VICTORIA MANALO & JUAN PICAS

Children of the Revolution

 

THE SEVEN GIRLS and three boys in Irene’s barkada—all aged between five and seven—usually behave like any other group of barrio waifs.  When not at home helping in the household chores or in the fields planting crops, they cavort around their tiny village, playing games like hide-and-seek and baril-barilan.

But they also happen to live in the interior of northwestern Samar, a heavily militarized area where salvagings and other military atrocities have become part of life.  It is the AFP’s way of dealing with the barriofolk who staunchly support the NPA.

In such conditions, Irene and her young friends play a special role.  They have been organized into a group whose tasks is to alert comrades in the barrio of approaching enemy forces.  Being mostly children of Red fighters and activists, they need no prodding to do this.  Though far away from their parents who have placed them under the care of supportive families, they understand what their parents are fighting for.  They also grew up with an almost instinctive desire to protect comrades.

Being the eldest in the group, Irene became the team leader.  She leads the other children in singing songs about the BaHuBa (NPA)—Ang BaHuBa nagmamartsa, rorondahon/Kampo nera susulungon. (The NPA marches/To fight the enemy/To ambush and raid/and destroy their camps.)  She and her friends also join discussions with the adult comrades and listen to stories such as An Lagas na Uwat (The Foolish Old Man).

“Villagers laughed at an old man who said he could remove three huge mountains that blocked the sun from shining on his house,” Irene recounted.  “But the old man said, “I will do it.  And when I am gone, there will be my children and my children’s children to do it.’ And with their perseverance, the mountains were removed.”

When asked what the story meant, Irene answered much like a diligent schoolgirl: “If we unite and work hard enough, we can defeat even the strongest enemies.  The three mountains stand for imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism.”

Irene’s young mind may as yet be hard put to fully understand such-isms.  But there is one word whose meaning she has fully grasped: fascism.

She still recalls how she and two other friends crept away, then half-ran and half-stumbled towards their barrio to warn comrades about advancing enemy troops from another village two kilometers away. In their hurry, they had dropped along the hilly trails the pan de sal they had bought from the other barrio, where the nearest sari-sari store was.  It did not matter that they lost his rare chance to eat bread—the comrades had to be reached on time.

When the soldiers finally arrived, the comrades had gone.  But along the way, the troopers had chanced upon a 16-year-old boy whom they accused of being a courier.  Irene and the other barriofolk were made to watch as the soldiers mercilessly beat up the boy to force him to point out which of the barrio children were sons and daughters of the Red fighters.

As darkness fell, the people were ordered to stay in their homes.  Meanwhile, the troopers dragged the boy to an animal pen underneath the house were Irene and her foster parents lived, and continued beating him up till well into the night.

To this day, Irene remembers the peasant boy’s cries of pain that kept her awake all night, and her feeling of helplessness at not being able to stop the beating.  By dawn, the boy, all bloody and barely conscious, was ordered by the soldiers to run.  Irene saw how he was shot as he staggered away, only a short distance from the house.  To the end, he had refused to betray her and other children.

As soon as the soldiers had left, comrades came to take Irene and her 4-year old and 8-months old brothers to more secure  barrio farther into the hinterlands.  For a whole day, Irene walked with the adults along rocky mountain trails, stopping only for a meal of camote when they reached a forested area. Both her brothers, too young to walk the distance, were placed inside woven baskets which the comrades slung over their shoulders like backpacks.

For 7-year old Irene, words were unnecessary to explain the meaning of fascist brutality.  But deep in her heart, she had also learned the meaning of revolutionary courage.

 

JON-JON

The young boy was wary of this stranger who was so intent on asking him questions.  “Si Tatay kag Nanay, nag-uuman” (Father and Mother are farmers), he simply answered, when asked what his parents did.  As he said this, beads of sweat slowly formed on his forehead.

Thoughtfully, his adult companion put his arm around the child’s shoulders.  “Don’t be nervous. You may answer her questions truthfully. She is a kaupod (comrade).”

Upon hearing this, the boy’s eyes sparkled and he flashed his impish smile.  Giggling, he gave the comrade from Manila a fleeting but warm handshake and said his nom ge guerre, “Jon-Jon.”  It was the customary way revolutionaries in the Negros countryside greeted visitors to their guerrilla zones.

Born and raised on one of the  more consolidated barrios in southern Negros, the ways of the “rebolusyonaryo nga kahublagan” (revolutionary movement) have always come naturally to Jon-Jon.  Though only 8 years old, he already had a basic understanding of what ail his country.  “Ang mga kaaway, mga PC, Ranger, Army,”  he said.

Why so? “They are bad. I have seen them hurt people.”

Are there other enemies? “Yes, Marcos…Imelda…and their close friends,” he continued.  Anyone else?  Jon-Jon grinned.  “Mga Kano! Because they give arms to Marcos that are used to kill our people.”

All of the Kano? “No, just some of them.”

The answers decidedly different from what an ordinary city-based 8-year old would have given.  But Jon-Jon’s childhood wish would set him even father apart.

“I want to join the hukbo, like may father. Also, like my mother, I want to sit in meetings and talk to the barrio people.”

What else do they do in the NPA?  “They ambush enemy soldier.  Sometimes, they snipe at them.”

When does he intend to join the NPA?  “When I’m big and strong enough to carry a rifle,” he said, in all seriousness.

Meantime, Jon-Jon’s task in revolution is to bring letters to comrades which mostly contain information about an approaching enemy.

But what if he himself sees soldiers coming?  What would he do?

“I will go to comrades and tell them what I saw.”

Why not write a letter and pass it on to another courier?

“I don’t know how to read and write. I had to drop out in my first grade.  We had to leave the barrio because Tatay and Nanay were being hunted by the military.”

Doesn’t he miss school?  Especially his playmates?

“Not really.  I seem them once a while.  Many of them have parents who are Red fighters too.  When we are together, we play our own games, like racing across the bridge (the bridge is a huge tree tunk-felled by a recent typhoon).”

Doesn’t he want to learn to read and write?

“Of course I do.  Next year, Nanay said I could go to school in another barrio.  Meantime the comrades can teach me.  They can teach me many things, besides reading and writing.  They have taught me this poem,” Jon-Jon said, reciting it in Ilonggo:

We are the children of the kaigangan

Born of the masses oppressed

For long, we have suffered

From the clutches of the greedy

Come comrades, fellow oppressed

Let us be brave and gather strength

Let us follow the path of armed resistance!

 

 

BOTYOG

Six-year old Botyog is Jon-Jon’s bossom buddy.  He is at first painfully why with people he doesn’t know.  But when he warms up, a toothy grin lights up his dark rounded checks, and he stares at a visitor in wonder, with eyes as wide as platters.

Botyog’s father and stepmother are both Red fighters.  “My real Nanay died of illness when I was very young.  But now I have a new Nanay.  She is a medic,” he said haltingly.

Barely more than three-and-a-half feet tall, Botyog is a courier for the New People’s Army,

Getting messages to NPA camps across the igang or hills of jagged rock is not however mere child’s play to Botyog.  “It’s all right in daytime.  But I get really scared when I have to deliver a letter at night.”

“Why?  “Because I’m scared of the dark and I’m so little,” he said with downcast eyes.

Then why does he still do it?  “If I don’t, there will be much fighting…And if caught unprepared, many comrades might get killed,” he noted.

Like his friend Jon-Jon, Botyog wants to be a Red fighter when he grows up.  The reason, he explained with child-like simplicity:  “When there’s fighting, it’s the hukbo that wins.  I don’t want to be with the PC. They always end up dead.”

Why else he want to join the NPA?  At this, Botyog sadly looked away.  “I want vengeance,” he whispered, and grew silent.

Days later, we were to learn from other comrades why Botyog reacted that way.  Years before, soldiers raided the house where the boy and his family lived.  When the troopers came, they ransacked the place and pushed everyone around.  Botyog’s baby sister, who was them sleeping on a mat, began to cry, but the soldiers paid no heed. Later, one of them stepped on her tiny body with  his heavy black boots.  Botyog saw how the trooper quickly silenced his sister’s cries.  And the memory of that tragic night has stayed with him ever since.

 

MARIVIC

Like the other members of the revolutionary masses movement in the barrio, she has acquired a nom de guerre of her own: Marivic, and she responds to it as she would to a nickname.

For more then two weeks early this year, she was busy performing tasks other than routine household chores and farm work.  When the NPA’s Kidlat (Lightning) and Dalugdog (Thunder) units conducted military drills in clearing near her barrio, Marivic and her best friend Rose were among the  young women who volunteered to cook meals for the Red fighters.  The girls asked the guerrillas to unload their rice supply and vegetables at designated houses.  The night before, the Red fighters had come down from their mountain base with food provisions and Marivic was placed in charge of this.

In fact, Marivic is one of the few residents of the barrio with direct access to the NPA’s mountain camp in a guerrilla front in central Samar.  She acts as liaison person between the barrio people and the guerrillas.  Because of her familiarity with the area, she also sometimes joins teams of Red fighters in digging for root crops.  There are also times when she would join the NPAs in the camp to share in the camaraderie.

Marivic never runs out of revolutionary songs and she feels for the guitar as she would for a long-lost friend.  To mime the songs in interpretative dance is also second nature  to her.  She is one of the few members of the barrio youth organization who performs in cultural programs.   They usually present these after joining assessment of the barrio  peasant organization and the guerrilla units, or during special occasions such as the anniversaries of the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Marivic is 13.  She grew up in another barrio in Eastern Samar, then together with her sister she traveled to the central highlands to escape the atrocities of the military in the plains.   Her sister is married to a Red fighters.  In their new home, the terrain is to treacherous that farming is done without the advantages of a carabao or plow.   But in their mountain barrio, her revolutionary consciousness has blossomed among peasants who have learned to wage open and secret struggles against the enemy, and among the guerrillas who have made it possible for people to transform their lives with confidence and conviction.

“One day I will also join the hukbo,” she vows.  To her, it is all so clear.  First, she will join an NPA medical staff and then she herself will become a Red fighter.  Her lack of formal education will be remedied by the literacy classes and revolutionary offered regularly by the guerrillas.  In truth, the choice is very clear not only to Marivic but to the other peasants of Samar: either one is simply a victim of a corrupt society or one becomes a revolutionary who will help in bringing about a just society.