VICTORIA MANALO
Trekking the Rugged Trails
ON THE DIRT floor of the abung (hut) sat a brown-skinned, slightly built, soft-spoken woman in her early ‘30s. As she talked, she would nod her head and her shoulder-length hair would catch streaks of sunlight peeping through the reed walls of the hut. To her right was a newly polished M2 rifle, and beside it lay a black canvas bag containing two changes of clothing and a few others provisions. To her left was an olive-drab ammunition belt. Occasionally, her eyes would sparkle as she talked about her work and her nine year-old child, and it seems she is not much different from other women. But Lib’s interview with her would give away the fact that hers is a unique life.
She is Ka
Celia, a Red fighter. Since the early
‘70s, she had made the mighty
There
were many things to show that Ka Celia does not fit into the stereotype image
of a pretty, frivolous or retiring middle-class woman. Having survived the rigors of guerrilla life
in the harsh and often inhospitable climate and terrain of the
For one, she was enrolled as an engineering major, taking up a course normally thought to be male’s domain. For another, she also refused to go the way of the ordinary coed for whom campus involvement usually meant joining socials and sororities. Instead, she joined the Kabataang Makabayan chapter in her school and helped set up several national democratic sectoral organizations for students enrolled in science and technology courses.
As a
student activist, she also helped organize KM chapters in communities outside
Metro Manila. But the myriad tasks of
facing her soon firmed up martial law in 1972, she dropped out of school and
immersed herself totally into organizing youth and students for the national
democratic movement. After a new more
months, she opted to go to the countryside to join the NPA, and was assigned to
an expansion area in
In her place of assignment, the NPA unit in the locality was only an undersized platoon and based in one small barrio. At this time, Ka Celia remembers being involved in little of everything. “I was into organizing, medical work, education, and even tried my hand at making explosives,” she recalled. “With the local masses, we dismantled land mines left behind by the Japanese during World War II and tried to extract some materials to make our own explosives. But we were more successful in making cauldrons, spears and bolos out of the iron we salvaged,” she laughed. “It was also then that I learned to eat ants, termites, snails and even ferns.”
There is one more vivid detail, though that Ka Celia remembers about those early years. “Most of the NPAs were men. There was a handful of local women in NPA at this time but I was the only woman from the lowlands. I had to face the problem of being both a lowlander and a woman guerrilla working among fiercely traditional tribal people,” she said.
“Thus, though I had an extremely difficult time adjusting to the terrain, I never let out a word of complaint. I had to prove that even a lowland woman could survive in terrain where one had to walk for hours along very steep and rugged mountain trails. The local guerrillas, of course, had no problem with the terrain, and could easily outwalk the men from the lowlands even while literally shouldering heavy loads. But we women in our unit faced yet another problem.”
For the local masses, the spectacle of women bearing arms and fighting alongside men was at first difficult to accept. They were, after all, steeped in the tradition that it was men who become warriors and went to battle while women were left behind the village with the children.
“The female guerrillas, especially the tribeswomen, were ridiculed. We were derisively referred to as “balon ti NPA,” meaning we were supposed to have brought along by the male comrades to satisfy their sexual needs while they were in the field. The military had a lot to do with fanning the flames of this age-old prejudice among the tribespeople by deliberately spreading such black propaganda,” said Ka Celia.
But with the rise of the overall prestige of the New People’s Army, the cultural prejudice against women guerrillas was slowly scattered. In may instances, it was the women Red fighters themselves who helped eliminated or reduce the bias against them through their gallantry in combat.
News of the women’s participation in raids, ambushes and other tactical offensives spread fast among the villagers. Gradually, they began to accept and admire the women fighters, and this led to an increase in the number of women NPAs. By the time Ka Celia left to undertake expansion work in a nearby province, the local masses perception regarding the women guerrilla had considerably improved.
But when they marry and starts a family, women guerrillas face what it perhaps their biggest problem—how to arrange for the care of their children when it is time for them to return to the front. “When this problem occurs, the concerned unit always sees to it that a viable plan regarding child care as well as the women’s perspective in the struggle, are discussed thoroughly,” said Ka Celia. “The women, especially leading cadres, are always encouraged to return to the field. In my case, I was fortunate to have supportive parents who were welling to care for my child when she was little so that I could resume my work. Later, as members of the urban committee secretariat charged with guerrilla zone building in another province, I and my husband had the chance to take care of our daughter ourselves.
But apart from child care and the cultural bias she had initially encountered, were there any difficulties women faced with the male comrades within the NPA itself? To this, Ka Celia smiled and carefully pondered her words. “I would not be totally accurate if I told you that there were no other problems,” she answered. “Yes, there is still a tendency among the men to be too protective of the women in their units,” said Ka Celia.
“In camps, for example, women are generally placed in the middle. In marching, the women guerrillas stay in the middle of the file, because this happens to be the safest position. In planning guard duty schedules, women are also usually assigned to keep watch during the ‘safe’ hours, when there is the likelihood of enemy attack. And although many women guerrillas have risen to become squad leaders and vice squad leaders, still it is mostly the men who get the chance to occupy positions of responsibility. Also, women often wind up dong medical work, as if it were matter of course,” she pointed out.
“But,” Ka Celia hastened to add, “the situation has not led to serious antagonisms. The men are not deliberately over-protective and neither is it a conscious policy to prevent women from acquiring experiences that would enable them to advance to more responsible positions. I think it is more a matter of men still having traces of feudal values within them. This sort of things does not disappear overnight. I believe, though, that the issue deserves serious study and that the movement should systematically adopt ways to eradicate such practices.”
“But one cannot deny that the NPA and the national democratic movement on the whole, have done a lot in teaching equality not only in theory but through actual practice,” asserted Ka Celia. “The number and quality women cadres and guerrillas have steadily risen and improved. In some mass organizations, women even outnumber the men. Women have proven that they can perform any task just as well as the men. Women also have shown as much courage and daring in the face of enemy onslaughts. Even in their personal relationships with men, women have emerged stronger and more assertive. In a significant sense, it is the revolution that has provided women the chance to work for their own as well as the Filipino people’s liberation,” she concluded.
The way has been as steep and as rugged as the mountain trails of the Cordilleras, but more and more women have beaten the path to their and the Filipino people’s emancipation by joining the revolutionary struggle. With the way being pave for other Filipino women to follow, Ka Celia’s life and achievements will not be so unique.