Memoirs of a Communist

Lava, Jesus B. Memoirs of a Communist. Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil, 2002. 365 pp.

Three of the Lava brothers, Vincente, Jose, and Jesus, were leaders in the communist party of the Philippines from 1937, when Vincente first joined the party in the United States, until 1964, when Jesus was captured by the Philippine government. This volume is an appropriate companion to the book by Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr., on The Lavas released in 1999 by the same publisher (reviewed by me in the 1999 issue of Pilipinas), which concentrated on Vicente, who was 20 years older than Jesus.

This is, of course, an autobiography, and autobiographies are, by definition, somewhat self-serving. Lava's version of the people's struggle has characters who are clearly heroes and others who are clearly villains. Among the heroes are Lava's family and the many exploited peasants in the small, rural towns and hamlets who contributed positively to the struggle and who sheltered Lava and his companions; most prominent among the villains are Luis Taruc, usually seen as the front man for the communists due to his supposed lowly peasant background but who appears in Lava's account to be highly manipulative and who eventually betrayed the cause in many ways, and Jose Ma. Sison, who split from the Lava-dominated party to form his own Maoist version of the communist cause. Lava devotes several passages to a rehearsal of the disagreements with Sison, such as Lava's "single file" policy of limiting contacts among recruits, which Sison later labeled as a "liquidationist" policy and which Lava defends as necessary "to maintain the Party organization at the most critical period in its history" (p. 239). Other villains include those who betrayed Lava during his period of underground activities.

Vincent died in 1947, and Jose was captured in 1950, along with most of the top leadership of the communist party. Jesus became the pivotal figure in the party from that point until 1964. Much of this autobiography is a rather harrowing account of the hardships, both physical and mental, of working underground, hiding, running, living in constant fear of betrayal, often going for days without food in hostile environments, and all the while attempting to hold together a slowly collapsing organization. Lava's tenacious belief in his cause stabilized him mentally if not physically. Although properly fed and clothed while in prison for ten years, and treated amazingly gently, according to his own account, these years were apparently more mentally wearing than the underground years. Lava, nevertheless, maintains his belief in the radical response to the exploitation of the bulk of the Philippine people.

Refreshingly unlike the contemporary politicians of modern states, Lava is candid about the mistakes that he and the communists made in their efforts to revolutionize the Philippines. "The greatest error of the Party," according to Lava, was the decision in 1948 "to use the armed struggle" (p. 276) after the ouster of those communists elected to the legislative entities of the new Republic of the Philippines (Lava himself was elected to Congress). The imminent victory of the communists in China combined with the poor record of the European powers in Asia during World War II convinced the Philippine communists that the United States would retreat from the Philippines and that the communists would be able to militarily overthrow the government. The United States, however, powerfully intervened, and, as Lava writes, it was not until the late 195Os and early 196Os "that we began a serious analysis of the theory and practice of our past struggles" (p. 277).

For the first five years after his release in 1974 Lava, a physician, worked as a medical examiner for an insurance company. Since the fall in 1986 of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines, Lava has been quite outspoken and even socially accepted, being invited, for example, to speak at various Rotary Club meetings. About three years ago Lava left the communist party "because of fundamental disagreement with the Party leadership, especially on matters of revolutionary principles, ethics, and integrity" (p. 361 ) and formed the People's Patriotic Movement, which has a program of uniting groups on the political left and developing a Philippine industrialized alternative to globalization.

Lava obviously kept no notes during his underground years and his decade in prison, and it is, indeed, remarkable that this autobiography contains all the specific details that it does, giving the particulars of names, places, and events. The years and the dates of many of the events are unfortunately not always entirely clear. The book does, then, assume at least a rudimentary knowledge of Philippine history, and if the reader is versed in the history of the communist movement there, the book will be especially rewarding. This book will certainly stand throughout history as an account of the life of a Philippine patriot, nationalist, and hero who unflinchingly and with unquestioned integrity devoted his life to the struggles of the masses to be masters of their own destiny.