Today, as Ferdinand Marcos Jr delivers his 5th State of the Nation Address, the National Democratic Front-Cagayan Valley (NDF-CV) pledges to work its hardest to further unite the people in the region to advance the revolutionary mass movement to overthrow the corrupt and rotten regime he leads. In the midst of worsening economic and political crises this regime perpetuates, we strengthen our resolve to advance the people’s democratic revolution in order to implement genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization to achieve a prosperous life, and a just and lasting peace for the Filipino people.

Imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism has caused massive destruction of our mountain ranges and depleted our fertile fields in Cagayan Valley pushing our people into more oppressive hunger, continuing landlessness, inhumane displacement, joblessness and despair.

Under the US-Marcos Jr. regime, Cagayan Valley people has plunged into deeper poverty. The onerous effects of El Niño is aggravated by the long years of government neglect and corruption in building irrigation systems in the valley. As of June, government estimates ₱10 billion in damages with more than 500,000 hectares of corn and rice fields affected by severe drought, resulting to sharp decreases in the volume of harvest and income of farmers in the region. This leads to more debts of poor and middle-income farmers tied to endless cycles of usury due to high capital requirements for planting imported high yielding varieties of rice and corn. Farmers and indigent people who comprise the majority in the valley carry additional economic burden, after having been unable to recover from the price-shock caused by the Middle East war ignited by the US-Israel attack on sovereign Iran.

Foreign mining companies, desiring monstrous profits in exploiting our mineral resources, are enjoying the support of the Marcos Jr government. They extract our mineral resources paying nothing but making giant profits when they sell these in the international market. While the oceans of Cagayan and mountains of Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya are threatened of absolute degradation, the intrusion of foreign mining companies are protected by the judicial courts and the AFP-PNP. Nearly 20 percent of the land area in the valley is plagued with various types of mining tenements posing clear danger to sources of clean water for households and agricultural production. Communities in Nueva Vizcaya, Isabela and Cagayan are prompted to continue defending their land, water sources and forests against encroachment of large-scale foreign mining companies in the face of state violence and legal repression by the US-Marcos Jr regime.

The whole Philippine archipelago has been turned into a US military base in its war provocation and domination in Asia-Pacific. There are three (3) EDCA sites cum US military bases in our region hosting foreign troops and war materiel, manifesting the Philippines as part of US’ “first island chain” strategy. Meanwhile, numerous Balikatan war exercises of the US with Philippine soldiers have covered most of the areas in the Cagayan Valley region and two-thirds of the whole area of North Luzon.

Imperialist US is in the business of making wars. It is using the maritime conflict between the Philippines and China to peddle a full-scale war with China, and insist its hegemony in Asia-Pacific. Eventually, it drags Filipinos, including people of Cagayan Valley as their soldier-pawns . And to sustain its war, imperialist US exploits our natural resources.

Poor farmers, indigenous peoples, workers, youth, lowly paid employees and all oppressed masses will only be plunged deeper into abysmal suffering if the Philippines goes to war with the US against China. It will not resolve the incessant problems of landlesness, high prices of basic commodities, high prices of capital for agricultural production and environmental degradation because of plunder. All the more, it will destroy our valley, our farms, our mountains and poison our rivers, seas and waters. US will only sacrifice the lives of our youth as soldier-pawns in its war against China.

Deeply rooted corruption and unending social problems of the Cagayan Valley and the Philippines is due to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. We should not endure this grossly unequal society, our conditions can change. This rotten-to-the-core system carried on by monopoly of foreign big businesses and mining corporations, big landlords and bourgeois compradors and bureaucrat capitalists can end through the national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective.

The NDF-Cagayan Valley calls on the people here to unite and fight through all forms possible to bring down imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Join the national democratic revolution through a people’s war that will ultimately break down the base of political power of big landlords, bourgeois compradors and bureaucrat capitalists, and mount the political power of the broader base of Filipino masses – the farmers, workers and all impoverished and oppressed.

Currently, the US-Marcos Jr regime heads the ruling classes. Let us intensify and advance our people’s war to topple this regime along with the semi-feudal and semi-colonial sytem it seats upon, and bring to reality genuine democracy and national freedom for the majority of Filipinos and not for the privileged few.