Subversive Lives. Susan F. Quimpo

      Preface

      The beginnings of this book date to 1989-1992 when Susan, working on short writing assignments for her journalism classes at Ohio University, and later at Columbia University, penned stories about the turmoil and distress that the family had experienced during the Marcos period. Most of her siblings and she herself had been deeply involved in the revolutionary movement to topple the Marcos dictatorship. Her professors were tremendously helpful and went out of their way by sending her stories to literary journals and introducing her to agents for what they perceived to be a book in progress.

      By 1991, however, the revolutionary movement in the Philippines had been divided by ideological and other differences. In the mid-1980s, hundreds of kasama (comrades) in Mindanao, possibly well over a thousand, had been tortured and killed within the movement itself, supposedly found guilty of being government infiltrators. Two years later, more were killed in another purging in the Southern Tagalog provinces; mass graves were discovered holding the mutilated bodies of kasama. The purge campaigns did die down but recriminations grew. Leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines, including those exiled in the Netherlands, squabbled about strategy and tactics and about the roots of the crisis of socialism. The revolutionary leadership eventually expelled dissenters and the Party split.

      When rumors of these events reached her, Susan felt that she had to stop writing. What was there to say? That this revolution that her siblings and she herself had devoted their lives to was now acting like the enemy and killing its own? For years, her manuscript lay untouched and pretty much forgotten, as children and other more immediate concerns took hold of her life.

      Meanwhile, Nathan, who had sought political asylum in the Netherlands in 1990, became deeply embroiled in the debates among Philippine political exiles. Following his expulsion from the CPP on trumped-up charges and the split in the movement in 1992-1993, he returned to the academe, finishing his master’s in international relations in 1994.

      While continuing to involve himself in Philippine solidarity activities, he decided to write about his experiences in the movement, hoping to eventually publish a historical memoir. Nathan thought that, at that time, not enough stories had been published about life in the revolutionary movement, about the great difficulties and sacrifices, about the joys, pains, fears, and anguish of kasama and their loved ones in the struggle against the dictatorship. Through his account, he also wanted to show what had gone wrong, where the Party and the movement had faltered. To gather data for his book, he pored over the old documents and files of kasama and the Philippine solidarity groups in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, including files of his brother Ryan in Paris. In 1996, shortly after acquiring Dutch nationality, Nathan returned to the Philippines for the first time since going into exile and collected more material.

      But after writing over 400 pages in three years, Nathan still had not finished. Doubts crept in. The process seemed endless. Moreover, Nathan was not satisfied with what he had written, feeling that he lacked the narrative skills to make the story come alive. Nor could he continue any longer without a stable job. He put aside his manuscript and took a teaching position at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.

      A friend of Susan, Vicente (Vince) Rafael, a scholar of Philippine history at the University of Washington in Seattle, proved instrumental in rekindling Susan’s and then Nathan’s interest in book writing. Sometime in 2005, in a casual conversation with Susan and her husband, George, Vince asked, “By the way, are you in any way related to that family of Quimpos who were all involved in the underground movement?” “Oh yes, that’s us. I’m the youngest of those Quimpos,” Susan answered. “Well someone ought to write that story!” remarked Vince. When Susan told him that she had begun writing a memoir years ago, he requested to see some chapters. Susan mentioned that her brother Nathan also had an unfinished memoir, but with a more political slant to it. It was then that Vince suggested, “Why don’t you put your chapters together?”

      Susan and Nathan warmed to the idea. Susan retrieved her abandoned chapters. While still entertaining the possibility of coming up with his own book as a separate project, Nathan excised sections from his rambling manuscript and recast them into what he hoped would be more readable stories that would better mesh with Susan’s narrative. On his own initiative, Vince sent Susan’s chapters to Anvil Publishing, which quickly expressed interest in the book. After assembling draft chapters, Susan and Nathan decided to seek feedback from their siblings and in-laws, to help check for inaccuracies. They sent out their draft, inviting contributions but not expecting much.

      But their siblings were inspired to write, and they did, one by one. Some had ready memories, quickly composed. Others had to dig up their old files, clippings, mementos. Eventually, the book project became an endeavor of all the living siblings, with Susan taking on the considerable task of weaving the bits together into a coherent narrative.

      Many memories were of earlier, pre-martial law family life, of an itinerant household moving from Iloilo to Pampanga and around various locations in Manila. Others were of the strains and tensions between our parents and the activists in the family, as well as Mom’s and Dad’s passing away in turbulent times. Almost everyone had grim stories to tell about the Marcos years: life in the underground, on the run, or in the hills; military raids, arrests, detention, torture, forced disappearance; separation from family and close friends. Some added stories of study, work, or exile in far-flung parts of the globe. For some, it was an easy process, for others a difficult one. But for everyone, writing had some cathartic result.

      Norman welcomed the chance to put together his recollections of a time when he was convinced he was doing his patriotic and Christian duty, when he had felt a deep sense of fulfillment in spite of the attendant terrors. He could tell his story and give a full and balanced account of everything he could recall. He also welcomed the chance to finally confront the sorrows and traumas of those years, the worst being those occasions when he would learn that comrades he had worked with had been killed by the armed forces. Perhaps by telling or retelling that part of their life stories that intersected with his, he could give them some recognition. To Norman, these kasama, who had worked selflessly in the mass movement, were the true leaders of the nation, even though they never had the chance to do more than just kindle the spark of popular protest against injustice and oppression.

      Ryan contributed his tales and his knowledge of the movement because he wanted to leave a legacy for his children, grandchildren, and generations of Quimpos to come. He wanted them to understand the history of the family and why his sons and grandchildren had grown up in France. He also thought it was a way to pay tribute to his dead brothers and to very dear friends who were no longer with him.

      Not everyone found it easy, or desirable, to revisit the past. When Susan had started interviewing her siblings and writing stories about the family’s experiences for her journalism classes, Lillian, who had migrated to Australia, told her that it was difficult to recall events in her past activist life. Since she had left the movement, she had mostly wanted to forget. On a visit to Perth, Susan interviewed Lillian and managed to elicit information for a brief account. Years later, asked whether she wished to contribute more actively to a family memoir, Lillian was reluctant. She feared the work would celebrate the “courageous, noble, romantic, and glorious” sacrifice of activists, when all she could see was wasted lives. She cringed at the possibility of a Dickensian tear-jerker. Still, as the book grew in heft and she could read more of her siblings’ stories, Lillian eventually came round.

      Emilie admits that she cried after reading early drafts of Susan’s, Nathan’s and Ryan’s chapters. She wanted to contribute to the family book, though she had separated herself from the family in