Filipino author Michael Beltran introduces his book regarding the ongoing struggle in the Philippines and two of the movements leaders living in exile in the Netherlands.
Title picture: Guerrillas of the NPA taking a break in the jungle, 2009
Many of you might not know this, but for over 50 years, the Philippines has been locked in a civil war. Since the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968 and its guerrillas, the New People’s Army (NPA) a year later, Filipino revolutionaries have dedicated more than half a century to toppling the state. From the mountains and jungles of the archipelago’s countryside, armed fighters wage a protracted war sustained by organizing impoverished farmers and support from the cities. Likely all of them will tell you the same reason that started this war and why it persists: chronic poverty and landlessness overseen by a vicious ruling few. It’s not the most unusual story in the world. I am sure the rebels would prefer to stop fighting, as they themselves are sick and tired of the conditions they live and struggle in. But Filipino history tells us that rebellion against an oppressive elite has been a part of our heritage since the colonizing Spaniards first arrived on our shores hundreds of years ago. As long as our ground remains rife with injustice, seeds of liberation will blossom.
As of today, the Philippines has two governments. The first is the Philippine state, and the second is one ruled by rebels in the countryside, where cadres, ordinary farmers and indigenous peoples make the laws. It might surprise to learn that the founders of the revolution, the world’s longest-running insurgency, Jose Maria “Joma” Sison and his partner Julie de Lima, have been stranded in Europe since 1987. They made a home for themselves in a tiny apartment in the ghettos of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
My book, The Singing Detainee and the Librarian with One Book: Essays on Exile, is about the pair’s life in exile and the city’s refugee community that sprang from the Filipino revolution. I’m happy to say that this year, my book was translated and re-published into German by Regiospectra Verlag. I began working on this book in late 2019, having already known Joma by having read his work as a student activist and later by interviewing him as a journalist. I’d asked him in June 2019 if I could interview him for a feature about what it was like for the insurgency’s founder to live in exile.
My interview request was spurred by accusations of the Philippine government that the pair were living a life of luxury in gilded European homes, while their comrades suffered in the jungles. I wanted to see how they live and by October of the same year I was sitting on their sofa. In their living room with direct view towards the passing ships on the Rhine, I spent over a month deep in conversation with the two communist leaders, recording over 50 hours on tape. For me it was impossible to speak and write of Joma and Julie, of exile and liberation, without including entire communities of asylum seekers, migrant workers and the European left in the story, which were all part of their supportive social net. I hopped on trains, buses, trams, and bikes or walked to interviews I had booked on the fly, speaking even to opponents of the movement, looking for perspectives different from the muddy narratives in official government statements.
The truth is, the pair live inside the ghetto in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Every day an exile must ask themselves: How does one liberate a home they cannot return to? How does one contribute to a cause happening on the other side of the planet?
I think the pair have resigned themselves to knowing they’ll never return. I remember Joma telling me during one of our conversations about the fate of the struggle down the line, that some people thought too much of advancement within their own lifetimes. Real change and revolution happen over ages and epochs.
Joma was 81 when I spoke to him, Julie a year older. Up until his death in December 2022, Joma was a consummate ideologue, seeing himself as a teacher to millions, not unlike his former job as a professor. Julie is an editor, who has produced a big part of the literature and stories that have shaped progressive Filipino consciousness. Both have endured dictatorships, years of detention, torture, and building mass movements on a scale that might seem inconceivable to many. Exiles are those of us whose tethers to home soil have been maliciously severed. It is a permanent tear of the body from a land whose borders are either shut or a danger to them. It is a horrible fate to be in constant longing. Thankfully, exiles are also somewhat magnetized to each other. And while just the mention of exile can conjure up feelings of desolation, Filipinos have managed to erect pockets of resistance no matter how far away from home they are.
This book also explores what led to exile and what memories they have of their life before asylum. What was it like to take the first steps into guerrilla warfare? How did the Japanese occupation of the Philippines shape a young Julie’s future? How did Joma go from being marooned in exile in socialist China to applying for asylum in the Netherlands? How did a broad solidarity network in Europe rise, expanding in the anti-dictatorship movement in the Philippines? The book is not an encyclopaedic overview of the Philippine left and its leaders, but a snapshot of a period and of people. Story is a powerful weapon, and those in exile wield a wealth of it. Despite its insistence on the humanity of revolutionaries, the intention is not to draw the reader away from politics, but closer to it.
Recently, I was asked by a German journalist how to describe what politics is like in the Philippines to her audience and how it differs from politics in Germany. I thought about this for a while. I’d say the best way to describe it is that in Europe, politics is about right and wrong, and in the Philippines, it’s about life and death.
I hope this book and subject matter find a home among German readers, among you who would like to hear about the Philippine condition from local voices, the relentless unrest happening far away, and the sacrifice of many to strike deep into the guts of imperialist oppression.
