A Thousand Little Deaths by Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein

Author:Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2013-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Given Filipinos’ major disappointment with the CPP and the left after the 1986 People Power that drove Marcos out of the country, one begins to wonder how long they intended to wait until taking over the reins of government. Alternately, were they even capable of taking over, given that they lost their chance to do so when Corazon Aquino became president? Many critics believed that the left squandered this opportunity and that internal party struggles had marred the organization. One might even venture to ask: Has dissidence simply become a well-worn career path for budding communists or leftist guerillas? Or some might wonder: have they lost their way, as they increasingly beat a path towards criminality? In their early years, they gave hope to countless masses that joined the leftist fold because Filipinos were in dire need of a political alternative. But the dogma became, over time, increasingly distanced from what was actually happening on the ground. Lives were not getting any better, even for those in areas of the country under the protection of the NPA. Economic statistics from the period, spanning from the late 1960s to the time that Marcos fled the country in 1986, showed that poverty had increased. While the CPP is not being blamed for the growing poverty since this is as much the fault of Marcos’ failed economic policies as well as the unsuccessful intervention measures brought about by international monetary institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, it indicated that the CPP was too remote and distant to ever truly become a significant factor in the economic and political life of the country. In other words, they had not become a crucial ‘player,’ specifically not in the way they would be able to influence significant social change, and perhaps not even in any real sense so that the lives of those they purportedly protected would have gotten better after many years of patient waiting. The left remained outside the mainstream, and while this was deliberate—being seen as ‘the other’ a pre-determined stance since its inception—many years of armed struggle have only strengthened the government’s resolve to extinguish them from existence. Furthermore, the CPP had not made it their mission to put a stop to the oligarchic politics that had been entrenched in the country since independence in 1946. They believed, as Mao did in China, which was the initial model that they adapted, like Castro in Cuba, and then the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, that the struggle must begin in the countryside and from there, fan out to the urban areas of the country. While some success was achieved in certain areas, I wondered why it is taking so long for the CPP to do the same across the country. Something else must be operating. Over time I have had my own speculations about this but I did not give it the space necessary in my thinking because like many of the experiences I had there, I relegated it to the deep recesses of my mind once I left the Philippines in 1979.

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