Peace for the masses is the kasili (river eel) that they have endlessly dreamed and sought for— to hold and catch—to eliminate the hunger they have endured for centuries.
– Last sentence of the previous essay
Yes indeed, peace for the masses of our people is the kasili—a river eel that has been the dream of every country folk to catch and cook and served on the table for a satisfying savory dinner. But it is very hard to find and even when you have lured it out of its abode—a hole in the riverbed—it is very hard to get. Its entire length of snake-like body is very slippery and it is very strong and nimble and can easily slip away from your hands and fingers even when you have got hold of it. It requires extraordinary mettle and skill to be able to get it.
Such is the symbolic phenomenon of the quest for peace on the part of the masses. It has remained to be an elusive dream. But it also signifies the rationale for the extraordinary zeal by which the New People’s Army, the armed contingent of the masses, has waged without let-up the People’s War in the countryside.
Since the ruling classes have regarded the phenomenon of peace as a condition for continuing its subjugation and oppression of the masses to advance its interests, the latter has no other recourse but to resist and pursue its armed struggle—relentlessly!— as the only avenue to obtain the benefits of meaningful peace. Meaningful in the sense of being a condition whereby their interests constitute the agenda to be pursued towards the end. The end being their eventual emancipation from the conditions of enslaving poverty and unabated social injustice. .
Alongside their earnest desire for peace, the ruling elite have also bandied about their ostentatious adoration for freedom and democracy. Their spokespersons are extravagantly vociferous in proclaiming their devotion to the ideals of freedom and democracy, extending these averments to their own perverted notion of sovereignty. Little do they realize that their perversion has floundered in miserable contradictions in social realities..
First, where is freedom and democracy when billionaires and millionaires live in luxury and glory and bliss in mansions seemingly floating on the clouds, and the masses are mired in squalor in slums and public spaces—walled in by fears and insecurities—their shelter the sheets of winds and lashes of rains that visit them hour by hour — the pangs of hunger etched as grimace of pain and death on their faces? Nightfall cradles their dreams that soon dissipate as dawn breaks and the police arrive to cart them away from the eyes of visiting foreign dignitaries, lest their pitiable plight would reveal the government’s deceptions and hypocrisies.
Second, the government’s avowals in brave words of determination to safeguard the country’s sovereignty vis-a-vis the unfounded bullying and unjust incursions of China in the Scarborough Shoals meet their utter mockery in agreements it has forged with the US government to grant basing rights of American troops on our lands wherever and whenever they deem it convenient for the interests of US imperialist-militarist expansionism in this part of the globe. Aren’t these blatant violations of our territorial integrity as a sovereign nation?
Imperialist China bullies us with its naked show of military might and Imperialist US violates us with their sugar-coated stipulations in such lopsided agreements as the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). The naïve and stupid Philippine leadership succumbs to the US imperialist’s sweet poison. These two superpowers are both intent on making the Philippines a stooge for their imperialist expansionism.. In the event that both of them unleashed their military hardwares in open confrontation, Lord have mercy! We will be the pitiful site of war debris!
Our government’s policy of obeisance to the dictates of the US is a shameless act that smacks of canine puppetry to the US Imperialist master. It has adhered to this policy ever since the birth of this republic. And it has engendered corruption not only among the top leadership but has seeped into all the agencies and instrumentalities of the bureaucracy. It has warped the sense of morality of the Filipino, creating the perverted notion that corruption is a normal phenomenon and is part of our society’s way of life.
The ideal of democracy which presupposes an equitable distribution and enjoyment of the fruits of social labor becomes a mere bubble on the lips of politicians. Its meaning is thwarted and limited to the false sense of political prerogative in the electoral process. But here again is another instance of contradiction between theory and practice or between names and deeds. Where the so-called universal suffrage is supposedly a sacred right exercised in the ballot by individual citizens, it has become a veritable capitalist commodity subject to all forms of advertising and marketing processes. And most of all—fraud and deceit!—aside from the naked use of violence and terror as offshoot of politicians’ obsession to win by hook or by crook! Democracy, Philippine style, is a rotten egg that poisons the body politic by the virulence of its germs of decay.
Freedom, sovereignty and democracy are myths — weapons of the political gods of deceit—creations of the ruling imperialist powers that have since trod the earth with no other intent than to rule the world as a global hacienda where greed and profit are seeds to manifest in their own seasons of sowing and reaping.
Philippine society, having emerged as an offspring of colonization, has never quite extricated itself from the socio-economic props of the colonial society experienced by the Indios during Andres Bonifacio’s time and the colonial society under the star-spangled banner of the US imperialists. And so, the Filipino nation under the bogus independence granted by the US is rightfully characterized as a semi-colonial semi-feudal society in present-day realities.
Because of these, the nationalist Filipinos has waged the national democratic revolution as the continuation of the revolution of Gat Andres Bonifacio. The same aspiration for peace and freedom, justice and democracy shines in the realm of the Filipino soul as beacon for continuing struggles—the same nationalist ardor throbs in the hearts of the sons and daughters of the race, with all its force and strength to be wielded relentlessly towards the end—the end for which a new breed of Andres Bonifacio have fought and died for.
Ka Parago has been laid to his rest. But he won’t rest.. His life’s fighting energy is very much alive in the countless Ka Parago now in the fold of the revolutionary forces. And they shall have multiplied by leaps and bounds in shorter time now, because the blood he shed upon his death has fertilized to awesome breadth and depth the revolutionary consciousness of the masses.
The kasili has yet to be caught and cooked to national democratic recipe and served on the table to be savored and enjoyed by all Filipinos who have long longed for peace, freedom, and justice to reign supreme on our lands.
