Jose Maria Sison: Difference between revisions

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(Created page with "{{Infobox revolutionary | name = Jose Maria Sison | image = File:KaJoma.png | image_size = 225px | caption = Portrait of Comrade Joma. | nationality = Filipino |political_party=CPP | birth_name = Jose Maria Canlas Sison | birth_date = 8 February 1939 | birth_place = Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, Philippines | death_date = 16 December 2022 | death_place = Utrecht, Netherlands | political_line...")
 
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Jose Maria Sison was born to a landlord political family in February 8, 1939, in Cabugao, Ilocos Sur. Some of his relatives were killed by the [[HUKBALAHAP]] (early Filipino Marxist-Leninist guerilla movement) due to their upper-class landlord status. He learned more about the “Huks”, as they were colloquially called, from Ilocos farm workers. He once was supportive of populist and anti-imperialist politicians. He claimed to get interested in Communism from reading an anti-communist book in his Jesuit High School.<ref>Rev Left Radio (October 31, 2023). [https://youtu.be/GnwTzf0mL8E "Jose Maria Sison: In Conversation with Comrade Joma"]. ''YouTube''.</ref> Upon graduating from the University of the Philippines in 1959, he studied in Indonesia and upon returning to the Philippines, he became a Professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman of literature and later political science. He co-founded a youth organization called Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth) in 1964, where it stood against the Vietnam War, bureaucrat capitalism, and feudalism.
Jose Maria Sison was born to a landlord political family in February 8, 1939, in Cabugao, Ilocos Sur. Some of his relatives were killed by the [[HUKBALAHAP]] (early Filipino Marxist-Leninist guerilla movement) due to their upper-class landlord status. He learned more about the “Huks”, as they were colloquially called, from Ilocos farm workers. He once was supportive of populist and anti-imperialist politicians. He claimed to get interested in Communism from reading an anti-communist book in his Jesuit High School.<ref>Rev Left Radio (October 31, 2023). [https://youtu.be/GnwTzf0mL8E "Jose Maria Sison: In Conversation with Comrade Joma"]. ''YouTube''.</ref> Upon graduating from the University of the Philippines in 1959, he studied in Indonesia and upon returning to the Philippines, he became a Professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman of literature and later political science. He co-founded a youth organization called Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth) in 1964, where it stood against the Vietnam War, bureaucrat capitalism, and feudalism.


Gonzalo finished his Primary education in Callao and then started studying in Secondary. Gonzalo as a kid was also attracted to the sport Football and played it intensely; little by little he started to give it up, although as an adult he retained some fondness for it. At the end of World War 2 Gonzalo had read on the newspaper, the capture of Berlin by the Red Army, the celebration of Victory Day after Germany's defeat, the newspapers that headlined images of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Comrade Stalin. Chairman Gonzalo had grown emotional admiration to Comrade Stalin and the Soviet Union from the Soviet film 'Long Live Youth!' Gonzalo later learned from a Chinese merchant, that in China there was a great revolution and that the true figure was not Chiang Kai-shek but Mao Zedong who led a Communist Party like Stalin in the USSR. This started the awakening of Gonzalo's class consciousness.<ref>Ibid, Page 7</ref>


By age fourteen Gonzalo had finished Secondary School and had moved into his father's home, an atheistic and intellectual setting focused on conversations and discussions about books, theories, and ideas in general, though little was talked about politics,<ref>Ibid, page 10</ref> when he was 16 Gonzalo had witnessed an uprising in Arequipa in 1950, Gonzalo later commentated about the event during an interview:<ref>INTERVIEW WITH CHAIRMAN GONZALO, Central Committee Communist Party of Peru, 1988</ref>
<blockquote>I'd say that what has most influenced me to take up politics has been the struggle of the people. I saw the fighting spirit of the people during the uprising in Arequipa in 1950--how the masses fought with uncontainable fury in response to the barbarous slaughter of the youth. And I saw how they fought the army, forcing them to retreat to their barracks. And how forces had to be brought in from other places in order to crush the people. This is an event that, I'd say, has been imprinted quite vividly in my memory. Because there, after having come to understand Lenin, I understood how the people, how our class, when they take to the streets and march, can make the reactionaries tremble, despite all their power.
At age 18, in 1952 Gonzalo had finished all of his studies, Gonzalo received medals upon graduation.</blockquote>


== Refounding of the Communist Party and Martial Law==
== Refounding of the Communist Party and Martial Law==


Chairman Gonzalo originally had aspirations to become a soldier in the Peruvian Army, however decided to become a lawyer, Gonzalo was enrolled in the University of the Great Father San Agustín of Arequipa in 1953, Gonzalo's Father primarily funded his education. After he graduated, he earned a degree in Philosophy and law, after graduating he became a clerk then finally landing on the job as a university lecture and becoming financially independent, no longer requiring his father's economic aid. During his time at the University Philosophy and Science became the center of his studies; in terms of theory, they led him to Marxism.<ref>Ibid, Page 13-15</ref>


Chairman Gonzalo wrote two theses, "On the Kantian Theory of Space" and "The Democratic-Bourgeois State". When he was 26. The first aimed to demonstrate the unsustainability of Kant's subjective idealist position on space and, conversely, to reaffirm the Marxist philosophical position of space (and also of time, although this thesis does not address time) as a manifestation of matter in eternal movement, based on current science. The second aimed to demonstrate the obsolescence of the democratic-bourgeois state, and bourgeois in general, based on how its practice proves the negation of its own principles and how it has plunged the world into the greatest exploitation and oppression, while simultaneously giving rise to its gravedigger, the proletariat, a class that has opened a new chapter in history. Two political events, alongside the aforementioned, mark the development of Gonzalo's class consciousness, the earlier mentioned uprising in Arequipa in 1950, and another not yet mentioned event of class struggle in the same area in 1956 which brought down Esparza Zañartu, and initiated the end of the Ochenio.
The first Marxist works Gonzalo read were, [[the Communist Manifesto]], and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he received them shortly after the death of Comrade Stalin in 1953. Gonzalo admired and defended Stalin even defending him against [[Khrushchevite]] attacks in 1956, Gonzalo later joined the PCP around in the late 50's to the early 60's. Gonzalo first worked with workers and students, then in organization where he came to know the party's structure and how it functioned, he attended important events such as a regional meeting with comrades from Cuzco and Puno. Subsequently, he was involved in the preparation of the so-called 'National Liberation Front,' but Gonzalo was among those who opposed using this name for electoral purposes, as its outlook was the elections of 1962; a good part, if not the majority, took such a position in the most important internal struggle of the moment against a backdrop of the fight against revisionism that, years later, would ultimately lead to its expulsion from the Party in 1964. He first went to Tacna to promote his party work then later when to Lima where he participated in the national formation of the 'FLN,' where he met prominent leaders of the Party and figures from the colorful Peruvian left. During his time as a begginer Marxist he read Stalin's, "Questions of Leninism", "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", "What is to be done?", "New Democracy" and other works.
== Exile and Later Life ==
== Exile and Later Life ==
== Criticism ==
== Criticism ==

Revision as of 00:34, 1 September 2025

Jose Maria Sison

Portrait of Comrade Joma.
Born
Jose Maria Canlas Sison

8 February 1939
Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, Philippines
Died 16 December 2022
Utrecht, Netherlands
Nationality Filipino
Ideology Marxism–Leninism–Maoism
Anti-revisionism
Political party CPP

Jose Maria Sison (3 December 1934 – 11 September 2021), also known as Joma, was a Filipino revolutionary, writer, poet, professor, and founding member of the Communist Party of the Philippines from 1968 until his death in 2022. He founded the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and waged a people's war in the Philippines since 1969. He has been in exile in the Netherlands since 1988 and has led the party from there for the rest of his life.

Early Life and Education

Jose Maria Sison was born to a landlord political family in February 8, 1939, in Cabugao, Ilocos Sur. Some of his relatives were killed by the HUKBALAHAP (early Filipino Marxist-Leninist guerilla movement) due to their upper-class landlord status. He learned more about the “Huks”, as they were colloquially called, from Ilocos farm workers. He once was supportive of populist and anti-imperialist politicians. He claimed to get interested in Communism from reading an anti-communist book in his Jesuit High School.[1] Upon graduating from the University of the Philippines in 1959, he studied in Indonesia and upon returning to the Philippines, he became a Professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman of literature and later political science. He co-founded a youth organization called Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth) in 1964, where it stood against the Vietnam War, bureaucrat capitalism, and feudalism.


Refounding of the Communist Party and Martial Law

Exile and Later Life

Criticism

See also

References

  1. ↑ Rev Left Radio (October 31, 2023). "Jose Maria Sison: In Conversation with Comrade Joma". YouTube.

Notes

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