REVOLUTION & UP

REVOLUTION & UP
(Speech delivered by the author at the University of the
Philippines Diliman on
Nov 23)

What is an old man like myself doing here, talking about

revolution? Hindsight
is the lowest form of wisdom. I can tell you what it was
like when your campus
was nothing but cogon waste, when all those trees that
line your streets were
just saplings.

I can tell you also, why we were left behind by all our
neighbors when in the
Fifties and the Sixties we were the richest, most
progressive country in the
region, when Seoul and Tokyo were ravaged by war;
Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta were
mere kampongs; when Bangkok was a sleepy town
crisscrossed by canals. I never
was in China till 1979, but I know in the Forties that
country was always
threatened by famine. It had a population then of only
half a billion. Now, with
more than a billion people famine is no longer a threat,
although hunger still
lurks in some of its distant regions.

Hunger has always been with some of us, too, but not as
much as it now when so
many poor Filipinos eat only once a day. Altanghap, I
wonder how many of you
know what that word means.

So then, why are we poor? Why do women flee to foreign

cities to work as
housemaids, as prostitutes?

We are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings,

despite of those massive
religious rallies of El Shaddai, those neo-gothic churches
of the Iglesia ni
Kristo sprouting all over the country, in spite of the
nearly 400 years of
Catholic evangelization.

How can we build an ethical society? We must remember

that so-called values are
neutral -- that so much depends on how people use
them. James Fallows' thesis on
our damaged culture, which many of us understand, is
neither permanent nor
inherent.

Ramon Magsaysay infused public life in the Fifties with

discipline and morality,
Arsenio Lacson as mayor of Manila cleaned up City Hall.
Even today, shining
examples of honesty among in our public officials exist,
but they are few and
far between and they are not institutionalized.
And it is precisely here where the university comes in
with its courses in the
humanities.

Of all the arts, only literature teaches us ethics.

Literature presents us with
problems, complex equations that deal with the human
spirit and how often the
choice between right and wrong is made. In this process,
we are compelled to use
our conscience, to validate the choices we make, and
render the meaning, the
pith of our existence.

The university then is the real cathedral of a nation, and

its humanities,
particularly its literature department, the altar. But how
many possess this
sense of worth and mission?

To know ourselves, to make good and proper use of our

consciences, we must know
our own history. So few of us do, in fact, we nurture no
sense of the past.

If our teachers know our history, if they soak it in their

bones, then it
follows that they also impart this very same marrow to
their students.

If this is so, how come that when Bongbong Marcos

visited Diliman sometime ago,
he was mobbed by students who wanted his autograph?
How come that in La Salle,
business students cited Marcos as the best President this
country ever had?

Not too long ago, I spoke before freshmen at the Ateneo

and was told that since
so many practice bribery, it must be right, or how could
anyone get things done
if palms are not greased?

In this university are professors who served Marcos.

Have they ever been asked
what their role was?

We are poor because we are not moral. Can this

immorality as evidenced by
widespread corruption be quantified? Yes, about P23
billion a year is lost,
according to NGO estimates.

We are poor because we have no sense of history, and

therefore, no sense of
nation. The nationalism that was preached to my
generation by Claro M. Recto and
Lorenzo Tanada was phony; how could they have
convinced so many intellectuals to
analyze that inward, socially meaningless nationalism.

Recto and Tanada opposed agrarian reform, the single

most important political
act that could have lifted this country then from poverty
and released the
peasantry from its centuries-old bondage.

We are poor because our elite from way back had no

sense of nation -- they
collaborated with whoever ruled the Spaniards, the
Japanese, the Americans and
in recent times, Marcos. Our elite imbibed the values of
the colonizer.

And worst of all, these wealthy Filipinos did not

modernize this country - they
sent abroad their wealth distilled from the blood and
sweat of our poor. The
rich Chinese to China, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, the rich
mestizos to Europe and
the rich Indios like Marcos to Switzerland and the United
States -- money that
could have developed this nation.

How do we end this shameless domestic colonialism? The

ballot failed; the bullet
then ? How else but through the cleansing power of
revolution. Make no mistake
about it -- revolution means the transfer of power from
the decadent upper
classes to the lower classes. Revolution is class war
whose objective is justice
and freedom.

Who will form the vanguard of change? Who else but the
very people who will
benefit from it.
Listen, when I was researching for my novel POON at the
New York Public Library,
I came across photographs of our soldiers of the 1896
revolution felled in their
trenches by American guns. I looked closely and found
that most of them were
barefoot. They were peasants.

The peasant is the truest nationalist. He works the land

with his hands, he
knows instinctively what the term Motherland means. He
loves this earth, even
worships it. The Ilocano farmer calls it Apo Daga.

But never romanticize the poor. Once, a group of PhDs

lamented the futility of
their efforts in organizing and motivating them. When the
elections came that
year, the poor sold their votes or voted for Erap.

Understand why they are often lazy, contemptible,

fawning, cheating and
stealing. Imagine yourself not having a centavo in your
pocket now, and you
don't know if you will eat tonight. There is nothing
honorable about poverty --
it is totally dehumanizing and degrading. But once the
very poor are roused from
their stupor, they become the bravest, the most
steadfast. Remember, those
Watawat ng Lahi followers felled by Constabulary guns on
Taft Avenue in 1965?
They believed that with their faith they were invincible.
It is with such faith and righteousness that our peasants
rebelled in living
memory, the Colorums in 1931, the Sakdals in 1935, and
the Huks in 1949-53.

The Moro rebellion, the New People's Army -- the cadres

of both are from our
very poor, just like it was in 1896. And now, here is the
most tragic
contradiction in our country. Our Armed Forces -- its
officers corps -- many
come from the lower classes, too; they go to their
exalted positions through
public examinations and entry to the Philippine Military
Academy. Our Armed
Forces enlisted men -- most of them come from the very
poor.

When the poor kill the poor, who profits?

THE IDEOLOGY OF THE REVOLUTIONS

Revolution starts in the mind and heart. It alters
attitudes to enable us to
think beyond ourselves, family and ethnicity to
encompass the whole nation. If
the communists win, and I don't think they ever will, they
will rule just as
badly because they are Filipinos unable to go beyond
barnacled habits of mind,
hostage as they always are to friends and family and to
towering egos. The same
egos aborted the revolution in 1896, the EDSA revolution
in 1986, and now, we
see the same egos wrecking havoc on the Communist
Party. We see these egos
eroding our already rotten political system.

The core belief that should guide us in redeeming our

unhappy country is in our
history, in our peasantry. It is not in textbooks, in foreign
intellectual
idols, in Marx. And what is this ideology which Bonifacio
believed in? Which
those barefoot soldiers killed by the Americans believed
in? Pedro Close, the
peasant leader who led the Colored uprising in Taut,
Parnassian in 1931, said is
this: "God resides in every man. God created earth,
water and air for all men.
It is against God's laws for one family or one group to
own them."

God and country; translate this belief into your own

words and there you have it
in its simplest terms the creed with which the unfulfilled
revolution of 1896
was based, and which should be the same creed that
should forge unity among us.

Who will lead the revolution?

Certainly, not the masa, but one from the masa who
understands them, who will
not betray them the way our leaders betrayed the masa.
Estrada is the most
shameful example of that leadership that betrayed.

The leaders of the revolution could be in this university

who have the
education, but who are not shackled by alien concepts, or
the attitudes of
superiority that destroy leadership. Such leaders, like Ho
Chi Minh, must lead
by sterling example, with integrity, courage, compassion
and willingness to
sacrifice, who know that when the revolution is won, it is
time to change from
conspirators to even better administrators, remembering
that they must now work
even harder to produce better and cheaper products. And
this massive work of
modernization can be achieved in one generation. The
Koreans, Taiwanese and the
Japanese did it. It is not the Confucian ethic that enabled
them to do this;
they understood simply the logic of government, which is
service, and that of
commerce, which is profit.

By what right do I have to urge revolution upon our

people who will suffer it?
What right do I have to urge the young to sacrifice, the
poor to get even
poorer, if they embrace the revolutionary creed?

I have no such right, nor will I call it such. I call it duty,

duty, duty. Duty
for all of us rooted in our soil, who believe that our
destiny is freedom.

Not everyone can bear arms, or have the physical

strength to stand up, to shout
loudly about the injustices that prevail around us.

Those who cannot do these, who cannot be part of this

radical movement, must not
help those who enslave us. Do not give them legitimacy
as so many gave
legitimacy to Marcos. Recognize, identify our enemies
and oppose them with all
your means.

This will then test integrity, commitment.

Nobody need tell us the exorbitant cost of revolution, the

lives that will be
lost, senselessly even as when Pol Pot massacred
thousands of his own countrymen
in Cambodia. We who lived through the Japanese
Occupation know what hunger, fear
and flight mean.

Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus and Jose Rizal -- writers I

admire deeply, all
warned against revolution because it breeds tyrants,
becaust it does not always
bring change. But look around us, at the thousands of
Filipinos who are debased
and hungry, who are denied justice. Be shamed if you
don't act. And as Salud
Algabre, the Sakdal general said in 1935, "No rebellion
fails. Each is a step in
the right direction."

Revolution need not even have to be bloody. How many

lives were lost at Edsa 1?
Not even 20. So Cory goes around telling the world that
she had restored
democracy in the Philippines. Sure enough, we know
have free elections, free
speech, free assembly but these are the empty shells of
democratic institutions
because the real essence of democracy does not exist
here. And that real essence
is in the stomach -- as when the taxi driver in Tokyo eats
the same sashimi as
the Japanese emperor, or the bus driver in Washington
who can eat the same steak
as President Bush in the White House. Contrast these
with that jobless Cavite
laborer whose two children died because he fed them
garbage. No, Cory Aquino's
EDSA revolution could not even have our garbage
properly collected. Worse, 19
farmer demonstrators were killed near Malacanang
because she refused to see
them. True to her oligarchic class, she declared a
revolutionary government
without doing anything revolutionary; instead, she turned
Edsa 1 into a
restoration of the old oligarchy. So today, we are reaping
the results of her
negligence, ignorance and folly.
Yet, even capitalism can be very helpful. South Korea is a
very good example of
how capital was formed by corruption, and how a single-
minded general lifted
that nation from the ashes of the Koren War, into the
thriving economy, which
Korea is today.

Remember the slogans of American capitalism -- a

chicken in every pot, a Ford in
every garage. Money is like fertilizer -- to do any good it
must be spread
around. Those robber barons at the turn of the 19th
century were rapacious, they
exploited their worker, but they built industries, railroads,
banks, the sinews
of American capitalism. And the most important thing -
they kept their money
home to develop America. Unlike our rich Chinese, our
rich mestizos and the
likes of Marcos who sent their money abroad to keep us
poor. They are the enemy.

It has been said again and again that we are, indeed, a

young nation compared
with other Asian countries whose august civilizations date
back to 2,000 years
or more. Indeed, so are the Filipinos who shaped this
nation --- those who led
the revolution against Spain -- they were all young, like
you are, in their 20s
or early 30s. Rizal was 34 when he was martyred.
How then do we keep young without having to grow old
only to see the fire in our
having to grow old only to see the fire in our minds and
hearts die? How does
the nation's leading university maintain its vitality, its
youth against the
ravages of consumerism, of globalism?

How else but to keep the mind ever healthy, ever alive
by empowering it with
those ideas that nurture change and revolution itself, by
ingesting the
technological age so that we can use technology for
realizing our ideals.

How else but to embrace the ideas that make us doubt

technology, society, even
revolution itself, but never, never about who we are,
what we should do and hope
to be.

We cannot be beholden to any other nation. Jose Maria

Sison doomed his
revolution when he turned to China for assistance; he
ignored the "objective
reality" -- the latent anti-Chinese feeling among Filipinos,
in fact among all
Southeast Asians who fear a Chinese hegemony.

We must mold our own destiny, infusing it with the

strength of a sovereign
people. The Americans, the English, French, Russians,
Cubans, Chinese, and
Vietnamese -- all achieved their unique revolutions. We
must have our very own,
defined only by us.

How to build it, direct it, use it for the betterment of our
lives, the
flowering of liberty -- I see all these as the major
function of the university
which, after all, shapes our leaders. I pray that UP will
graduate the best
doctors, the best engineers, the best teachers, the best
bureaucrats. The
revolution needs them all. But most of all, let this
university of the people
produce the ultimate modernizer, the heroic nationalist
revolutionary -- we need
him most of all.