At the launch of his book Deeper Ground, Darker Shadows in Manila a few weeks ago, Eddie Quitoriano asked, “How did the New People’s Army ‘s image change from being the ‘Nice People Around’ to one of being only interested in imposing revolutionary taxes and obtaining weapons?”

This was Eddie’s diplomatic way of asking, “How did the Philippine revolution lose its way?”

Answering that question was undoubtedly a key motivation for writing his memoir. In the process of fleshing out his life in over 300 pages, he provides the reader a fascinating personal odyssey that is meshed with a larger, tragic odyssey, that of the National Democratic Movement. Eddie as an individual reaches his Ithaca, which is reconciliation with a family he had neglected out of devotion to the revolution. The movement, however, has not, and is still adrift, growing more marginal to Philippine politics by the day.

This is a book that should be required reading for the global left, for it is a sobering affirmation of the truism that efforts to realize good intentions, if not grounded in a firm belief in the intrinsic value of individuals, balanced by good institutional checks, and guided by plain common sense, can go badly awry.

Cadre

The offspring of a struggling family in Mindanao, the Philippines’ second biggest island, Eddie grows up in a frontier area peopled by Christian settlers, indigenous peoples, and Muslims. It is the early 1970s, and, like many in his generation, he is repelled by Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of martial law and attracted to the National Democratic Revolution radiating outwards from Manila to the rest of the country. He is drawn into activist circles, resulting in his being railroaded from the seminary where he has been training to be a Catholic priest. Recruited into the reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), he proves his mettle as an organizer, one who is able to skillfully navigate both the perils of encounters with the military and internecine conflicts within the fledgling party.

With the establishment of the party’s Mindanao Commission and the growth of the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army, in the movement’s most promising expansion area, Eddie becomes a seasoned NPA fighter and trainer, even as he fathers a family and, along with his wife Agnes, rotates in and out of military and police detention. His performance attracts the attention of Romulo Kintanar, the chief of the NPA and a fellow Mindanaoan, and he and his family are brought to Manila for his integration into the people’s army’s General Command.

In the first part of the book, the excitement of revolutionary organizing and the dedication of CPP and NPA cadres come across despite the author’s understated style of writing and his reluctance to tell the reader about his talents and capabilities. Still, there are things that bother him that he registers. One is the lack of warmth with which he is received by “Tagalog” cadres in Manila. Indeed, their reluctance to extend personal assistance contrasts with the spontaneous solidarity of comrades in Mindanao. Another is a disconcerting distrust among the top leadership of the party and NPA, which leads to non-sharing of vital information like his pending assignment to overseas work. The third is the most alarming, which is news from home about an internal purge taking the lives of many veteran cadres in Mindanao beginning in 1985.

The Voyage Out

But before he can wrap his head around what came to be known as “Kampanyang Ahos,” or “Garlic Campaign,” he is sent off on a mission to raise money and purchase arms........

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