Inside the New People’s Army (NPA), Punta Dumalag, known more for its turbulent business backstory than for its insurgent past, was a key rebel laboratory situated on the edge of the gulf. Only ten kilometers away from the city center, it was a ‘ramshackle fishing community’ and ‘a model communist village.’ It was here that most of the rebel experiments were introduced.
William Chapman, William, in ‘Inside the Philippine Revolution’ (1987), described it as ‘a kind of Philippine commune where under the [communist] party’s protection and guidance the dispossessed had taken possession… [a] quiet self-contained enclave of outwardly satisfied converts… [that] fit as neatly the CPP’s definition of success.’
The choice of the area as an insurgent lab was expected; it was a squatter colony that strongly echoed the social disparity of the 1980s. Given the presence of discontent and apathy towards the state, the communists exploited the opportunity and made the headland a training ground for guerrilla raids, barrio organizing, grassroots education, and arms gathering.
By exploiting the social inequality, the armed unit of the rebels, the NPA, kindled the citizens to protest and taught local leaders to convey their entreaties to the authorities. But what ignited a wave of already pent-up anger was when the city government launched the first demolitions. Chapman wrote, ‘the citizens were aroused, polarized and ready for a long fight.’
To ensure the shanties were safe from pulling down, ‘brigades of women formed lines across the entry road, facing the demolition teams and a military squad. At their sides were buckets of sand, stones, bricks and human waste… to shower on the invaders should an attack begin. In the night, the village was patrolled by armed members of an NPA-organized militia. Their weapons consisted of six old rifles obtained in a raid on the landowners’ sawmill.’
Using the tried and tested negotiations that would drag on for weeks, the colony was spared.
As a lab for experiments, Punta Dumalag was ‘a model of equity.’ So-called ‘revolutionary taxes’ were pegged according to the capacity of every family, usually at P2 monthly. The collection was evenly divided between the underground movement and the legal fronts in the form of people’s organizations. The largest source of extorted money was ‘a single company, the landlord’s sawmill, [which] was required to pay annually an amount based on earnings.’
To expand the tax base of the rebels, they imposed levies on enterprises outside the community, including fishing boat operators working near the village’s waters and the lumber firms that purchased logs and lumber from the sawmill. The victims of the extortions balked at the manipulations of rebels. There was no option but to keep the mills turning otherwise they would be subject to continuous harassment.
Before its conversion into a communist lab, Punta Dumalag was a strip of land jutting out to the sea with mangroves on the east and a cove on the west. The mangrove forest, then managed by the fishery bureau, was secured from the turbulent waves by a breakwater. With only a very few squatters in the late 1970s, the dense thickets provided a spawning spot for ocean denizens.
‘The land,’ Chapman wrote, ‘was legally claimed by a wealthy Davao entrepreneur whose use of it had been limited to a large sawmill located at one end of the beach. Having at first little need for the rest of the property, he had left the squatters alone for several years, and the residents’ main concern was the large number of thieves and housebreakers, mostly outsiders, who roamed without fear of arrest since the closest police station was far away.’
Over time, the once rustic public land, partitioned by so-called ‘public servants,’ had turned into a private enclave of establishments and rest houses owned by affluent social figures.
