HOTSPOT
Tonyo Cruz
I’m sorry to break it to you, but this seemingly difficult time is a great time to be a progressive.
The avalanche of fake news about the nature and objectives of activism and all sorts of social engagement even by non-activists provide us an opportunity to explain and to discuss.
True, there’s a well-grounded fear. Given all that has happened, an activist could just disappear, get arrested, falsely charged with all sorts of crimes, or even killed. But if you look at your activist friends, they don’t cower in fear. They take extra precautions, but they are not afraid.
Progressives are not afraid, because there’s this certainty that deep in the Filipino heart, most of us share the fundamental belief that the system is rigged against us in favor of a few. There’s no Filipino who could say with a straight face that they love and adore this system. In fact, millions have fled this system that’s unable to provide them the opportunity right in their own homeland, and they pine to come back when things are better.
Filipinos in fact have a long progressive and radical tradition. It is un-Filipino to embrace colonial and imperialist rulers. What’s Filipino is to fight for freedom and independence. The Philippines was a child of struggle, between those who sought self-determination, and a colonial ruler that thought we are forever unable to decide for ourselves. Progressives continue this tradition of speaking and taking action against old and new foreign powers that impair our right to freely determine the destiny of our country.
In the last century, progressive thought-leaders punctured the “deceptive calm,” exposing the problems that fester Filipinos while enriching a few. Claro M. Recto boldly called for an independent foreign policy, shocking and humiliating officials deeply afflicted by “colonial mentality.”
When the Japanese imperial army invaded the country, it was Crisanto Evangelista and his fellow communists who formed the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, and filled the void left by the elected and appointed colonial officials who sought refuge in the US or went into hiding. Up until today and forever, we honor these communist-led Huks for their bravery and patriotism.
Progressive historians Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino presented Philippine history with a refreshing pro-people and pro-Filipino view. Our reading of history has since graduated from a recital of trivia and of the “legacies” of colonial rulers, into a story of our saga as a people seeking change through various means.
Today’s generation of progressives and activists hail from a new tradition started in the 1960s and the 1970s. We owe to young ones of that period the progressives’ clarity of purpose (national democracy), a clarity of partisanship (farmers and workers first), and a clarity of perspective (fight and replace a deeply flawed system rooted in imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism, and feudalism). They showed and continue to show — through political science, political economy, sociology, and history — the development of the state, and why every regime turned out to be that way.
That generation, we must say, became a most formidable force that fought and challenged martial law and dictatorship. Our history is incomplete without the stories of progressives, hailing from all walks of life, who stood up against the tyrant. Today, their names dominate the Bantayog ng mga Bayani.
Today’s dystopian politics seek to blame progressives for the problems they actually wish to solve.
Progressives didn’t invite foreign intervention in our internal affairs and in our economic life. The system did, and progressives oppose it. Progressives didn’t start a brutal “war on drugs” that has killed tens of thousands. The system did, and progressive oppose it. Progressives didn’t enact laws granting tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or favoring Bid Business and Big Landlords. The system did, and progressive oppose it.
Nowhere is this gaslighting sharper than in the case of Jevilyn Cullamat. But Jevilyn did not kill herself. Neither did her mother, Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat, kill her. It was the military that proudly claimed to have killed Jevilyn and then paraded her body as a war trophy — not progressives and certainly not her mother, Representative Cullamat.
The situation today is definitely challenging to progressives. The state has mobilized a national task force, complete with a funding of P19-billion, in order to destroy progressives. There’s no longer any distinction between activists and revolutionaries, or between unarmed civilians and combatants, or between medics and armed fighters. Facts and evidence are also unimportant to the national task force, as we could glean from the unremitting lies, misrepresentation and fake news. They don’t care about filing any cases anymore.
Congressman Edcel Lagman points out one reason behind the anti-Red hysteria: money. He says there are officials who seek to “justify” a war budget, by launching a high-profile campaign painting progressives as the enemy. We could only hope lawmakers listen to Lagman, because he is right. We need tens of billions for mass vaccination, for blended learning, and for other urgent needs. We don’t need new onerous loans. The proposed budget for war could and should be redirected to more productive and more pressings needs that are more important that the corrupt designs of those who lust after the war budget.
But apart from corruption, there’s also the certainty that, despite all its real and perceived flaws which they criticize in order to improve, the progressives in the Philippines carry in their hearts and minds what it takes to expose, unravel, and solve the system’s problems. There’s no other political movement in the country that, from the get-go, assails the system and finds common ground with most Filipinos. There are forces who cannot stomach what progressives wish to promote and achieve: resumption of formal peace negotiations, national industrialization capable of providing full employment, genuine agrarian reform to democratize the countryside, a comprehensive social policy, the emancipation of women and LGBTs, self-determination for national minorities, an independent foreign policy, and a democratic coalition government.
Why should anyone be scared of or reject such objectives? The dystopia makes us hate the solutions to our problems, and those who promote such solutions. Only time will tell when Filipinos would snap out of this odd, dystopian view, and rally around the cause of defending civil liberties and national democracy. Meantime, the progressives embrace the current time. Because Filipinos have known them to never retreat, never surrender.