Ka Bob: Fearless Red Commander, Pride of the Tumanduk in Panay

Jurie Guerrero
Spokesperson
Jose Percival Estocada Command
New People's Army-Central Panay
February 25, 2003

Rarely in recent history of guerrilla war in the Visayas has a small NPA unit been able to wipe out one squad of reactionary troops on foot patrol. Even rarer is the case of the February 24, 2003 ambush in Daan Sur, Tapaz, Capiz because it was done without sophisticated equipment against the command center itself of the SOT, Task Force Panay's special, highly trained combat and psy-ops unit. Led by Capt. Fonteveros, the command center was surrounded by five other SOT units deployed in the adjacent villages and further augmented by four CAFGU platoons and another four platoons of the Alpha and Bravo Companies of the 12th Infantry Battalion to provide them security.

The success of this NPA tactical operation is attributed to the widespread support of the tumanduk indigenous people of Panay, who assisted at every step of the way. It also owes much of its success to the revolutionary determination and perseverance of the Red fighters of the people's army and partly to the daringness and sharpness of Ka Bob, who commanded the operation.

Ka Bob is Ismaelito Giganto, Maeng to his friends, Tiyoy (Ilonggo term for uncle), and Mal-am (tumanduk term for elder) to the many people whom he served while in the people's army. Son of the late Mal-am Benig, respected elder of the tumanduk, Ka Bob was regarded by the tumanduk as their own leader in the struggle to regain their ancestral land.

A large portion of tumanduk ancestral domain in the municipalities of Tapaz and Jamindan, province of Capiz, was landgrabbed from the tumanduk by virtue of President Diosdado Macapagal's Proclamation 67 in 1962. This covers 24 villages or 33,310 hectares of cultivated land, grasslands and prime forests along the Pan-ay River, inhabited for more than a century now by the tumanduk but forcibly converted into training grounds for the 3rd Infantry Division, Philippine Army. Other parts in the adjoining municipality of Calinog, province of Iloilo along the Julaud River were declared as forest reservations by the DENR. tumanduk farmers today are arrested if they attempt to plant edible crops in their ancestor's lands. Still other parts of ancestral land have been arrogated by big landlords and military officers who took advantage of marginalization of the tumanduk from the social and political life of the lowlands.

Mal-am Benig himself was thrown out of his land in Brgy. Acuna, Tapaz, Capiz by big landlords who turned his redor (tumanduk system of ownership) into pasturelands. The family then became tenants of a big landlord in the lowland villages of San Miguel Ilaya and Roosevelt, Tapaz. When the New People's Army started organizing revolutionary people's organizations in Tapaz and Calinog in the early seventies, Mal-am Benig's family was among the most enthusiastic participants of the revolution. They put their extensive influence among the other elders in the upland villages to encourage support for the people's army. Mass movements were launched to successfully resist the tumado, a form of land rent imposed by the Philippine Army. Tumandok farmers organized teams, drove away the cows and reclaimed their land for planting, including Mal-am Benig's redor. Ka Bob himself was among the activists who pushed for revolutionary land reform of big landholdings in the lowlands, and the peasant organization he was involved in was able to successfully lower land rent in their village in the early eighties.

It is history now that intense militarization was the Marcos and Aquino Regime's response to the people's revolutionary efforts for justice and reform. The Philippine Constabulary, the 12th Infantry Battalion, 47IB and 6IB of the Philippine Army took turns in terrorizing the tumanduk by burning down their houses, strafing and looting their homes, confiscating their farm products, gongs and family treasures, beheading local mass leaders, and other such brutality. Ka Bob, the tall, soft-spoken volleyball player and several other villagers including two teachers, were butt-whipped with an Armalite rifle and made to walk on their knees from the volleyball court to the barangay hall when they defeated a PC officer in a volleyball game.

From a local activist, Ka Bob joined the people's army in early 1984 and participated in many successful military actions, putting to good use his mastery of the terrain, his close links with the people, and his grasp of tumanduk culture and history. At the height of the revisionist confusion in the late 1980s, Ka Bob held on to his commitment and was eventually appointed to assume command of the front's main guerrilla unit. His unit survived the US-Ramos Regime's Total War and gradual constriction by striking deep roots among the masses in the hinterlands of Tapaz, Jamindan and Calinog.

He went on to become an active Party cadre of the Second Great Rectification Movement, patiently explaining to his fellow tumanduk in the villages and in the people's army the need to review basic Marxist-Leninist principles and advance the revolution comprehensively. He helped in the recovery of tumanduk areas that have been abandoned during the movement's militarism and encouraged the villagers to raise their grievances so that the movement can act upon the complaints. Because the tumanduk treated him as their Mal-am, they showered him with gifts and asked him to mediate between feuding clans and villages to avoid the panambi. He took pains to educate them on developing mass organizations, democratization and collective leadership while respecting the indigenous justice system and the traditional leaders.

The renewed efforts of the 3ID, PA, to evict the tumanduk in connection with Balikatan '94 and the AFP Modernization Program in 1995 met with renewed resistance from the affected villages. Larger mass mobilizations, dialogues, congressional hearings and petitions by democratic people's organizations advanced side by side with campaigns of revolutionary mass organizations to develop production, health, education, and campaigns to support and join the people's army. The daringness of the tumanduk dumot (traditional grudge) and panambi (settling the score through tribal wars) were directed at the military instead of between warring villages. Indigenous youth swelled the ranks of the people's army.

Today, the tumanduk struggle to reclaim their ancestral land has become a part of the national democratic revolution, a comprehensive struggle against the imperialist incursions by mining corporations and ecotourism projects, against landgrabbing, usury and exploitative price manipulation by the local ruling class, and against militarization. The combination of broad open mass struggles, full-blown revolutionary mass organizations, developing revolutionary governance, and increased fighting capacity of the people's army is serving the people well in resisting Task Force Panay's almost two years of intensive military campaign to crush the people's resistance. TFP's combined intelligence, psywar and combat strike operations have failed to weaken the people's army and the revolutionary mass organizations. Instead, it has tempered the NPA red fighter and commanders, taught the tumanduk to support the people's army even more, and to flexibly and creatively combine all forms of struggle.

As a beloved son and respected leader of the tumanduk, Ka Bob exemplifies the higher development of the tumanduk struggle. He has shown in his life how to fuse the hardiness, communal spirit and forest survival and battle skills of the tumanduk with the depth and universal scope of the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In the process, he has become not only a brave tumanduk warrior or a wise and respected tribal elder. He has become a true proletarian revolutionary leader, pride of his people.

The military psy-war machinery wishes to make it appear that the people's struggle in Central Panay has ended with Ka Bob's death. In truth, a new level of the tumanduk struggle has just begun.

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