminate violence of daily hardships and political repression. The people are learning that the only way out of poverty and powerlessness is through their revolution, and that the counterrevolutionary violence of US imperialism and the puppet Arroyo regime must be met and overwhelmed with the revolutionary might of the people. Through taking up arms and mobilizing in their millions, the masses of the people can overthrow the Arroyo regime and other succeeding puppets a la EDSA I and II, until the entire ruling system and imperialist control can be smashed and complete revolutionary victory assured.

That will be then a genuine national liberation.#

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