Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance

Anarchism in the Philippines

Bas Umali, Gabriel Kuhn, Gabriel Kuhn

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781629638195
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Anarchismus

The legacy of anarchist ideas in the Philippines was first brought to the attention of a global audience by Benedict Anderson's book Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. Activist-author Bas Umali proves with stunning evidence that these ideas are still alive in a country that he would like to see replaced by an "archepelagic confederation."

Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines is the first-ever book specifically about anarchism in the Philippines. Pangayaw refers to indigenous ways of maritime warfare. Bas Umali expertly ties traditional forms of communal life in the archipelago that makes up the Philippine state together with modern-day expressions of antiauthoritarian politics. Umali's essays are deliciously provocative, not just for apologists of the current system, but also for radicals in the Global North who often forget that their political models do not necessarily fit the realities of postcolonial countries.

In weaving together independent research and experiences from grassroots organizing, Umali sketches a way for resistance in the Global South that does not rely on Marxist determinism and Maoist people's armies but the self-empowerment of the masses. His book addresses the crucial questions of liberation: who are the agents and what are the means?

More than a sterile case study, Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance is the start of a new paradigm and a must-read for those interested in decolonization, anarchism, and social movements of the Global South.

TEXTS BY BAS UMALI

ARCHIPELAGIC CONFEDERATION

Advancing Genuine Citizens’ Politics through Free Assemblies and Independent Structures from the Barangay and Communities (2006)

Introduction

Many of us will agree that in our context democracy seems elusive. A vast number of people are in extreme poverty, deprived of basic needs and politically marginalized. We know that poverty is caused by the uneven distribution of power, where only a few can decide over critical things, such as the use of natural resources and the distribution of their benefits. Who among us was ever asked or consulted by the government in its program of environmental destruction which has only profited big corporations controlled by a few families and foreign corporations? Did the government bother to ask peasants, farmers, fishers, workers, women, youth, gays, consumers, and other sectors with regard to the country’s accession to the WTO and the signing of various bilateral agreements? Who wants E-VAT and debt payment?¹ The list is overwhelmingly long, proving that the democracy we have today is a farce.

The heart of the struggle of all the revolutionary efforts in our history is about making people participate in power. People’s participation in decision-making is central, because without people’s participation in the political exercises that directly influence every dimension of their lives, democracy will not be realized.

This document will attempt to discuss an alternative anarchist political structure that will promote people’s direct participation in power and, in broad strokes, discuss the flow of political power from the bottom to the top. It is a concept that is heavily derived from the idea of a confederation advanced by libertarian author Murray Bookchin. This idea is not detached from traditional anarchist movements and contemporary anarchist activists; we believe it is highly relevant to our current political crisis.

A confederation offers an alternative political structure based on a libertarian framework, i.e., nonhierarchical and non-statist, which is doable and applicable. It is doable compared to the thirty-five-year-old struggle of the CPP-NPANDF,² which, after taking tens of thousands of lives, has not delivered any concrete economic and political output for the Filipino people. Moreover, the alternatives being proposed by mainstream leftist groups outside the NDF offer no substantial difference, for they all adhere to the state and to capturing political power—an objective that cannot be realized in the near future.

Considering that anarchism is exaggeratedly misunderstood, let us first discuss some fundamental principles of stateless socialism, libertarianism, and anarchism.

“Purely utopian!” That’s one of the common reactions of those who do not understand the word anarchy and the alternatives it offers. Another misconception is its affinity to chaos. These nuisances and misinterpretations are not surprising at all. Historically, anarchism has long opposed oppressive systems and fought monarchy, oligarchy, and the totalitarianism of the state socialists and authoritarian communists alike. It continuous with the struggle to fight new forms of colonialism, capitalism, and other exploitative systems that hamper the development of humanity. Every ruling regime has its share in imputing fear and terror on the anarchist movement in order to discredit it.

It is impossible to escape the fact that violence is part of the anarchist movement. Along with nationalists and republicans, anarchists used terroristic methods to advance social revolution. The “propaganda by the deed” was meant to encourage people to act against the state and the old order by launching violent acts. There are various examples: Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio killed French president Marie François Sadi Carnot in 1894; his compatriot Michele Angiolillo shot the Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas in 1897; Luigi Lucheni, another anarchist from Italy, stabbed Empress Elisabeth of Austria to death in 1898; and Polish anarchist Leon Czogolsz killed US president William McKinley in 1901. There were also two attempts on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first by Max Hödel in May 1878, the second by Karl Nobiling just one month later. The list is long.

These incidents were used by the dominant regimes to their own advantage. In order to demonize anarchism, they shrewdly related it to violence and chaos. This was reinforced by the state socialists and authoritarian communists when the anarchist movement in Ukraine challenged the Bolshevik regime, the White Army, and other foreign invaders.

Nuisances and misinterpretations are bound to occur in situations where power is asymmetrically distributed. The political structure that is controlled by the economic and political elite will not allow anarchism to flourish. Moreover, the revolutionary tradition in the Philippines is highly influenced by red bureaucracy, which is historically hostile to anarchism.

Contrary to common misconceptions, anarchism is a theory that firmly upholds the idea of an organized world that is free for all. As Noam Chomsky once stated in an interview, anarchy is a society that is highly organized, with many different structures being integrated, such as the workplace, the community, and other myriad forms of free and voluntary associations, where participants directly manage their own affairs.

Unlike the existing order—in which people are motivated by power, profit, private property, and individualism—anarchy is a society that fosters mutual cooperation, solidarity, and freedom from exploitation and oppression. Decisions are made by those directly concerned. Any form of political structure that centralizes power is unacceptable.

The term archipelago recognizes the geographical characteristics of the country called the Philippines and the very essential role of its rich natural resources that strongly influence the lifestyle of its inhabitants. Myriad historical accounts indicate that the bodies of water surrounding the different islands actually connect rather than separate them from each other, and that the inhabitants’ economic, social, and political activities were developed due to the interconnectedness of their immediate environment.

It is also important to note that the rich natural endowments of the archipelago allow diverse cultures to flourish and develop in heterogeneous ways but in cooperation with one another.

Historical Context

The famous victory of Lapu-Lapu against Ferdinand Magellan is one of the earliest examples of resistance in the archipelago. It has high symbolic value. A considerable number of Lapu-Lapu’s men defeated the well-armed and battle-hardened Spanish conquistadores in a low-tide clash along the shores of Mactan in 1521. One narrative speaks of a rivalry between Lapu-Lapu and Rajah Humabon, a rivalry that Magellan used by teaming up with the latter in order to attack the former. Another emphasizes that Lapu-Lapu’s group was set to defend the autonomy of their community.

Prior to the nationalist struggle, the so-called Moro Wars lasted from 1565 to 1898,³ preventing the Spaniards from subjugating the inhabitants of the southern part of the archipelago. Colonizers mobilized Christianized locals to fight Muslims, thus laying the foundation of the “perpetual” Christian-Muslim conflict in Mindanao.

The Philippines was one of the first Asian countries to stage a revolution against the colonialism of the West. The early phase of the Filipino struggle was carried by local privileged intellectuals like José Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar. The revolution was nationalist in character, which is understandable, as, at the time, nationalism was propagated in many parts of the world, especially Europe. This profoundly influenced Rizal’s work and inspired the oppressed masses, culminating in armed resistance organized by Andrés Bonifacio in 1896.

With the growing influence of the US, combined with the simultaneous armed resistance in Cuba, the Filipino nationalist resistance was able to substantially reduce the influence of the Catholics and finally drive them out of colonial Spain. But American expansionist policies immediately took effect, as expressed through the 1898 Treaty of Paris.⁴ Shortly after the inauguration of the First Philippine Republic in January 1899, the Filipino-American War broke out, claiming six hundred thousand Filipino lives, mostly due to starvation and disease.

The revolutionary tradition in the country was enriched by the arrival of Isabelo de los Reyes in Manila in 1901 from his exile in Barcelona, Spain. He brought a collection of books with him, including some by Errico Malatesta, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Thomas Aquinas, and Voltaire. This was followed by a successful wave of protests and strikes within and around Manila that paved the way for the establishment of the Unión Obrera Democrática (UOD). This marked the shift of the revolutionary struggle from a mere nationalist to an anti-imperialist one.

The UOD disintegrated in 1903. From its remains, the Socialist Party was established, which later led the Hukbalahap guerilla movement, active from 1942 to 1954. Its members were the foremost opponents of the Japanese forces prior to the reinforcement provided by the Americans. This was also the period when the revolutionary movement was increasingly influenced by Bolshevik ideas.

In the late 1960s, the Maoist-influenced Communist Party was established. It adopted a nationalist strategy and protracted the people’s war. It gained enormous support from the masses but failed to grab power. In 1992, a split led to a fragmentation into smaller party formations.

Hard Facts in the Current Context

Indeed, the country’s historical development has continuously enriched its revolutionary tradition, not to mention the resistance efforts outside of the national democracy movement, such as sectoral and community-based resistance and the Moro struggle, among others.

However, such richness failed to translate immediately into the interest of the people. In the 1970s, the poverty rate was as high as 40 percent. The current rate is 34 to 36 percent according to the National Statistical Coordination Board.⁵ This indicates only marginal improvement in terms of poverty reduction.

Unemployment, on the other hand, is stagnant at eleven million, while underemployment is up to seven million. This is aggravated by the massive destruction of our natural resources due to the growth orientation of the economy and the incapacity of the state to manage and utilize them in a sustainable way.

Furthermore, liberalization, coupled with chronic rent-seeking practices in government offices and the absence of a logical economic development plan, inflicted serious injury to the domestic economy, which further exacerbated our deteriorating economic condition.

Another equally important issue is the marginalization of huge numbers of citizens in decision-making processes that directly and indirectly affect their political, social, and economic lives. The existing political structure makes citizens passive, inactive, and apathetic. Their political participation is reduced to routine electoral exercises where they will occasionally choose politicians who will represent them in making and implementing policies.

We can hardly identify a historical period when Filipinos lived in prosperity, abundance, and relative peace, except during pre-Spanish times. As described by Italian explorer Antonio Pigafetta, the inhabitants of the archipelago were in perfect health and had no physical defects. He got the impression that food scarcity was not prevalent.⁶ While William Henry Scott and a host of other writers confirmed the presence of slavery in the archipelago during the pre-Spanish period, they never mentioned any sign of poverty in local villages.⁷

These findings make us think that the phenomenon of poverty in the Philippines occurred with the advent of Spanish colonization and coercive formation of a centralized government. Unfortunately, several studies have conveniently pinned down population explosion as the cause of poverty, thus undermining the fact that it was brought about by systemic oppression. For instance, in Southern Asia, around thirty million households own no or very little land, representing 40 percent of nearly all rural households on the subcontinent. Both the African and Latin American continents have similar data. Moreover, land distribution in the nations of the South favors large-scale commercial agriculture controlled by a few landowners. Ergo, poverty is rooted socially.

In 2000, the Philippines ranked seventy-seventh out of more than 150 countries, with a poverty level of 34 percent and a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.656.⁸ According to the 1993 Fishery Sector Program Report of the Asian Development Bank, 80 percent of fisher households lived below the poverty line. Four primary factors are widely accepted by those studying the fishery sector:

1)low productivity of land-based resources or lack of access to land;

2)low productivity of aquatic resources due mainly to habitat destruction and stock depletion;

3)resource use conflict, particularly in coastal waters;

4)lack of adequate basic services, i.e., health, education, shelter, and infrastructure.

The report also cited high population density in most near-shore areas. We know for a fact that the increase of population in coastal communities is due to migration. As noted in an ASEAN-SEAFDEC (Association of Southeast Asian Nations-Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center) report in 2001, households displaced in agricultural lands seek economic opportunity in coastal areas that are open to anybody who wants to use fishery resources. Poverty is, therefore, not rooted in natural limits; it is clearly brought on by structural problems, such as the distribution of wealth and the control of natural resources.

The idea of a carrying capacity is well-recognized. It refers to a limit for both the number of organisms and the non-living matter in specific ecosystems, based on the availability of food, space, and other vital things for their existence. A specific ecosystem is able to absorb pressure brought on by extraction. But the destruction of natural resources (which results in the death of many citizens and the loss of livelihoods) is not directly attributable to population numbers. In fact, it is common knowledge that big corporations benefit from large-scale logging operations. Together with large commercial mining operations, this eventually leads to the denudation of our forests. It must also be noted that mineral extraction is one of the notorious polluters of the coastal zones and significantly reduces fish stocks.

There is not sufficient evidence to prove that the country’s population of eighty-six million challenges the carrying capacity of the local ecosystems. Clearly, food production is no longer a problem. In fact, developed nations—as well as developing nations like China, India, and Brazil—are extra-aggressive in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, in order to have full market access to the economies of poor and other nations where they can dump their huge surpluses. The available data on poverty in the Philippines is related to low agricultural and fishery productivity and poor e...