Where are we now with agrarian reform in the Philippines? On June 10, 38 years would have passed since the enactment of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. Earlier this year, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary Conrado M. Estrella III told the media that only 700,000 hectares of agricultural land remain to be redistributed. After four decades of continuous implementation, the government claims that agrarian reform is almost complete.

However, an emerging coalition named the “June 10 Land Rights Committee,” is questioning claims that agrarian reform can already be concluded. Agrarian and climate justice movements that compose this committee point to the unfinished business of agrarian reform in the country. Many rural working people have yet to benefit from land redistribution, even as the lack of state support has compelled many beneficiaries to sell their lands.

Research we have conducted with the national rural working peoples’ movement KATARUNGAN or Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan identifies four interconnected challenges faced by the agrarian sector: reform reversals and land reconcentration; contestations over conflicting land laws and overlapping claims; escalating capitalist land grabs and violence; and a deepening price scissors between higher farming costs and low farm gate prices, resulting in the loss of agrarian livelihoods.

Significant but partial land redistribution was made possible through the “bibingka strategy” of strong peasant mobilization from below and coalition-building with state reformers in the 1990s and early 2000s. This resulted in the redistribution of nearly half of the country’s 13 million hectares of agriculturally productive lands including alienable and disposable public lands, private agricultural lands and forest lands covered under Community-Based Forest Management Program, which benefited about three-fifths of all peasant households.

But neoliberal policies of liberalizing agricultural imports and slashing government support services for farmers have challenged the gains made by agrarian movements. The past four decades have also seen rapid urbanization and the expansion of metropolitan areas like Metro Manila, which have increasingly absorbed rural land and labor for nonagricultural activities. Reflecting global trends, almost 50 percent of the Philippine population now lives in urban areas. This development has come alongside the rise of a large reserve of jobless or near-jobless working people with precarious livelihoods and food insecurity. Meanwhile, the intensifying impacts of climate change have exposed peasants and other rural working people to unpredictable weather and ecological shocks. Together, these factors have eroded their capacity to sustain their livelihoods on the land, making dispossession a gradual yet persistent reality.

The shifting political and socio-ecological landscape has exposed the limits of relying solely on land redistribution for attaining agrarian justice, pro-poor rural development, and sovereign industrialization. This is why contemporary agrarian movements are advancing a holistic framework for agrarian reform: the 4Rs—Redistribution, Recognition, Restitution, and Regulation. The 4Rs, now pushed by a broad global coalition of social movements, progressive academics, and rights advocates, were crystallized into an agenda during the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Cartagena, Colombia, in February 2026.

Redistribution remains essential, but it must be complemented by recognition of the diverse land rights of indigenous peoples, women, and youth, as well as the customary and communal tenure systems that persist outside formal titles. Restitution is necessary to address past and ongoing injustices and to provide reparations for dispossession and displacement. Regulation is crucial to prevent new waves of land grabbing, set limits on accumulation, prevent agricultural land-use conversion, and ensure that land serves people’s needs, including food and housing, for the present and the future.

Agrarian and climate justice movements and advocates will be trooping to the DAR Central Office on June 10 to highlight issues of land grabbing, reform reversals, and unfinished land redistribution. But this is only the beginning. Philippine agrarian reform today stands at a crossroads. To move forward, it must transcend a narrow focus on redistribution alone and embrace the holistic 4Rs agenda, reimagining agrarian reform as a living, ongoing process that links democratic land control with food sovereignty and climate justice.

Sheila and I presented our paper on agrarian reform and rural-agrarian struggles in the Philippines at the International Conference on Autonomous Social Sciences and Alternative Development in Times of Multiple Crises on May 21-23 at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia. A two hour ride from Jakarta, IPB University is the top-ranked university in Southeast Asia in the fields of agriculture and forestry studies.

Drawing on our volunteer work with the national rural working people’s movement KATARUNGAN, our paper argues that the experience of CARP highlights the limits of redistribution alone, especially without sustained state support for economic and ecological sustainability. While CARP secured significant gains during periods of strong peasant mobilization and coalition-building in the 1990s and early 2000s, these advances have since been undermined by neoliberal agricultural policies and aggressive land reform reversals.

Our paper points to the need to move beyond the traditional agrarian reform paradigm centered mainly on land redistribution, and instead ground agrarian reform in the holistic framework of the 4Rs: Redistribution, Recognition, Restitution, and Regulation

The full version of our presentation will be published as a discussion paper at the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies: https://cids.up.edu.ph/discussion_paper/where-are-we-now-state-agrarian-reform-rural-agrarian-struggles-philippines-perspective-contemporary-agrarian-movement/.

During the Holy Week, Sheila and I brought Giap for field work with the national peasant and rural working peoples’ movement KATARUNGAN across the hacienda belt of Bondoc Peninsula, Quezon where we met peasant leaders and fisher peoples, visiting their farms, homes, and cooperatives. Travelling by land over 300-kilometers south of the national capital gave us a chance to see firsthand what we’ve long heard in stories and read in reports and studies, including Jennifer Franco’s classic study Bound by Law (2011). We found the checkered legacy of agrarian reform, which has brought both partial but significant gains and unfinished struggles.

In many areas, peasant resistance has led to land redistribution. In places like the 1,700-hectare Hacienda Matias in San Francisco town, where landlord resistance was fiercest, the struggle was also the most intense. Peasant leaders who sought to claim their land rights through the government’s land reform program CARP were intimidated and killed by landlord goons and communist insurgents. The landowner enclosed the entire sitio, sealing its gate as collective punishment. In the end, organized resistance forced the land to be redistributed.

In the vast Villa Reyes estate, spanning San Narciso and San Andres towns, much of the 12,000 hectares has been redistributed through CARP. The once-dominant hacienda manor overlooking the sea now stands abandoned. The grip of the powerful Reyes landlord clan over local politics has also been broken.

But the story does not end there. Many peasants still continue to struggle for their land rights. Coastal communities face displacement as investors eye beachfronts where fisherpeoples dock their boats and build their homes. Many others who have secured land now confront new challenges: lack of state support, pressures from trade liberalization, and the difficulty of making farming sustainable. Many beneficiaries have also been forced to sell their land in informal markets. While others struggle to maintain unity in their peasant associations, make their cooperatives sustainable, and transition toward agroecological practices. The pasyon of the Filipino peasant continues. 

I spent two meaningful weeks in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia to attend the second International Conference on Land, Life and Society. This gathering set the stage for the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) organized by the Government of Colombia and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, where grassroots movements, government leaders, and academics come together to discuss some of the world’s most urgent challenges: land rights, agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and the climate crisis.

I am grateful for what has been an overall productive engagement and deep learning experience. I spent 25 hours of travel halfway across the World to Colombia from Manila and vice versa. I presented my co-authored paper with Sheila during the academic conference. Our paper invites a rethinking of the Agrarian Question in the Philippines especially in light of the profound transformations of the agrarian political economy in the last four decades and the ongoing multiple crises of food, climate, and neoliberal capitalism.

I am also honored to have taken part in reading the Cartagena Declaration in the conclusion of the academic conference at the Claustro de la Merced in Cartagena de Indias — the final resting place of Gabriel García Márquez. I served on the declaration’s drafting committee, along with other scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The declaration’s contents were shaped by the 3-day discussions and debates of 410 participants representing 321 universities, research institutions, and academic organizations from around the world.

Beyond the conference plenaries and the field visit to the Sabana Alta estate, which was redistributed by the Gustavo Petro government to campesinos in Turbaco, Colombia — simply being in Cartagena was an experience in itself.

I spent time in the old town of Cartagena, a vibrant tourist district filled with historic sites and scenic views facing the Caribbean Sea. Every night is literally a party. They even have something called a “disco bus” where you dance and drink while driving around the city. Also for the first time ever, I rode a yacht for a party after the academic sessions.

Of course, being a tourist city has its downsides. Cartagena is insanely expensive, and like many major destinations, there are also problems such as prostitution and petty crimes, so you really have to stay alert against scams and theft especially when walking at night.

That said, it’s fascinating to be in the same Caribbean region where Gabriel García Márquez once lived. Being there, I can somehow understand how the place inspired his magical realism.

El Menu de la Casa, an eatery for working people, at Centro Comercial y Empresarial, Calle 25, just a few meters’ walk from the Convention Center, saved me from the expensive restaurants of Cartagena, one of the most expensive tourist destinations on this continent.

We had free lunch during the academic conference, but none at ICARRD+20 itself so I had lunch here with fellow comrades the whole week. My favorite is chuleta frita — crispy pan-fried pork chop served with rice, beans, banana, and vegetables — with sopa. Only 14,000 Colombian pesos (a little over 200 Philippine pesos).

Fortunately, there was no disruption of my return flight to the Philippines due to the insane US-Israeli war on Iran. That was my first time in Colombia and what an experience it has been.

Some local Philippine media outlets also took notice and published the following articles on my participation in ICARRD+20 and the academic conference:

https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/701717/filipino-scholar-urges-fresh-look-at-agrarian-reform-at-international-conference-in-colombia

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/cebuano-scholar-urges-fresh-look-at-agrarian-reform-at-colombia-conference

My top reads of 2025 include books on agrarian political economy and land politics which are very helpful for ongoing writing and research; insightful biographies / political reflections by ex-guerrilla cadre Eddie Quitoriano, scholar-activist Walden Bello, Filipino Marxist Dodong Nemenzo, and Huk cadre Bart Pasion; novels by Victor Serge and Andrei Platonov and a book monograph dealing with the Soviet revolutionary and state-building experiences and their excesses (daghang salamat sa nag-donate).

Finally managed to finish “Seeing Like a State” (1998) by James Scott after putting it off for far too long. I enjoyed the most Quitoriano’s “Deeper Ground, Darker Shadows” (2025), which reads like a spy-thriller, historical record, and socio-political critique all packed into one.

I found Borras and Franco’s “Essential Concepts of Land Politics” (2025) to be the most useful. This list doesn’t include books I had to reread or those I didn’t manage to finish, mostly for writing purposes.

We also joined sessions on the peasant question organized by the Manila office of the International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE), linked to the Tri-People movement of indigenous Lumad, Muslim Moro, and Christian settlers in Mindanao. We also sat in the Food Sovereignty Conference organized by the PKMM (Pambansang Katipunan ng Makabayang Magbubukid, or National Federation of Patriotic Peasants) for World Food Day 2025.

Capping off the year this December and synthesizing our understanding of key concepts in land politics was the week-long seminar on agrarian political economy and agroecology organized by KATARUNGAN and other organizations, where we learned alongside peasant leaders and community organizers. On her birthday, Sheila had our copy of Essential Concepts of Land Politics (2025) signed by its author, Jun Borras, the lead facilitator of the workshop.

Altogether it’s been an eye-opening experience, grounding our research in lived struggles and offering valuable insight into how our scholarly work might contribute to revitalizing contemporary agrarian movements and reimagining post-capitalist futures. Kasarinlan sa pagkain, lupa, at bayan ipaglaban!

Wika, Panitikan, at Kultura sa Ilalim ng Batas Militar sa Pilipinas

Ikalawang Semestre, 2025-2026

READING LIST

1. Introduksyon sa kursong Batas Militar  

1.1 Mga diskurso hinggil sa Batas Militar

Aguilar, Filomeno. (2019). Political Conjuncture and Scholarly Disjunctures: Reflections on Studies of the Philippine State under Marcos. Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

Tiglao, Rigoberto. (2019). Shameless prostitution of academe: The Communist Party’s martial law course at UP. Manila Times.

1.2 Susing salita bilang lapit

Borras, Jun and Franco, Jennifer. (2025). Power and politics through keywords in everyday life. Transnational Institute.

Joey Ayala at Bagong Lumad. (1991). Magkabilaan. Magkabilaan. Awit.

2. Ang konteksto ng Batas Militar

2.1 Cold War, Global Sixties, Third World

Inang Laya. (1994). Base Militar. Best of Inang Laya. Awit.

Mohandesi, Salar. (2022). Thinking the Global Sixties. The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Scalice, Joseph. (2023). A Storm on the Horizon. In The Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines, pp. 23-59.

2.2 Rebelyong Huk at “Digmang Magsasaka sa Ika-20 Siglo”

Arador, Andante. (1984). Manguuma Ako. Mga Kanta ng Rebolusyong Pilipino. Awit.

Kerkvliet, Benedict. (1977). Conclusion. The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines, pp. 249-269.

Wolf, Eric. (1969). Conclusion. In Peasant War of the 20^th Century, pp. 275-302.

2.3 Diktadura, awtoritaryanismo, pasismo

Amin, Samir. (2014). The return of fascism in contemporary capitalism. Monthly Review.

Bello, Walden. (2019). The Philippines: Emergence of a Fascist Original. In Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right, pp. 103-122.

Pasismo Ha Nagookan. (1984). Mga Kanta ng Rebolusyong Pilipino. Awit.

2.4 Kilusang panlipunan at mga anyo ng pakikibaka

Ang Masa. (1984). Mga Kanta ng Rebolusyong Pilipino. Awit.

O’Brien, Kevin and Lianjiang Li. 2006. Rightful Resistance. In Rightful Resistance in Rural China, pp.1-24. 

Rutten, Rosanne. (2003). Changing “We-Feelings” in a Period of Revolutionary Mobilization Philippine Studies.

Scott, James. (1986). Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. In Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in Southeast Asia, pp. 5-35.

2.5 Socdem, natdem, oposisyong burges, pakikibakang Moro

Abinales, Patricio. (2001). Filipino Marxism and the ‘National Question.’ In Fellow Traveler: Essays on Filipino Communism, pp. 195-228.  

McKenna, Thomas. (2022). Marcos and the Moros: Philippine Muslims, Martial Law and the Bangsamoro Rebellion. In The Marcos Era: A Reader, pp. 131-150. 

Thompson, Mark. (1995). The Form, Not the Substance of Democracy. In The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines, pp. 64-80. 

Tolosa, Benjamin. (2010). Filipino Social Democracy: Origins and Characteristics, Lessons and Challenges. In Socdem: Filipino Social Democracy in a Time of Turmoil and Transition, pp. 253-285. 

3. Tunggalian at diskurso sa Batas Militar

3.1 Pol-Mil, digmang bayan, welgang bayan

Butalid, Maya. (2024). The Struggle. In Chasing Windmills, pp. 15-54.

Mongaya, Karlo Mikhail. (2024). “Seizing the Momentum”: The Communist Resistance in Cebu during the Anti-Marcos Struggle, 1972–1986.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints.

Quimpo, Nathan. (2012). Welgang Bayan! In Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Martial Law Years, pp. 379-394.

Quitoriano, Eddie. (2025). Midnight Express. In Deeper Ground, Darker Shadows: The Making of a Mindanao Rebel, pp. 96-101.

Wild, Nettie. (1989). Rustling of the Leaves. Film.

Invited speaker: Santos, Vim-Vim (Philippine Global Exchange Fair Trade Center)

3.2 Pambansang industriyalisasyon tungong neoliberalismo

Abinales, Patricio. (2023). Ferdinand Marcos and the Fantasy of Development Dictatorship. In Martial Law in the Philippines: Lessons & Legacies 1972-2022, pp. 45-61.

Broad, Robin and Walden Bello. (1982). Structural and Other Adjustments. In The Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, pp. 165-182.

Istoryang Pangbanwahanon. (1984). Mga Kanta ng Rebolusyong Pilipino. Awit. 

3.3 Karapatang pantao, insurhensiya, kontra-insurhensiya

Ayala, Joey. (1991). Wala Nang Tao sa Sta. Filomena. Panganay ng Umaga. Awit. 

Corpus, Victor. (1989). Reassessment of AFP Counter-Insurgent Strategies. In Silent War, pp. 107-125.

Whyte, Jessica. (2021). Human Rights, Revolution and the Good Society: The Soviet Union and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917, pp. 401 – 427.

3.4 People Power, demokratisasyon, restorasyon ng elit

Abinales, Patricio. (2023). Can Communists Laugh? Recalling Vanishing Ditties of the Marcos Era. In Presidents and Pests, Cosmopolitan and Communists, pp. 155-175.

Claudio, Lisandro. (2010). Memories of the Anti-Marcos Movement: The Left and the Mnemonic Dynamics of the Post-Authoritarian Philippines. Southeast Asia Research.

Quimpo, Nathan. (2016). “People Power” 1986 in Retrospect: A Conjunctural Analysis. Remembering/Rethinking EDSA.

Yano. (1994). Kumusta Na? Yano. Awit.

3.5 Kasama, kaaway, at iba pang suhetong politikal

De Jong, Alex. (2016). Hunting Specters: Paranoid Purges in the Filipino Communist Guerrilla Movement. In Genocide: New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses,  and Consequences, pp. 113-129.

Escala, Cha. (2019). Remnants of a Revolution. Film.

Rutten, Rosanne. (2009). Turncoat? The activist trajectory of a Philippine plantation-community leader. The Journal of Peasant Studies.

Santos, Soliman. (2024). Some Dance to Remember, Some Dance to Forget: Empirical Insights from Working on Books on Activism, Insurgency, and Martial Law in the Philippines. ANU Philippine Institute Update Conference 2024.

Invited speaker: Garcia, Robert Francis (Peace Advocates for Truth and Healing)

4. Mga pamana at hamon ng Batas Militar

4.1 Peti-repormismo, ultra-rebolusyonismo, gerilyaismo

Danilo, Carranza. (2015). Agrarian reform and the difficult road to peace in the Philippine countryside. Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre.

Mongaya, Karlo Mikhail. (2026). The forgotten history of the Kabataan para sa Demokrasya at Nasyonalismo (KADENA) and the Philippine insurrectionary 1980s. Draft.

Tupaz, Omar. (1991). Toward a Revolutionary Strategy for the 1990s. Debate: Philippine Left Review.

Invited speaker: Reyes, Ric (Rural Poor Institute for Land and Human Rights Services)

4.2 Di-repormistang reporma at makatarungang paglaban

Borras, Saturnino Jr. and Jennifer Franco. (2025). “Petty Reformism.” In Essential Concepts of Land Politics: An A-Z Guide, pp. 131-134.

Buklod. (1997). Buhay at Bukid. Bukid at Buhay. Awit.

Mongaya, Karlo Mikhail. (2026). “Maibalik sa amin ang aming lupa”: The Narunotan yang Pagsarasan yang Boses Tagbanuang Coron may Busuanga and the Struggle for Land in the Busuanga Pasture Reserve, Palawan, Philippines. Forthcoming.

4.3 Populismo, kanang populismo, kaliwang populismo

Borras, Saturnino Jr. (2019). Agrarian social movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right-wing populism and exploring a socialist future. Journal of Agrarian Change.

Granada, Gary. (2008). Holdap. Samu’t Saring. Awit.

Valte, Alex, Leomar Doctolero Jr., and Karlo Mikhail Mongaya. (2026). “Tara na kamanggagawa!” How a workers’ populist campaign emerged as an alternative to liberal discourses in the 2025 Philippine elections. In The Elite Center Cannot Hold: Critical Perspectives on Resurgent Philippine Liberalism. Forthcoming.

Invited speaker: Valte, Alex (Living Wage Network)

4.4 Sakalikasaan at Soberanya sa pagkain, lupa, at teritoryo

Fairbarn, Madeleine. (2010). Framing Resistance: International Food Regimes & the Roots of Food Sovereignty. In Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, pp. 15-32.

Joey Ayala at Ang Bagong Lumad. (1995). Bathala. Mga Awit ng Tanod-Lupa. Awit.

Pagurayan, Sheila Mae and Karlo Mikhail Mongaya. (2026). Food regimes and radical movements in agrarian change: An invitation for rethinking the Agrarian Question in the Philippines. Draft.

Invited speaker: Mendoza, Clarissa (Kilusan Para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan)

4.5 Kilusang masa at iskolar-aktibismo

Borras, Saturnino Jr. & Jennifer Franco. (2023). Scholar-Activism. In Scholar-Activism and Land Struggles, pp. 55-95.

Borras, Saturnino Jr. & Jennifer Franco. (2025). Land struggles and working people. In Oxford Handbook of Land Politics, pp. 815-832.

Cabangon, Noel. (2011). Sangandaan. Panaginip. Awit.

Previous indicators—such as tenancy, sharecropping, concentration, or wage labor—were found to be by themselves inadequate markers of capitalist presence. Yet the transition from tenancy to wage labor farming, the replacement of servile and bonded labor with free, cash-paid workers, and substantial investments in modern agriculture, which boosted productivity, could not be dismissed easily either. The focus of the Indian debates thus shifted from questioning the existence of capitalism to exploring the type of capitalism that emerged and its impact on class relations.

What struck me was how the Indian debate resonates with the Philippines’ own debates on modes of production during the 1980s and the subsequent split in the communist movement in the 1990s.

The contending positions in the Philippine debates examined the same agrarian economy, which is linked to global capitalism, yet they arrived at opposing conclusions. Those who remained in the CPP orthodoxy stressed the persistence of semi-feudal relations, interpreted the situation as “half-glass empty” to justify the continuation of its rural armed insurgency. Many of those who rejected the CPP, by contrast, saw “half-glass full”—a form of backward capitalism—arguing that this called for prioritizing workers’ organizing in the urban centers. In this sense, both semi-feudal and backward-capitalist interpretations remained captive to a stageist, linear conception of “national” development. They differed only in where they located the Philippines on that trajectory. However, recent trends related to neoliberal globalization, such as the decline of agriculture, rapid urbanization, but also the absence of significant industrial growth, have pulled the rug over these contending interpretive frames.

What may be needed is a reframing of the question altogether: moving beyond capitalist penetration as the sole yardstick for revolutionary strategy, and instead toward a more holistic view of how social relations (including but not limited to capital–labor relations) and the balance of forces at a given conjuncture can either enable or constrain possibilities for radical transformation.

The sessions, held partly at China Agricultural University (CAU) in Beijing and in Sanggang Village, Hebei County, were both productive and deeply insightful. The Writeshop gave invaluable and rigorous feedback on an article that Sheila and I have co-authored inviting scholars and activists to rethink the agrarian question in the Philippines.

The discussions on critical agrarian studies and scholar-activism by Jun Borras and other JPS editors made me realize how I was very much like the proverbial frog in the well, yet as another saying goes, the journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.

We’re truly grateful to all the people in the Writeshop for the opportunity and the warm camaraderie.

For me, the most striking moment in the book was the author’s unflinching critique of CPP founder and ideologue Jose Maria Sison, whom she described as having “delusions of grandeur.” However, the bulk of the memoir is not focused on the CPP at all. It’s about the life that followed as a migrant in the Netherlands.

What stood out to many students was the idea that resistance doesn’t end when one leaves a movement. Some noted that true commitment involves continually reassessing one’s alignment with a cause and having the courage to walk away when it no longer aligns with one’s convictions, or even critique it. Butalid’s story also highlighted for others the value of contributing to social change through peaceful means such as education, outreach, organizing, and writing, in contrast to seeing them as instrumental only to armed struggle as always-already the primary repertoire of contention.

Toward the end of the book, the author reminisces about growing up on P. del Rosario St. in Cebu City. Her memories evoked my childhood as I recalled being a child in the late ’90s and early 2000s, accompanying my late father, Anol, to his newspaper office located in the same neighborhood.

Chasing Windmills may not be as action-packed as some might expect from a memoir about the dictatorship years, but its introspection, honesty, and quiet wisdom make it a compelling and essential read. Thanks to Earl Parreno for recommending this book. It is available at Lost Books Cebu and PGX – Peoples’ Global Exchange.

The novel is a daring and gripping work that weaves in the bloody purges carried out by the Communist Party of the Philippines and how foreign funding (pX) for NGO projects intended to support the armed struggle (ghost, credible reality, full implementation) can fall prey to corruption within the movement.

Dehn’s book offers a bold fictionalized look at a controversial and often overlooked chapter in the history of the Philippine Left, building on earlier works like Bobby Garcia’s To Suffer Thy Comrades or Nathan Quimpo’s scholarship on the financial work of the underground movement.

The book is available for sale at the PGX – Peoples’ Global Exchange shop at 26-B Matahimik Street, QUezon City.

I read Global Battlefields backward — starting with the last chapter and moving toward the first. Lately, I’ve been going over movement documents from the 1980s and 1990s, so I thought it would be refreshing to engage with more contemporary accounts for a change. The final chapter offers a schematic of Bello’s intellectual and political evolution: from his existentialist college years to his early activist-scholar phase at Princeton and Chile, to his time with the CPP during the martial law years, and finally, what he calls his phase of “critical subjectivity.”

Bello’s insights on Duterte were some of the most compelling materials in these latter chapters. Bello makes a compelling argument: the rise of Duterte wasn’t simply a product of disinformation, as many liberals assume. Rather, it was the material failure of EDSA to deliver on its promises that created fertile ground for the rise of Duterte. Bello had warned the Philippine Left about this 15 years ago, reflecting on the working-class mobilization in EDSA III: “Unless the Left looks at the recent crisis with humility, the fire next time might not only sweep away the elite but also decimate the progressive movement…” His words feel even more urgent today.

But what I found most insightful from the entire book was his account of how neoliberalism, as a new phase in global capitalism, took root in the Philippines, gutting agriculture and manufacturing. The entry into the WTO in 1995 was devastating: “Far from increasing by 500,000 a year, employment in agriculture dropped from 11.2 million in 1994 to 10.9 in 2001 to less than 10 million in 2016. With little incentive to remain in a dying sector, the rate of emigration to the city and abroad increased sharply, leaving behind a rapidly aging workforce.”

The discussion of his involvement against the neoliberal offensive, from the battle over WTO ratification up to the struggle for the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), was particularly valuable for gaining a deeper understanding of these pivotal moments.

On the other hand, what I found most disappointing was his perspective on Jose Maria Sison. For me, it is one thing to recognize Sison’s historical significance: his offering a compelling analysis of Philippine society and his poetic formulation of a politico-military strategy that captured the imagination of an entire generation and shaped the armed movement that formed the core of the resistance to the dictatorship.

However, it is quite another matter to downplay as merely a matter of “differences” Sison and the CPP’s role in obstructing the reimagining and flowering of a left alternative in the Philippines (to the point of branding ideological rivals as “counterrevolutionaries” deserving “revolutionary violence”). After all, the CPP was inseparable from his leadership.

I wrote this intervention two years ago when I was still less critical of the CPP’s “national democratic” framework outlined in CASER. Since then, I’ve become more critical not only of its silence on the significant changes brought about by the neoliberal transformation of the economy. My positions have shifted towards an explicitly socialist position, but one that is pluralist and internationalist in its orientation. Read the article here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383093065_The_National_Democratic_Front_of_the_Philippines’_draft_Comprehensive_Agreement_on_Social_and_Economic_Reforms_Issues_and_Prospects?_sg%5B0%5D=BiLuPrjnsT4Ii7yY1CJF18mFG-XYKUwpzF3WLEhwJzjiGCUU3QQ7fw2XNA_w0zeXVtPDYNG0MpQjjAGEOQnv9NtNkYtcuofJFnyMyfSZ.kpeBizWK_EBQJM8gfTCjLYMawfgRmO-rS9bW9q4EoekxYm9stzOjOytpm2TsizKGEgrL2RurmDH5Dewfn7A-Mw&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6ImhvbWUiLCJwYWdlIjoicHJvZmlsZSIsInBvc2l0aW9uIjoicGFnZUNvbnRlbnQifX0

My top reads of 2024 include books on history, political economy, insurgent warfare, critical agrarian studies, and Soviet-era novels. I enjoyed Tariq Ali’s memoir of the Global Sixties, Street Fighting Years, Jojo Abinales’s latest book Presidents and Pests, Cosmopolitans and Communists, the Soviet-era novels Conquered City by Victor Serge, The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov, and The Inhabited Island by the Strugatsky brothers. I found Daniel Bensaid’s Marx for Our Times, the Comintern manual on Armed Insurrection, Joseph Daher’s Hezbollah, and Abinales’s Making Mindanao useful for ongoing research projects. 2024 is also the year I finally read Lenin’s Development of Capitalism in Russia, which lays down the foundations of the classical agrarian question. Reading Philip McMichael’s Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions, Marc Edelman & Jun Borras’ Transnational Agrarian Movements, and Jun Borras & Jennifer Franco’s Scholar Activism and Land Struggles brings the discussion of the agrarian question to the contemporary period.