It is quite absurd that we are
celebrating a holiday for Ninoy Aquino, wherein there is no declaration or any
law that says he is a hero or that he has lived an exemplary life that
Filipinos of the future should emulate him as such.
Poor Lapu-lapu the first Filipino who
resisted, fought, and won against foreign invaders, he is left with a name that
is of the same as the highly prized coral reef fish – lapu-lapu.
No declaration of being a hero,
despite being thought in all elementary Filipino students and no holiday to
commemorate his feat as a gallant Filipino chieftain who resisted foreign
colonizers.
 |
| Former President Ferdinand Marcos, Ninoy Aquino , & Joma Sison (photo credit to Manila Times) |
Which brings us back to Ninoy Aquino
Jr., known as the political enemy of former President Ferdinand Marcos, died in
the Manila International Airport, husband of former President Corazon Aquino and
father to former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.
Nothing in our history books the name
Ninoy Aquino is connected to the communists or the Communist Party of the
Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) all stories linking to the communists
read are being dismissed and being labelled as mere black propaganda to
besmirch his name on the annals of Philippine history.
Historical revisionism is very much
alive with respect to the Marcos years and the Aquino involvement during such
years, it only depends who is occupying the much higher political clout.
Not uo until now, former Ambassador
Rigoberto Tiglao in his The Manila Times article wrote a PhD dissertation in
2017 by a certain Joseph Scalice at the University of California,
Berkeley, entitled Crisis of Revolutionary
Leadership: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines,
1957-1974.
The 800 well researched page thesis
eloquently explains the surprising details on political figures of that
era that would shock the Yellows and the Reds.
Scalice showed the crucial role Ninoy
Aquino was involve in, ost especially in the establishment of the CPP-NPA.
For Purposes of understanding, clarity and in educating the
reding public we have quoted said article in full titled “PhD thesis details
Ninoy Aquino’s collaboration with Communist Party/NPA” by Mr. Tiglao
PhD thesis details Ninoy Aquino’s
collaboration with Communist Party/NPA
THE Yellows’ martyr Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, Jr. was crucial in the
founding and growth of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New
People’s Army (CPP-NPA). Aquino, until his arrest when martial was declared in
1972, supported the CPP-NPA as one of his weapons to topple his arch-enemy
Ferdinand Marcos.
This is among the many explosive conclusions and details of a 2017 PhD
dissertation by Joseph Scalice at the University of California, Berkeley,
entitled Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership: Martial Law and the
Communist Parties of the Philippines, 1957-1974.
The 800-page thesis is replete with encyclopedic information not just on
the old pro-Soviet Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) and
Jose Ma. Sison’s pro-China Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Scalice
reveals surprising details on political figures of that era that would shock
the Yellows and the Reds.
Scalice appears to have spent years on his thesis, poring over nearly
every written material on the insurgency as well as interviewing participants
in the “revolutionary struggle” (or at least those willing to be interviewed).
His native fluency in Tagalog (he spoke the language since he was five, he says
in his CV) enabled him to read the mountain of papers in the so-called Radical
Papers at the UP library, an archive of all materials on the revolutionary
struggle.
Hacienda Luisita
On the thesis’ page 378, Scalice shows how crucial Aquino’s role was in the founding of the CPP and the NPA:
“Aquino allowed [NPA head Kumander] Dante to move freely throughout his
Hacienda Luisita, and Yap, on returning from a visit to China, had given Dante
a copy of Mao’s Red Book.(RDT:Yap is the late congressman Jose Yap,
Aquino’s close ally in Tarlac. Ironically perhaps, he was Cory Aquino’s peace
negotiator with the CPP.)
“Dante provided Aquino with an armed base of popular opposition to
Marcos. Connecting Dante with Jose Ma. Sison and the CPP presented Aquino the
possibility of expanding his base of armed support to a national scale. In
October 1968, Aquino and Sison met and discussed ‘how big a problem Marcos
was,’ and Yap, Aquino and Rodolfo Salas [who would succeed Dante as NPA head]
arranged a meeting between Sison and Dante.
“The meeting took place in late January 1969 in Dante’s hometown of
Talimundoc, Capas. Aquino later reported to his friends that he personally
drove Sison to this meeting. Among the crucial conditions which facilitated
both the discussions between Sison and Dante from January to March 1969, as
well as the founding of the CPP at the end of March, was the demilitarization
of Tarlac from Nov. 7, 1968 to April 10, 1969.
“Dante and his men moved about in peace throughout the province, and
Sison and his cohort traveled freely between Manila and Tarlac. The
demilitarization, which effectively removed the massive military buildup of
Task Force Lawin from the province, lasted precisely from the founding of the
party to the establishment of the New People’s Army. The negotiated removal of
the military was entirely the doing of Aquino and was referred to in the press
as the ‘Ninoy Aquino peace plan’.”
“Scalice in page 392 would report an interesting detail: “Dante and (his
deputy Rodolfo) Salas became political instructors in a party training school
set up within the Voice of America radio relay station compound, housed on
Aquino’s Hacienda Luisita. Dante’s men worked as security guards there and they
gave Dante and Salas, dressed in blue security guard uniforms, access to the
compound.”
Red Isabela
Sison’s plan right after the NPA was founded in 1969 was to build the communist first base in Isabela in the thick of the Sierra Madre mountains. This was of course his attempt to replicate Mao’s famous Red base in Yan’an, where the Chinese communists built up its forces to eventually defeat the Kuomintang in China’s civil war.
In his thesis’ page 292, Scalice reports how Sison’s fledgling band of
former Huks like Dante and student drop-outs from Manila’s universities managed
to build a base of sorts in Isabela, where an obscure fishing port there would
be used as a landing site for Chinese-made rifles in May 1972):
“Salas recounted that Faustino Dy, the mayor of Cauayan, Isabela, ‘was
instrumental in enabling the NPA to develop a base in the province.’ Ninoy
Aquino, Salas claimed, ‘introduced Dy to the NPA.. For some time Joma even
stayed in Dy’s house. … He helped us a lot.’ Salas further reported that with
the NPA’s help, Dy was elected governor of Isabela in 1971.
“Dy broke with the NPA with the declaration of martial law and allied
with Marcos, thus securing his hold as governor for the next twenty years. The
NPA was friendly not only with the local political elite of Isabela but with
logging corporations as well, and Sison recounted that ‘in the forest region of
Isabela, we did united front work with logging businessmen’.”
Aquino’s money (“from the coffers of his wife.” Scalice scoffed) as well
as from anti-Marcos oligarchs such as the Lopezes — whose plea for a rate
increase for their Meralco electric distribution utility Marcos denied — funded
the CPP’s front organizations, including their huge 1970 rallies romanticized
as the “First Quarter Storm,” Scalice pointed out.
Tipped Aquino
The NPA was officially established in March 1969 in Capas, Tarlac by Dante and his eight lieutenants, along with Sison and four members of the CPP’s central committee. One of the eight was one Ruben Tuazon, known as Kumander Rubio and barrio captain of a town within the Cojuangcos’ Hacienda Luisita. According to Scalice, Tuazon was Aquino’s employee until his death right after martial law was declared.
Tuazon would be an intriguing protagonist in the CPP-Aquino saga.
Scalice gave credence to an obscure and forgotten newspaper report in 1989 that
it was Tuazon, then still a party central committee member, who tipped Aquino
that the Liberal Party miting de avance on Aug. 21, 1971 would
be bombed by CPP operatives and that he should delay his scheduled attendance
in that rally.
Up to the last weeks before martial law ended his political career,
Aquino was plotting with the CPP to seize power for himself, Scalice explains
in pages 746 to 748 of his thesis:
“Aquino intended to seize power through an uprising led by the CPP in
conjunction with a military coup and then immediately implement martial law.
For this to succeed it was imperative that he have the support of Washington,
and on September 12, Aquino held a private meeting with two political officers
of the US Embassy.*
“Aquino first made clear that he supported military dictatorship
regardless of who implemented it. He stated that ‘Marcos must take strong
actions in the near future and these will include martial law. If the President
follows this course, Aquino said that, ‘for the good of the country,’ he will
support Marcos.’
Washington’s support
Having established that Washington could rely on his support for martial law, Aquino then informed the Embassy political officers that he might in the near future attempt to seize power. ‘Aquino believes that the possibilities of his becoming head of government by legitimate means are quickly diminishing, and he is accordingly keeping open an option to lead an anti-Marcos revolution in alliance with the communists.’
“During the same meeting, Aquino informed the Embassy officers that he had
recently held a secret meeting with Sison. Aquino and Sison discussed the
possibility of forming a broad united front in opposition to the Marcos
administration. Aquino said that he had been offered and had declined as being
premature and unwarranted by the present situation, the position of leading a
revolutionary government ‘in the hills’ in alliance with the CPP.
“In Aquino’s view, however, the internal security and socio-economic
situation in the Philippines was rapidly deteriorating. He believed that
President Marcos intended to stay in power indefinitely and that his own
chances of becoming head of the government by legitimate means were slight. He
thus may be willing at some point in the future to ally himself with the
communists as the leader of a revolution, if he is convinced that this is the
best way for him to realize his ultimate political ambition.
“Aquino’s failed bid for dictatorship is one of the gross
miscalculations in Philippine political history; it proved so slight, so
insubstantial, that most are unaware that it was even attempted.”
Are we sure we want our airport to be named after this man, and have his
statues in prominent places as if he were a hero who opposed Marcos because of
his democratic ideals?
*Scalice’s source here: “Airgram From the Embassy in the Philippines to
the Department of State,” chap. Document 257 in Foreign Relations of
the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XX, Southeast Asia, 1969-1972 (Washington:
United States Government Printing Office, 2006)
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