BOOK SIX

ROMANCING THE STORM

Chapter I

PCC, as the Philippine College of Commerce was popularly known, looked less a school than activists’ camp that night chants of “Welga! Welga! Welga!” (“Strike! Strike! Strike!) reverberated from one of the classrooms adjoining the corridor that rounded the quadrangle. To one side of the quadrangle, artist activists have partitioned among themselves portions to work on for a  large mural depicting workers led by one flailing a sledge hammer; farmers with the leader thrusting a sickle; peasant women armed with bolos along with two guerilla-attired young men, one pumping an M-16 to the sky, another waving a  red flag with the acronym “NPA” done in yellow; a group of physicians and nurses  led by someone holding high a book with the acronym “PSR” on the cover, with the spelled out title hardly readable: “Philippine Society and Revolution” together with the by-line: “Amado Guerrero”. All these depicted movements are directed at caricatures of a fallen Uncle Sam being helped up by a landlord and a bureaucrat capitalist. Splashed across this composition was the large caption: “ISULONG ANG DIGMAANG BAYAN”. On the quadrangle stage, a drama group, identified by a streamer in its background as “GINTONG SILAHIS”, was rehearsing a skit with one group doing an adagio depicting the poem “Lumuha Ka Aking Bayan (Cry My Dear Country)” being recited in unison by another group. To the opposite end of the guadrangle, activists garbed as government soldiers on one side and NPA guerillas on the other perform a choreography of battle to the tune of “Makibaka, Huwag Matakot,” a Tagalog adaptation of a Chinese revolutionary song. Here and there on the corridors are DGs (discussion groups) and in rooms or spacious nooks, teach-ins.

            Across the quadrangle, a guy, short by normal reckoning but dapper in a polo barong, briskly walked, lugging his brief case. He headed for the room from where came the continuing call for strike.

            “Welga! Welga! Welga!” went on the chant by members of KAMAO huddled in the room.

            “Kasama… Mga kasama…”

            Ka Mao, standing in front of the group, was urging them to quiet down.

            “Welga! Welga! Welga!” continued the crowd.

            Ed, standing on the sideline, appeared satisfied. Danny, seated among the crowd, was anticipating eagerly what Ka Mao would say.

            “Won’t we quiet down?” Danny told the crowd.

            Now entered the short fellow in polo barong with the brief case. His entrance prompted the crowd to quiet down as Ed approached him and shook his hand.

            “O, Jo,” greeted Ed.

            The guy acknowledged the greeting then faced Ka Mao as he neared.

            “Ka Mao, this is attorney,” Ed said, introducing the two. “Attorney, si Ka Mao.”

            “O, Ka Mao,” said the guy as he took Ka Mao’s handshake.

            “Good thing you’re here. We need you to explain this whole thing.”

            Ed beat Ka Mao to introducing the guest.

            “Kasama, this is Attorney Jejomar Binay, from the Lupon ng mga Manananggol ng Bansa or LUMABAN. He is the lawyer given to us by Dr. Prudente to handle our case.”

            The crowd applauded spontaneously, prompting Ka Mao to join them.

             “Just call me Jojo,” said the guy.

            The crowd loved the words and clapped their hands once more.

            “Well… What have we got?” asked Jojo.

            Ka Mao and Ed moved at the same time to make the reply so that neither of them could speak first. Danny rather annoyedly made the response.

            “President Ka Mao presented our union demands yesterday. And this morning the management gave him his termination papers.”

            “Outright, unfair labor practice.”

            “Precisely, Jo. Enough reason to strike,” said Ed.

            “It depends,” said Jojo. “Do the members want to strike?”

            “Welga! Welga! Welga!” went the calls one after another across the gathering.

            “Attorney…,” said Ka Mao.

            “Jojo,” said Jojo.

            “Yes, Jojo.”

            “So?”

            “I’m just one man slapped with that offense of unfair labor practice. Nothing done to the rest of the union members.”

            “Those are always their tactics. They fire one. They fire two. They fire three…”

            “ Frankly, Attorney… Jojo… I don’t want the union to go striking all because of me.”

            “That’s not quite right. The union, if ever, will not be going on strike because of you. It is because of the whole of you. All of you comprising the union. And it is wrong to think that it is only you whose employment management is terminating. It is their standard tactics. They fire one. Two. Three. Before you know it, they’ve fired everybody.”

            “That’s why we need to strike. Now,” cut in Ed.

            “Ed, we’re discussing,” snapped Ka Mao.

            “Tell us what to do, Attorney.” Danny said, butting in.

            “My name is Jojo.”

            “Sorry… Jojo,” said Danny. “What do we do?”

            “Well… First off, I was sent here by Dr.Prudente to help you with your legal needs. These needs will most likely come up as a consequence of the strike you are discussing now. The police beats you up, I’m there to help you file charges against your assailants. Or you assail the security guards, I’m there to defend you against any action they make against you. It is not important whether you are the aggressor or the aggrieved. For either way, I’m there to help you assert your rights under the law. But as to whether you will go on strike or not, I’m not here to tell you what to do. The strike is your judgment call.”

            All of a sudden the crowd burst in a powerful call: “Welga! Welga! Welga!”

            It enthused Jojo exceedingly inside. He conveys the feeling to Ka Mao as he gestured him to the chanting crowd.

            “Their call,” said Jojo.

            “Our call,” said Ka Mao.

Chapter II

RAYS OF THE RISING SUN appeared to fade in on the faces of  the KAMAO members who with bated breaths and taut nerves were completing their blitzkrieg into that corner of the Araneta Center where in a large compound was housed the Makabayan Publishing Corporation. Placard-bearing strikers lined the concrete wall all the way from that corner to the mesh wire fence that separated the publishing house compound from the equally large acreage in which were housed the Araneta cock farm and the Araneta residence called White House, which immediately adjourned Highway 54. Sparsely spaced, the picketers were able to cover the entire frontage of the publishing house. A number of strikers minded the streamer carrying the name of KAMAO, which, held by a pole on either end, they spread across the gates. At this, the two security guards assigned there were aroused from their stolen naps, and realizing what was happening, they quickly locked the gates shut. One of the guards frantically called on his mobile radio.

            Danny talked to the other guard.

            “No need to worry. We’re not after you. We’re fighting the management,” he said.

            At the same time, Ka Mao and Ed took command at positioning the strikers to cover the entire frontage of the Makabayan compound.

            “Follow what we have discussed,” instructed Ka Mao.

            “Group A, at the gate,” Ed directed those concerned, who massed themselves across the gates, sealing them instantly. “Group B, here.”

            Ed indicated the frontage from the gates to the corner eastward, which the concerned picketers filled up.

            “Group C, Group C,” Ka Mao shouted.

A big number of strikers presented themselves.

            “Take this area, from here to there, all the way to the White House fence,” said Ka Mao, indicating the stretch from the gates to where the Makabayan compound adjoined the compound of the White House.

            “Group D, Ka Mao. Group D,” a small section of the strikers announced themselves.

            “To the back, to the back. We’ve discussed that,” said Ka Mao, showing impatience. “Comrades from the squatters community there have been instructed to help you out. They could already be there. Move.”

            The group went rushing.

            “Ben,” called Ka Mao to one  of them. “You take command there.”

            The guy signaled A-OK.

            “Ed, you’re in command there,” indicating the area to the east of the gate, already taken by him and Group B.

            Ed smiled like he got candy. He addressed the group.

            “Ok, Kasama. Let’s heat it up. Have no fear! Fight! Have no fear! Fight!”

            The strikers took up the militant chant.

            “Danny, mind the gates. This is the most important area, the critical area,” said Ka Mao, a kind of heaviness lining his voice.

            Danny felt it.

            “We’ll be okay here,” he said. “Have no fear! Fight!”

            “Have no fear! Fight!” Ka Mao shouted as he joined the group that had occupied the frontage from the gates onward to the White House compound. “This is where the enemy would be entering the strike area. We should be the first to mix it up with them.”

            Through the gates of the White House compound suddenly surged out a contingent of security guards, about thirty of them, many still doing their belts and holsters and caps. Obviously it was in the residential compound that the security guards headquarters were. The guards headed for the picket line.

            As by instinct, all the strikers were suddenly silence with shock. Everyone gaped with horror at the onrush of security guards.

            Perhaps the first to have gotten over the shock, Ed came rushing to Ka Mao’s ranks, shouting: “Have no fear! Fight!”

            Ka Mao confronted Ed.

            “Dammit, Ed. Get back. Mind your command.”

            “Okay…,” said Ed, seeing no need to argue. He turned back, doing the chant “Have no fear! Fight!” all by his lonesome.

            Ka Mao essayed the advancing security guards. Their outflow through the White House gates seemed endless. It horrified him surely, as he saw it horrified everyone else. He even thought that Ed’s continuing chant, at the moment solitary, was actually a manifestation of his own horror.

             Security guards rushed on and on out of the Araneta residential compound and from there take their own position on the opposite side of the street in confrontation with the strikers. Soon the strikers stood pitted one-on-one with the security guards. The security guards began intimidating the strikers with menacing stares while striking their sticks on the palms of their  hands, with those guards armed with shotguns, standing behind them in another column, cocking their weapons one after another in seemingly rhythmic succession.

            This is it, Ka Mao told himself. It had been all so good then, when the workers were only just organizing the union, to speak of  such things as dying for the liberation of the proletariat. Now that it was here, Ka Mao admitted to himself that he was terrified. He had never gone through such a situation.  The worst he went through before was the mauling he got one evening from a group of thrill-seeking juvenile delinquents who ganged up on him as he was walking home down a dark deserted section of the street. He deliberately put up no resistance, knowing he was no match to the ferocity of his attackers; not fighting, it occurred to him, was his best defense. And so he just took the blows, reeling and crouching, even as he vainly tried to shield himself with his arms. Until one blow sent him reeling to the ground, where the boys turned to kicking him all over, mercilessly. Still he saw no need to fight back. Back in college, he had  come across a passage in Rizal’s El Filibusterismo: “To stoop when the bullet passes by is not cowardice. What is foolish is to face it, only to fall, never to rise again.” But then, as his assailants went unrelenting in pummeling him with fist blows and kicks, he thought if he was not being foolish for continuing to stoop so low as to literally kiss the ground. And then it came, the gleam of that blade flashed by one of the boys. They would kill him anyway, so fight to the finish. And he leapt to his feet, ready to tackle his attackers. It just so happened that by then, folks from the slums at the distance, having overheard the commotion. were rushing to check. The boys hurried into their car and beat it quick.

            Now, the staccato of the sounds of cocking of the shotguns by the security guards were as that flashing of the blade in the dark in that mauling incident. And it kindled in him an anger not born out of sheer guts or bravado but just that kind of rage that even now was already propelling him to go, fight it out to the finish.

            And so he cried, to the very top of his voice, yet so measured as to sound it were an unending echo: “Have no fear! Fight!”

            And that cry, replicated in that mighty indescribable unison of workers’ voices, thundered all over the Araneta Center, like a rumble of a thousand drums in a symphony reaching its climax.

            “Have no fear! Fight! Have no fear! Fight! Have no fear! Fight!”

            Separating the opposing columns was that narrow stretch of the road already avoided by vehicles, save for the few passenger jeepneys whose drivers wanted to show their sympathy to the strike.

            “For the revolution,” said the jeepney driver as he put a seizable portion of his earnings into the collection box being passed around by a striker.

            “Mabuhay, Kasama,” said the striker; that’s for wishing the donor: “Long live, Comrade.”.

            The jeepney passengers put in their own donations.

            “Mabuhay, all of you. Thank you,” came the acknowledgement from the striker.

And then the head of the security guards began prompting the jeepney drivers to clear the area.

            “Beat it!” said the mean-looking officer. “You don’t want to get hit, do you?”

            At the same time, the officer shouted to the guards at the bend where vehicles were entering the strike area.

            “No entry there. All vehicles. Stop entry.”

            Promptly, the guards set up road blocks in the area.

In a moment, the space separating the guards from the strikers was as a horrible chasm ready to gobble up anybody who dared step forward.

The officer looked to his men.

“Two minutes!”

The guards tightened their grips on their sticks, those with shotguns, on their weapons.

The officer looked to Ka Mao, who was trooping the picketers in their formations back and forth, yelling to the top of his voice, prodding them to go on with their chant.

“Have no fear! Fight!”

The guard officer addressed Ka Mao.

“You have no permit. Your strike is illegal. You have two minutes to clear the area.”

Ed and Danny looked to Ka Mao, who, not bothering to mind their reaction, threw into a fit like a maddened beast, now confronting the guards,  now agitating his men to chant on and on, then confronting the guards again.

To his men: “Have no fear! Fight! Have no fear! Fight! To the guards: ”Okay, bastards! Come on! Get it on!” Back to this men: “Have no fear! Fight!” Suddenly turning to the guards again: “Fight! Bastards! Dammit! Come on! Come on! Get it on!”

All the while, the strikers shouted  on and on with Ka Mao: “Have no fear! Fight!”

And then the guard officer began moving forward.

All shouting stopped. The strikers held their breaths for a long moment. Their eyes gaped in anticipation of what the guards would do next. To writers like Ka Mao, the silence was ominous. It had become a cliché but that was how it had always gone: the lull before the storm.

Inch by inch, the guard officer moved forward,  his men moving accordingly.

Ka Mao took a firm stand on the path of the advancing guard officer. He appeared composed, just aiming to strike his placard once he needed to.

“Come on…,” he murmured to himself. His eyes were unblinking, like those of a batter aiming to hit a pitched  baseball. The tip of the placard had a large nail embedded in it such that a seizable part of its point protruded with a terrifying effect. “Come on…,” Ka Mao murmured on.

At signal of the officer, the guards at the White House end of their column began closing in on the strikers, like a net folding up on fish; guards at the other end of the column did the same. These movements were in turn signal for the officer to give it a go at Ka Mao.

Ka Mao swang his placard. The nail at the tip of the placard handle went burying into the officer’s arm. The officer pulled back, yelling in pain. Ka Mao confronted other charging guards, who held themselves back at sight of the blood dripping from the nail at the tip of Ka Mao’s placard handle.

Other strikers tackled with their respective opponents, their placards against the guards’ sticks.

Two guards charging at lady strikers were repelled with tear gas from their perfume sprayers.

Several guards charging at male strikers threw back at the firing of darts from slingshots by the strikers.

One dart hit the wrist of a guard, causing him to lose hold of his stick, which a lady striker picked up and with it hit the same guard on the head.

Another dart hit a guard on the thigh, causing him to rush away together with his companions  who got hit by  darts  on their butts.

A large group of guards closed ranks and charged like a mighty phalanx.

Two strikers repelled them with blasts from their pillbox bombs, sending them scampering away.

Another group forming another phalanx charged and is met with a Molotov cocktail blast, its explosive contraption of gasoline condensed with chips of bathsoap clinging inscrutably to the guards’ attires and skin – on the arms, on the hands as they tried to brush it off, and on their cheeks, in the case of some.

At which the guards wielding shotguns rushed to the frontlines, blasting warning shots into the air, then cocking their weapons and pointed them to the strikers menacingly.

The strikers appeared terrified and drew back until they were pressing to the wall.

Emboldened, the guard officer moved forward even as he gripped his bleeding injured arm. The guards moved accordingly.

But abruptly they stopped.

From behind the apparently retreating strikers, men wielding improvised shotguns called sumpak took the frontlines, aiming them for the kill as well.

Long, tense quiet ensued, the guards betraying frayed nerves, the strikers resolved to fight it out.

Ka Mao and the guard officer exchanged defiant stares.

Trying hard to conceal the nervousness he shared with his men, the guard officer spoke to Ka Mao.

“Those sumpak of yours are good only for one shot each. Say you kill some of us, but we finish all of you. Two minutes!”

And the seconds went beating it seemed, like the pounding of pulse beats matched by hushed harsh bated breaths. Ka Mao scanned the uniform grit on the face of every striker and he knew he shared that grit. He realized this was just that moment in any man’s life when it no longer matters whether he dies, what is important is to fight. And he could not help but bask in quiet pride to see in the faces of the guards not the grit that seized his comrades but a kind of fragility of spirit that could send them scurrying away at the slightest excuse.

And then it came, a sound that began creeping in.

“Bangon sa pagkakabusabos (Arise from your wretched existence)…”

The strikers lit up, surprise in their eyes, their lips quivering with a sudden feeling of relief.

On the guards’ side, common seizure of wonderment.

“Bangon, alipin ng gutom (Slaves of hunger break loose from your chains)”

And the sound, a singing by thousands of voices, became louder and louder, now bringing joy and excitement to the workers, horror to the guards,

“Katarunga’y bulkang sasabog, sa huling paghuhukom (Justice is volcano erupting, on the day of last judgment)”

From one end of the road, the area manned by Ed, activists in their hundreds began appearing in a march at the head of which is a large streamer that proclaimed: “MABUHAY ANG URING MANGGAGAWA (LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS)”.

“Gapos ng kahapo’y lagutin, tayong api ay magbalikwas (Oppressors tremble now in fright, we who are oppressed rise and fight)…”

Ed wanted to shout out his great feeling of relief and a desire to boast, but couldn’t quite do so yet. Nor could Ka Mao, Danny and the rest of the strikers. Everybody appeared ravished, as in euphoria in which one though suddenly thrown in bliss is thrown at the same time into a state of utter wordlessness.

“Tayo ngayo’s inaalipin, subalit atin ang bukas (To shake off our chains of enslavement, and tomorrow become free men)”

Activism had attained such a height by that time that the mere sight of hundreds of activists marching instill inspiration or terror, depending on where one stood in the class struggle. And this time, the singing did not just come from Ed’s area of the battlefield but from all over, from each entry into the Araneta center  such that having been completely terrified, the guards found their retreat blocked by still hundreds of activists.

Now the strikers join in the singing, while the guards sought to make a final dash to the White House compound. But from that area, the last hundreds of activists appeared and as they marched forward effected a compressing by the guards of themselves in the picket line. There they could only cringe together in submission, ready to drop to their knees if told to do so. Leading this last wave of marchers, the biggest, was Bayani, proud, confident, combative. He was exhilarated at sight of the full force of the marchers as well as of the strikers punching the air with their tightly-clenched fists.

“Ito’y huling paglalaban, magkaisa nang masaklaw (This is the final class conflict, unite that we at long last win )

 Ng manggagawa ang buong daigdigan (The good fight of comrades the world has not yet seen)

Ito’y huling paglalaban, magkaisa nang masaklaw (This is the final class conflict, unite

that we may put in place)

Ng manggagawa ang buong daigdigan (The working class as ruler over all the Earth)

Wala tayong maaasahan, bathala o manunubos (Neither is there God nor Redeemer to grant our dream of salvation)

Kaya ang ating kaligtasa’y nasa ating pagkilos (And so it is our prayer ever to push our dear revolution)

Manggagawa bawiin ang yaman (The wealth you make proclaim as your own)

Ang uri ay palayain (Embark on class liberation)

Ang maso’t karet ay hawakan (Hold on fast to hammer and sickle)

Kinabukasa’y pandayin (Pound your future fine like steel)

Ito’y huling paglalaban, tunay na kalayaan (This is the final class conflict, struggle for genuine liberty)

Ng manggagawa sa buong daigdigan (Of all workers over the whole of the Earth)

Ito’y huling paglalaban, magkaisa nang masaklaw (This is the ultimate conflict, the great fight for final conquest)

Ng Internasyonal ang buong daigdigan (By Internationale of the whole human race)

In contrast to his calm, cool comportment during the voting on the strike the night before, Bayani was a firebrand as the singing ended, when at once he threw into a speech.

“Long live the struggling workers of KAMAO!”

“Long live!” came the thunderous response.

“Down with US imperialism!”

“Bring it down!” cried the horde of thousands.

“Down with feudalism!”

“Bring it down!”

“Down with bureaucrat capitalism!”

“Bring it down!”

The entire crowd burst in thunderous applause, while a couple of women strikers hit the guard officer with their knuckles on his head; other guards got surreptitious elbow strikes on the side and none dared show any trace of their belligerence just a while ago. But one unthinking  guard got himself carried away by impulse and at the hard elbow butt on his side, he moved to retaliate with a strike of his stick, at which a striker quickly aimed to shoot a dart to his face at point blank.

Ka Mao intervened in time to prevent any further commotion. He addressed the guards.

“Friend security guards, you are not our enemies. You are also employees of the monster that is the Araneta empire. As we always say, pain on the small toe is ache of the whole body. Our pain is your pain, our fight, your fight!”

Quite a number of the guards appeared stunned, others convinced, but most of them took those words as propaganda.

“That’s right,” butted in Bayani, having heard Ka Mao’s words. “This is a golden opportunity for you to ride the crest of the workers’ triumphant historical march to full exercise of their liberating political power.”

“Comrades, mark this!” cried Bayani, turning to the throng once more. Ka Mao minded the job of prompting the guards to get away, while speaking to the strikers and activists who were blocking their way, “Paraanin, mga kasama.”

The strikers relented, and the guards seized the opportunity to rush away, heading for the White House compound.

“Today,” continued the agitation by Bayani, “is the day of a great consolidation of youth and students militancy with the revolutionary role of the proletariat in leading the struggle for the establishment on the face of the earth a truly just and humane society. That society which we all so dearly dream of can never come about except through the one single road of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We, mass organizations of different sectors in the national democratic movement, youth and students, workers, peasants, women, professionals and nationalist businessmen, pronounce our wholehearted support to the struggle of  KAMAO even as we, too, take support from that struggle for the advancement of the people’s war against US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism!”

Somebody from the crowd yelled.

“Imperialism!”

“Bring it down!” responded Bayani together with the throng, raising their clenched fists.

“Feudalism!”

“Bring it down!”

“Bureaucrat capitalism!”

“Bring it down!”

Bayani cried, “Long live the New People’s Army!”

The crowd under the streamer carrying the artist group’s name “SINING KAYUMANGGI” flailed in the air their prop M16s as they lead in the response: “Long Live!”

“Long live the protracted people’s war!”

“Long live!”

Chapter III

  

ARANETA COMMUNE was the romance seizing the minds of young people who came in droves well into the night that first day of the KAMAO strike.  The UP Commune, which had taken place from February 1 to 9, 1971, had impacted on the youth so much that with the First Quarter Storm, of which the commune was the highlight, having lulled into the second quarter of the year, they hungered to replicate it wherever it was possible.

The KAMAO strike was  an opportunity for doing just that, giving release to the fire and fury from those days in February when the students had seized control of the vast campus of the University of the Philippines, the country’s premier learning institution, proclaiming its liberation from what they called the Marcos fascist rule and its tutelage to US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. Wielding improvised weapons like pillbox bombs and Molotov cocktail, the students had exercised political power over the entire campus, and though it lasted for just over a week, the phenomenon did advance the propaganda of the national democratic movement for the establishment of  what it called national democracy in the Philippines.

Moreover the KAMAO strike was a real school – as all workers’ strike were regarded – for youth activists to get honed on the practice of proletarian revolutionary principles. It had become a fad to call it mass integration whereby youth otherwise reared in affluence and comfort stayed with workers in their homes and neighborhoods and shared with them the difficulties of earning a living and fighting oppression and exploitation.

The strikers had pitched camps all around the Makabayan compound – on sidewalks, on the surrounding vacant lots, and right on the street which had been completely cordoned to close it to traffic.

All over the strike area and beyond, the KAMAO members had been sort of apportioned in groups for discussing with youth activists. Many of the young people had copies of Mao Tse Tung’s Red Book, a collection of Mao Tse Tung thoughts that all of a sudden at the advent of the seventies proliferated among youth and students who took its contents as Gospel truth on the proletarian revolutionary line. The discussions centered on quotes read from the book.

In an area in the midst of the discussion groups, artist activists were singing a melancholic proletarian song around a bonfire, as though serving as a sentimental background for the ongoing discussions. Similar bonfires lit a number of the other groups, with the rest making-do with candles or flashlights, otherwise with the illumination from the streetlights of the Araneta Center.

In the main, the discussions were actually veritable lectures from the activists, who read and then elaborated on quotes from the Red Book, with the strikers limited to just listening.

“The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.”

“The wealth of society is created by the workers, peasants and working intellectuals. If they take their destiny into their own hands, follow a Marxist-Leninist line and take an active attitude in solving problems instead of evading them, there will be no difficulty in the world which they cannot overcome.”

“Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory.”

In the cacophony of pronouncements, Ka Mao could not seem to place himself. Just as he was focusing on a particular statement, came another statement that would distract him.

“The revolutionary war is a war of the masses…”

“The masses are the real heroes…”

“The masses have boundless creative power…”

“People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed,” Ed finished reading the quote as Ka Mao passed by. Barely acknowledging Ka Mao, Ed proceeded to make his elaboration on the MTT quote. “The main enemy of the Filipino people is US imperialism, which is why our struggle is intertwined  with the struggles of the Chinese people and all people of the world struggling to overthrow American imperialists worldwide.”

Ka Mao twitched inwardly as he passed by the next group in his path in which the young moderator was intoning from a reading of the Red Book, “The Communist Party of China, having made a clear-headed appraisal of the international and domestic situation on the basis of the science of Marxism-Leninism, recognized that all attacks by the reactionaries at home and abroad had to be defeated and could be defeated. When dark clouds appeared in the sky, we pointed out that they were only temporary, that the darkness would soon pass and the sun break through.”

That reading, Ka Mao thought, just didn’t fit into the situation. He walked on, slightly shaking his head. He was distracted by the words from another group.

“Comrade Bethune's spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his boundless sense of responsibility in his work and his boundless warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people….”

“Who was Comrade Bethune?” asked a striker.

“He was a Canadian doctor who devoted his entire self in serving the Chinese people’s army during the bloody civil war in China,” answered the young activist conducting the discussion. “As Mao Tse Tung says,” and the activist read from the Red Book again, “we must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him.”

Ka Mao liked what he heard. He walked on, liking also the words coming from all around.

 “Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence. But we have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart, and when we die for the people it is a worthy death.”

He pondered the words seriously as he walked on; he was looking for somebody. He checked one group just as when the boy activist leading in the discussion was speaking with an air of a battle-scarred veteran: “All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, ‘Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.’ To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather. In Tagalog, ang mamatay na naglilingkod sa mga mamamayan ay kasing bigat ng Bundok Sierra Madre, subalit ang mamatay na naglilingkod sa mga pasista ay kasing gaan ng balahibo ng manok.”

While Ka Mao essayed the youthful looks of the activist, a cockroach crept by the boy’s leg, prompting him to throw back in fright.

“Hey, kill that thing! Kill it!” cried the boy.

As the other activists would just avoid the creeper, Danny, who was among the strikers in the group, slammed it with his slipper.

“Here’s for you, damn fascist!” Danny said, eyeing the activist with mischief. He flicked the smashed cockroach aside, causing the boy to throw back again because it passed in front of him.

Ka Mao amused to himself as he resumed his steps. Finally he found Bayani leading the discussions in a rather large group. Ka Mao joined the group in the midst of Bayani’s reading from the Red Book.

“There is an ancient Chinese fable called ‘The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains’. It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. With great determination, he led his sons in digging up these mountains hoe in hand. Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, ‘How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains.’ The Foolish Old Man replied, ‘When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?’ Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. This moved God, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs. Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism and the other is feudalism. The Chinese Communist Party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we, too, will touch God's heart. Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can't these two mountains be cleared away?”

Ending his reading, Bayani began elaborating.

“Ka Mao was all by himself when he thought of organizing KAMAO. And then there were two of us discussing the idea. And then there were Ka Danny, Ka Ed. Before long, God, the masses in Makabayan, listened, and now we are into this strike which as you can see already has the makings of victory. With all of us joining hands, why can’t we clear away the mountains of oppression and exploitation being suffered by the workers at Makabayan Publishing Corporation?”

The group cheered. Bayani enthused at it. He turned to Ka Mao.

“Share us your thoughts, Ka Mao.”

             “Oh, yes,” said Ka Mao.

            The crowd thought of applauding, but at the first clapping of hands, Ka Mao gestured no need for applause.

            “I have been thinking… Actually in command at Makabayan is not Jorvina but a bully of a guy, Enrique, who is Don Amado’s Man Friday for all the Araneta enterprises in the center.  I had hoped that with the official management, there was a big chance of striking up a settlement. After all, I had been part of it at one time. But it is this bully that calls the shots in the company, and when I presented the union demands to Jorvina and Jorvina endorsed it to this bully, the guy punched his palm, saying threateningly: “It’s like you hitting your head against a concrete wall.”

            “Oh, yes?” butted in an activist. He slapped the side of his head, “He’d bang his head against that wall if he chose to collide with us.”

            “He’s been readying himself for that,” said Ka Mao.

            Bayani eyed Ka Mao, throwing the question wordlessly.

            “He got a former member of the notorious Military Intelligence Security Group, a certain Colonel Doromal, to replace the commander of the Araneta security forces. That,  by way of really gearing up for battle.”

            No remark came from Ka Mao’s listeners. Bayani anticipated his words.

            Ka Mao continued, eyeing Bayani, “There was a little incident at the mess area just a while ago.”

            “Yes?”

            “The Cubao police detachment commander entered the area surreptitiously, looking for me. Comrades mistook his intentions and would have ganged up on him, and so he grabbed me from behind, making me his shield. Turned out, the police officer was sympathetic with the strike and came to warn me of an impending strike-bust in the morning. He informed me that Doromal had gone all the way to the Central Police District Command to press for the implementation of the no-permit, no-strike policy.”

            Bayani could visualize what Ka Mao was narrating. Now he speaks.

            “The strike is an exercise of our right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances. Guaranteed by the constitution. No need for permits.”

            “Tell that to the Quezon City Police GHQ Chief.”

            Bayani eyed Ka Mao inquisitively.

            “He was a batchmate of Doromal at the Philippine Military Academy.”

            Bayani went tongue-tied.

Chapter IV

EARLY SUN RAYS  were filtered through columns of smoke rising above tree tops hovering on what served as the mess hall in the strike area. The grounds were that large open section adjoining the east wall of the Makabayan Publishing Corporation. Kitchen personnel were busy preparing the poor man’s fish galunggong for cooking in vinegar flavored with garlic, onion and ginger and black pepper, while two women were already shoveling their cooking spoons into the rice being fried in a large vat, which sat on a stove improvised on the ground  with little rocks. Another stove, already burning with fire, was being fed by a man, the cook, with more wood fuel. The cook addressed those preparing the fish.

            “Hurry up, ladies. We will be wasting fuel.”

            The man got a large vat and settled it on top of the stove. He emptied a large can of vinegar into the vat, poured into it the collection of spices, and after mixing the ingredients, savored the aroma of the rising steam. Then from a sack, he scooped salt with his hand, dropped it into the vat, doing it thrice. He stirred the ingredients so as to dissolve the salt, then made several scoops once more with his hands of salt from the sack with which he treated the fish collected in a basin. All that done, the man finally poured all the fish into the cooking vat.   

            Again he savored the aroma of the steam from the vat.

            “Hmm…  Makes me hungrier.”

            Ka Mao walked into the area, a cup in his hand, which he dipped into a large cauldron on another stove with burning fuel.

            “Smells good,” said Ka Mao to the cook as he scooped coffee from the cauldron with his cup.

            “This will be ready soon,” said the cook, then turned to the women frying rice. “Hey, you’re taking too long there.”

            “You try frying this much rice,” said one woman. “See if you don’t get your palms calloused too.”

            Ka Mao amused at the little banter, beginning to sip his coffee.

            Coming out into the street, he scanned the surroundings.

            The strikers were in place in the quiet picket. Most of them were down on their seats, leaning relaxed against the wall. Many were on their feet, also leaning on the wall as they exchanged stories. A number lay on the pavement, obviously asleep, as one may tell from the way they had their arms covered on their faces, or their bodies folded up on their sides.

Ka Mao took the other side of the road fronting the gates and half-leaped into the air to get a glimpse of what could be taking place inside the compound.

At the gates were large concentration of picketers, among them Danny and Bayani, who were discussing.

            “Been thinking about that story Ka Mao told us,” said Danny. “That the police officer warned him about the plan to break the strike this morning.”

            “Good cop, bad cop,” said Bayani. “That’s all there is to it.”

            “If it were not true, why take the trouble of warning us.?”

            “To read what’s on our minds.”

            Danny appeared still perplexed.

            Bayani addressed Ka Mao, “See anything?

            “Can’t see much,” said Ka Mao, then walked toward the end of the picket line, now and then leaping to see any movements inside the compound.

            Danny resumed his talk with Bayani.

            “They didn’t have to read our minds. It’s obvious, what we’re doing. We’ll fight to the finish.”

            “Still they need to check how determined we are. SOP in military science and tactics. Know yourself, know your enemies, a thousand battles, a thousand victories.”

A loud clank created by the unlatching of the lockset of the Makabayan gates stirred Bayani.

“This is it!” he said aloud, alarming everyone as he leaped to his feet, at once grabbing a two-by-two-inch wooden club.

            “Everybody to the gates!” shouted Danny.

            “To the gates!” cried Ed to those under his command.

            Ka Mao prompted his assigned strikers to do the same.

`           “Beat it, quick!”

            Those in the kitchen area all rushed to respond. The cook minding the fish couldn’t quite make his mind up whether to rush along with the rest or continue looking after the fish he was cooking. Finally he decided to wave the fish away with his hands.

            And the cook, clinging to his large ladle, came squeezing himself into the mass of strikers clogging the gates as they were swung open by the security guards. A large number of security guards massed inside the compound, indicating their readiness to force a large delivery truck out through the gates,

            For a moment, Bayani essayed the meanness in the eyes of the guy giving commands to the guards.

            Ka Mao spoke with tense hush.

            “Doromal.”

            “I can see that,” said Bayani.

            Doromal, catching Bayani staring at him,  flashed a faint impish, mocking grin. Then he gave the signal for the truck to ram through the gates. 

            “Block the fucking truck!” cried Danny.

            The strikers pressed close together to seal the gates.

            “No, no!” said Bayani. “Keep moving, keep moving. You stand still, you’re blocking. That’s illegal. On the move, you’re not blocking. So keep moving. Movc, move.”

            And the strikers formed a circular moving picket which although effecting a block of the gates could not technically be called blocking because the circular picket moved continuously.

            At the same time, a large contingent of the Quezon City Police arrived aboard patrol cars and immediately charged toward the commotion at the gates. Ka Mao confronted them, waving them away.

            “No,” he told them. “You don’t go this far. You’re only up to fifty meters away from the strike area. Back off…”

            The policemen wouldn’t budge.

            “Back off!” yelled Ka Mao.

            The policemen hurried back to a distance.

            Ka Mao stirred at the sudden singing by the picketers at the gate.

                KAMAO will never ever crumble down

            KAMAO will never ever crumble down

            Just like a sturdy tree

            In middle of the sea

            Never crumble down   

            It was a singing prompted by a need for anything that could buoy up the  spirit of the strikers. The moving picket continued, all according to the requirement of the law to keep it moving or be declared illegal. At the same time, the Makabayan management also had the legal right to pass through the gate without violating the strikers’           right to picket. And so the situation presented two contending forces, each exercising their respective rights under the law, rights that legally are placed on equal level but on the practical level a lopsided balance. For although the truck was not ramming through the picket, by simply moving inch by inch, it caused the picket to draw back little by little even as it maintained its circular motion. And by now, the hood of the truck had substantially gone through the gates; before long, the whole vehicle could well be out into the street – successfully breaking the strike.

            Ka Mao and Bayani finally resorted to pushing on the truck hood now to keep the vehicle from moving forward any further. They were not important anymore, the invectives they yelled to the top of their voices. Words no longer mattered, nor did the song. Now sung with discordant notes, the song succeeded only in imparting the rage and desperation of the strikers thrown into utter helplessness in this most unfair and inhuman pitting of warm bodies against the monstrosity of machine.

            Quite a number of sympathizing activists shifted to singing the Internationale in an effort to fire up the strikers. That amounted to a pathetic anti-climax of a drama apparently already ended: the truck hood was now half-way through the gates.

            Bayani and Ka Mao threw horrified stares at each other.

            Many of the strikers just found themselvcs crying out their helplessness.

            “Haven’t you even got pity left in your hearts? Damn bastards! Fuck you!” cried the cook, banging the truck hood with his ladle.

            One hard stare at each other, and Ka Mao and Bayani indicated their sharing of a realization: that the only way left to be done was to throw themselves into a supreme sacrifice.

            Almost as one man, Ka Mao and Bayani threw to the ground, hugging it crosswise to the path of the truck tires.

            Doromal was completely taken aback.

            The security guards signified their horror at what they were doing.

            The truck driver shifted the gear to neutral, casting a horrified stare at Doromal, who was speechless.

            Ka Mao and Bayani stared hard at each other, then as though on cue punched the air at the same time, shouting their supreme challenge.

            “Come on! Damn you! Get it on!” yelled Ka Mao.

            “Bangon sa pagkakabusabos! Mabuhay ang uring manggagawa! (Rise from slavery! Long live the working class!)” yelled Bayani.

            The singing of the Internationale now took on its inherent militant cadence, outing through the mouths of strikers and activists with grit, in each one’s eyes, tears of rage.

            For at Doromal’s signal, the truck driver shifted to forward gear.

            And the truck tires were inch by inch gaining on the bodies of Ka Mao and Bayani, now completely under the bumper.

            And then tires and bodies touched.

            At that, the driver promptly stepped on the brakes, instantly shifting to neutral gear. He threw a stare to Doromal, who staring chidingly signaled him to go on.

            The truck driver grimaced to himself. But gritting his jaws, he shifted to front gear and then moved his foot from the brakes to the gas.

The women strikers cried as the men stared at one another, urgently asking what to do?

            And the tires were pressing harder and harder on the sides of Ka Mao and Bayani, until the rubber wheels were now poised to climb up into their backs.

            Danny took the lead. He threw himself on top of Ka Mao. The rest followed, throwing themselves alongside Ka Mao and Bayani, piling one on top of the other such that what blocked the vehicle now was a barricade made up of precious humans.

            From under the pile, a ladle thrust upward and hooked at the bumper of the truck. Tightly clinging to the ladle, the cook grunted furiously.

            At the same time, activists and strikers  took positions to battle the security guards with their pillbox bombs, Molotov cocktail, darts, homemade shotguns, and other crude combat implements.

From the bend in the kitchen area, slums folks rushed in, wielding their own crude homemade weapons. They joined the strikers, all ready to mix it up.

            “Okay, roll it over!” shouted one striker to the driver of the truck.

            “Blast, bastards!” yelled another to the guards inside the compound.

            “You kill us, we kill you, we all get killed!” cried an activist.

            And the driver did shift the gear and moved as though to drive the truck forward. The combatants on the strikers’ side aimed their weapons. The driver made his mind up. His foot stepped on the gas, revving up the engine. Under the truck hood, Bayani and Kamao stared in horror then closed their eyes hard. The driver pulled the shift handle backward.

            The truck went full throttle back into the compound and the guards promptly locked the gates back shut.

            The strikers and sympathizers and mass support threw in euphoria, prancing around, bursting into the song once again, among them the particularly overjoyed cook flailing the air with his ladle.

                KAMAO will never ever crumble down

            KAMAO will never ever crumble down

            Just like a sturdy tree

            In middle of the sea

            Never crumble down

One among the policemen who had withdrawn to the distance asked the team leader as they walked away.

            “Why hadn’t we moved in?”

            “Our orders were to maintain peace and order. Has there been violence?”

            The policeman who asked the question shook his head.

            The strikers who had formed themselves into a barricade began picking themselves up from the pile. Ka Mao had to push Danny off his torso.

            “It’s your weight I could have been crushed with, you know that?”  Ka Mao joked.

            “I was cushioning you from the truck tires just in case they went over, you know that?” said Danny in turn.

            They got a nice laugh.

            Ka Mao sat on the pavement, breathing hard. Bayani did the same, beside him. They stared at each other, sharing each other’s feeling of relief – and then exchanged high fives.

CHAPTER V

ALL DAY LONG, Ka Mao went around soliciting logistical  support. The strike had been forced on the employees without giving them time to prepare, and just into the first week of the picket, the union treasurer was already expressing fears about funds running out after two or three days more. Contributions from people who came by in the area, like pedestrians on the sidewalks and passengers of vehicles, amount to so much inspiring sympathy, but hardly in terms of hard logistics.

            Accompanied by two of the strikers who had been acting as his close-in aides, he made the rounds of friends and acquaintances, explaining the union cause. He purposely garbed himself in a manner as to make him look true proletarian: faded maong pants, plain drab shirt with folded long sleeves, and on his head a straw hat characteristic of peasants.

            The three appeared queer as they strode into the hall of the National Press Club that noon, quite contrasting the others walking in garbed either in barong tagalog, business suites, executive shirt and tie, and other such respectable attires as are fit in a formal affair. Nevertheless, the amiable movie actor heading the reception committee welcomed the three and showed them into the luncheon gathering by a business group at the plush NPC restaurant.

            Ka Mao realized that they had walked into where they did not belong. But he decided that inasmuch as they had been welcomed, he might as well make good use of it.

            “Pardon us, ladies and gentlemen. We do not wish to intrude into your gathering. We actually came to see Sol Villa, the NPC President. We are here to plead our cause. We are members of the Katipunan ng mga Makabayang Obrero, KAMAO, in the Makabayan Publishing Corporation. We are on strike because of unfair labor practices by the company. We are soliciting your support.”

            Those in the gathering cast inquisitive stares at one another. After a subtle shrug of a shoulder here, a smile of indifference there, and a few sympathetic responses of a hundred-peso-bill each, everybody minded their lunch. Ka Mao felt like a pauper as he accepted the few contributions.

            The NPC prexy who was seated with guests at a table excused himself from the group and saw fit to invite Ka Mao and his aides to his office. There they were asked to wait while being served with Coca-Cola. Minutes later, Sol Villa joined them again.

            “We have talked about your situation,” he began.

            “Yes?” said Ka Mao.

            “Certainly we sympathize with your strike.”

            “Oh, yes. Thank you.”

            “But we cannot consider it as an attack on press freedom on which issue we can be justified to intervene.”

            “Is it not a case that my freedom to express has been curtailed by the unjust termination of my services?”

            “They see it as a union matter…”

            “Who are they?”

            “My colleagues at the NPC board.”

            “Oh…”

            “But we are supporting you.”

            Ka Mao gave out a lame, ambiguous smile.

NEXT Ka Mao and his aides found themselves going office-to-office solicitation of support. These were foreign films distribution outfits which at one time or another received help from Ka Mao in publicizing their movies.

            From his suite, Johnny Litton, whom Ka Mao would later realize as the most rabid defender of Hollywood movies in the Philippines, came out already wearing a sarcastic smile. His publicist led him to Ka Mao.

            “This is Mauro Gia Samonte,” said the publicist.

            “Yes, of course, Mauro,” said Litton.

            “We have gone on strike at Makabayan Publishing,” said Ka Mao. “We wish to solicit your support.”

            “How would that be? I am a capitalist.”

            Litton wore a taunting smile as he said those words. Ka Mao inwardly squinted. He found himself  putting on a smile of his own, as defense mechanism or an alibi not to speak, because the Litton statement amounted to a challenge, and in that moment which he suddenly realized was one of begging, he was just powerless to answer.

            “Anyway, Frankie here will take care of you,” Litton said, tapping the publicist on the shoulder, then headed back to his suite.

            Ka Mao trailed Litton with a deep stare. That guy Litton had a way of slighting you but not letting the slighting show because he did it with a smile. But Ka Mao’s sense of irony now was that what Litton said was true.

            How, indeed, can a capitalist support an action aimed at killing his class?

            The greater irony for Ka Mao was that when the publicist Frankie fished two hundred pesos from his wallet and handed it to him, he accepted. That was payment for the right by Litton to insult him.

            Ka Mao gulped that damaging of self-respect.

            “All in for KAMAO!” he shouted to himself.

            That consoled him enough.

THAT EVENING the strikers had two visitors, both purveyors of goodwill.

            National Press Club President Sol Villa brought two sacks of rice.

            “We will try to provide more,” he said, then drove away

            The next arrival created some stir because he was Atty. Jojo Binay from whom everybody wanted to get assurance that on the legal front, the strike was going fine. But the strikers found reason for more excitement when they learned that aboard Jojo’s car was Crispin Aranda, the period’s matinee idol as far as activists were concerned. Aranda was pictured in the media as a symbol of students’ rebellion and exerted vivifying effect across the sectors in the national democratic movement. It was obviously for this reason that Jojo sought to announce Aranda’s presence to the strikers, although the fellow was trying to make himself inconspicuous inside Jojo’s car.

            “Mga kasama, naririto si Cris Aranda.”

            The strikers spontaneously gathered around the car, veritable fans swooning at a movie idol.

            “How are you, Ka Cris,” greeted Ka Mao as he stretched his neck through the window of the backseat where Aranda sat, not indicating he was stepping out. Ka Mao turned to the crowd, speaking by way of prompting them to acknowledge the star visitor. “Mga kasama, si Ka Cris.”

            “Mabuhay Ka Cris,” went the greetings from the strikers.

            Aranda straightened up somewhat to get himself visible through the car window. Ka Mao held out a hand to Aranda for a handshake, but in just that instance Aranda waved a hand to excited strikers and didn’t take the handshake.

            “Cris got into trouble at the Island Cement strike. I had to get him out of jail,” said Jojo to Ka Mao, distracting him at once from what seemed to be Aranda’s snobbery.

            “We appreciate your dropping by,” said Ka Mao.

            “To remind you about our hearing tomorrow,” said Jojo.

            “Hearing?”

            “Management filed a petition for permanent injunction.”

            “What’s permanent injunction, Attorney?” asked Danny.

            “You guys never learn. Jojo is my name.”

            “Yes, sir, Attorney…”

            Jojo stared hard at Danny.

            “Jojo,” added Danny.

            “Be at the Quezon City RTC 8:30 am tomorrow,” said Jojo to Ka Mao, then drove away.

THE COURT – a room on the second floor of a wood-and-concrete building standing on the edge of a narrow creek cutting under Highway 54 – was jampacked with a crowd overflowing into the corridor at the creekside balcony. Into the first two rows of the benches in the gallery were squeezed lawyers of the litigants, majority of whom common folks as indicated by their lowly garments, with a spattering of men and women with snobbish mien complemented by their well-pressed street-smart attires. Prominent on the front benches were men in orange prison convicts’ uniforms, joined to one another with handcuffs on the wrists and flanked by a policeman on either end of the line. Ka Mao essayed this group with sympathetic eyes even as he inwardly admired the oral arguments being delivered by Jojo before the judge on the stand. Seated beside Ka Mao was Danny, listening intently to Jojo.

            “Your Honor, please. This honorable court should be well-informed that what is involved in this case is a labor dispute. An exercise by workers of their freedom to organize into a union and seek redress of grievances. Being such, this honorable court is denied jurisdiction over this case as provided under Republic Act 875, otherwise known as the Industrial Peace Act. This law provides that labor disputes are to be tried by, and I quote, Letter a of Section 2: ‘Court’ means the Court of Industrial Relations established by Commonwealth Act Numbered One hundred and three as amended…’ With all due respect, this honorable court is not such court so defined under R.A. 875. Moreover, Letter b, Section 9 of the Industrial Peace Act provides, and I quote. ‘No court of the Philippines shall have jurisdiction to issue a restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction upon the ground that any of the persons participating or interested in a labor dispute constitute or are engaged in an unlawful combination or conspiracy because of the doing in concert of the acts enumerated in paragraph (a).’ Acts which may be summed up thus: ‘Assembling peaceably to act or to organize to act in promotion of their interests in a labor dispute.’ The law is clear and unequivocal. These acts are never to be restrained nor be subject to temporary or permanent injunction. Surely we all must abhor violence. But if ever there was violence in the strike of the KAMAO, that violence was committed upon the peaceably assembling union picketers by the brute naked force of the Security guards and other personnel of the Makabayan Publishing Corporation. And at any rate such violence must be a subject of criminal investigation and not serve as excuse for management to stifle the rights and freedoms of workers guaranteed by our Constitution and our laws. To reiterate your Honor, the issue is: Does this honorable court have jurisdiction over this case which inherently is a labor dispute. Our humble submission is: No, this court has not. That jurisdiction exclusively belongs to the Court of Industrial Relations.”

            Even as Jojo was still making the final plea for dismissal of the injunction suit, Ka Mao was feeling confident the union will win the case.

Soon he and Jojo were walking out of the courtroom together with two other lawyers, who were members of Ka Mao’s legal panel.

            “Let’s see they taste a certiorari if they side with the management,” boasted the tallest lawyer among the three; Jojo was the shortest.

            “What’s a certiorari?” asked Ka Mao.

            “It’s the remedy for grave abuse of discrethion by the court,” said Jojo. “As you heard in my oral argument, the court has no jurisdiction over the case. Court rules in favor of management, we raise the matter to the Sujpreme Court.”

            All the while, Danny just listened as he tagged along the group. Some thoughts were seizing his mind.

FINGERS plucking on the guitar chords the tune of a popular melody provided the musical background for a poem rendered by picketers who were huddled around a bonfire near the gates of the publishing company. Other picketers were here and there busy with their own huddles around their own bonfires, otherwise taking naps as they leaned on the walls while seated on the ground or lay on carboard mats.

            “Lumuha ka aking bayan

            (Shed your tear country dear)

            Buong lungkot mong iluha

            (With all your sorrow cry)

            Ang kawawang kapalaran

             (The great misfortune suffered)

            Ng bayan mong kawawa…”

            (By your people so aggrieved)

The poem  was  barely audible in the mess hall area where Ka Mao, Danny, Ed and Bayani huddled while taking coffee in a corner, seated on the ground. Light from the stove being readied by the cook flickered on their faces.

“That certiori thing sounded nice,” said Ed. “But been thinking about it all day. It’s no use.”

“Let Jojo worry about that,” said Bayani. “Our concern is the picket line.”

“Precisely, Ka Bay,” snapped Danny. “Once the court issues any injunction, we can’t fight with force anymore. Meaning when management breaks our strike, we just sit by and watch.”

“Naah! We fight them to the last drop of our blood!” cut in Ed.

“And get our strike declared illegal?” snapped Ka Mao.

“It’s not the law that will make us win. It’s our strength and determination to fight it out,” declared Ed.

The cook had set a big cauldron on the stove with the necessary amount of water for cooking rice. Now he emptied into the vessel what little rice was left in a sack, then opened another sack from which he put additional rice into the cauldron. He spoke to Ka Mao.

“Nothing more after this sack, Ka Mao,” said the cook.

“Sol Villa promised to bring another sack tonight,” said Ka Mao.

“Very well then. We are assured of food for the next two days,” said the cook.

For a moment, Ka Mao appeared stunned by the implication of those words. “After two days, what?” he asked himself. Cross the bridge when we get there.  That’s how he had always approached the question, and luckily enough there always was something that cropped up and solved the problem. This time however a kind of heaviness bore upon him. That commitment from the National Press Club president was the last and no other pledges were in place from elsewhere.  

“My concern is the strike,” he said as he resumed the discussion with the group. “Our members did not join the union in order to push the movement. They joined to get what the law says they must have.”

“I think, Ka Mao,” said Ed, “we had better start teaching the union members the need for protracted struggle.”

“The members are not ready for that,” said Danny

“That’s why I say, teach them.”

“What a time to teach. Just as when everybody has begun complaining about difficulties in their living.”

“There is no other way to face up to those difficulties. Hard struggle.”

“Our members appear to have prepared only for a short fight. Quite a few have already begun looking for jobs elsewhere. Give this a month more and we’d be lucky to have half of our number still picketing.”

“So are we blaming them? Blame it on our own economism.”

“That’s what the union was perceived to be from the very beginning. To gain economic benefits for the members.”

“Precisely why I kept reminding you when you were making the union demands. Make them political. Lenin said economic struggle is the ideological enslavement of the working class.”

“There you go again, Ed,” cut in Danny. “Stop dragging Lenin into the union fight.”

“Lenin is a source of wisdom in the conduct of our strike.”

“Only you know Lenin. All the rest are interested only in economic benefits.”

“Okay, comrades.” Bayani finally cut in. “Debate won’t get us anywhere. (to Ed) We face Lenin at the proper time and place, okay? Right now, let’s face the concrete problem. We’re running out of food provisions. How do we solve that?”

“Learn to struggle the hard way. The only way,” said Ed.

“Cut the rhetoric. I ask you, after our last sack of rice is gone, where do you get the next?” said Bayani.

“We’ve got the committee system. We have the finance committee to worry about that.” Ed was wiggling out of entrapment in the discussion.      

Ka Mao  cut in.

“Truth of the matter is, Ed, the finance committee had been up to collecting alms from passersby and car passengers only. Bulk of our logistics came from my tapping of personal contacts. By now I have just about exhausted their goodwill.”

“So you’re the hero. Well taken…”

Ka Mao found himself not saying anything at the sarcasm. He set his jaws subtly while fixing a hard stare at Ed. Bayani took up the discussion.

“Ed, we are finding solution to a problem. I don’t think your talk is proper.”

Ed, recognizing his mistake, flashed to Ka Mao his characteristic put-on smile and gave him a tap on the leg as he said, “Sorry.”

“All in for the workers,” said Ka Mao.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Bayani.

“I’d swallow everything just to preserve the union.”

All three stared, anticipating Ka Mao’s next words. But Ka Mao did not pursue the topic anymore. He rose.

“You mind the picket. I don’t see any trouble coming. I’ll check my folks at home,” Ka Mao said as he started for the street.

“Won’t you have dinner first?” said Bayani.

“It’s early enough. I’ll catch some food in the house.”

Ka Mao walked away. Bayani faced Ed.

“Lie low with your tongue, eh, Ed. You come on too strong.”

Ed flashed his apologetic smile, raising both hands.

“Sorry. I said, I’m sorry, didn’t I?”

BEFORE THE CRUCIFIX on an improvised altar in a corner of the mezzanine floor, Nanay Puping  was in deep prayer with her rosary when she was distracted by Violeta’s voice from below.

            “Ay, si Manoy Mauro!”

            Ka Mao was arriving at the apartment. He took the hand of Tatay Simo, who was minding the store, and paid him his respect, touching the hand to his forehead.

            Tatay Simo was his usual, quiet self, keeping his thoughts to himself. What relief he felt in seeing his son well and safe, he didn’t speak but conveyed it with a loving stare, a faint smile and a gentle grip on Ka Mao’s hand.

            “How are you, Tatay?” Ka Mao asked.

            “I’m okay,” said Tatay Simo.

            “And everyone?”

            “We’re all okay. They missed you.”

            Tatay Simo went inside quickly.

            “Violeta, mind the store.”

            Violeta quickly finished doing the dishes at the kitchen sink then went over to the store, with jolly mien circling her palm in the air as she passed Ka Mao.

            “Hello!”

            “Hi, how are you?”

            “Okay!”

            “Nice to hear that.”

            “What’s not okay is that this store is not selling much.  I really doubt if it can raise enough for my and Ellen’s tuition come June.”

            “There is still time I suppose.”

            “How time flies so fast. Before we know it, it’s enrollment time.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind. Where’s Nanay?”

            “Upstairs praying. She’ll go down in a minute.”

            “Mamay Oliva not home yet?”

            “Normally it takes her just before midnight to arrive home. She’d be coming from Malolos.”

            Meantime, Tatay Simo hurried to prepare supper for Ka Mao. He called to him.

            “Come, Maurito, sit here, eat. I can see you’ve lost weight. You must not be eating enough at the strike.”

Ellen cleared a space on the table for Tatay Simo to set the food in. She was doing in small packs of colored Japanese paper a delicacy of sweet called pulvorun.

            “Hi, Ellen,” said Ka Mao as he sat before the food Tatay Simo was setting.

“Hi, how are you Manoy Mauro?”

“What’s that you’re doing?”

“Pulvorun. For selling to friends and acquaintances. Must help earning for my studies.”

“Worst case scenario, you pass off the coming semester.”

“Ay,” came Ellen’s curt response. All of a sudden her mouth quivered as she pressed her lips; a tear threatened in her eyes.

Ka Mao felt Ellen’s pain. He spoke through a lump in his throat.

“Just a thought really. I’ll make means of course. Don’t you worry.”

“Already made inquiries at UST.”

“Oh, University of the Santo Tomas. The oldest in the country. Good school.”

“ Got enrollment forms too.”

“What do you intend to take up by the way.”

“Medical Technology. The cheapest medical course. We can’t afford medicine.”

“Medtech is a good course.”

“There is a big demand for it abroad.”

Tatay Simo finished setting for Ka Mao a simple dinner course consisting of rice, monggo soup and fish boiled in vinegar and spices.

“Okay, son. Eat a lot.”

Ka Mao laughed lightly. He began eating.

“Hmm… This is good. You really cook nice, Tatay.”

“I had a feeling you’d come, so I thought of cooking your favorite.”

“Every viand you cook is my favorite.”

Now came Nanay Puping rushing down the stairs. Always sentimental, she was already breaking in tears as she hurried to hug Ka Mao even as he rose and made besa to her.

“Ay, ginaha aqui (beloved child),” Nanay Puping cried. “Dios mabalos (thank god). My heart breaks just thinking what harm could be happening to you.”

“No harm could happen to me. My men are good. They even assign bodyguards to protect me when I have to go out on appointments.”

“Bodyguards! My God. So people want to harm you. What do you need bodyguards for? You tell me.”

“Puping, your son is hungry. Let him eat,” cut in Tatay Simo.

Ka Mao sat and resumed eating. Nanay Puping sat beside him, doing her habit of putting food into Ka Mao’s plate.

“No big deal really, Nanay,” Ka Mao said assuringly. “Just little precaution. Nothing to worry about.”

Tatay Simo stood by, replenishing food in the plates, as Ka Mao was eating quite voraciously.

“From what I know, strikes take long. Months, years,” said Tatay Simo.

“How about yours, how long?” Nanay Puping asked of Ka Mao.

“I could end it tomorrow.”

Ka Mao said the words very matter-of-factly.

But everybody appeared stunned, including Violeta who rushed from the store, beaming with surprised delight.

“Did I hear right?” she asked loudly, unbelievingly.

“Our lawyer had agreed to a conciliation meeting with management,” Ka Mao said. “And it would be tomorrow. In that meeting, I intend to make a return-to-work offer.”

“Return to work!” exclaimed Violeta.

“What’s return to work?” Nanay Puping asked Tatay Simo, nearly whispering, as though afraid that anyone else might hear the question. He gestured to her to just listen to Ka Mao’s explanation.

“I thought of a face-saving way of ending the strike. We lift our picket with honor. The company is saved from the disgrace of being anti-labor. Return to work will do the trick.”

“Return to you getting pay at every middle and end of the month?” asked Violeta.

Ka Mao nodded, saying, “Right.”

“Return to me and Ellen getting our daily school allowance?”

“With bonus for good grades, too.”

Violeta grabbed Ka Mao’s arm and raised it.

“Mabuhay si Ka Mao!”

Everybody got a good laugh.

With Ellen the laughter came with tears of joy.

Ka Mao nodded to her assuringly.

A CLEAR DAY lay ahead as indicated by the gleam reflected by the red KAMAO flag fluttering in the air, against the bright blue of the sky and the brilliant white of the clouds. The picket along the wide frontage of the Makabayan compound was being conducted with characteristic militancy, but nothing in the atmosphere boded any grave occurrence, such as the violence that inevitably erupted following past rises in tension between strikers and strike-breakers.

            But as Ka Mao walked past the Araneta Coliseum on the way to the conciliation meeting with the management, the Big Dome appeared to be like a gigantic weight from under which he could not extricate himself. Walking beside him was Ed, almost madly trying to talk him out of what he was intending to do.

            “What you are thinking, Ka Mao, is not only a detestable act of class collaboration. It is treachery to the union. It’s bad. It’s mad. It’s stupid!”

            “Ed,” cut in Bayani, “we are comrades. No foul language please.”

            “Bay, this is not a question of language. It’s about ideology. Ka Mao is selling out the struggle of the Makabayan workers.”

            Ka Mao gritted his jaws, keeping himself from responding, which could be terrible.

            “We had a board caucus, eh, Ed?” said Danny, wanting to avoid the ill talk. “The board gave go signal to negotiate return to work. Why fret now?”

            “Nobody in the caucus had the guts to say no to Ka Mao. We were all no better than  stooges, going whichever way he pulled us by nose.”

            Ka Mao stopped walking and faced up to Ed.

            “I’d take that, Ed. Pour it on. I’ve bent backward enough, I’ll bend a lot more backward still. But get this. As long as I’m president of KAMAO, I’ll do things for the union the way I see best.”

            “Your best is no better than that of yellow labor leaders.”

            Bayani cut in, but trying hard to sound cool.

            “Ed, careful with your words. We’re comrades.”

            “No comrade sells workers to capitalists.”

            “Say it again, Ed,” Ka Mao dared, voice trembling in rage.

            Danny butted in, “It’d still be all up for negotiations. No need to argue now.”

            Ed insisted, “The very idea of returning to work and abandoning the strike is a betrayal of the workers! A sellout!”

            Now, Ka Mao let loose his own temper.

            “You all know that that’s the last thing I could ever do to the union. You know because you all know what I was before the strike. You know what I had. And all that I was going to make. And all that I put at stake.  If there has been any betrayal in this fight, it is my having turned traitor to all the lot more that I stood to have.”

            “Ah, yes. Always the hero. Never mind that all that you want to do now are a desecration of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought!”

            Almost as one, Bayani and Danny blurted out together with Ka Mao a reprimand for Ed: “Dammit, Ed!”

But realizing it, the two found themselves giving way for Ka Mao to complete what he was saying.

            “I’m not fighting for Marxism! I’m not fighting for Leninism. I’m not fighting for Mao Tse Tung Thought! I’m fighting for the liberation of the working class!”

            That got Ed tongue-tied.

What Ed didn’t realize, he actually scored a point. As eventually proven by the result of the conciliation meeting, the idea of return-to-work was futile from the very start. KAMAO had proclaimed its antagonism toward Makabayan and there wouldn’t be anymore chance whatsoever that the strikers could be back in the company’s good graces.

            Steeped in legalese, the Makabayan management wouldn’t fall into a trap by rejecting Ka Mao when he declared at the meeting: “We are offering to return to work.” It was in effect Jojo who did it for them when he stretched aside to Ka Mao and nudged him on the side of the body.

            “Huwag kang banat nang banat (Don’t go throwing wild punches),” Jojo said in a hushed, irritated tone.

            Quickly after, Jojo addressed the management group, saying, “Our position is that while we are open to an amicable settlement, unless and until such a settlement is reached, the issues raised before the court stand.”

THAT MORNING, the surroundings in the strike area appeared gloomy. Mist was in the air, the sun hardly shining through the dark clouds that mostly covered the sky. The strikers, though holding their ground, generally appeared in a lazy mood. They either pressed close to one another or cringed inside themselves, feeling the cold air. A very slight drizzle was dropping but was no cause for the picketers to seek shelter.

            In the kitchen, the cook engaged in some braggadocio as he prepared viand for breakfast consisting of tomato omelet matched with friend tuyo (dried fish). With his large machete, he chopped wood for fueling the stove.

            “When our SSS payment is finally put in order, I’d take out a loan and use the money to put up a bulalo eatery. You know the one in Sto. Tomas, Batangas began with just three hundred sixty five pesos capital. Now it’s the biggest in that region and the owner is now a millionaire.”

            “And you plan to be a millionaire also?” cut in the cook’s female assistant.

            “Certainly,” said the cook as he began cooking the omelet. “I cook better bulalo than that guy in Batangas.”

            Amusing at the talk while sipping at his coffee, Ka Mao is distracted by the sudden rushing in of Danny.

            “Come, take a look,” Danny said to Ka Mao.

            Ka Mao trailed Danny in hurrying out of the kitchen and into the street where the strikers in the picket lines were up on their feet, alarmed at the massing of the Makabayan security force in their usual gathering place near the gates of the While House.

            “They’re up to some mischief again,” said Danny.

            “Nobody moves,” went Ka Mao’s announcement. He instructed Danny, “Keep the men ready.”

            Danny stayed among the picketers as Ka Mao walked to a spot from which he hoped to make a study of the movements of the security guards. Doromal was at the head of their formation but indicated no movement whatsoever. He just fixed a belligerent stare at Ka Mao.

            Ka Mao was distracted from his eye confrontation with Doromal by Bayani who hurried to his side, indicating the arrival of two police mobile patrol cars. The vehicles were approaching from the street which curved to the area where Doromal and his men were gathered.

            The formation of the security guards split at the middle to give way for the police cars, which headed straight to the strike area.  Ka Mao positioned himself in the middle of the road, in the path of the approaching police cars. Doromal and his men began moving forward, trailing the police vehicles.

            Ka Mao shouted as the police cars neared.

            “Police! Fifty meters away!”

            The police team leader chose to be polite. He stepped out of the lead vehicle, clutching a document in his hand. His team of seven trailed him.

            Doromal was emboldened and signaled his men to follow. This irked the police team leader.

            “Stay back. This is our job,” he said.

            Doromal grudgingly obliged and signaled to his men to stop.

            The police team leader approached Ka Mao.

            “We are here to serve this order by the court,” he said and handed to Ka Mao the document he was carrying.

            Staring inquisitively, Ka Mao took the document and read it.

            “Preliminary injunction?” Ka Mao nearly blurted.

            “As you can see,” said the police officer.

            “This order recognizes our strike as under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Commission,” Ka Mao pointed out.

            “But you are ordered not to commit acts of violence. And you must not hinder the company in its conduct of business.”

            “We can picket.”

            “That is your right. But you cannot put up these things. These tents. These banners. These streamers. These shelters. The court orders you to dismantle all these structures.”

            “It is an exercise of our constitutional rights,” Bayani cut in.

            Doromal starts moving toward a tent, his men following. The police officer pushes him aside.

            “I said this is our job,” growled the police officer.

            “You are inside a private property. It is our job!” Doromal growled back

            “Court order to the police, not you. You are obstructing justice!”

            The other policemen signified their readiness to confront Doromal and his men.

            The police officer faced Ka Mao. “You don’t remove these things, we will.”

            The strikers braced themselves for trouble. Ka Mao urged inside him to come up with a  quick decision. He trained his eyes around. Danny eyed him back as though to say, “Your call, my call.” Bayani’s stare was ambivalent. But Ed urged for a clash, indicating this with a firm grip of his hand on the pillbox bomb inside a pocket of his pants. Quite a number of young activists did the same.

            From the kitchen, the cook rushed out and seeing what was happening, rushed back in and when he emerged into the street again, he was brandishing his large machete.

But then that was the moment Ka Mao finally shouted to the strikers as he started to dismantle a tent.

            “We follow the court order!”

            Ed grudgingly eyed Ka Mao, staying put where he stood.

            Though similarly grudging, Bayani turned to another tent and began dismantling it.

            “Okay, Comrades. Get it on,” he told the others.

            Danny took the cue and began dismantling another tent.

            And all the strikers turned to bringing down the tents that surrounded the Makabayan compound, together with the large streamers and banners and every little bit of strike paraphernalia.

            The cook madly swang his machete, which split in two the trunk of a banana plant.

            Doromal moved around arrogantly now even as he beamed with triumph. He shouted to the strikers.

            “The Araneta Center is private property. You cannot put up anything around here. Bring all your things out of Araneta Center.”

            The cook threw in a display of raging irony, cutting with his machete the ropes and other supports that held the kitchen tent in place.

            “Oh, yes! Damn us, proletariat! What business do we have anyway squatting on an oligarch’s property. Suits us fine that we’re wretched. That’s what we’re only good for anyway. To be forever poor. Forever powerless. Forever suckered. Forever fucked. We’ve got nothing to lose but our chains? Fuck! Fuck us all! How can we even lose our chains when we’ve already lost our balls!”

            Finally yanking at the center post of the kitchen tent, the cook sent the whole structure collapsing over him.

           

            Ka Mao hurried to the rescue, followed by a number of strikers. Some lifted the collapsed tent so Ka Mao could pull the cook out from under it.

            “It’s okay, Comrade. It.s okay. We’ll be okay,” said Ka Mao.

            The cook brushed Ka Mao aside. He spoke with angry teary eyes.

            “You got the gall to lead a strike. Get the balls to win it.”

            Ka Mao appeared stunned. It completely humbled him to hear those words which to him sounded: “Who are you to pretend to lead us in a fight which you don’t know how to win?”  And he didn’t know what to answer.

            Just that moment, lightning bolts ripped the sky. A deafening thunder roared as though to announce the sudden falling of the rain.

            The cook and his kitchen staff hurriedly gathered their cooking paraphernalia and brought them to the slums area at the back of the Makabayan compound. Those manning the picket sought cover under the few trees in the area, in a couple of old shacks put up by construction workers in the past, or otherwise under the torn streamers and banners which they spread over their heads.

            Ka Mao saw that not one of the strikers had stayed in the picket. He picked up a placard, hurried to the area fronting the gates of the company compound and there did what appeared to be a one-man picket.

            From one of the shacks, Danny called out.

            “Take shelter, Ka Mao. You can get sick.”

            Ka Mao just threw a stare at Danny, continuing with his picket.

            Under a streamer together with Bayani and a number of activists, Ed waxed sarcasm.

            “Ah, Ka Mao… Always the hero.”

            Bayani did not relish Ed’s words. He grabbed  a placard and walked over to join Ka Mao.  He stared probingly at him.

            Ka Mao said, “Our cook was right. Inasmuch as we have taken the guts to unionize the workers, we should see to it that we win this fight. So long as somebody moves in the picket, management cannot say we have abandoned the strike. They cannot have excuse to take over the picket line.”

            Bayani kept his stare at Ka Mao, who felt squeamish at it.

            “What?” said Ka Mao.

            Bayani sat on a boulder by the wall and stared at the distance.

            Suddenly came a succession of lightning bolts causing Ka Mao to instinctively cringe inside him.

“Can there be a storm?” Ka Mao asked.

“The proletariat can no longer liberate itself without at the same time liberating the whole of society,” said Bayani.

“I said, is there a storm?” Ka Mao insisted.

CHAPTER VI

THE WIND blew hard, and a sea of streamers, banners and placards carrying various slogans that had been a hallmark of the national democratic movement swayed across the large frontage of the Philippine Congress building. There was an overcast sky but no sign of rain coming. It was just some kind of a foreboding of the onset of an early wet season. Though the rainy season normally starts in June, soon after the early April showers, stretches of heavy downpour begin taking place in May. Yet even if it were to rain now, the enthusiasm seizing everyone in the area would surely stand the downpour.

It was the First of May, always a hallowed date in the history of the workers’ struggle.

The area was already teeming with demonstrators as a long column of marchers arrives, half-running and chanting: “Down with US imperialism! Down with feudalism! Down with bureaucrat capitalism!” At the head of the column is a huge streamer hoisted on wooden poles and carried the signage: “KASAMA”. Actually an acronym for “Katipunan ng mga Samahan ng mga Manggagawa (Federation of Workers’ Associations)”, the word is the Pilipino translation of “comrade”. Second only to this streamer is a smaller one but large enough to be noticed, and it read: “KAMAO”. Also hoisted on wooden poles, the streamer seemed to be blazing the trail for the KAMAO members into the midst of the gathering. Leading the KAMAO group was Ka Mao, Danny and Ed.

Ed, with much aid from Bayani, had the day before won an argument with Ka Mao over whether the union should participate in this commemoration of Labor Day. And so Ka Mao had to go on a quick run-through of  several materials to get himself familiar with why the first of May is a sacred day for the workers’ struggle. He should be able to tell it to the union members in order to convince them to join today’s rally – which apparently he did.

Awed by the mammoth gathering, Ka Mao wondered to himself whether what KAMAO was entering into right now was any different from that May 1 of 1886 when 35,000 workers of Chicago demonstrated demanding the reduction to eight hours the highly oppressive ten-hour working day obtaining at the time. His crash course on the history of Labor Day had made Ka Mao realized that were it not for the sacrifices of those Chicago workers, the present generation of workers would not be enjoying the benefits of the eight-hour working day.

            On the edge of the elevated patio, which was actually the top of a rising driveway that leveled up in front of the wide main entrance of the building, the firebrand speaker, addressing the crowd through a public address system, greeted the new arrivals with a yell: “Long live the working class!”

The gathering cheered, “Long live the workers!”

“This arrival of an awesomely large force of comrades from the workers’ sector clearly demonstrates the readiness now of the Filipino proletariat to live up to its historically-mandated task of being the leading class in the Filipino nation’s resolute struggle to overthrow the US-Marcos dictatorship that has been ramming down the throats of the Filipino people the tyrannical designs of US imperialism in cahoots with local feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism!” cried the speaker.

A cheerleader broke out into a call, “Marcos! Hitler! Diktador! Tuta! (Marcos! Hitler! Dictator! Puppet!)”

And the call turned into a continuing chant once the throng picked it up. To the KAMAO members, it sounded like a fanfare heralding their entry into the gathering. Some were thrilled. Others experienced that exhilarating feeling of being part of something big, something noble and worth fighting for.

And they joined in the chant as they went deeper into the crowd.

Even as he, too, voiced it, the chant evoked in Ka Mao recollections of what he read about the first May Day event in Chicago. That remembering strangely gave him the chills. The Chicago police had fired at the protesters, resulting to calls for revenge from the workers. Thereafter the workers went around the city urging other workers to strike. When the police charged at a large gathering, bomb exploded in their midst, instantly killing one officer.

Instantly, Ka Mao stirred from his recollections as a bomb – as though in response to that precise moment’s agitation by the speaker for the overthrow of the “US-Marcos dictatorship” – exploded on a spot at the Congress entrance where Metrocom soldiers were standing on guard.  A second after, rapid ratatats rent the air.

The ratatats, sounding more like a pounding on a sheet of iron, were not stunning, unlike those from a rapidly-fired .45 pistol which astound. But to activists familiar with shots from an M-16, the ratatats that threw everybody in panic were more horrific. Armalite slugs, long and slender, don’t strike through their tips but hit you sideways and thus have a more shattering effect.

The crowd dispersed, scampering in all directions.

Combatant activists also rushed along with the throng but countering the ratatats with explosions from their pillbox bombs.

An old couple had a hard time clambering up the barbed-wire fence of the Sunken Garden, that vast expanse of green grass separating the Congress area from the walls of Intramuros. Others chose to crawl under. A young woman in this group got her dress caught on the barbed wire and had her bottom exposed as she violently ripped her garment to free herself and run on.

Rushing away together with his ever loyal close-in buddies, Ka Mao wanted to help the old couple, but just now he could almost feel the whizzing of something past his ears and a split-second after, something impacted upon the shoulder of a youth clad in military jacket and who, at some distance from Ka Mao, was aiming to release a pillbox bomb from his hand. The youth threw to the ground, unconscious, his shoulder shattered. The pillbox bombed he was attempting to throw dropped on soft grass and did not explode.

As the ratatats would not stop and people dropped here and there after getting hit, Ka Mao’s companions leaped at him, throwing themselves into the grass. Just a few meters ahead, a woman, aiming to throw her own pillbox bomb, got hit smack on the chest, right above the heart, and dropped.

While many went on rushing away, Ka Mao and his companions stayed hugging the ground. If M-16 slugs happened to strike where they lay, then just their luck. Still that was better than having to stay clear on the snipers’ sights by running away.

And then the ratatats were no more.

Ka Mao spent a moment making sure if it was okay to get up. After that, he cautiously rose to his feet. He cast a look around.

The whole frontage of the Congress building had been deserted and all over were strewn torn placards, abandoned banners and streamers, along with plastic bags, personal belongings, including ladies shoes and slippers, which mixed with rubbish to make for the debris resulting from the mayhem.

In the sunken garden, scores of people were still running in different directions, seeking safer spots, while others minded the number of injured.

Ka Mao wondered to himself if this May Day violence was any different from the first one in Chicago. Or if this was in fact a reprise of the first May 1 carnage, then nearly a century since that time had not been enough for the workers to end violent suppression of their legitimate right to protest and seek redress of grievances?

He cringed at sight of the youth whose shoulder had been shattered by an Armalite slug. Was he alive? Ka Mao asked himself. The youth remained unconscious as companions carried him for loading into a jeepney already jampacked with protesters. Many of those aboard had sustained their own injuries.

Ka Mao trained his eyes on the surroundings, wanting to see who had fired the shots. But there was no police or military personnel in sight. Not even the soldiers who were seen earlier guarding the entrance to the legislature. It would seem that they had been instructed to hide from view once the guns began firing. In subsequent accounts of the massacre, the press theorized that Metrocom soldiers fired the shots from the rafters of the Congress building. For this reason, nobody was seen firing.

Ka Mao could just set his jaws in silent grief. He recalled what he had read about the first May Day. None of the police was ever punished for shooting the workers. But eight leaders of the protest were jailed for trumped-up charges and four of them eventually hanged, with one committing suicide. In the case of the Congress May Day, the police did not bother to make any arrests. The better to execute the protesters then and there.

But the grimmest sight for Ka Mao was the woman felled by an M16 slug which slammed her chest above the heart and rendered that portion of her body to smithereens. She was a bloody mess. A companion of Ka Mao vainly tried to pull the woman by the arm apparently in an effort to help her get back up. The body would not budge. It was as limp as the arm. She was dead. 

A news photographer took a shot of that scene and it would fill the front pages of newspapers the next day – the signature photograph of what would go down in the contemporary history of the Filipino workers’ struggle as the Congress May Day Massacre. Already, statements from the national democratic movement hailed the fallen woman as a heroine of the workers’ struggle – Liza Balando, a union organizer at the Rossini’s Knitwear Factory in Caloocan.

Ka Mao would not recall if he had known Liza before that carnage, but in the run up to the Congress massacre, when various caucuses and teach-ins had organized workers coming together at one time or another, he knew he must have crossed path with Liza. But Ka Mao would no longer bother about this. Instead, here to him was a woman who had a family to support but did not hesitate to sacrifice her life if only to be able to show how really should it be to fight capitalism.

Ka Mao got it from Liza at close range. He needed not the news play up the next day to decide that trade unionism was not the way to redeem the working class from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Liza’s sacrifice was the way.

The following day, Ka Mao called a meeting of KAMAO in the family’s store-residence. In the meeting, he explained that while the union was not abandoning the legal aspect of the strike, it had no more choice now but to lift the picket for good.

“You don’t fight guns with placards, slingshot darts and pillbox bombs. You fight capitalism with revolution,” he declared to the stunned KAMAO unionists.