Lola’s story
IN THE mountains, she kept her eyes peeled and her senses ever on alert for the “enemy”—soldiers and police operatives, including private armed groups, chasing after her and her band of New People’s Army members.
Today, 32 years after her recruitment to the NPA when she was but 13 years old, even the cool climes of Tagaytay offer no respite from her default state of vigilance. She has, she says, spotted some “operatives” keeping an eye on her, so she has chosen to stay in the confines of the hotel-resort. Her senses remain sharp and on hyper alert, but this time she is on the lookout, not for soldiers, but for former comrades or their agents who apparently are not ready to “forgive and forget” NPA recruits who “went down” and rejoined society.
I will call her “Lola,” her preferred form of address. I met her at the recent symposium on “The Plight of Women and Children in Conflict Situations” sponsored by the Asean Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.
Targeted for recruitment by senior activists who recognized the pluck and bravery, hardiness and fierceness of the pigtailed adolescent firebrand, Lola became, she said “[a] student by day and NPA by night.” In the mountains, she became “a hard, tough, callous and fierce NPA cadre,” given the task to “recruit students from different schools and universities all over the Bicol region” and then, in 1985, was deemed “ripe” enough to work and live among armed combatants in the Caramoan Peninsula.
In the mountains, she worked first as a political officer, and then as an active combatant. “It didn’t matter whom I killed,” she recounted. It was “a matter of my life and the other person’s life, especially if the encounters involved soldiers and police whom we believed were the real ‘roots and causes’ of the poor people’s misery.”
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IT was by no means a cushy life.
“I silently endured all the hardships that I experienced because of the credo that we have to follow by heart ‘simpleng pamumuhay, masigabong pakikibaka’ or simple living but with an intense will to fight,” Lola declared. “The countless days and nights that we had to walk long distances and the nights that we had to sleep without eating made no difference. The days when we had nothing to eat was considered a sacrifice. Sleeping with wet clothes on was irrelevant, enduring the bites of mosquitoes or niknik, the risk of snake bites and scorpions and so many other dangers in the mountain, not to mention my share of bloody encounters, raids, ambushes, bombings… All of those became irrelevant.”
But the sheen of “revolutionary” commitment gradually dulled, and by 1989, she said, “everything that I believed about the movement as ‘savior and protector of the people’ crumbled [before] my very eyes.” The disillusionment consisted of “bits and pieces of discoveries of injustices, inequalities, sexual and psychological abuses, and discrimination led me to a ‘poignant awakening.’”
But much of her reawakening, she said, could be traced to the “purge” that the communist leadership undertook to rid the group of suspected “informers.” It was “the never ending abuse of the very same people that we promised to protect and fight for that was the dry faggot that gradually [dimmed] my revolutionary spirit,” she confessed.
Deciding to avail herself of an amnesty offer, she went into retreat, not just from the movement but from society itself for nine years, concentrating on building her shattered sense of self and repairing the damaged relationships she left in the wake of her joining the NPA.
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BUT soon the call to do her bit to effect social change proved irresistible. Lola accepted a position with the Army and organized a group of former rebels called PeACE, Inc. (for People’s Advocacy for Collaboration and Empowerment, Inc.). As head of PeACE, Lola finds herself visiting various campuses and holding dialogues with students—who, she believes, are most vulnerable to recruiters of the communist movement—to talk frankly about various issues that confront the country.
“As a former rebel,” declared Lola, “I believe that the healing must start from within; we must first learn to accept who we were and who we are now. I believe that talk therapy is one way of healing ourselves, through the retelling of our stories; we claim our right to be accepted again as part of this government and of this universe.”
To government officials and ordinary compatriots, Lola said: “We need you in this time of our healing as much as you need us. I acknowledge and I am grateful to my government from the past administration to the present for helping us, and I want to extend my deepest gratitude to them. But please, I am advocating that we work together. Let’s come up with a process that will truly address our psycho-emotional healing because this is the first step. I am begging from each one of us here: Let’s ensure that whatever we come up [with] in these two days will not only remain on paper; let us enjoin and ensure our respective governments that it will be implemented.”
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ONE of Lola’s biggest beefs is the name-calling adopted by authorities and even sympathizers. She bristled at being called a “former rebel,” resenting that she and her friends will forever be known and recognized for what they once were, not for what they are today. “We, too, are victims and survivors,” she pointed out, begging officials not to confine them to the term “beneficiaries” but instead to view them as “active partners in nation-building, not just mere observers but active actors in promoting peace.”
In the meantime, eternal vigilance is just one price Lola pays for pursuing a new life, a new and a meaningful identity.
