Red commanders and Red fighters of all units under the Chadli Molintas Command-NPA Ilocos Cordillera Region extend our deepest condolences to the family, friends and kinsmen of Comrade Julio “Ka Puli” Dumalyong, who was slain in an armed engagement with the fascist 50IB troops at Bgy. Bagtayan, Pasil, Kalinga on November 13, 2021. His life, like the flowing waters of the Chico River, shall always be remembered by the people and the whole revolutionary movement in the Ilocos-Cordillera Region.

Ka Puli’s life and struggle was a living testimony of the people’s indomitable will to fight for their rights as national minorities, for his tribe and the whole Filipino people. Born in Bgy. Tanglag, Lubuagan, Kalinga to a farmer’s family, his adolescence was shaped in the people’s intense struggle against the construction of the US-Marcos dictatorship’s destructive Chico Dams 1-4 project in Kalinga and Mountain Province. Bgy. Tanglag, which is one of the barrios located along the banks of the Chico River, would have been inundated along with the other barrios if said dams were built. His family, together with the whole community, became part of the broad anti-Chico Dam mass movement formed by the various tribes from Upper Tabuk, Lubuagan, Pasil and Tinglayan in Kalinga and Sadanga, Sabangan and Bontoc from Mountain Province.

When the NPA unit arrived in the area, he was one among the youths mobilized as couriers, and was organized as a member of the revolutionary youth organization in the barrio. Through the twists and turns of the revolutionary movement until the launching of the Second Great Rectification Movement (SGRM), Ka Puli remained steadfast in his faith in the armed revolution. When the NPA unit undertook its recovery work after the SGRM, Ka Puli was one of the many peasants in the community who were eagerly awaiting for the return of the people’s army. He was part of the reestablishment of the revolutionary youth organization and evolved as one of the community’s mass leaders. An active leader and organizer, he was always at the forefront in mobilizing his fellow youth to attend educational discussions and other mass activities. He also worked as a member of the Barrio Medical Group. As the years passed, he decided to become a Red fighter of the NPA in Kalinga in 2006 to further serve the masses, not only in his barrio but in the entire Cordillera and Ilocos. He was known as an industrious and patient comrade, despite the fact that he was already in his 40s when he joined the NPA. His interest in medical work led him to develop as a committed medical officer of the NPA. In 2017, he was deployed to a unit under the Alfredo Cesar Command-NPA Ilocos Sur. Although he was in his late 50s, he enthusiastically studied and adapted to the particular social and physical terrain in the area.

The NPA is ever grateful to the Tanglag tribe for its finest sons and daughters who have selflessly served and contributed their time and efforts for the people and the national-democratic revolution since the first years of the NPA’s arrival in Kalinga in 1976.

The enemy may have taken Ka Puli’s life from us, but they can never take away the memory of his deeds and life as a revolutionary. Ka Puli embodied the revolutionary proletarian spirit of wholeheartedly serving the masses, up to his last breath.

In blind subservience to their fascist commander-in-chief’s pipedream of ending the armed revolutionary movement within his term, the AFP-PNP are desperately racing against time in trying to please him. Contrary to what the enemy crazily rants from their frothing lying mouths, a revolutionary’s death does not mean the end of the revolution. On the other hand, the death of a revolutionary spurs on the others to continue to pick up where they left off, so that their sacrifices are not in vain. The revolution cannot be crushed by the enemy’s bullets, nor by its sham surrenders. The US-designed counter-insurgency guide currently being used by the AFP-PNP and funded by gigantic onerous multi-billion loans burdening the Filipino people, under the banner of ‘whole-of-nation approach’ has been recently proven a total failure in Afghanistan and will certainly fail in the Philippines. The current regime, backed by imperialist powers such as US and China, may have the resources, arms and machinery, but the intensifying present crisis of the world capitalist system limits its financial capacity to sustain its puppet regimes. But we, the exploited and oppressed Filipino people, have the inexhaustible will and determination to press on in advancing the national-democratic revolution and will ultimately prevail.

Ka Puli, along with other martyrs of the Tanglag tribe, shall always be remembered and will serve as a shining beacon to all of us to persevere in the difficult path of the revolutionary armed struggle until final victory.