Wilful Men Push History: The Ex-Priest, the Ex-Soldier and the Dark Lord

by Maria Karina A. Bolasco

Date: February 28, 2019, Thursday, 13:30 – 14:30
Venue: Middle-sized Meeting Room, Inamori Foundation Building

Abstract:
Much has been published on the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)
– its history, analysis of its rise and fall, and impact on the life of
a nation. Leaders are mentioned but not their intellectual formation,
revolutionary ideas and decisions they made. While some have written
episodic memoirs a decade after the 1986 EDSA People Power, these
principally were contributions to anthologies memorializing the
historical event. My project attempts to document the thinking and role
of revolutionary leaders as reflected on and assessed by the leaders
themselves five decades later. This is a partial telling of three of the
stories. Edicio De la Torre, an ex-priest, reconciled for many religious
activists the necessity of armed struggle and national democracy with
their Christian faith. Victor Corpus, a top-ranking Armed Forces of the
Philippines Officer, defected to the CPP with a large cache of firearms
and trained young warriors of the New People’s Army. Ricardo Reyes,
called the Dark Lord, whose trajectory into activism and communism in
the 70s and rise to the CPP Central Committee best typifies that of the
revolutionary intellectual’s of the 70s. Here are the stories of men in
their 20s as they themselves remember now that they are in their 70s.

Maria Karina A. Bolasco is the Director of the Ateneo de Manila
University Press. She has behind her decades of experience in book
publishing and has published many articles and papers on publishing
issues. She also serves as Governor of the National Book Development
Board, Vice Chair for Internal Affairs of the Book Development
Association of the Philippines, and sits on the boards of both the
Philippine PEN and The Writers Union of the Philippines.

Chair: Carol Hau, CSEAS