Armed movements of a mass character and with revolutionary content

Jose Maria Sison

Note by Julieta de Lima:

It is with deepest grief that I have to be the one to issue my husband’s last and final message to the revolutionary forces and the people on the 54th anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines. He started discussing with me the outline and writing of the message a month ago when he just got discharged from the hospital at his second confinement in November and just before the start of his third and last confinement on November 28. He wrote the first draft on paper, which I keyed in to the computer and then he reread and corrected it twice to produce this final draft below. Some fifteen or so minutes before Joma took his last breath, he we was still talking about ensuring the revolution would win victory and advancing to socialism. With his last thoughts he remained optimistic about the Filipino people whom he served with utmost determination.

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Armed revolution of the Filipino people

Today, 21 September 2020, marks the 48th anniversary of the declaration of martial law throughout the Philippines by then President Ferdinand Marcos. In the declaration, he arrogated unto himself absolute powers on the pretext of defeating a Communist Party-led armed rebellion, “saving the Republic, and building a New Society.” Marcos and his wife Imelda, their families, their clique of military generals and favored big bureaucrats and capitalist cronies, thereby ushered in a 14-year fascist dictatorship, which legacies are felt until now.

This is the full-text version of an online talk by Prof. Jose Maria Sison on the Filipino peopleʼs long but victorious struggle against that dictatorship, its social roots, impacts, and lessons for the present and future. The talk was hosted by Edna Becher of Anakbayan-Europa on 20 September 2020. The text is from Prof. Sisonʼs Facebook page, with minor typo corrections by PRISM editors. The video version can be watched on FB Live: https://www.facebook.com/AnakbayanEurope/videos/640771163542075

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Opinion by PRISM editors

The debate is heating up on whether Mao Zedong’s theory of protracted people’s war has worldwide applicability today. The timing, while probably unintended, aptly coincides with the forthcoming 70th anniversary on October 1 of the People’s Republic of China. Mao’s theory developed and proved a success in China’s civil and national wars through the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s until the Communist-led forces won nationwide victory in 1949.

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Mao during the Long March

PRISM editors are posting below the full text of a major response by Andy Belisario to the simmering debate on the “universality of people’s war”.

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More than 120 Filipinos and their international friends in Europe gathered to celebrate 50 years of struggle for social and national liberation in the Philippines on 31 March 2019. Billed as a “Tapestry of Resistance,” the event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands resonated with many other gatherings in the Philippines and overseas that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the New People’s Army.

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