The leadership and entire membership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, all Red fighters and commanders of the New People’s Army, and all revolutionary forces of the Filipino people, raise their clenched fists and pay tribute to Ka Maria Malaya (Myrna Sularte), one of the leading cadres of the Party and beloved warrior of the oppressed masses of workers, peasants and the Lumad people of Mindanao.

Ka Maria, 71, fell in her last battle on February 12 in Barangay Pianing, Butuan City in a fierce encounter between the New People’s Army and the ruthless fascist forces of the 901st Infantry Brigade.

She was a member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau. She was also a member of the Mindanao Commission and served as secretary of the Northeast Mindanao Regional Party Committee for more than two decades. She also served as the National Democratic Front spokesperson in Northeast Mindanao.

A native of Bayugan City, Agusan del Sur, Ka Maria came from a middle peasant class family. She graduated with a degree in agrotechnology from one of the universities in Butuan. She left her relatively comfortable life to selflessly serve the oppressed and exploited masses. She joined the Party in 1977, at the height of the darkness of fascist rule under the then Marcos dictatorship.

Over the past five decades, she performed various duties, including leading revolutionary work in cities and rural areas, both in western and northeastern Mindanao.

Her commitment to the revolutionary cause never wavered. She tirelessly fulfilled her duties as a Party cadre and leader of the New People’s Army, even when she was diagnosed with cancer, which she faced for two decades through disciplined diet and treatment.

Ka Maria was an ardent student of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. She assiduously applied the Party’s basic principles, policies and program to the concrete conditions of the people in Northeast Mindanao. At the same time, she studied the revolutionary experiences of Vietnam, China and other countries, as well as that of other regions in the country.

For many years, she was a close partner of her husband, the former NPA spokesperson Ka Oris, in leading the Party and the NPA in achieving revolutionary victories in advancing the protracted people’s war. She was one of the strongest pillars of the Second Great Rectification Movement in 1992, which she promoted and implemented without hesitation.

Ka Maria was a military cadre par excellence. She always ensured that the people’s war in the northeast region of Mindanao developed comprehensively. Under Ka Maria’s unwavering leadership, the NPA and the people waged an unyielding struggle against the destructive and exploitative mining companies, plantations and ecotourism projects which drove the toiling masses away from their communities and devastated the environment.

She instilled in the NPA an unwavering resolve to combat all forms of oppression and to exact justice for all the crimes perpetrated by the fascists against the people.

She inspired and helped organize the resistance of the Manobo lumad masses in defending their ancestral lands, and preventing the further aggression of “development projects”. For this, she earned the ire of the big bourgeois compradors and multinational corporations, who contributed funds to arm and train units of the enemy armed forces and paramilitary groups to fight the NPA, and “neutralize” Ka Maria.

In fleeting moments of respite, Ka Maria captured the elusive beauty of rare orchids and flowers, their vibrant colors bursting forth amid the green forest of guerrilla camps.

As the blood of revolutionary heroes once flowed through Ka Maria’s veins, so does her blood now flow in the veins of a new generation of Party cadres and Red fighters. They are determined, as Ka Maria once was, to advance the people’s war from one stage to the next, towards complete victory.

Excerpts from the Central Committee of the Philippines’ tribute to Ka Maria Malaya, February 14, 2025 .