"THE
PERSONAL is the political" is a favorite saying of activists
and revolutionaries. When they cite this saying, they mean that
their personal lives cannot be divorced from the march of history
in which they have chosen to play an active part.
Scheduled for a series of book launching in the Philippines starting
this week, Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World - Portrait of
a Revolutionary (Conversations with Ninotchka Rosca) provides a
concretization of that maxim. The book is at once biography of Jose
Maria Sison - a revolutionary intellectual touted as one of the
most influential Filipinos of the 20th century and one of the most
significant Marxist thinkers since 1848 - and history and analysis
of the Philippine national-democratic movement and the world proletarian
revolutionary movement.
The exile's tale
The phrase "At Home in the World" will strike many readers
as a reference to Sison's life as an exile in The Netherlands for
almost 16 years now. The book is a series of interviews with noted
journalist and novelist Ninotchka Rosca, who has been living in
the United States since the martial law years.
Sison was charged by the Corazon Aquino government with subversion
on Sept. 14, 1988, while he was on a lecture tour in Europe. The
lecture tour was part of a long series of trips arranged for him
by the movement as part of its international work after his release
in 1986 from almost nine years of detention.
Says Sison in one of the interviews: "The lectures in the
Philippines and abroad had their own importance apart from the armed
struggle... It was important to speak about the Philippine revolution
and seek international support for it in various countries. People
took special interest in me then because of my record as a revolutionary
leader and because of the significance of the Philippine revolutionary
movement."
In fact the series of trips were only temporary, since he had
definite plans of rejoining the underground. He had gone underground
in 1969, the year the New People's Army was established. Sison recounts
that after his release from detention, "interest was high"
in his "public meetings, university lectures, seminars, press
interviews and other legal activities." He adds: "Comrades
advised me to stay aboveground for a year or so, in order to take
advantage of opportunities for open activities in propagating the
ideas and policies of the national-democratic movement."
But then came the subversion charge, and two days later his passport
was cancelled. Upon the advice of comrades, he applied for political
asylum in The Netherlands. He continues activist work there as chief
political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines
(NDFP) panel in the peace negotiations with the Government of the
Republic of the Philippines (GRP), as well as general consultant
of the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS).
Hard questions
Being an activist herself interviewing a fellow activist, Rosca
admits that this effort "could be construed" as being
biased in Sison's favor.
But Sison also allows Rosca to ask hard questions about himself
and the national-democratic movement. The question-and-answer format
of the book lets Sison's words flow freely, context and all: there
is no danger of being misinterpreted or deliberately misquoted as
usually happens to him in mainstream media.
Many of the hard questions deal with his having been placed by
the U.S. government, together with the CPP-NPA, in its list of "foreign
terrorists" in late 2002 - which has increased the risks he
faces as a hunted man.
"A revolutionary is not a terrorist," Rosca says in
her introduction to the book. The last part consists of two appendices:
one the full text of a statement by Sison condemning the terrorist
attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 while at the same time discoursing
on the brand of terrorism committed by the U.S. government, and
an article by Rosca assailing the U.S. listing of Sison as a "foreign
terrorist."
In his 9-11 statement, Sison defines terrorism as "the willful
and malicious infliction and threat of death and other physical
harm on innocent civilians." While noting that the 9-11 attack
was committed in retaliation for U.S. intervention and atrocities,
he explains that it is to be condemned like all other terrorist
acts, at the same time that he acknowledges that the U.S. imperialism
has been guilty of a far more unforgivable brand of terrorism.
"I am sad that ordinary civilians take the main brunt of terrorist
acts done in obvious retaliation against the long history and current
acts of terrorism of U.S. imperialism," Sison says in the statement.
"The U.S. no doubt has been a notorious perpetrator of terrorism
on a scale far larger than what is now being alleged against the
private group of Osama bin Laden," he adds. "But the people
in the U.S. should not be targeted for mass slaughter for the terrorist
crimes of the U.S. imperialists."
In one of the interviews, Rosca asks Sison: "Can one counterpoise
revolution to terrorism? How can you achieve a just and lasting
peace when the U.S. can terrorize the whole world?"
"Certainly you can and should counterpoise revolution to
terrorism," he replies, "whether this is the state terrorism
of the imperialist powers and the puppet states or the nongovernmental
terrorism of the likes of Al Qaeda or the Abu Sayyaf. The U.S. has
practised the most reprehensible kinds of terrorism, wars of aggression,
production of weapons of mass destruction, the atom bombing of civilian
populations, the use of chemical warfare and instigation of puppet
regimes of open terror that engage in massacres and all kinds of
human rights violations."
Supposed to have been published in 2002, the book was temporarily
swept into the sidelines by other pressing concerns. But as the
authors state in their preface, "The delay in finishing the
book has been beneficial. The time gained allowed us to enrich the
book, with questions pertaining to the 'terrorist' listing initiated
by the U.S. and carried on further by the Dutch government and the
European Council against the subject of this book." That the
introduction and the last parts of the book heavily deal with the
"terror" tag indicates that the book, since the delay
in its publication, had made the debunking - even ridiculing - of
the "terrorist" listing among its main goals. And all
the interviews seem to fit neatly into the pattern, never mind that
it was originally unintended.
Life and thoughts
Sison's life is traced from his early years. His experiences and
achievements are shared in order to show the man for what he is:
a man born under fortunate social circumstances and with high academic
and intellectual achievements, who could have exploited all these
for personal gain but chose to take what the late Eman Lacaba termed
"the road less traveled by" - the perpetually dangerous
life of a fighter for the liberation of his compatriots and his
fellow human beings.
To reveal a more human aspect of the man who always makes news,
Rosca asks some decidedly personal questions: ones that deal with
the way he chooses to have fun, how he kicked his smoking habit,
and whether he would be rather writing more poetry than prose or
the other way around. And Sison gamely obliges.
At the same time there is an extensive discourse on Sison's way
of looking at the world - its past, present, and future. The interviews
showing Sison's views on the national-democratic revolution in the
Philippines and the world proletarian revolution are meant to unearth
the comprehensive ideology behind Sison's advocacy of people's war,
backed up by other forms of struggle, as means of changing the way
things are - with the ultimate goal of contributing toward bringing
about a life fit for humans the world over.
On the question of whether a just and lasting peace can be achieved
through the GRP-NDFP peace talks and whether these can replace the
revolutionary armed struggle, Sison has this to say: "There
are peace negotiations because there is an armed struggle between
the revolutionary forces of the people and the counterrevolutionary
forces of the ruling classes. The contending sides have agreed to
negotiate in order to address the roots of the armed conflict, make
reforms beneficial to the people and thus pave the way for a just
and lasting peace.
"The Filipino people and the NDFP know what they want to
achieve from the peace negotiations. They have no illusions that
genuine peace cannot be achieved through negotiations alone. It
is clear that the line of struggle for a just and lasting peace
is the same as the line of struggle for national liberation and
democracy.
"The revolutionary armed struggle is the sure process of
empowering the people and satisfying their demands. The peace negotiations
conducted by the most competent negotiators cannot go beyond what
the people's armed revolution can achieve and therefore cannot replace
it."
At home in the world
The book's title, Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World - Portrait
of a Revolutionary, is apt. This is the chronicle of a man who was
banished from the country of his birth and branded a "terrorist"
because he refused to accept its condition as a land enslaved; but
who never lifted his feet from his native land even as he is bound
to the refugee's life abroad, and refuses to be cowed by those who
seek to terrorize him by calling him a "terrorist."
In the March 30, 1994 poem "Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for
Mangoes," one of the several Sison poems that bridge the gaps
between chapters, the interviewee says: "The well-purposed
exile continues/To fight for his motherland/Against those who banished
him,/The unwelcome exploiters of his people,/And he is certain that
he is at home/In his own country and the world."
The poem captures the essence of Jose Maria Sison's life, and
is fit to be what the book makes it: one of the closing pieces to
a chronicle of the life, thoughts and works of a prominent, definitely
well-purposed exile.
