Lorena. Kerima. Alyssa.
When I first heard of Alyssa Alano, her life was over, violently taken in an AFP-NPA encounter in Negros. She reminded painfully of Lorena Barros na nakaklase ko sa Experimental Psych and an Anthro class sa U.P. in the late sixties when she was still in Twiggy mode, mini-skirt and black net stockings with ankle boots and all. When I heard she had turned activist, and then revolutionary, I was awed by the transformation. When she founded MAKIBAKA (Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan) of the iconic battlecry “Makibaka! Huwag matakot!” I envied her the certainty that “a woman’s place is in the struggle,” therefrom disdaining and dropping conventional notions of femininity in response to the nationalist call vs imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, and consumerism, all valid issues then and now.
I don’t remember when I heard that she died in battle four years into martial law — censorship forbade such news — only that it was much much later, when the list included the likes of Eman Lacaba and Ed Jopson and many many more young intellectuals. I do remember grieving for nation, for the loss of the best and the brightest of our generation who bravely took up the armed struggle for revolutionary change. The very same grief when it was Kerima Tariman‘s turn in the time of Duterte, and Erickson Acosta‘s in the time of Marcos. And now Alyssa’s and eight others’ .
To my mind, Alyssa is a Kerima is a Lorena, no matter that her fellow progressives in Manila say she wasn’t armed. That she was in NPA turf, not for the first time, I hear, and of her own volition, speaks volumes. That I can’t find any data on her, like her birthday if only for her zodiac sign, or how long she’d been in Negros — surely someone keeps track — makes me think even more that she was indeed one brave and bright scholar turned insurgent.
She was ready to die for the cause, and now that she has, died for the cause, habang nakikipamuhay sa masa, I’m actually surprised that the Left is kind of disclaiming her — she was civilian, unarmed, doing research — instead of claiming her outright and with pride: proof that the Resistance is not dead and all that jazz.
In a virtual chat with political historian Patricio “Jojo” Abinales about Alyssa and the NPAs of Negros, I had mentioned that I knew Lorena back in the ’60s…
ABINALES: Today’s activists missed the chance to have their own Lorena Barros by depicting Alyssa as a seemingly innocent researcher instead of praising her commitment to the revolution.
Sayang, because I think they need their own heroine, their symbol of resistance. Each generation has its own revolution to make. This generation is fighting a revolution of the older generation, our generation, which may be outdated na. [April 27, 30]
Medyo outdated nga. It’s been 57 years, and protracted war pa rin ba ang strategy despite the obvious failure to organize and radicalize the broad masses into overthrowing the government? Armed struggle pa rin ba ang strategy gayong malinaw na naman na walang panalo?
In a January 2026 essay on “The Misguidance of Chantal Anicoche,” the Fil-Am activist whose “immersion” with the NPA was cut short without losing her life, Abinales remarks on the sorry state of the communist movement.
ABINALES: The disappearance and dwindling of the guerrilla fronts [are] the outcome of several factors. First, the Armed Forces of the Philippines has vastly improved its fighting capacity, largely thanks to American assistance. Night-vision goggles had made it easier to locate NPA squads, and drones were cheaper to launch missiles into NPA camps.
The second reason was the pandemic. COVID was the NPA’s bane. Unable to enter the village they claim as their “mass bases,” the guerrillas had to remain in the jungle, only to have their body heat exposed to drone surveillance. It was also said that it was a drone attack that ended the lives of former CPP chairman Benito Tiamzon and his wife, Wilma, in the mangrove swamps of Samar in August 2022. The military’s adept tracking of cell phone messages and calls purportedly revealed Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos’s movements, leading to his death in an encounter in Impasugong, Bukidnon….
The irony is that it is in the parliamentary struggle that the CPP is doing well, its elected representatives doing well on the legislative floor and on television. But in Amado Guerrero’s world, parliamentary struggle will always be ancillary to the armed struggle, its primary role being like that of the universities – to politicize and organize. It cannot be the central area of struggle, lest one commits the sin of political deviationism. https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/
Yeah. Joma was fixated on the vision of an awakened proletariat, armed for revolution, encircling the cities from the countryside for the Communist Party. Shades of Mao, but so last century.
Time for political deviationism. Read Unmasking the Myths of the CCP and its leader Joma Sison (2025) ng mag-asawang Maya at Carlo Butalid, mga dating kadre na naging RJ (rejectionists) in the 1990s. Self-published. Edited by Abinales. Or read Rene Ciria Cruz‘s review: “a hard look” at this “cautionary account of the couple’s disenchantment with the party and its founder.” [19 January 2026] Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières https://www.facebook.com/
CIRIA CRUZ: “The CPP is inherently undemocratic. So how can it build a democratic Philippines?” The authors ask rhetorically.
…Some online testimonies of former NPA fighters, wearied of the grueling, existential demands of guerrilla life now question the effectiveness of the CPP’S strategy of protracted people’s war to seize power by surrounding the cities from the countryside. The strategy gives “priority to military matters,” write the Butalids — or, in leftist parlance, it puts the military, not politics, in command.
… Why does it have to be a military-based strategy at all times: “There are alternative paths; e.g., through the building up of strong and militant social movements that could eventually topple the government in a relatively non-violent uprising,” they note, without needing to directly cite the People Power overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship as proof.
A good time to point out na noong martial law, hindi lahat ng aktibistang anti-Marcos ay na-recruit ng Kabataang Makabayan para sa CPP-NPA. Marami ring moderates (as opposed to radicals) — mostly students, hippies, activists, oppositionists of the sixties and seventies who believed in making love, not war. Rather than collaborate with the dictator, they went underground, not to join the armed revolution and die for Joma Sison, but to do grassroots work, some with church and charity orgs, some on their own. They became known as cause-oriented groups, non-governmental orgs, stepping in not just to deliver basic services where government was absent, but also to do consciousness-raising workshops, community organizing, networking, and to sponsor (along with like-minded do-gooders) livelihood projects meant to empower people in commmunities to become the stewards of their own environment and the engines of their own development.
The peaceful revolution of 1986 which saw the ouster of the martial law government was a combined effort of these activists in “rainbow coalition” with leftists and Coryistas. At least this is what I gathered from the sidelines in1984 to 2001, as editor of the journals and papers of the late environmentalist and original NGO volunteer Maximo “Junie” Kalaw on the movement for sustainable development. https://stuartsantiago.com/code-ngo-fake-ngo/
Non-violence na ang mantra noon, and we didn’t do too badly. Nagkaleche-leche lang when many NGO/civil society leaders joined the Aquino government, which messed up their priorities, and when NGO funding from many international aid groups came with strings attached in aid of unsustainable development programs, raising again the question: development for whom?
Malinaw naman na Systemic Change can be achieved through nonviolent measures. And yet the Left refuses to lay down their guns. Is it a macho thing? Or for love of Joma? Time to take stock, seriously: you’re getting students killed if not stunting their intellectual-political development when they could be aboveground, contributing to the general discourse and struggle for social change.
Sabi nga ni Earl Parreño, independent journalist and author who has also read the Butalids: the question is why we continue to offer the youth a path that so often demands their lives, instead of one that allows them to live—and still fight for justice.
PARREÑO: The real failure is not the absence of options, but our refusal to confront them. These alternative paths to deep, structural change—grounded in democratic struggle, social movements, and accountable institutions—are too often pushed to the margins, while violence continues to dominate both imagination and policy.
This is what should be at the center of national discourse: not the shallow, personality-driven contest of who is worse or better—Marcos or Duterte—but a serious reckoning with how meaningful change can be pursued without sacrificing yet another generation. After the Toboso encounters: The discourse the nation needs