By Joel B. Belinan
A peace agreement seems to be a graveyard for armed groups in many countries around the World. This was true with the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA) that signed the Mt. Data Peace Accord with the government on Sept. 13, 1986. Last Monday, Sept. 13, the Cordillera commemorated its 35th year since its signing. Thanks to an executive order issued by Malacanang, it was a special non-working holiday in the region. Otherwise, it would have passed unnoticed. I remember clearly it was only in 2012 that the government started giving importance and recognition to this particular day. What was being commemorated was July 15, the signing of EO220 in 1987 that created the Cordillera Administrative Region. As I said in my column here last week, 35 years since that day and yet the dream of those who signed it is nowhere in sight, referring to the establishment of the Cordillera Autonomous Region.
The creation of the Cordillera Administrative Region is not a partial realization of the Mt. Data Sipat as the posts from the government tend to put it. The issuance of EO220 which created the CAR was only an afterthought during the follow-up negotiation and as a means to pacify the restless CPLA in the middle of 1987 or after the ambush that killed 8 high commanders of the group on June 23 of that year.
The question now is, did the Mt. Data Sipat in a way signal the disintegration of the CPLA? The answer is yes and no. Yes in the long run but no at the same time. Immediately after the signing, the group under the leadership of the late Conrado Balweg and with the support of the military and the government became a very potent force. Thousands of firearms and ammunition were supplied to the CPLA fighters in the guise of a joint operation against the communist’s New People’s Army (NPA) in the Cordillera. Their numbers swelled. And due to the CPLA’s familiarity with their former NPA comrades, the NPA’s presence in the region was reduced to the lowest ever. However, as could be glimpsed later, the government and its military apparatus showed their insecurities against the CPLA, and later on, military intelligence people successfully created internal conflicts within the group resulting in the creation of factions. The faction that was created and supported by the military, however, was not able to make any progress until after year 2000 when the CPLA’s charismatic leader, Fr. Balweg, was felled by an NPA assassin’s bullet on the tail-end of December 1999. After that, the CPLA became a chess piece of the government, and with no leader with the caliber of Balweg that the group could look up to, it continuously declined into irrelevancy.
Being close to many of the second-generation CPLA leaders, I usually asked the question why the leadership vacuum after the demise of Balweg. The answer I always got was that Balweg and his close associates had a very short timeline. They were very sure during the 1986 negotiation that in 3 to 7 years, autonomy will be attained and then the CPLA will completely self-abolish by integrating itself with what it envisioned as the Cordillera Region Security Force. But as history unfolded, we failed to ratify the organic acts passed by Congress not only once but twice.
Looking at it, the CPLA leadership including the Cordillera Bodong Administration (CBA) were very assuming or very naïve that autonomy would be easily attained. They underestimated the resolve of vested interests to oppose autonomy not only in the government side but more so from the private sector, the big corporations exploiting the Cordillera’s natural resources.
Contributory perhaps to this was the fact that the CPLA was never organized from the start as such. They were a group of red fighters who left the communist group due to ideological differences. Of particular interest among these differences was, after the announced cancellation by the government of the Chico River dam Project following the withdrawal of funding by the World Bank, the NPA allegedly could not justify its presence in the region. When the Lumbaya Company, an elite NPA unit composed of purely native warriors under the leadership of Fr. Balweg split and formed the CPLA in April of 1985, it was barely a year that it had been standing on its own as a group, where there was not much action, until the Cory government came to power in February 1986.
While the CPLA’s circumstances are different from other armed groups in other countries, its experience relative to its signing a peace agreement even before the attainment of its main objective is the same.
During the past 6 or 7 decades, there may have been a hundred revolutionary groups organized around the globe. Of course, most of which were communist or socialist-inspired and supported especially during the Cold War era. While most were either disintegrated or defeated to sign peace agreements with the respective ruling governments in the countries where they were such as those in Latin America, a few succeeded and became the governments in such countries. I am referring to Cuba that, through the leadership of Fidel Castro, easily beat the aristocratic dictatorial government of Cuba in the early 1950s, and maybe Vietnam.
In most peace agreements, the common complaint was the government failed to deliver on its obligation of which the same complaint is thrown against the other side. There was always evidence of insincerity on both sides. What can be glimpsed from most South American experiences was that their first batch of leaders whenever they retired, or were killed, or captured there was a big chance the group slowly changed into a different entity, or, worse, got engaged in the very profitable drug trade. Although a couple of those 50s and 60s revolutionary groups maintained their presence even until now due to the continued existence of the causes of their emergence, the presence of rampant injustices continue in their respective societies. The very common observation, however, on the South American experience is that once a revolutionary group signs a Peace agreement with its government, such group was bound to disintegrate without even realizing the very essence of the agreement. This means that a Peace agreement is the best weapon against any progressive armed group. **
