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.

In the First Semester of Academic Year 2024–2025, my Philippine Studies 21 class at the University of the Philippines, Diliman explored the histories and narratives of resistance to the Marcos dictatorship in the Visayan Islands.

We began by critically examining Rigoberto Tiglao’s Manila Times article, “Shameless Prostitution of Academe: The Communist Party’s Martial Law Course at UP“ (2019). While Tiglao’s accusations against the course are baseless, his piece facilitated a broader discussion on how the martial law era has been studied and taught—wherein the likes of Tiglao amplify simplified state-aligned perspectives while national democrats in academia present romanticized portrayals of resistance.

Our discussions emphasized questioning historical categories. Drawing on Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros’s “The Fall and Rise of the National Question” (2011) and Filomeno Aguilar’s “The Local as National History“ (2018), we examined how the obscuring of the persistence of the national question under the spell of triumphant global capitalism on one hand and the privileging of the nation-state on the other hand has deformed our historical understanding.

We reviewed the events leading to martial law, contextualized by the intertwined logics of the “Cold War” and the “Global Sixties”, through Joseph Scalice’s “A Storm on the Horizon” (2023) and Francine Parker’s film F.T.A. (1972). The political economy and cultural structures of the Marcos dictatorship were analyzed through Jojo Abinales’s “Ferdinand Marcos and the Fantasy of Development Dictatorship” (2023) and Resil Mojares’s “Marking a Turn: Thoughts on a Generation of Philippine Scholarship” (2017).

Theories on martial law, fascism, and populism were grounded in Samir Amin’s “The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism” (2014), George Dimitrov’s The Fascist Offensive and Unity of the Working Class (2021), and Jun Borras’s “Agrarian Social Movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right-wing populism and exploring a socialist future” (2018). These frameworks helped contextualize the Philippine experience within global political currents.

We introduced the main political forces opposing the Marcos dictatorship, including Moro revolutionary groups, social democrats, the bourgeois opposition, and the national democrats. We also made a close reading of Communist Party founder Jose Maria Sison’s Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War (1974).

This discussion set the stage for examining the anti-Marcos resistance in the Visayas, drawing on my works “Seizing the Momentum: The Communist Resistance in Cebu during the Anti-Marcos Struggle, 1972–1986” (2024) and “Roger Felix Salditos and Agrarian Class Struggles in Panay Island” (2024), as well as “The Never-Ending War in the Wounded Land: The New People’s Army on Samar” (2013) by William Holden and “Regional Dynamics: Rise and Decline of the CPP-NPA in Negros Occidental” (2008) by Rosanne Rutten. This emphasis countered the Manila-centric “People Power” narrative.

We also addressed resistance in Mindanao, highlighting the Moro revolutionary groups and the communist insurgency. “Marcos and the Moros: Philippine Muslims, Martial Law and the Bangsamoro Rebellion” (2023) by Thomas McKenna, “Competing nationalisms, tactical alliances: The Communist Party of the Philippines’ stance on the Bangsamoro struggle during the anti-Marcos resistance” (2024) that I co-wrote with Elgin Glenn Salomon, and “Rejoinder to the Theorizing of Armando Liwanag and the CPP-Executive Committee on the Mindanao Experience, 1983-1986” by Robert Sibunga (1993) helped us explore this topic.

The strategic, operational, and tactical principles of Marcos’s counterinsurgency campaigns were analyzed through Alfred McCoy’s “Theater of Terror: The Spectacle of Political Violence under Marcos and Duterte” (2023), Walden Bello’s US-Sponsored Low-Intensity Conflict (1987), and Victor Corpus’s Silent War (1989).

From the Visayas and Mindanao, the class returned to the national capital to discuss in broad strokes the fate of the bourgeois opposition to Marcos and the 1986 Edsa popular uprising that ultimately toppled his dictatorship. We made extensive use of Mark Thompson’s The Anti-Marcos: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines (1995) and Nathan Quimpo’s “People Power 1986 in Retrospect: A Conjunctural Analysis” (2016) for this discussion. Nettie Wild’s The Rustling of Leaves (1988) meanwhile provided a starting point for discussing the persistence of a grim human rights situation, unjust social structures, and insurgent politics even after the fall of the dictator. 

Finally, we analyzed the post-Marcos trajectory of insurgent movements, the split within the CPP, and the broader decline of the left. Key texts included Omar Tupaz’s “Toward a Revolutionary Strategy of the 90s” (1992), Rosanne Rutten’s “Turncoat? The activist trajectory of a Philippine plantation-community leader” (2009), Robert Francis Garcia’s To Suffer Thy Comrades: How The Revolution Decimated its Own (2017), and Lisandro Claudio’s “Memories of the Anti-Marcos Movement” (2010). The International Crisis Group’s 2024 report “Calming the Long War in the Philippine Countryside” offered a contemporary view of the communist insurgency.

The class concluded by examining the rise of the Dutertes and the return of the Marcoses to Malacañang as reflective of the politico-economic transformations of the past four decades. These changes have reshaped class structures amid the Philippines’ deeper integration into global capitalism, enabling right-wing populism and neo-fascist forces to position themselves as alternatives to the existing system by capitalizing on the disorientation and fragmentation within left-wing movements. Discussing Jennifer Franco and Jun Borras’s Scholar-Activism and Land Struggles (2023), we underscored the need for critical scholarship and activist research to understand and transform the current conjuncture.

Next semester, we might take a deep dive into the histories and narratives of the anti-dictatorship resistance in Mindanao.

My paper is exploratory work that started when I was researching the communist resistance to the Marcos dictatorship in Cebu. From that earlier work I discovered that Cebu was one of the areas of operation of support groups organized by the communist movement’s Mindanao Commission. Thus, my research on Cebu led me to trace this Mindanao connection and, eventually, the RPM-M. Working on this connection was also informed by the earlier research I did with Elgin Glenn Salomon on the communist movement’s stance on the Bangsamoro struggle during the anti-Marcos resistance. This work was published as a journal article with The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

While it was short-lived, the RPM-M peace process opened new possibilities for localized humanitarian development and peacebuilding “from below” on an island that has been ravaged by decades of armed conflict. What RPM-M leader Ike Delos Reyes called a “community-based and people-centered peace talks” enabled tri-people Moro, Lumad, and Christian communities to escape the adverse consequences of armed conflict while building local power at the ground level. Grassroots community empowerment helped them attain tangible material gains as part of a broader process of revolutionary social transformation, even after the collapse of the peace process with the GRP.

Read it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384681632_Big_Red_Book