It is a beautiful way to celebrate the centennial of the old democratic revolution by anthologizing literary works that evoke the fighting spirit of the new-democratic revolution.
This anthology unfolds in literary terms the decisive importance of the countryside in the people’s struggle for revolutionary change against the oppressive and exploitative semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.
The authors deserve the highest commendation from expressing their revolutionary commitment and depicting the revolutionary struggle and aspirations of the toiling masses, especially the peasantry and the revolutionary forces.
The old and new types of democratic revolution are linked by the Filipino people’s unceasing struggle and aspirations for national independence against foreign domination and for democracy against feudal exploitation.
The main content of the democratic revolution is the solution of the land problem. This concerns the peasant majority of the Filipino people. The social liberation of the peasant masses through their participation in the revolution is the precondition to national liberation.
The new-democratic revolution can advance only if the proletarian leadership can arouse, organize and mobilize the peasant masses. They are the main mass base for the protracted people’s war, for allowing the revolutionary forces to grow from weak to strong and from small to big until the defeat of the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class.
Thus, the leading force in the continuation of the national-democratic revolution has sought to develop the peasant masses as the main force and to make the countryside the iron bastion of the revolution politically, economically, socially and culturally.
When the rural mass base grows strong, the entire revolutionary movement grows strong on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. The weakening of the rural mass base always necessitates a rectification movement to ensure the revitalization and resurgence of the entire revolutionary mass movement.
The selection of literary works from year to year allows the anthology to reflect the phases of the revolutionary struggle, the sacrifices and victories of the heroic masses and the Party cadres and members, the Red fighters and mass activists in various parts of the country and in the country as a whole.
The anthology is inspiring. It encourages the toiling masses to continue their revolutionary struggle and their all-round advance, including the cultural and literary. It urges the creative writers of this generation and later generations to avail of the rich material and soul of the protracted people’s war.
This anthology is of incalculably far-reaching significance and relevance. We owe a debt of gratitude to the authors as well as the anthologists of the Institute for People’s Literature and Art (IPASA).