📷 : National Democratic Front of the Philippines organizations pay tribute to the New People’s Army ahead of its 57th founding anniversary on March 29. (Kodao Productions)
by Diego Morra
For the people of Sta. Rita, Capas, Tarlac, March 29 is celebrated as the founding anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA), the barrio being the site of the meeting of Red commanders and fighters that led to the formation of the revolutionary army, decades after the original Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap) was established to fight Japanese fascism in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija.
A total of 60 commanders and fighters armed with less than 25 rifles and nine handguns participated in reestablishing the guerrilla army from the ashes of the Hukbalahap and its successor organization, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan, with various units in Tarlac, Pampanga and Bataan being united under one command in 1969. Since then, the NPA expanded its areas of operations from Central Luzon to Cagayan Valley, Southern Tagalog and Bicol. Such expansion led the Philippine government to realize that instead of pushing a military solution to the armed struggle, it might as well talk peace with the guerrillas. It started in 1986 only to be sabotaged by the Mendiola Massacre that effectively ended the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP.)
Succeeding attempts to pursue the path of peace proved to be akin to navigating through a minefield, with US imperialism and its surrogates throwing a monkey wrench into the process, despite the signing of several agreements pertaining to respect for human rights and international humanitarian law and protection for peace consultants doing the yeoman’s job in securing agreement with the various territorial and sectoral organizations that have a stake in any comprehensive settlement. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), through Edward Landsdale, played a key role in the psywar campaign that rattled the progressive forces after World War II, restored landlord rule in Central Luzon and caused the massacre of Huk fighters.
This year, various underground groups belonging to the NDFP marched in Metro Manila days before March 29, indicating that the Marcos Jr. administration, despite the boast of National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano, failed again to dismantle the NPA in 2025. Moreover, the many NPA commands conducted their own celebration right under the very noses of military forces being trained by the US in waging relentless campaigns against the revolutionaries using drones, self-propelled howitzers and helicopter gunships. Marcos Jr. promised the resumption of peace negotiations in earnest in November 2023 but at least one militarist vowed to wipe out the NPA within two years. It did not happen, causing Marcos Jr. headaches. That’s the problem with talking loud about an outcome while the wheel is still in spin.
The Rodrigo Duterte initially tried to cajole the NDFP into talking and even appointed two Cabinet members recommended by progressive forces, only for the Commission on Appointments (COA), which was under the beck and call of Duterte himself, junking their appointments. The double-dealing Duterte, who fancied himself as a “socialist President,” established the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) in 2018 through Executive Order No. 70, and deployed troops and police commandos in the Leyte-Samar provinces, Negros and Bicol to wipe out the NPA and eliminate suspected sympathetic groups under Memo Circular No. 32. Both directives failed but they enriched some generals with their own type of pork barrel.
Government has wasted trillions of pesos to subsidize graft and corruption in high places but it has failed to generate jobs, improve the condition of peasants who are now being battered with the doubling of irrigation fees, the unlimited importation of rice and other agricultural products and the entire Filipino people bludgeoned by skyrocketing oil and diesel prices caused by the unprovoked war on Iran by Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Trump seeking to regain the role of a global hegemon and Netanyahu seeking to be the Trump overseer in the Mideast.
The deregulation of practically everything in the Philippines has stripped the country of its sovereignty and reduced to being a tax collector for the oil industry and foreign interests that demand national treatment. The huge income inequality in the Philippines only proves NDFP’s critique to be cogent and unassailable. The rising number of the unemployed and millions living below the official poverty line betray the failure of a mendacious regime that refuses to admit its incompetence and indolence in crafting solutions to mitigate the economic crisis.
The Marcos Jr. cannot stop the annual March 29 celebration just as it cannot ban anyone from making December 26 a day of joy. Both days represent the debunking of July 4 and June 12 as days of freedom, imposed as they were by the same ruling class that served colonial and imperialist interests to the hilt. Other than being the NPA anniversary, March 29 is also celebrated as “World Piano Day,” being the 88th day of the year. A piano has 88 keys. The “terra cotta army” in China was excavated on March 29, 1974, and a Turkish commercial airliner crashed on the same day, killing 346 people. Coca Cola began commercial production on March 29, 1886, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage in 1953 and condemned to die by electrocution. Lt. William Calley was also convicted on March 29, 1971 for the massacre of scores of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.
