A 'Rustling' in the Philippines

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Barbara Putnam, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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2 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1990 (NPA).

The American people must judge whether our country is right in helping to keep a "low-intensity conflict" brewing in the Philippines. Last month, I saw a new documentary film that provides important background information.

"A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution" gives a vivid portrait of people who are involved on both sides of the conflict-from teenaged guerrilla fighters to Jun Pala, a Hitler-admiring deejay who is the voice of the rightwing death squads.

The film's director, Nettie Wild, Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, May May Gong, Malik Business Manager: DAVID KIRSCHNER Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

San Francisco, CA 94110.

$30. (Money orders, checks should be in U.S. dollars.)

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views expressed in editorials. and her crew operated under conditions of great personal danger. At one point, for example, they filmed a firefight between the NPA and the Philippine army. The rebels' radio operator, a close friend of the filmmaker, was killed in the battle.

I was able to speak to Nettie Closing date:

May 26, 1990 Wild a few days after viewing the film. She told me that she first became interested in political developments in the Philippines several years ago while working as an actress in Vancouver, B.C. Wild later received a Canadian government grant to work in the Philippines with the "creative dramatics movement" there.

"I started to see a pattern of oppression that I had never been exposed to before," Wild told me. She visited sugar workers, for example, who labored from sunup to sundown for barely $1 a day. She saw children who spend their hours picking through the steaming garbage dumps that ring Manila. These people are shown in starkly beautiful (and terrifying) scenes of her film.

The army attacks While working in the southern island of Mindanao, she was approached by people from the political underground. They told her that their guerrilla unit was beginning to organize its own dramatic company and asked if she would join in.

On one occasion, the guerrilla dramatics troupe participated in a large gathering attended by hundreds This experience helped to convince the filmmaker that nothing would change in the Philippines unless fundamental changes were made in the government and society as a whole. She decided to make a film that would enable the outside world to understand what social activists in the Philippines, like those she had met and worked with, were fighting for.

Marcos forced to flee Wild returned to the country during the 1986 elections, in which Cory Aquino was running for president against Marcos. She expected that Marcos would simply steal the election and that the guerrillas would resume their fight much as before. But these expectations quickly changed; the mass mobilization forced Marcos to flee.

The Communist Party, the NPA, and other leftist organizations were confused about what course to follow; they had called a lukewarm boycott of the elections. Now that Marcos was gone, the pro-capitalist forces that supported Cory Aquino backed by the armed forces—were able to capture a large part of the credit for ousting Marcos.

The Aquino government soon arranged a cease-fire with the guerrillas. Several months later, however, the ceasefire was blown apart when guards outside the presidential palace opened fire on a demonstration by farmers who were demanding land reform. Eighteen people were killed in the massacre, which is shown in news footage included film was limited by the conditions imposed by low-budget, semi-clandestine movie-making. The struggle of the trade unions and other mass organizations in the cities, for example, is barely mentioned. "That's a real hole in my film," Wild admitted.

Today, Wild said, conditions are as bad or worse than under Marcos. Many of the people she filmed are now lying low or in exile. The right-wing vigilante groups-with ties to Contragate conspirator John Singlaub and other U.S. government operatives-have gained strength.

Back in the USA, Secretary of State James Baker's office refused to allow one of the people interviewed in the film, Ed de la Torre, to enter the country in order to speak at the movie's premiere. De la Torre was a "Communist," they charged, and had set out to "overthrow the U.S government by force and violence."

At the same time, most major media in this country have refused to provide publicity about the film. These restrictions severely limit the ability of Americans to evaluate a situation that has the potential of becoming our "Vietnam War" of the 1990s.

"Guerrilla filmmaking in the Philippines," Nettie Wild pointed out, "has become guerrilla film distribution in the United States."

To rent "A Rustling of Leaves" or for information, write to the Empowerment Project, 1653 18th St., #3, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Telephone (213) 828-8807.

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