THE NEW MASS ART AND LITERATURE

Kris Montaez

THE NEW MASS ART AND LITERATURE in the Philippines today are part and
parcel of the national democratic revolution being waged by the Filipino people
against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. They primarily serve
the interests of the basic masses of workers and peasants, Red fighters and lower petty
bourgeoisie, as well as their allies in the struggle for national liberation and
democracy. As cultural weapon, they aim at advancing the armed struggle and
agrarian revolution in the countryside, the urban strike movement, and the national
united front founded on the basic alliance of the worker and peasant classes, the most
numerous segment of the population and the most oppressed in a semicolonial and
semifeudal society such as the Philippines.
The art and literature of national democracy, like the other components of
revolutionary culture, are necessarily national, scientific and mass in character.
A truly national art and literature unite the broadest segment of our population
against US imperialism and its local agents from the big landlord and big comprador
bourgeois classes. They combat the ideas and values of the dominant colonial, feudal
and fascist culture which, among others, affirms that the interests of the ruling classes
and the people are one and the same, at the same time abetting divisiveness along
regional, linguistic, and religious lines. In contrast to colonial, feudal and elitist art
and literature, a national art and literature assert the right of the people for national
sovereignty, unite them on the basis of this right, and cultivate everything that can
enhance this unity and national dignity.
The scientific character of these art and literature of national democracy stems
from their opposition against the metaphysical and idealist worldview and all other
superstitions peddled by bourgeois and feudal ideologists regarding human nature, the
economic, political and social structures, and historical processes, all these being
aimed at directing development along narrow, ruling class interests, and at resisting
any movement for meaningful changes spearheaded by the masses. These new art and
literature stand for truth and encourage further advances in production, scientific and
technological inventions and class struggle as the key to the material and ideological
progress of the greater segments of the population.
And, being mass art and literature, they combat elitist art and literature which
focus on the achievements, ambitions, lifestyles, tastes and idiosyncrasies of the
ruling classes as matters of emulation and treat the masses as an object of their fun,
charity, contempt or ire. Mass art and literature establish the primacy of the masses in
social, economic, political and cultural change, their main content embodying the
needs and aspirations of the masses and their heroism and sacrifices in the struggle.
At the core of these mass art and literature are the workers and peasants who are at the
forefront of the present struggle for national liberation and democracy.
It is in this encompassing sense that the new national democratic art and
literature (or the national democratic culture in general) are different from, and
opposed to, the dominant colonial, feudal and elitist art and literature of the US-
Marcos dictatorship. Under the banner of an invented unitive aesthetics, the
dictatorship prates about the oneness of the Filipino people in a futile attempt to
maintain itself in power and cover up the wide gap between the oppressed masses and
the ruling classes whose exploitative interests, both foreign and local, are preserved
and enlarged by the dictatorship to the utter ruin and destitution of the majority of the
population. This dictatorships emphasis on the so-called true, good and beautiful in
all artistic and literary productions which receive state patronage shows its regard for
universal art and literature as embellishments for fascist rule and as a weapon
against the revolutionary aspirations of the Filipino people.
The national democratic art and literature also stand in opposition to the so-
called authentic humanism of the Nagkakaisang Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng
Pilipinas (NPDSP), a clerico-fascist organization working for democratic socialism
as its goal, which is just another/ shade of the democratic revolution of the US-
Marcos regime. Like the latter, it aims to preserve the same comprador bourgeois
interests and directs its main thrust against the advance detachment of workers. As a
cultural credo, authentic humanism is nothing but feudal religious ethics rehashed
to suit comprador bourgeois interests; at its core, it negates class struggle and
preaches class conciliation.
In contrast to cultural fascism, the culture of national democracy serves the
Filipino masses by showing their collective strength through the revolutionary mass
movements and armed struggle in the countryside and cities. The heroes of the new
art and literature are the basic masses of workers and peasants, their Red fighters, and
the progressive urban petty bourgeoisie; the content of these creative works is drawn
from the rich revolutionary experiences of the masses; and it is these most numerous
of all social classes who compose the great audiences for these new art and literature.
In order that these art and literature may truly reflect the needs and aspirations
of the masses, progressive and revolutionary artists and writers participate in mass
struggles and integrate with workers and peasants to be able to know them well.
From the masses, to the masses is the fundamental principle which guides the artists
and writers in carrying out their tasks: draw from the rich, lively and concrete
experiences of the masses the raw materials of art, forge these into fine creative
works, bring these works back to the masses, and through the process of mass
criticism, create more and finer works to better serve the masses. Slowly, new artists
and writers are emerging from the ranks of workers, peasants and Red fighters
themselves.
In these new works, traditional and modern forms of art and literature are used
due to their popularity with the masses. Foreign influences also enter into these
works, especially such influences have become part of the revolutionary tradition of
the people of the Third World spearheading the struggles against US imperialism,
feudalism, colonialism, fascism and racism.
Facilitating the spread of revolutionary culture, particularly in the countryside,
is the effort of mass activists to combat illiteracy among the people and the use of
Pilipino. While Pilipino, being the national language, is spoken by most people as a
result of its widespread employment in the mass media, such languages as are native
to the masses in different regions continue to be used. The general effort, however, of
systematizing and simplifying Pilipino based on mass usage will hasten the wider use
of this language, enriched with terms and concepts from local and foreign languages
in order to create a truly national and modern language.
The new art and literature do not only perform a valuable role in the struggle
of the masses; they have become part of their daily life. Skits, songs and poems firm
up the hearts and minds of the peasant masses before launching a mass action, such as
Operasyon Sukot in the south, conducted by the peasants to protest against feudal
abuses by their landlords; in the north, the cultural minorities celebrate a successful
NPA ambush on the fascist troops by dancing the tadek to the rhythmic pounding of
the gangsa and by singing their salidum-ays. Organized workers and peasants study
Philippine society and revolution with the aid of visual charts and drawings; and the
Red fighters, at rest in a peasants hut or in the middle of canefields, bring out
battered copies of mass literary publications from their backpacks to read and reread
stories whose characters are familiar to them, and poems they have come to know by
heart.
From the backward countryside which in the course of the peoples war will
be transformed into revolutionary cultural bastions, the new poetry is being created by
peasant mass activists, cadres and Red fighters.
One of the most popular poems among peasant audiences today is Ortelano:
Ing Bayaning Era Balu (The Peasant, Unknown Hero), especially since its translation
into Pilipino from the original Kapampangan. Written by a peasant activist, the poem
describes in fourteen 4-line stanzas the typical existence of a peasant family, drawing
a sharp contrast between peasant productivity and peasant poverty. It exposes the
landlords various forms of exploitation and the scheme of the ruling classes to deny
the peasantry its own sense of social value and collective power. The emotion-laden
chronicle of oppression leads towards the recognition of the real causes of poverty
and a call to armed struggle:

Dahil dito, makibaka sa taksil na kaypalalo
Dahil dito, ang magandang kabuhayan ay itayo;
Kaya, bayan, ukitin mo nitong balang kumukulo
Ang ngalan ng magsasaka, ang bayaning hindi tanto.
The increasing number of guerrilla zones and bases for armed struggle in the
countryside is a big step in advancing the peoples war to a higher level. Since the
democratic content of the present revolution is genuine land reform, it is the peasants,
particularly the poor and middle peasants, who provide the bulk of recruits for armed
struggle. Long nurtured in feudal oppression in body and spirit, the poor peasants are
made conscious of the reactionary character of subservience, fear and defeatism,
which must be overcome in order to work full-heartedly for the revolutionary mass
movement and the armed struggle. This is the message of a poem composed by
members of an armed propaganda unit:
Tara, igan, tuturuan kitang humawak ng baril
Nang sa gayoy matuto kang lumaban sa mapanupil
Upang aping kalagayan sa nilikhang mapaniil
Mabigyan mo ng ginhawat mahango sa pagkasikil.
Patigasin ang kamaot ang ulo mo ay itaas
Imulat ang iyong mata at matutong makitalad;
Lakas-loob ang ipalit sa takot mong nakalipas
Nang madali mong matamo itong iyong hinahangad.
Bakit tahimik ka, igan, ano pa ang alinlangan?
Iniisip moy kaylalim, parang may ayaw kang iwan
Ang kanin ba na sandakot para sa yoy kahustuhan
Gayong doon sa palasyoy may bundat na mga tiyan?
Hindi ganyan ang mabuhay sa ibabaw nitong mundo
Laging nagpapaumanhin at yuko ang iyong ulo
Ikaw sana ay mamulat at pag-agos ng dugo mo
Mamuhay nang masagana at ng layon moy matamo.
Some of the poems written by the Red fighters deal with their day-to-day
activities, containing humorous touches here and there, but never losing sight of the
importance of their tasks, however big or small, in the over-all development of the
struggle. The poem Ang Gawain at ang mga Kasama, for instance, recounts in
fifteen irregular stanzas the various activities of the Red fighters, from cooking meals
to night- watch, from summing-up sessions and social investigations to building a
camp in the mountain, unhampered by sickness, gunshot wound, or loneliness:

Pasa-gising, bangon, pusisyon.
Humanda sa kaaway na may masamang layon.
Pasa-taliba, luto, makinilya.
Kalap duma, angkupan ang gawaing masa.
Ipabili ang kailangang lohistika.
Pasa-pahinga, pasa-kain muna.
Mamayay maligot maglalaba pa.
Susunod sa aktibidad ang pagpupulong
Pagtatasa at paglalagom
Upang gawaiy mapaunlad, mapasulong.
Sa militar, taktika at teknika ng paglaban
Ang siyang iinsayuhin at pag-aaralan
Upang sa pakikihamok kaalamay maragdagan.
Pasa-tilap sa kaliwa! Plank sa kanan!
Palalong mga pasista, sa punloy paulanan!
Meanwhile, in the cities, the workers strike movement and the urban poors
struggles against the demolition of their communities serve as subject of poems which
link economic with political struggle of other oppressed classes and sectors, and the
struggles in urban centers with the armed struggle in the countryside. These poems are
usually based on specific mass actions in factories and depressed communities. A
characteristic feature of these poems is the incorporation of a particular slogan itself
providing the thematic cleat of the poem. Thus, the slogan of the workers of the
Engineering Equipment, Inc. in 1975, who were among the first to defy the ban on
workers strike, is used in the poem Ang Laban ng isa ay Laban ng Lahat for
structural and thematic coherence:

Madlang manggagawa: sa bayay lumingap
pagkat hirap natiy sa masa ring hirap,
ang lakas ng bayan ay atin ding lakas,
ang laban ng isa ay laban ng lahat!

In another poem, Panawagan ng mga Maralita, the well- known slogan
Kamiy tao, hindi hayop serves to initiate a series of tribulations suffered by the
urban poor, from the destruction of their communities to resettlement in far worse
environment away from their means of livelihood. The poem affirms the continuing
struggle of the urban poor with the rest of the Filipino people, defying the restrictions
set by the fascists:
Kami raw ay sagabal
Sa daloy ng progreso
Subalit saan at kanino?
Sa kabulaanang pagpapaunlad
Ng diktador na si Ferdinand
Sa mga proyektong pagpapaganda
Ng maluhong si Imelda!
Just as the new poetry deals with the struggle to transform the material world,
so also does it deal with the internal struggle of the revolutionary forces in the course
of transforming themselves. In a life- and-death struggle, they learn to value such
virtues as patience, steadfastness, presence of mind, and selflessness. To sacrifice
oneself for the wider interests of the struggle is a demonstration of love for the people,
confirmed in poem after poem about revolutionary martyrs:

May tama sa binti wala pa ring takot
May buntung-hiningang kasabay ay putok
Sigaw sa kasamay Sige na, humayot
Akoy maiiwan upang makihamok!

Sa sandaling iyong flog ay pumula
Berdugoy nagdiwang, si Billyy wala na
Labimpitong saksak at tama ng bala
Buto ay dinurog, bibig kinulata.

Ngunit hininga nya ang siyang napugto
At hindi ang diwang sa kilusay sulo
Kayat Sierra Madreng dinilig ng dugo
Lupay laging pulat gubat ay kaylago.

Such deaths become emblems of triumph over the enemy, who can only
destroy the body but never the spirit of a peoples warrior, whose loss does not end in
grief but in the birth of a hundred revolutionary warriors.
While the martyrs remain fondly remembered by the masses, the traitors to the
revolution receive their just condemnation:

hindi na nakapaghintay ang mga taksil
sa martsa ng tagumpay ng pagpapalaya.
nasa kabisera na sila,
nakikibahagi sa nakahaing karangyaan
sa hapag ng mayayaman
may litsong isinasawsaw sa sarsang dugo
ng mga rebolusyonaryong martir,
may mainit na sabaw ng pinigang pawis
sa bisig ng mga inaalipin,
may wiski ng inipong luha
ng kababaihang niyurakan ng dangal.

Every revolutionary must constantly overcome his weaknesses and develop
further his strength through the process of struggle, criticism and transformation. This
need to transform oneself is especially evident in poems written by revolutionaries
from the petty bourgeoisie, as in the well-known poem by Emmanuel Lacaba, Open
Letters to Filipino Artists.

You want to know, companions of my youth,
How much has changed the wild but shy poet,
Forever writing last poem after last poem;

You hear hes dark as earth, barefoot,
A turban round his head, a bolo at his side,
His ballpen blown up to a long-barrelled gun:
Deeper still the struggling change inside.

This struggling change inside, even as the material world slowly undergoes
change in the crucible of peoples war, bespeaks of the humility of men and women in
the revolutionary movement. As they become tempered revolutionaries who remain
steadfast in the face of various challenges that test their commitment, they cap never
be destroyed by the enemy. As Jose Maria Sison writes from his prison cell:

The enemy wants to bury us
In the dark depths of prison.
But the shining gold is mined
From the dark depths of the earth.
And the shining pearl is dived
From the dark depths of the sea.
We suffer but we endure
And draw up gold and pearl
From depths of character
Formed for so long in struggle.
As the revolution brings out new heroes and acquires concrete lessons in the
various fronts of struggle, and as artists and writers immerse themselves in
revolutionary practice among the basic masses in the countryside and urban centers,
revolutionary art and literature therefore acquire a wealth of new characters, situations
and themes which are familiar to the masses because these are drawn from their own
lives and constitute a lasting source of inspiration for their heroic role in the struggle.
In the narrative works, which range from dagli and character sketch to the
short story and the novel, the most popularly depicted character is an individual who
comes from the worker, peasant or petty bourgeois class, undergoes social iniquities,
enlarges his understanding of society and social change through participation in the
mass movement, and decides towards fulltime involvement in the urban mass
movement or armed struggle in the countryside. In this paradigmatic plot, which
conveys the necessary movement of historical forces to achieve national liberation
and democracy, the abstract and stereotype elements are slowly giving way to the
concrete details of character, action and environment of present realities.
For example, Kasama, which is the first short story published under martial
law by the underground press, depicts the development of Ka Lando from a street
hooligan into a squad leader of the New Peoples Army. It is the story of Ka Landos
apprenticeship to Ka Cely, who is identified in the end as the real-life revolutionary
Crispin Tagamolila, one of the first martyrs of the Philippine revolution. The story
presents the various aspects of revolutionary work in the countryside organizing
barrio people in the guerrilla zone, carrying out propaganda and production work, and
planning military actions against the enemy. Pulsing through all these activities are
the qualities that make up a revolutionary patience, trust and love for the masses,
attentiveness to details, decisiveness, selflessness in the face of death, and an
unswerving commitment to the revolutionary cause. in this story also appears what
would be common elements in the new prose and poetry the hesitant old woman,
the enemy agent from among the masses, and the boy who, starting out early in
revolutionary work, is destined to follow the footsteps of his elders.
In another, later story, Ilang Buhay Man ay Iaalay, the same theme of
dedicating ones life to the revolution is depicted, with the romantic angle serving as
the structural frame of the story. It tells of Ka Totoy, an urban worker with peasant
background. He undergoes landlord and capitalist exploitation and fascist brutality.
As he raises the level of his understanding of class society through political education
and participation in mass struggles, he decides to become a full- time revolutionary
worker, fIrst among the urban poor and finally in the countryside as a member of the
New Peoples Army.
While still a factory worker, Ka Totoy meets Anna, a student activist who
composes peoples songs. She, along with hundreds of others, was imprisoned right
upon the declaration of martial law, manages to escape from prison camp and join her
comrades in the countryside where she dies in an encounter with enemy forces. Her
spirit lives on through her song which has become popular among armed comrades
and organized peasants as they sing on a night of rice harvest.
Most of these stories are burdened with too much materials that, while
essential, assume no more than mere notations. A broad time frame has to be
hurriedly contracted, the characters past which helps to delineate character
development is reduced to summary account, and revolutionary work in its
multifarious aspects has to be treated cursorily, thus failing to capture time, character
and processes through scenes, actions and character interiorization..
The dagli or vignette has much more success in capturing the essence of a
single character or event through telling, concrete details. In Ang Matanda, the
difference between the NPAs and Hapon (this term, whose use is now discouraged
due to its racist overtones, refers to the fascist troopers) is indicated by a small
phenomenon: at nighttime, fascist soldiers passing through a village do not fall to
steal anything they fancy from the meager possessions of the poor peasants. The
NPAs, on the other hand, are bound by strict discipline never to steal, destroy or lose
anything owned by the masses.
In Ang Pagpapasya, two political detainees one an activist union
president and the other a waiter who was arrested by mistake are thrown together
in a military safehouse. The waiter has only heard about the movement from his
cousin who is the real target of the military. Nevertheless, he has a high regard for the
revolutionaries and so he helps the union president regain his strength by giving him
food and caring for his wounds. He goes further: he observes the movement of the
military goons inside the safehouse to determine the possibility of escape. He finds a
piece of wire with which to unlock the chain binding the union presidents arms and
to open the door and window. Through these small details, the theme is thus shaped:
the masses, once enlightened about the necessity of carrying out revolution, embrace
it full-heartedly and seize every opportunity to hasten its advance.
Sa Harap ng Panganib shows how a propaganda production team escapes
enemy detection through presence of mind so that they are able to finish an urgent
task, which is to mimeograph an issue of a worker newspaper for a Labor Day rally.
While they are absorbed hi their work, a group of armed intelligence agents stop by
the production house in search of some activists supposedly conducting a meeting in
the area. The comrades act coolly; they devise certain ruses to fool the enemy, thus
providing them enough time to finish their work while they make preparations for an
orderly retreat the following morning to a factory workers house. This vignette
dramatizes the sense of organization and discipline of a collective in carrying out its
central task, unrattled by enemy presence but avoiding probable security risk in order
to preserve its forces.
In most of these short stories and vignettes, children appear as young heroes.
They are usually children from the countryside who, living in guerrilla zones, are
exposed early to the needs of the revolution and therefore begin to assume certain
tasks suitable to their age. In Ang Batang NPA, a Grade II pupil rushes out of the
schoolroom upon seeing a pack of fascist troopers entering their barrio. He must warn
a group of NPAs who are holding a meeting in their house about enemy presence. In
Ka Dadong, a twelve-year-old boy regularly brings letters and supplies to comrades
wherever they are camped, even if this takes him five hours of trekking through fields,
irrigation canals and hills, day or night. He attends political education sessions of
comrades and already, he knows how to fire any gun used by the Red fighters in their
operations. He hopes to join the NPA when he becomes hot. And in Dalawang
Bata at ang Baril, Tanglaw and Estrella. outwit a pack of fascist soldiers, enabling
the two children to capture a gun without being detected. In daring to do this act, they
are responding to the need to reinforce the arms of the Red fighters.
Such stories about and for children assure the revolution of experienced and
tempered fighters in the years ahead, since these children have started to make
revolution right from their childhood.
A big step in the development of revolutionary mass literature is the
appearance in 1980 of Hulagpos by Mano de Verdades Posadas, the first novel to be
published by the peoples press. The novel pictures the entire natiopral democratic
forces at a particular time (1974- 75) and the level of struggle in various fronts
throughout the country, with particular stress on armed struggle and workers strike
movement and urban poor resistance against dmolition. The novel has a broad
compass, and while at first glance characters and events seem to be unconnected with
one another due to the employment of certain technical devices such as the cinematic
montage and the installment method of ifiustrated novels in comics books, they are in
fact linked together by the central action of the novel and the novels unifying spirit,
the spirit of breaking away from all forms of prison, from narrow petty bourgeois
outlook to the exploitative social system itself.
Amidst the many characters and episodes, the novel follows the development
of Tommy Guevarra, a petty bourgeois intellectual, in terms of his political outlook,
from his limited empiricist view of the basic problems of Philippine society to his
decision to participate in the mainstream of revolutionary work, armed struggle. His
release from his class limitations is accompanied by the advance of the mass
movement of revolutionary workers, peasants, urban poor, students, teachers, priests
and other progressive elements.
There are fully developed characters in Hulagpos and they serve as standards
of new beings shaped in the fire of revolution. There are also characters who stand
outside the revolutionary movement, serving as negative examples from the ranks of
the masses.
The novel also portrays enemy actions the machinations of US imperialism
and the Marcos regime, military torture of political prisoners, corrupt practices of
barangay officials, etc. Mass reaction to these enemy activities ranges from the simple
turning off of the radio set before the voice of the enemy could foul the air, to
organized mass actions in city streets or dirt roads in the countryside. At the same
time, the novel gives examples of individuals from the enemy ranks who defect and
reform themselves through revolutionary practice.
The novels lasting value is its portrayal of the revolutionary characters in the
conduct of their daily lives, thinking and acting with comrades and the basic masses
and in confronting the enemy. The ideological and moral superiority of these
subjective forces over the enemy guarantees the sure triumph of the revolution, even
as it develops step by step, truly a protracted peoples war that will engulf the cities
with the fire of armed struggle from the countryside.
Revolutionary artworks, cut directly on stencil, photo-stencilled or silk-
screened, regularly appear in peoples newspapers and magazines of national, regional
or sectoral circulation, serving as illustrations for news items, editorials, essays, short
stories and poetry. These mimeographed mass publications may also contain comic
strips, posters and other graphic aids. Fully-illustrated story pamphlets have been
produced depicting mass struggles in the countryside and cities. Giant murals are
mounted during mass demonstrations, with sticker tapes flourishing on prominent
walls near factory sites and urban poor communities. In mass political education
campaigns in the guerrilla zones, visual charts and ifiustrations serve to clarify
complicated revolutionary theories to the peasant masses. Even in military detention
camps, comrades create images of struggle in paintings using opaque water colors or
burnt bamboo slivers, woodcuts, handcrafted cards, silk- screened shirts, and pendants
out of chiselled cowbones.
At the center of this new visual art are the masses, the Filipino masses in
struggle, their collective strength and unity expressed through armed struggle and the
united front against fascism, US imperialism and feudalism. This great contradiction
in Philippine society, which can only be resolved through peoples war, is summed up
in that seminal image of the revolution: ranged on one side are the enemies of the
Filipino people reduced to their essential features: top hat with stars and stripes for US
imperialism, as well as goatee and tailcoat; a round, thick, wide-rimmed white hat for
feudalism; and a big belly and fat cigar for bureaucrat capitalism Marcos as the
foremost running dog of US imperialism appears with a lacquered bulge of hair,
Hitlerian mustache, a swastika sign either in an armband, epaulet or collar pin, and a
cluster of medals, one of which bears a big dollar sign. On the other side, which then
completes the image, are the Filipino people led by the workers and peasants,
weapons and clenched fists and the book, Philippine Society and Revolution by
Amado Guerrero held aloft in a surging sea of flags and banners. The masses advance,
the enemy retreats, isolated, disorganized and comfortlessly clinging to each other in
inevitable defeat.
This is the scenario of the national democratic revolution, the paradigmatic
image which sums up the problems of Philippine society, and the tasks, forces,
method and perspective of national democracy.
As the revolution advances and the masses gain a wealth of experiences, this
prototype takes on more concrete and varied visual forms. Usually serving as
illustrations for peoples newspapers, the new artworks depict the organized masses in
struggle or study, in production, organizing or military work. The peasants are shown
confronting abusive landlords to demand land rent reduction and an end to other
feudal abuses, or seizing outright landlord properties in certain cases; punishing
enemy agents who have done harm to the masses and the struggle; or fighting for the
release of their imprisoned leaders and other peasants from military camps. Such and
other actions take place wherever the peasants are organized and the New Peoples
Army has grown roots. The close link between the peasants and the Red fighters are
portrayed in numerous artworks accompanying news reports, interviews with the Red
fighters, literary pieces, etc. The peasants support the NPA, being their own army, in
incalculable ways, foremost among which is by giving their best sons and daughters
to the struggle. The organized peasants and the NPAs are depicted together in the
fields doing production work or in study sessions; the NPA medical team attends to
common illnesses suffered by the masses and combats their feudal health practices
and social superstitions; through cultural presentations, the armed propaganda units
and mass organizations in the barrio present the basic problems of the people and the
necessity for a protracted peoples war. The Red fighters are shown conducting
tactical offensives, military exercises, summing- up sessions and study meetings.
The visual treatment of the close unity between the peasants and the NPAs is
exemplified by a comics pamphlet Tambang! Consisting of 44 frames of texts and
illustrations Tambang! is based on an actual ambush operation by the NPAs in
Bataan. The success of this tactical offensive, as of most other similar actions being
carried out by the NPA against the enemy in all the major regions of the country, is
due to the coordination of efforts of the masses and their Red fighters from start to
firish of a single operation. The comics pamphlet illustrates the major processes
involved in the military action, from social investigation about enemy movement,
meticulous planning, observance of discipline, summing-up of experience and
criticism and self-criticism. The organized peasant masses show their contempt of the
enemy, their support for their Red fighters and their capacity for self-sacrifice in the
interest of the revolution.
Meanwhile, illustrations about workers in the urban areas show them in strike
scenes, holding placards which present their economic and political demands, while
the military and labor scabs threaten to disrupt their assembly. Such illustrations
reflect the upsurge of the strike movement beginning in late 1975 in defiance of the
strike ban. Other illustrations show workers consolidating their ranks through
meetings and study sessions the better to create a stronger leadership and mass base
for forthcoming mass actions.
The urban poor are generally depicted defending their homes from demolition,
their communities finally being transformed into infrastructure projects which benefit
only the foreign investors.
In general, these artworks are based on concrete events which serve to
advance the struggle in the countryside and cities. Except for some characterizing
elements of locale, nature of mass action and social forces involved, they are
simplified illustrations in order to emphasize the typicality of mass unity against
enemy oppression. Now and then, they contain small touches of human warmth: in an
illustration of urban poor struggle, there is an anecdote of a father protecting his child
from harm even as he and the rest of the community dwellers defy the enemy with its
bulldozer and armed soldiers. Or details may enlarge the implications of a scene, as in
an illustration of workers meeting in a hovel, with a young man in the background
seated nonchalantly on the windowsill but alertly observing any indication of the
enemy movement in the neighborhood.
In these works, the masses are drawn in close ranks, confident and defiant,
while the enemy is identified and its weaknesses manifested through its isolation and
disorganization. Idealization with its basis on the typical, and caricature, are usually
employed together in one image, thus heightening the contrast between the
revolutionary forces and the enemy.
Caricature as an art form used in peoples papers shows a high degree of liveliness
and variety in depicting the enemy. Thus, Marcos appears as a puppet with strings
being pulled whichever way by the master puppeteer, US imperialism; AFP soldiers
are toy soldiers; the New Society is a grand but shallow facade; etc.
Aside from representational art, the peoples artists also create symbolic art.
This latter is the mode of visual expression usually employed by political detainees
due to their particular situation, although once they are released after a prolonged
series of hunger strikes and patient efforts of relatives and friends from local and
foreign organizations, they submit their experiences to more realistic treatment, as in a
lithograph showing a defense flanked by his torturers who are about to subject him to
Hawaii 5-0, a form of torture whereby live electric wires are attached to the victims
genitals. The most common symbol for the political detainees struggle for freedom is
a bird in flight, with wings torn and gory, triumphing over the barbed wires of the
dictatorship. in the art of woodcut, artists skillfully use negative and positive values to
portray armed resistance, as in work figuring a woman Red fighter whose
revolutionary defiance stirs a whole forest as her hair and limbs melt with the leaves
and tree trunks; all over the forest are silhouettes of Red fighters in ambush positions,
sharply edged but blending easily wirh the terrain and color of guerrilla warfare. In
paintings, silk- screened T-shirts, bookmarkers, greeting cards and pottery, the
political prisoners, who come from all oppressed social classes but with those from
the peasant and worker classes increasingly predominating, express their oneness with
the people in struggle and their aspiration to be part once more of the revolutionary
movements in the cities and countryside.

Peoples theater emerges where the basic masses in the urban centers and countryside
are organized for common struggle. Through skits, poems and songs, the spirit of an
awakened people who have begun to shake off the centuries-old oppression and take
up arms to liberate themselves and the entire country from the stranglehold of
fascism, US imperialism and feudalism is recreated in the gesture, image and sound of
the struggle. These works, born of, and continually nourished by mass struggles, serve
the basic masses by strengthening their unity, firming up their determination to
surmount all difficulties and furthering the development of the struggle for national
liberation and democracy. Peoples theater performs the tasks of arousing, organizing
and mobilizing the masses towards immediate or long-term needs of the revolution.
In the cities, peoples theater focuses on the particular issues immediately
confronting workers and urban poor and links these issues, which in the main are
economic in nature, with the worsening political situation and the necessity to conduct
peoples war. As part of the mass movement, this theater is itself subject to
harassment by fascist troops and intelligence agents and saboteurs whose masters are
most zealous in keeping the urban centers an enticing show-window for imperialist
investors while disfranchizing the basic masses of their rights, among which are the
right to strike and to have a humanly livable place to stay in.
It is precisely out of the struggles conducted by the masses that plays, poems
and songs are created. For instance, the plight of the Navotas batilyos (fish haulers)
served as the basis for a full-length play and several songs which chronicle their lives
and struggles. The play Ang Batilyo depicts their effort to strengthen their union in
order to fight for their rights and to prevent government plan to allow Japanese fishing
investors to take over the industry, including the conversion of their community into a
recreational village reserved for Japanese fishermen. The batilyos community as
described in mock hyperbole in their Squatters March is a picture of government
neglect:

Ang lugar namin napakadilim
Ang lamok dito ikay tatangayin
Ang hangin ditoy napakabango
Pag nalanghap moy matetetano
Ang kanal namin ay kalsada
Ang lahat ditoy nakabota.

In a play about women workers entitled Katerina, the workers divergent
attitudes toward their economic problem (evasion through popular entertainment,
putting the blame on oneself for improper budgeting, being satisfied with the little one
gets) are presented and examined until the workers finally unite to conduct a strike to
demand for higher wages and better working conditions. The play objectifies the
factors which work against class solidarity and thus prepares the ground for stronger
unity based on common class interests. This play has the added significance of
dealing with the question of participation of women in mass struggles; it debunks the
idea raised by Katerinas husband that women are weak and bound to lose.
In the cities and countryside, plays (or more commonly in their handier
version as skits), poetry in traditional meter easily given to declamation, or in the
form of a poetic joust (balagtasan), and songs (usually based on folk tunes or top hits),
serve the. masses in popularizing their struggle and goading them towards a common
direction. It is especially in the countryside where peoples theater takes on a more
lively, more varied and more direct political role. Before launching mass struggles
against abusive landlords, peasants in Eastern Visayas (parag-umas) hold a program
consisting of a play, poems and songs to mobilize the masses for struggle. The play
depicts the awakening of the parag-umas against abusive feudal practices. In the
course of their struggle, the landlord secures the assistance of the military to quell the
peasant action. The peasant leader is killed in struggle, but his wife, overcoming grief,
continues to fight for the cause. She turns to the audience composed of parag-umas
and exhorts them in a poem to rise up for their rights.
In Cagayan Valley, the peasant struggles against abusive landlords, military
harassment and forced evacuation are the subject of a play presented before a
gathering of cadres, Red fighters and organized peasants. The play systematically
presents the need for peasants to consolidate their strength through mass
organizations, to participate in armed struggle, to sum up their experiences in their
fights against feudal and fascist abuses, and to raise this fight to a higher level.
The Kalingas celebrate a successful ambush launched by their Red fighters
against the enemy. They sing militant marches and hymns of struggle even as they
sing their traditional cancions and dance their tadeks with the rhythmic pounding of
the gangsa. In such a way do the traditional and the new fuse to create a popular
revolutionary culture. Of the songs from the Kalingas, the more popular one is the el-
lalay Laban Tako Lusan, a narrative song about the struggle of the Kalinga and
Bontoc masses against the regimes Chico River dam project, which will forever
submerge their ancestral lands and centuries- old traditions. In seven stanzas with a
choral refrain, the song chronicles the history of struggle of the Kalingas against the
dam project, starting in 1975 when the regime had the Cordilleras surveyed for the
project up to the later years with the entry of the NPA and the emerging unity of the
various mountain tribes in the area.
In the southern Tagalog region, a most popular work among the peasant
audience is in the form of a balagtasan. The topic of this poetic joust is, under the
most oppressive conditions we are in, what is the right thing to do, rest content, or rise
up? Through this traditional presentation of two dialectically opposed viewpoints, the
masses are challenged to examine their own ideas, get rid of notions fed them by the
feudal and bourgeois classes and replace these with revolutionary ideas that truly
reflect and serve their needs and interests.
The specific characteristics of the struggle in each region all over the
archipelago, the degree of political education and organization and wealth of
revolutionary experiences already achieved by the masses, and the living traditional
and modern cultural forms and skills which play an active part in their daily activities,
all contribute to the creation of a variety of artistic and literary works by the masses in
the course of struggle.
Indeed, through the peoples struggles for national liberation and democracy,
the basis for a national culture is being developed, with the life and struggles of the
masses as the rich soil for its sustenance and flowering.

1981