Organizer: Alfred W. McCoy, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chair: Michael Cullinane, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Discussant: Benedict Anderson, Cornell University
Rosanne Rutten, University of Amsterdam
The rise of the revolutionary movement CPP NPA in Negros Occidental in the 1970s and 1980s marked a period of unprecedented popular mobilization among the sugarcane hacienda workers and peasants of the province that waned in the late 1980s with a concerted government counterinsurgency drive. Vital actors in these mobilization and demobilization processes were community leaders (women and men) who mediated between their communities and the CPP NPA, other mobilizing institutions (Catholic Church and unions), and government authorities.
This paper traces the career of one such community leader. Son of a hacienda foreman and 'houseboy' of his planter, he became, consecutively, hacienda overseer, union organizer, local CPP NPA leader, ally of the military in its counterinsurgency campaign (after his capture), and leader of a municipal 'rebel returnees' organization that engages in electoral politics. His shifts in political loyalty from the planter to the CPP NPA and then to the military cannot simply be explained by reference to 'turncoatism'-changing sides because of expediency and personal power play common in Philippine factional politics. He was a self proclaimed reformer whose involvement in the mobilization campaigns changed his perceptions and his ideological and social commitments. The paper provides community; and discusses the opportunities and constraints he faced in carrying out his own reformist agenda vis-à-vis government authorities, planter elite, and CPP NPA top leadership.
This case sheds light on the role of local leaders in the context of the nationwide power contention between the CPP NPA and government authorities. Since both national contenders compete for popular support, need community based brokers, and claim to answer community demands, their contention produced new opportunities (and constraints) for local leaders and other entrepreneurial poor to reshape local power configurations.
Alfred W. McCoy, University of Wisconsin, Madison
In his life, demise, and eclipse, Jose Maria Nava exemplifies the social role of Filipino literati who inspired and led the Philippines' working class movements during the US colonial period. As a self taught artist and writer, Nava, like other union leaders of the colonial era, was an active participant in the prewar florescence of vernacular literatures as poet, playwright, and journalist. Moving beyond the narrow nationalism of the colony's political elite, these vernacular literati identified with working class aspirations for social justice, and used their credibility with mass audiences to organize both working class brotherhoods and trade unions.
Among this generation activist literati, Jose Nava was the most successful and controversial. From his base near the waterfront of Iloilo City, Nava organized the colony's largest trade union, the Federacion Obrera de Filipinas (FOF), and led several general strikes in the early 1930s that rewrote the social contract between the port's sugar brokers and stevedores-making Nava the most powerful labor leader of his generation. While his attempt to organize the Negros sugar industry failed, his hold over the Iloilo waterfront was so tenacious that it forced sugar exporters to avoid his union's high handling charges by shifting their cargoes elsewhere, contributing to the City's sudden economic decline in the late 1930s.
After the war, however, personal and political changes led to the destruction of the union and the demise of his leader. As Nava's many sons came of age and took up positions in the FOF, a bitter generational conflict between veteran waterfront labor bosses (cabecilla) and Nava's family split the union, crippling its effectiveness. Failing to grasp the primacy of electoral politics after independence in 1946, Nava mismanaged his factional alliances, alienating powerful regional politicians and denying himself the protection of national patrons. Playing upon Nava's personal and political frustrations, Guillermo Capadocia, a former secretary-general of the Philippine Communist Party, convinced him to support the expansion of the Huk revolution into his home region, the Western Visayas. Convicted for his support of the abortive Communist revolt, Nava's union was abolished and he died in prison while awaiting execution.
Through the biography of Jose Nava we can glimpse Philippine provincial life in an era before national integration and the relentless rise of Manila stripped the outlying islands of their vernacular culture, political autonomy, and intellectual vitality. Most importantly, Nava's life is exemplary of a generation of Filipino literati who used reputations from journalism and vernacular literature to lead the Philippines' prewar trade unions and mutual aid associations. Their fusion of literary eloquence and political radicalism played a central role during an early, critical phase of lower class mobilization.
Glenn A. May, University of Oregon
Andres Bonifacio-the leader of the Katipunan, the secret society that launched the Philippine Revolution of 1896-was a controversial figure in his own day, and up to the present he remains so. On the one hand, he is apotheosized as a man of courage, charisma, and determination. On the other, he is criticized for certain flaws of character, for his failings as a military leader, and his seemingly bizarre (even traitorous) conduct of the months preceding his death in May 1897.
Although Bonifacio figures prominently in textbooks on Philippine and Southeast Asian history, only one full length biography has been written about him: Teodoro Agoncillo's Revolt of the Masses (1956). A prize winning study, The Revolt provided the first detailed account of Bonifacio's seemingly contradictory personality. But, in fact, that Bonifacio is almost entirely Teodoro Agoncillo's invention. Relying heavily on questionable data derived from interviews with a handful of Bonifacio's contemporaries, Agoncillo painted a picture of a man that suited his own ideological and personal predilections. The net effect of Agoncillo's problematic use of sources has been the creation of a national myth. This paper attempts to locate the man behind that myth. Although Bonifacio is arguably the greatest of Philippine national heroes, he remains today, nearly a century after his death, a man obscured by both historiographic myth and his ambiguous role as a lower middle class leader of what became an elite led revolution.
Maria Vina A. Lanzona, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The secondary literature on the Communist-led Huk rebellion in the Philippines (1942-1956), as meager as it is, says virtually nothing about the particular role of women within it. Women most definitely assumed important responsibilities in the Huk rebellion regardless of the predominant paradigms suggesting that the rebellion was led and fought primarily by men, with women in decidedly subsidiary "helping" roles. This literature has also neglected the sexual and affectual dimensions of the movement by not focusing on the relationships among the participants which indisputably affected and undermined the commitment of both male and female cadres. In short, the gendered character of the Huk rebellion, and the prowess that (re)produced this gendering, are not well understood. The biography of "Kumander Liwayway," the most visible and prominent woman commander during the Hukbalahap and Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) years, can help illuminate this almost "invisible" role of women within the movement. Ka Liwayway, whose real name is Remedios Gomez, was compelled to join the movement after her father was killed by the Japanese. A strong and committed revolutionary, she was one of a few(less than ten) women military commanders. She fought many battles, organized ambushes and led expansion programs. Like most Huk women, she also married into the movement, to a man the party chose and approved for her. And like most Huk men, she was captured, went to jail for years, and was acquitted in court. Her life history can help us understand more about the gendered aspect of revolutionary movements, which is extremely valuable, although often overlooked.
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