Tambuling Batangas Publication January 03-09, 2018 | Page 4
OPINYON
Enero 03-09, 2018
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The last homily
ARNOLD ALAMON
THE death of well-loved priest Fr.
Tito Paez of the Rural Missionaries
of the Philippines from the bullets
of brutal assassins in Nueva Ecija
obviously sprung into action by
Duterte’s declaration of war versus
the left after the failure of the peace
talks should not be forgotten nor
ignored. I believe that when a new
generation of Filipinos will look
back on the notorious but brief rule
of the man from the South many
years into the future, they will look
at the martyrdom of Fr. Tito as a
watershed of sorts.
They will have the benefit
of hindsight decades onwards and
they will see that the popular but
brutal regime of the folkish dictator
began to slowly unravel and lose
legitimacy when his madness
for order and absolute power
eventually victimized a man of the
cloth who have taken sides with the
poor and oppressed.
Last December 4, 2017,
Fr. Tito responded to a request of
a political detainee just released
from prison for assistance. The
family feared that he could be in
danger once he stepped out behind
bars given the climate of impunity
prevailing in the country. It was a
well-founded fear as motorcycle
riding men were seen tailing Fr.
Tito’s vehicle when the priest
picked them up.
Thinking of the safety of
everyone, online accounts reveal
that the priest arranged for the
transfer of the released political
prisoner and his family to another
vehicle in the parking lot of a
parish. The plan was to use his
vehicle as a decoy in order for the
political prisoner and his family to
lose the threat.
His fears were proven
true when the same motorcycle
riding men again followed Fr. Tito’s
vehicle and on an appointed portion
of the street overtook and then fired
nine bullets at the passenger side.
The attack was meant to kill the
just released political prisoner if he
was still riding the tinted vehicle.
However, two of these bullets
mortally wounded the priest.
Witnesses report that Fr. Tito was
able to shout to his assassins, “I
am priest!” but they still fired their
shots anyway.
Those were the last
words of the “martyr” as the CBCP
statement condemning his death
correctly asserts. The declaration
that he was a member of the
ministry of Christ as the assassins
peppered his vehicle with bullets
was a poignant and powerful final
act. In those final and pained three
words, the priest was able to give
his last homily. And he leaves us
with powerful lessons about faith,
discernment, and sacrifice.
If he only had the
opportunity
to
explain
his
convictions beyond the seconds it
took for the bullets to take away
his life, he might probably put it
this way: “Yes, I am a priest and
have devoted my life to follow in
the footsteps of Christ! For me this
meant, following in His ministry
for the poor and the oppressed. If
someone were to come to me for
shelter and protection, following
the compassion that Christ showed
others, I would do so unhesitatingly
and with great conviction even if
this meant putting my own life in
danger. Yes, I am priest and my faith
in God’s justness and righteousness
is no match to the fear I may
have over bullets and leaving this
mortal life violently. I am a priest
that means that I do not have the
luxury to vacillate between whose
ministry I should serve. Christ was
clear on whose side he was on. In
the balance of forces, He stood as
I may stand and fall on the side of
the poor and oppressed, even those
who may have learned to fight
back!”
Fr. Tito’s last homily
should be an inspiration for the
religious and non-religious. All
throughout, his service to the
poor had been the hallmark of his
life. To die for a brother in shared
solidarity for our common causes
in the hands of a murderous State
was his final Christian act worthy
of our emulation.
We are not lacking for
silent but inspiring acts of heroism
as a people. Fr. Tito’s life and
death is evidence of this. It is just
sickening that this murderous State
under Duterte, who has opened up
a new frontier of death targeting
members of legal progressive
organizations, will have easy
pickings among many who are
ready to martyr themselves for the
same righteous reasons as Fr. Tito
did.
LELOY MCCARTHY
PART 3
INSTEAD of criticizing the fascism
of the US-backed Duterte regime,
Claudio chose to highlight the
“bloody history” of Communists, the
regime’s target. Beyond his essay’s
“timing,” however, the greater
problem lies in his one-sided and
ahistorical understanding of killings
supposedly done in the name of
Communism. One-sided: he did
not at least study how Communists
and even some academic historians
explain these deaths and instead
simply parroted the US Cold War
line on these. Ahistorical: he did not
locate these supposed crimes and
excesses in their proper historical
contexts.
First, he fails to situate the
struggles for Communism that he cites
in the context of underdevelopment,
people’s suffering and war. Second,
he also fails to situate governments
adhering to Communism in the
context of the state of siege imposed
by the US and other Western powers
through wars, embargo, sabotage, and
other measures. Imperialist policy on
Communist governments is reflected
by the order of then-US Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger to weaken
the democratically-elected socialist
government of Salvador Allende in
Chile in the early 1970s: “Make the
economy scream.”
Let us be clear: these
contexts do not excuse the deaths
that occurred under the name of
Communism, but they provide a
better understanding of these. There
were deaths that were committed by
Communists in error, but it would
be erroneous to remove all deaths
in the Communist movement and
Communist-inspired
governments
from their historical contexts and
present them as evils of Communism.
Third,
Claudio
fails
to recognize how Communist
movements drew lessons and learned
from errors committed in the past that
resulted in the death of many. Fourth,
if the number of deaths caused by
a political and economic system
is the standard by which it should
be measured, then Claudio should
have examined the immensely more
numerous killings committed in the
name of “liberal democracy” and
imperialism – which include those
who were killed in many a bloody
anti-Communist campaign. Alas,
Claudio always prefers the caudillo
over the cadre.
He cites Robert Francis
Garcia’s book To Suffer Thy
Comrades [2001] as proof that local
Communists are also murderous.
The fact that the killings discussed in
the book were committed in a small
fraction of the Philippine Left’s more
than 50-year history shows that the
context of those killings is important.
Again,
Claudio
does
not present that context: military
adventurist errors committed by
the NPA, heightened government
intelligence and attacks, and errors
in the NPA’s handling of alleged
infiltrators. The fact that the said
errors have not been repeated is proof
that such killings are not integral to
the principles of Communism. It is
also proof that local Communists can
sum up their experiences, correctly
derive lessons from these, and hold
on to those lessons in practice.
When Claudio says “It is
the moral obligation of the historian
in the Philippines to speak about
Communism’s bloody history,” he
wants that history extracted from its
wider historical context. He refuses
to study and engage with the best
explanations that Communism has
to offer for its own history, instead
contenting himself with US Cold
War propaganda.
It is telling that Claudio
claims that Communism’s central
principle is “from each according to
his abilities, to each according to his
needs.” This is central, but secondary
to the abolition of private property.
He betrays his failure to study
Communism itself – in fact, its basic
text, The Communist Manifesto –
and his reliance on ready-made Cold
War propaganda.
It is uncanny that Claudio
speaks in terms of “moral obligation”
when in the same essay he joins the
chorus of the government and the
military in tagging legal progressive
organizations
as
“Communist
fronts.” The government and the
military will not listen to his faint
appeals for Communists’ human
rights, but their repressive campaign
– already in motion carried out by
dominant forces in society – will
benefit from his demonization of
Communists and alleged Communist
fronts. It seems that for Claudio,
historians and academics also have
the moral obligation to lend a hand
to the government and the military’s
drive to kill and suppress suspected
Communists.
Claudio always speaks
with the arrogance of someone who
thinks that he stands for democracy
while his enemies, the Communists,
stand for dictatorship. He even calls
the CPP a “dictatorial organization.”
The strict equation that Claudio
makes between democracy and
liberal democracy exposes his
ignorance. Wendy Brown clarifies:
“liberal democracy, Euro-Atlantic
modernity’s dominant form, is only
one variant of the sharing of political
power connoted by the venerable
Greek term. Demos + cracy = rule
of the people and contrasts with
aristocracy,
oligarchy,
tyranny,
and also with a condition of being
colonized or occupied… The term
carries a simple and purely political
claim that the people rule themselves,
that the whole rather than the part or
an Other is politically sovereign [“We
are all democrats now…,” 2011].
More
importantly,
in
class societies, “Democracy and
dictatorship are two sides of a
coin,” said Francisco Nemenzo,
Jr. [“Questioning Marx, Critiquing
Marxism,” 1992]. In capitalist
democracies, the democracy enjoyed
by big capitalists is imposed as a
dictatorship on workers and the
people, whose only democratic
participation is voting during
elections. Socialist democracy is the
dictatorship of the proletariat imposed
on the big bourgeoisie, and since it
is enjoyed by the majority beyond
regular elections, it is a democracy
that is deeper and more real.
In the end, Claudio’s
anti-Communism coheres with the
strategy summarized by American
Marxist Fredric Jameson: “The
substitution of politics for economics
was always a key move in the
hegemonic struggle against Marxism
(as in the substitution of questions
of freedom for those of exploitation)
[“Sartre’s Critique, Volume 2: An
Introduction,” 2009].”
Instead of fighting to
change the exploitative, unequal,
unjust and violent ruling system,
anti-Communists like Claudio fight
the very Communists who are risking
life and limb for such change – using
Communism’s “bloody history” as
bogeyman. In more arrogant moments
in his essays and social media posts,
Claudio celebrates US influence over
the country, the Philippines’ “liberal
democracy,” and the Yellow faction
of the ruling classes.
It is in this precise sense
– anti-Communism defending the
status quo and attacking those who
want genuine change – that we can
say: anti-Communism can never be
responsible. It is always irresponsible.
So are the academics and historians
that peddle it.
14 December 2017