A Brief History of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Movement in the Philippine Student Sector 1976-1977 Part 3

How Kabataang Makabayan (KM) was Revived, How League of Filipino Students (LFS) Got its Name

It was the middle of 1977, and martial law was at its height in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the CPP’s Standing Group for Youth and Students (SGYS) was making significant progress in initiating class boycotts in Manila and Quezon City. In the heat of the campaign, the group received a letter purportedly written by Jose Maria Sison. Sison hailed SGYS’ proposal to revive Kabataang Makabayan (KM), the premier Leftist youth organization before martial law. Sison was the first chairman of KM, with Nilo Tayag being the second.

The letter took several months to travel through the intricate CPP channels. A few weeks after receiving the letter, SGYS requested a meeting with National Democratic Front- Youth and Students (NDF-YS) to brainstorm the specifics of KM’s revival. SGYS was especially interested to get the say of the NDF-YS secretary because he used to be in KM’s national leadership and knew all about chapter building and expanding. He joined KM way back in 1966.

NDF-YS – SGYS Planning Meeting

For the meeting, NDF-YS booked the seminar house of the Catholic church of Sta.Isabel, Malolos, Bulacan. NDF-YS had reliable contacts in the Diocese of Malolos' youth program and regularly used the facility for its meetings. It was a good place for underground meetings. It was tucked away in a secluded and sleepy corner of Malolos, and was not well known to activists and military alike. An added feature was a basketball court in the church plaza, where the activists could exercise and fight boredom.

Also, the seminar house's huge front window, designed for watching processions and festivities in the olden days, offered a vantage view of the vast plaza. Any police raid of the place would have been detected way in advance, giving the activists ample escape time. 

The seminar house fee was P20 pesos per person inclusive of three meals and two meriendas a day. Even in 1977 prices, this was cheap. The meals and meriendas were prepared by the in-house cook named “Ka Biring.” NDF-YS footed the bill, they being more financially capable.

An original find by NDF-YS, the seminar house was only  40 km. from Metro-Manila. One had to go first to Malolos poblacion by bus,  then take a 3.5 km. tricycle ride to Sta. Isabel. Sta. Isabel used to be a separate town from Malolos, but was integrated in 1903.  The seminar house was a traditional “kumbento” attached to a church. Built in Spanish-era style, it had a spacious, well-lit, and airy living room on the second floor which had been converted into a seminar room.

The room’s original floor was still in place. It was made of ten-foot long, one-foot wide and one-inch thick sturdy wood planks rendered a shiny dark brown through the years. It creaked in many places as people walked. The dormitory, connected to the seminar room by a narrow corridor, could house twenty persons. It was basic but comfortable, with its green steel-frame beds with coil springs supporting new kapok matresses and pillows. It was air-conditioned, and the lone bathroom was clean and working.  

For a legal front, NDF-YS told the management that a group would be having a parish “youth formation seminar.” In complete attendance were SGYS, and NDF-YS, all in all  8  persons. By this time, the 5 members of SGYS, all in their early twenties, had been toughened in the tuition fee boycotts, and were keen to share their experiences. The NDF secretary , a balding, diminutive, and mustached 29 year-old man named Edgar Jopson, dropped by in mid-morning. After observing the meeting and saying a few things, Jopson left in the afternoon. I remember seeing him off with my eyes from the old building's front window, as he boarded a tricycle.

It was in this seminar house (with the red roof) at the extreme right of the Sta. Isabel
 church in Malolos, Bulacan that the League of Filipino Students (LFS) was conceptualized in 1977.
The place has lately been renovated, but it looked a lot more modest back then. Photo borrowed from the blog  "Travel.Journey.My Life. My Story."at http://novamayjtravels.blogspot.com/

Kabataang Makabayan Revival

A few months earlier, SGYS had sent a memo to the CPP central committee, suggesting that, in the light of the upsurge in class boycotts against tuition fee increases, it was necessary and feasible to revive KM. As a special request, SGYS asked that  KM’s founding chairman air his views regarding the proposal, so that these could inspire and guide a planning meeting. 

KM had to be revived because it was disbanded in 1973, after the CPP leadership realized that legal and open activist organizations like KM were not feasible anymore. Many UP based CPP cadres recoiled at the idea of disbanding KM and other mass organizations, largely due to the force of sentiment, and a misreading of the new situation. They engaged the CPP national leadership in a spirited debate that lasted for months.  

This time around, said the SGYS, KM, or "Karina" was to be revived as an underground organization. SGYS sometimes casually referred to KM as “Karina,” owing to its revered pre-martial law code name. KM would accomodate the hundreds of student activists who had participated in the boycotts, but who could not be formally integrated into the CPP just yet.

 “I Understand Kabataang Makabayan is Reinvigorating Itself”

These students were called “national-democratic” (ND) activists by the CPP, and would have been members of generic ND core groups in the absence of a unifying organization. SGYS argued that being members of KM instead of just an ND cell would give the ND activists a wider perspective, group pride, and introduce them to organizational discipline. It would be a worthy phase-in period into the CPP, just like in the old days, SGYS quipped.

In the letter, Sison acknowledged being informed of KM’s impending revitalization. “I understand Kabataang Makabayan is reinvigorating itself,” he wrote. Sison went on to cite the importance of a covert organization that would link up the various ND core groups that had been formed in the past few years, but especially after the bountiful campaign against tuition fee increases. This can be done, he said, by offering the student activists an underground organization that gives a collective outlook to their apparently isolated undertakings.

Creating the LFS

The secretary of NDF-YS, being at 27 the “senior” of the group, opened the meeting and presided. After giving a short introduction, he gave the floor to the SGYS secretary. The head of SGYS, a 22 year-old former history major in UP,  briefly bragged about the letter, then gave it to the group. As the letter went around,  he proposed that they spend the first session discussing how to revive KM. The second session, he proposed, was to discuss another suggestion from the letter, which was creating a legal student organization.  The proposals were approved immediately.

The  deliberations about KM that ensued centered on the formation and consolidation of KM chapters, programs of study, forms of mass actions, CPP keadership over KM, CPP recruitment from KM, and how to publish Kalayaan, the official KM newsletter.  They went very smoothly.

As the second session began, the SGYS secretary explained that the legal organization the letter suggested was nothing less than an overt counterpart of KM. SGYS itself had earlier entertained a similar idea. However, before the letter arrived, SGYS intended the meeting exclusively for KM’s revitalization. Now they were making an adjustment. 

Creating a legal organization proved to be the harder talking point, because it had never been done before. Putting up a legal but noticeably activist student organization under martial law had no precedent.  Compared to it, the revival of KM did not seem so hard.

A legal organization, the letter said, was necessary to aggressively expand the student anti-martial law movement, demand the restoration of student councils and publications, and otherwise shrewdly project a legal version of KM. It was to be pro-student and patriotic, yet must survive the harsh times.  It should evince enough militancy to attract radically inclined students, yet exude enough restraint not to be suppressed straightaway.

 The League of Filipino Students or LFS

SGYS understood that naming the organization was critical. The way the group thought went, the proposed group had to have a name that projected peaceful reform, but still had a radical appeal. The name had to be tame enough not to invite repression during the organization’s early life, yet audacious enough to do justice to its combative demands. Realizing they were crossing a thin line, the group wracked their brains what the name would be.

In the afternoon, the group settled on a name. The legal student organization would be called “League of Filipino Students” or LFS. The use of English was decided easily: it was a safe choice. Everyone conceded that the use of Filipino was a giveaway for LFS' latent radicalism. By using English for the organization’s title, it was given a veneer of temperance and discipline.  A tricky part was deciding on the first word. The contenders were: association, society, union, alliance, organization, and league. League was chosen because of its novelty, restraint, and subtle militancy.  

Furthermore, league was chosen because of its not so vague association with Rizal’s reformist group, Liga Filipina. Being associated with Liga Filipina, someone suggested, would somehow enable the LFS to lull the senses of the military and the school administrations.  At the end of the discussion, SGYS expressed its desire to consult its lower units first regarding the proposed name, before it was finalized in another meeting. But everyone thought this was just a formality.

The third and final session of the meeting was devoted to drafting the guidelines on building up KM, and its legal counterpart, LFS. The guidelines on the LFS were scant compared to that of KM’s, because much of the second session was devoted to deciding on a name.   At any rate, the cadres were excited by the new undertaking, considering it unprecedented in Philippine history. Another planning meeting was scheduled to flesh out the guidelines. The group had a sumptuous dinner at about 7 pm in the seminar house’s spacious dining room and broke up at about 10 pm.

This meeting is historically significant because in it the CPP not only approved KM’s revival, but also decided to establish the LFS, and choose its name. LFS was founded a few months later, on September 11, 1977 at the Asian Labor Education Center (ALEC) at the University of the Philippines. KM and LFS remain to be essential players in the still unsettled 45-year Philippine insurgency.

  

A Brief History of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Movement in the Philippine Student Sector 1976-1977 Part 2

CCY

Although the CPP’s plans for expanding in the student sector emphasized penetrating existing religious youth groups, it did try, through NDF-YS, to utilize its church assets to set up its own youth organizing unit. Formed in early 1976, the group was called “Committee for the Conscientization of Youth,” (CCY). The mission of the CCY, as decided in its first meetings, was to raise the critical awareness of, or “conscientize” youth in schools and communities. It would do so by conducting “conscientization seminars.” 

Also called "structural analysis" seminars, these discussions were designed to raise the youth’s social awareness, and discreetly push them to organize their ranks against martial law. They also served to softly introduce the participants to Marxism, the easier for CPP operatives to pluck them up for recruitment. Advanced seminars made use of Antonio Gramsci's ideas. 

The term conscientization was articulated by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s pedagogy, especially its class analysis, is Marxist.  Freire’s Marxism is best gleaned in his idea of developing critical conciousness (conscientização), which encompasses not only understanding social and political contradictions, but also wilful action to resolve these contradictions. Freire’s framework evolved from his experience in adult literacy work among Brazilian sugarcane workers in 1962.  

These early CCY meetings were attended by a CPP cadre, two CPP contacts who were in the administration of an exclusive girls’ school in Manila, a CPP female cadre in the religious sector, and an Irish Columban priest who was also a CPP contact. It was the CPP cadre who initiated the meetings. His original idea was the formation of an inter-university alliance. The meetings were held in the secure confines of the exclusive school. Sometimes the group met at the old Asian Social Institute (ASI) building on Leon Guinto St. in Manila. 

Christians for National Liberation

At that time, many persons in the Philippine religious sector  had already been radicalized by martial law. These militant priests, nuns, pastors, and seminarians were members of the CPP controlled underground organization called “Christians for National Liberation.” (CNL) The latter was formed in an emotional ceremony on February 17, 1972, in front of a Gomburza monument in Manila.

Many of these Filipino religious were educators, social action directors, community organizers, or otherwise had jobs which exposed them to widespread poverty or brazen human rights violations. In the course of their respective vocations, they were introduced to Left theory via Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez’ book “Theology of Liberation.” They accepted Marxism when they made contacts with CPP cadres in the few years leading to martial law.

When they formed the CNL in 1972, many of them were probably already CPP members. The CNL sent many of its members and mass supporters to attend the last protest rally before martial law was announced, held on September 21, 1972, in Plaza Miranda. These religious activists became the mainstays of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP), which was at the forefront of the legal opposition to martial law.

To be able to operate openly under martial law, some CNL members used legally acceptable terms to popularize Marxist analysis, and the term conscientization was one of the more useful ones. Another popular term was "Basic Christian Communities Organizing." (BCC-CO) NDF-YS, in its effort to broaden the student movement, decided that getting the participation of these radical church people was a viable option. NDF-YS scouted for religious activists who had natural ties to students, like being school administrators and teachers. They had the perfect legal cover and thus ideal members of CCY.

CCY Founding

These early CCY meetings tackled the problem of how to camouflage CPP youth organizing seminars under a  religious cover. One of the CPP contacts, who was a nun, suggested the catchword “conscientization,” which was then rapidly spreading among Filipino religious radicals. The other CPP contact, a comely young woman who was in charge of the exclusive school’s student affairs department, suggested the creation of a pool of educators which will conduct youth conscientization seminars when on call.

The core activity of the CCY, she proposed, was to conduct conscientization seminars,  with its secondary job being the setting-up of CCY chapters all over the Philippines. After a few more meetings, the group agreed on the orientation, activities, and name of the proposed group. The CPP cadre must have been the one who suggested the name CCY.

Finally, the group agreed on who would staff the CCY. Since CCY did not have the means to provide even small allowances to regular staff, it was decided that two people would first work as CCY staff on a part-time and voluntary basis, and that full-time staff would be acquired as soon as CCY acquired support from foreign funding agencies. The exclusive girl’s school was selected as the CCY’s temporary headquarters. 

Once CCY was finalized, the CPP cadre made contact with NDF-YS, which eventually took CCY under its wings, in behalf of the CPP. It was then arranged for one member of NDF-YS to become a member of CCY. The group now had 3 staffers. If there was a seminar to be conducted, skilled facilitators certified by the CPP would be invited. The 3 CCY staffers themselves were to train in giving seminars.     

CCY Structural Analysis Seminars

The standard CCY concientization seminar was called a “structural analysis” seminar. In the radical religious circles of the time, the euphemism was the accepted way of cloaking Marxist analysis. Each seminar was attended by about 20 to 30 students at a given time. These students were considered by CCY as having “low social consciousness,” but open to “social awareness raising.” They were prospective activists or even potential CPP cadres and members. After the CCY group leaves the seminar’s venue, it was envisioned, local CPP organizers would befriend and organize them, for eventual integration into the movement.  

The facilitator usually gave an initial lecture on the three main structures of Philippine society namely the economic, political, and cultural systems. Sometimes a fourth system was included, which was the religious system. After this lecture, the facilitator breaks up the group into workshops, with each workshop being assigned to discuss a specific system.

Each workshop was instructed to list down as many random facts as possible about the Philippines that they deem would fall under the system assigned to them. Those assigned to the political system, for example, would list down martial law, the armed forces, habeas corpus, “salvaging,” the Supreme Court, barangays, and so on. 

Those assigned to the economic system would list down things like Laurel-Langley Trade Agreement, Central Bank, high prices of food, foreign investments, and so on. Lastly, those assigned to the cultural and/or the religious system would list down the Catholic Church, Cardinal Sin, the 1974 Miss Universe Pageant, schools, the mass media, Thrilla in Manila, and so on.

The workshops were then told to write their output with marking pens on wide pieces of “Manila Paper” and report these to the entire seminar group. The workshop reports were taped to a wall or to a blackboard for everyone to see. The reporters often read the reports with much enthusiasm. After the workshop reports, it was the turn of the facilitator to “interpret” the data.

It is at this point that he/she injects Marxist analysis into the seminar. He/she weaves the abundant data into a summation that mirrors the CPP analysis of the Philippine situation, and the courses of action the CPP prescribes. It takes considerable skill to do this, as the facilitator has to be careful with the words he/she uses, or he/she endangers the security of the whole group.

The facilitator tells the group that the economic system is the “determinant” system which influences the other systems. However, he/she points out that meaningful change for social justice happens in the political system and this needs collective action by the people. The cultural system, on the other hand, is where a change in consciousness happens, which leads to or inspires, the collective action desired.

Antonio Gramsci

Sometimes, when the CCY facilitator reckoned it was safe enough, he/she injected Antonio Gramsci’s critique of the cultural system. For some reason, Gramsci, an Italian communist leader, was very acceptable to Filipino religious radicals at the time. Likewise, Gramsci’s name was deemed by many religious to be safe enough to use openly, as it was unfamiliar to the authorities, and not associated with the CPP.

Gramsci’s “cultural hegemony” theory was very useful in telling the participants how the dominant classes used the cultural system to justify the local and national status quo. The CCY facilitator also used Gramsci’s theory of “organic intellectuals” in encouraging the participants that they can become intellectuals even without going through formal schooling. 

All told, the skillfull CCY facilitator, by using non-activist terminology and a host of other subterfuges, subtly introduced the participants to the analysis, political program, and calls to action of the CPP.

CCY Student Conference 

In March 1976, CCY, using the CPP underground network, CCY was a able to hold a well-attended, 2-day Metro-Manila wide inter-university conference. It was held at the AMRSP’s Sisters’ Formation Institute (SFI) in San Juan, Metro Manila, with Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB giving the keynote address. More than 120 student leaders from different universities in the region attended. History will look to this conference as the first Left-organized student conference under martial law. The first student congress under martial law was not organized by the Left --- it was initiated by the government’s Department of Education and Culture (DEC) on December 26-29, 1975, in Baguio City.

The conference predictably issued resolutions against martial law, and in favor of student rights and welfare. The main demands were the restoration of student councils and press freedom for student publications. This is not to say, however, that the deliberations were smooth-sailing for the CCY.

Most of those who attended were mustered by the CPP SGYS through its underground facilities. However, since the conference was announced openly, quite a few non-CPP contacts or "walk-in" participants registered, paid the conference fee, and participated in the sessions. Many of these new contacts were not anti-Left, and so were soon on good terms with the CCY, and supported the conference resolutions.

The Soc-Dem Intervention

However, the same cannot be said of the 2-3 delegates from Ateneo University (AdMU) and Maryknoll College (MC), who were dyed-in-the-wool social-democrats (Socdems). From the start, the Socdems deviated from the workshop topics and vehemently raised the issue of “manipulation.” They meant that the participants were being manipulated by the CPP, through the CCY, into agreeing to the conference resolutions.

At first, the Socdem objections were civil. However, the discussions soon became acrimonious, when the CPP contacts, upon instruction by the CCY staff, began to counter the Socdems’ charge of manipulation. With equal anger, they defended the CCY, maintaining that the workshops were a democratic exercise. Despite the heated exchanges, the workshops were able to formulate and write the resolutions desired by the CCY. These resolutions were to be adopted by the plenary session in the afternoon of the second day of the 1976 CCY student conference.

During the plenary, the Socdems did not let up on their attacks on the CCY. One student leader from Ateneo kept raising his hand, grabbing the microphone in the center aisle, and vehemently accusing the CCY of “railroading” the resolutions. He did this so many times the presiding officer was soon declaring him out-of-order every time he spoke.

In the end, the Socdems were drowned out by the overwhelmingly National Democratic (ND or Natdem) conference body. The lone Socdem delegate who cried railroading in the plenary soon retired to his seat and grudgingly observed the delegates pass the resolutions one-by-one. The gutsy Ateneo student was Ricardo Manapat, who would make a name for himself after the EDSA Revolution by writing a well-received book on Marcos crony capitalism titled “Some Are Smarter Than Others.” Manapat died in 2008.

The CCY also published a militant newsletter titled “Conscientizer.” CCY designated one of its contacts in the exclusive girls school, a philosophy professor, as the newsletter’s editor. It came out in mid-1977. Out of the normal, CCY decided that the paper be militant in tone, as it was supporting a sudden upsurge of student anger. 

Conscientizer   managed to come out only three times though, due to CCY’s limited means. Every issue was printed in 5,000 copies, and openly distributed in the University Belt. CCY had a hard time looking for a printing house that would accept the Conscientizer, as the contents were patently subversive. All three issues were devoted to heralding the wave of class boycotts that hit the University Belt and South of Pasig areas in that period. The class boycotts were sparked by tuition fee increases, and at its peak spread like wildfire. The anger lasted a whole semester and garnered for the CPP many members and mass supporters. The boycott campaign was coordinated by MR's SGYS, with the CCY giving propaganda support through Conscientizer.

End of the CCY

After more than two years of operations, CCY folded up in early 1978, when NDF-YS abandoned the concept. NDF-YS concentrated instead on using existing youth groups in the catholic and protestant sectors. It was decided that this method was more cost-effective. The existing youth groups already had seminar teams of their own, had ready-made logistics like headquarters, equipment, and staff, and had more reliable funding.

CCY succeeded in getting substantial funding from two foreign funding agencies. One avid CCY benefactor was a prominent Australia-based Catholic funding agency. However, more than 50% of the funds were appropriated or "centralized" by the CPP. This elicited complaints from some CCY members, CPP members and non-members alike. They believed, and rightly so, that CCY could have done more if it was able to use all of its funds. 

During its existence, CCY managed to conduct conscientization seminars in several places in Luzon and the Visayas. Many of those who participated in these seminars were turned over by the CCY to the local activist network. Quite a few later became active CPP members or Natdem activists. The most successful CCY seminars were the ones conducted in Silang Cavite for the Student Catholic Action  of the Philippines (SCAP) chapters of Cayetano Arellano High School and Florentino Torres High School in late 1977, and for the Social Action Center (SAC) Youth Formation Program of Leon, Iloilo, also in late 1977.