Marcia residents remember the decades-long support of the Party and the people’s army for their community. Red fighters have long been their comrades. With the Party’s guidance, they studied Philippine Society and Revolution, special courses, and other studies that consolidated and mobilized the entire village. They resolved the problem of their ancestors against bandit groups in the area that brazenly seized their products and killed their family members and children defenselessly. The leaders of this group were punished.

Under the Second Great Rectification Movement, they launched the anti-feudal struggle against the local landlords. They succeeded in ending the latter’s exploitative practices. They won the struggle to stop giving landlords a share of their harvest. With the help of comrades, simple cooperation became their practice in production work and other tasks in the village.

They said they could not have achieved justice without the Party, the people’s army, and the entire revolutionary movement.

Rectification and advancement

While identifying the errors and weaknesses in the Party, the Army, and the mass organizations, the people of Marcia rebuilt their chapter of the Pambansang Katipunan ng mga Magbubukid (PKM). They conducted criticism and self-criticism. They criticized the PKM’s slow formation and the flash in the pan style of mass work. They said they failed to conduct mass base expansion. Repeated courses in PADEPA and others did not complement the current problems facing the village and its people. The Party, the Army, and the whole revolutionary movement also carried out self-criticism for their contributions to the overall setbacks in past years.

Concluding the assembly, they held elections to choose a chairperson and officers as vice chairpersons for various fields of work. They elected the former organizing committee leaders as officers. “We must uphold the responsibility entrusted by the people of the village,” vowed the newly elected committee.

The PKM immediately presented a one-year program to raise the level of the mass organization. They aimed to build the revolutionary committee in the village within six months. Before this, they would successively establish the full mass organizations of the youth, women, and cultural workers. They would also carry out recovery work and expand the mass base to give members a broad area of work, and the New People’s Army a space for maneuverability while it is overcoming self-constriction and over-concentration.

The organization also aimed to consolidate all forces simultaneously through education and propaganda work. It would emphasize the study of PADEPA (National Democratic School), Rebolusyon (the Party theoretical journal), courses on people’s war, and others. It also seeks to strengthen the people’s militia and other guerrilla units as NPA reserve forces. They recognized its importance as an additional armed force in punishing traitors and fascist enemies, and in seizing weapons and other military logistics from successful tactical offensives.

They aspire to complete social investigation work and to continue the successful anti-feudal movement from the past against exploitative landlords and their descendant new landlord type in their area.

Ka Jetro, one of the mass leaders who attended, said “Our successful establishment of the PKM in the village today proves that the revolutionary movement firmly stands in the countryside.” As we now plant the seeds of the organs of political power in our guerrilla front, our comrades are surely doing the same in other guerrilla fronts across the archipelago, he added.

Upon returning home, the participants carried with them their new responsibilities and a burning determination to achieve national freedom and genuine democracy.

(Read the first part, PKM chapter established amid military operations in Negros, Ang Bayan, September 7, 2025)