PAGBABAGO
Dr. Florangel Rosario-Braid
The passing of Jose Maria Sison, founding leader of the 54-year old Communist Party of the Philippines, one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies, makes us pause with the query – “Who will fill the empty chair?” Who can match Joma’s charisma, passion, and fearlessness?
Much had been said about him in various accounts here at home, and from foreign observers as well. He was unafraid to face torture, exile, and imprisonment. He was not only a revolutionary; he was also a university professor, a scholar, and a poet.
Not as artistic or versatile like his older brother, Ramon who was a pathologist, movie actor, pianist, violinist and documentalist, Joma was erudite, having graduated with honors at the University of the Philippines where he finished a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a master of arts in comparative literature.
I hadn’t met Joma in person. I almost did when Ramon who was the husband of a relative, Charito Fernandez, asked me if I would like to meet with him. I thought about it, then decided I should not. At that time which was in 1988, I was not prepared with an agenda concrete enough and worth his time. And I didn’t want our meeting to be merely an exchange of pleasantries.
Ramon, a medical doctor, member of the California Medical Board, official of the Kaiser Hospital system, and a noted movie actor in Hollywood, was a popular figure in his circles. I had visited with them at their lovely Beverly home in California and he and Charito likewise, had come to see us at our Quezon City home. Ramon and Charito were also present at the wedding of my niece in California. He and I exchanged correspondence where he shared with me drafts of his plans for a documentary – a history of Cabugao, his town, the Sison-Canlas ancestry, and their contribution to nation-building. He was a man in a hurry and when he passed away at 80, he had already acted in at least seven movies, supporting, but memorable roles, including that of Marcos, Sr. I am sure he must have performed in at least a couple of dozen concerts (his talent is ‘concert-quality’). He also took the lead in pursuing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for human rights violations, for Joma’s torture and disappearance of their brother, Paquito. They won the case in the US, but the Philippine government prevented the paying of indemnity to victims of human rights.
I met Luis Taruc sometime in 1972, while I was on the faculty of the University of Hawaii and the East-West Center where he was invited as a participating lecturer. He was a master of mass mobilization. When he advocated replacing armed conflict with parliamentary means and initiated peace talks with the government, he was expelled and denounced as a renegade by his party. He never advocated collectivization of land but its redistribution from the feudal landlord. Farmers’ cooperatives, he said are the ideal alternative to the feudal land tenure system. His Christian democratic ideology was similar to the Liberation Theology associated with Latin America. His concept of nationalism focused on the Filipino nation – that people must act on society’s best interest. The will of the majority is not necessarily correct or the best, he noted. Nelson Mandela’s statement that Taruc was the key “inspiration” for his anti-apartheid movement raised public esteem of him.
Horacio “Boy” Morales entered government with the hope of improving the service to the marginalized but soon realized that the latter needed to be empowered. As executive vice president of the Development Academy of the Philippines, he put in place countryside development, integrated development, rural credit and cooperatives, and small and medium-scale industries. On Dec. 25, 1971, the day he was to receive the Ten Outstanding Young Men award (TOYM), he issued a statement that he was joining the underground “to fight the system that had brought so much suffering.” Upon his release later, the established the Institute for Popular Democracy, became president of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and the Cooperative Foundation of the Philippines. The latter was chaired by Manuel Manahan and when I succeeded the latter as chair, Boy was already its president. Boy played an important role in Mahar Mangahas “Social Indicators project,” the first experiment in measuring self-rated poverty.
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