A Red and Expert Renaissance Man
/Book Review: Crossings: Portrait of a Revolutionary by Rolando E. Pena
(Sybil Jade Pena, 2019)
There are a few exceptions. Robert Francis Garcia's Suffer Thy Comrade, and Lualhati Abreu's Agaw-Dilim, Agaw-Liwanag devote as much space to the emotional and physical pain they endured in the hands of their comrade-torturers. Theirs are compelling personal accounts that draw you more to them as people and not as grim-and-determined members of the proletarian vanguard. They did go on their separate ways, though, Garcia broke completely with the Party to commit himself to seeking justice for those who suffered the same fate as his, while Abreu returned to the fold. A Filipina Zinoviev.
Rolando Pena's memoir is in the same genre as Garcia’s and Abreu’s, but it is also unique in the annals of Filipino communism. Yes, Portrait of a Revolutionary is about his radical politics, but it is likewise about this uncanny geologist's eye (his description of islands is picture perfect). The book is full of wonderful stories about his days with “the movement,” which are matched by zany episodes in his life, including frank reminiscences of trysts with women (Peña’s sexual aura is incandescent!). The book wants to show that communists are also like many of us – they do bicker a lot about politics, but they also get jealous of each other, get into physically spats over petty matters, and find secret places to fondle and make love to one another. They prefer aliases that illumine their radicalism (Amado Guerrero; beloved warrior; war freak), but they find ways of make fun of their noms de guerre as well. The chain-smoking, frail late NDF Chairman Antonio Zumel’s pseudonym was KP for Katawang Pangromansa (Body Made for Romance)!
But Peña worried that when his fellow communists write their stories, this human side would be marginalized as cadres slide into wistfulness. In May 1995, he expressed his reservations to a proposed SDK book, saying, "Iniisip ko kung may katuturan ba ito sa mga mambabasa liban sa mga dating aktibista, na parang magiging nostalgia trip. In other words, parang may agam-agam ako, kulang sa inspirasyon (I wondered if this would be meaningful only to other activists—a nostalgia trip. I had reservations. There was a lack of inspiration)." One can only assume that when he wrote this diary, he had in mind not to go gaga-nostalgic about his cadre life. And his daughter, Sibyl Jade – who has her own fascinating story to tell in the future as the child of two revolutionaries, an activist herself, and as a member of Médecins Sans Frontières – honored his memory by putting out her father’s story, warts and all.
Rolando Pena during his early years (Source: ABS-CBN)
He was the archetypal "red and expert" that the Great Helmsman wanted young Chinese comrades to be. Peña graduated from elite UP with a BS and MS in Geology, then wrote the now-classic Geology of the Philippines and Lexicon of Philippine Stratigraphy (which one fellow geologist called a "Ph.D. level of work"). When he died, a colleague called him the country’s number one geologist. I cannot think of any other communist in my time and more so today who has attained a stature aside from his or her political record. Many stuck to organizing and leading ambuscades, abandoning their academic training. Others realized that to excel in their specialization, they had to stop being radical. Atom Araullo perhaps? Nah.
Peña was a stalwart of the Samahan ng Demokratikong Kabataan (SDK) and a senior CPP cadre who was tasked to bring guns from China. Yet he was more than this Maoist idea. He named his daughter Sybil "after reading a pocketbook version of Greek mythology." Sibyl recalls that on their first meeting since he went underground, her father suggested she read Balzac. While aboard the MV Andrea, he observed that "Ulysses would have been disappointed" by the absence of any "siren song borne by the winds." He communed with writers like NVM Gonzalez and Pete Lacaba, read W.B. Yeats, Chekov, Paul Verlaine, Tom Sharpe, and got teary-eyed while looking at the originals in the Van Gogh Museum. He was not just red and expert; he was a Renaissance man.
In 1970, Sison ordered Peña to lead a crew to operate the MV Karagatan, a small cargo ship loaded with weapons from China intended for the New People's Army. A storm wrecked the ship at Digoyo Point, Isabela, and then NPA commander Victor Corpuz had to rush as many men as he could to try to recover the weapons before the military arrived. The NPA was only able to unload 200 M-14 rifles out of the thousands in the cargo hold. (see video below). Peña joined an NPA unit as it tried to avoid pursuing government troops, then eventually found his way back to Manila. In 1974, Sison once again ordered him to form another crew for a second vessel. This time they were to pilot the MV Andrea to a rendezvous point near China. Unfortunately, the Andrea had to be scuttled in an islet northwest of Batanes and, after being detained by Hong Kong authorities, Peña and his comrades (the "Dirty Dozen") spent the rest of the 1970s in mainland China where he studied Mandarin (and French), read on Maoist theory, worked in the fields and factories, deflected intrigues about his sexual liaisons, and mediated between comrades fighting over issues, like Sison’s leadership.
Peña's recollections of the Karagatan and Andrea are most fascinating. These are also the most depressing of his adventures. Sison sent a crew that knew nothing about seafaring. The chapters are littered with stories of Peña and his comrades stumbling from one mistake to another that marked these ill-fated arms smuggling attempts. What was Sison thinking? It turned out he did not. He and other leaders really believed that all Peña et al. needed was Maoist determination to overcome their maritime ignorance. This reminded me of one cadre recalling the times when they scoured every page of Mao’s Little Red Book to determine what the Great Leader said about repairing a radio. Another recalled how his cell devoted time and energy figuring what Mao wrote about penile penetration so as to determine when a cadre can be charged with the crime of sexual opportunism under the provisions of the document “On the Relations of the Sexes.”
Sison's major feat was polarizing Philippine politics with the Plaza Miranda bombing. His greatest blunder was the Karagatan and Andrea.
In 1981, Peña returned to the Philippines, was assigned to Bicol, before he moved back to Manila. This is a gap in the memoir, but it appears he was quite a good cadre who managed to keep himself out of the military's gaze. One of his comrades – the late journalist Roz Galang – chided Jade for the trifling prize on her father's head: "Ang daya ng tatay mo. Kami isang milyon ang patong (It’s not fair; we had a million on our head)!" He left the CPP in 1992, confessing to a friend his criticism of the 1992 NDF Congress document that further legitimized Sison's coup, which led to his reclaiming his throne as CPP founder. Peña added, "I was feeling (sic) that I had no sense of achievement, and I decided to come out and get into something...intellectually stimulating, where I could still learn something and apply a little learning to some 'earthly' problems." He also appears to admit defeat. In an SDK reunion, he ponders, "One important point: we failed to win when we were young, robust and united. Now that the movement is divided, we are old; we cannot hope to win. But perhaps the younger generation can start anew. What is our role then?”
There are hints of discomfort. He "found it ungracious of Ruth [de Leon, now executive director of NDF-International], to question the capability of Nathan [Quimpo], her former comrade in the group] [when he planned] to teach at UP. She didn't say so directly but in a rhetorical way." In the main, however, Peña kept his friendships across the pro-Sison/anti-Sison divide. To him, they remained his comrades and friends.
Peña rejoined the Bureau of Mines and was an active presence in many an international conference (Part 3 in the book). He felt comfortable with being in government and found ways to work with NGOs ("except the 'extremists'").
In 2010 Peña was part of a team that surveyed the Benham Rise east of Luzon island and presented its findings to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea to formalize the Philippines' claim. This was a highpoint in his professional career. On November 30, 2018, 77-year old Rollie Pena was killed in an accident. The country lost a major scientist and the CPP, a veteran who could have restored the luster that had begun to wane by 1986.
Patricio Abinales
Patricio N. Abinales is revising his booklet Love, Sex and the Filipino Communists: Or Hinggil sa Pagpigil ng Panggigigil (first published in 2004 by Anvil Publishing)
More articles by Patricio N. Abinales