Kabataang Makabayan – Negros mourns the death of Ka Ella, Red fighter and revolutionary poet, in the hands of fascist troops from the 79th Infantry Battalion last August 20 in Hacienda Raymunda, Barangay Kapitan Ramon, Silay City, Negros Occidental. We also vehemently denounce the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) violation of Geneva Conventions as Ka Ella was captured alive upon injury but was either left to bleed to death or was finished off.

The militant youth of Negros look up to her revolutionary and cultural work as worthy of emulation. Ka Ella was what an artist and cultural worker should be: wielding the pen on one hand, and strongly gripping the gun on the other.

Back when she was a young activist in the legal national democratic movement, she saw the limitations of art and activism in the face of outright violence of the state. In immersing herself in the peasant struggle for land, Ka Ella found the justness of the war being waged by the New People’s Army, with the guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines. She found that it was not merely enough to study and write about the revolution. A committed artist must also take up arms and wage revolution.

Ka Ella left what could have been a dazzling career in the arts back in the city. Instead she chose the long and arduous road of revolution and serving the people in the countrysides, particularly in Negros, where she immersed in the struggles of the peasant masses. May this inspire the militant youth of Negros to also strive towards remolding and the shedding away of our bourgeois tendencies in order to become true revolutionaries like Ka Ella.

The reactionary state has spit on her legacy and called her a terrorist. But the peasant masses of Negros, which Ka Ella fought alongside with, knows otherwise. The true terrorists are the mercenaries who sow terror on peasants and those who side with the landlords and the big compradors. For the toiling masses, Ka Ella and guerillas like her are the true heroes of our time. As long as imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism remain as the ills of our time, no state terror can stop people from following the path of Ka Ella towards the highest form of struggle.

Ka Ella, you will live on in the soils of Negros Island, and a hundred more young blood will fearlessly take up arms and rise after you to continue the revolution until victory.