Written by: CPSO Toronto

Canada is the home of a large Filipino diaspora, with nearly 250,000 Filipinos living in the Toronto Census Area (CMA) alone. Many have come to this country as part of the labour export policy, begun in the 1970s to deal with the financial crisis brought about by the Marcos dictatorship. Today, 8.5 per cent of the Philippines GDP is the product of remittances by Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

Such workers are often the subjects of labour trafficking, which encompasses a broad range of sectors including agricultural and resource extraction workers, care workers, and even international students. Even more regularized migrant workers face tremendous exploitation and long separations from their families in the Philippines.

The Filipino diaspora also brings seasoned activists, workers and peasants and professionals who came of age under the US-backed Marcos dictatorship. They founded some of the first Philippines solidarity organizations, focused primarily on the anti-dictatorship struggle. Many of them were former political prisoners, survivors of Marcos’ campaign to crush the people’s movements through disappearances, imprisonment, torture, and extra-judicial killings. They carried out research into the crimes of the Philippine government, lobbied against financial and military support for Marcos, educated Canadians on the conditions in their homeland. They also organized people to people relations, including those resulting in the Canadian director Nettie Wild’s 1988 film A Rustling of Leaves, on the conditions of political and armed struggle under post-dictatorship President Cory Aquino.

Despite the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, the problems of state terror in the Philippines have continued. Peasants, trade unionists, indigenous people, urban poor, and many other sectors of society face extreme repression whenever they organize to assert their rights and to transform Filipino society. Foreign mining and logging companies, including Canadian companies, tear wealth from the country, leaving environmental disasters and poverty in their wake.

New solidarity organizations have formed in response.

The Toronto premiere of My Friend the Terrorist: A Tale of Love and Revolution (MFT), coming on February 15, is the product of the relationship between these older and newer generations of solidarity activists. Created and directed by Montrealers, Malcolm Guy and Demetri Estdelacropolis, the documentary film illustrates the lives of the late Jose “Joma” Maria Sison (1939-2022) and his wife, Julie de Lima (84), two eminent Filipino revolutionary figures living in exile in the Netherlands. Founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and former leaders of its armed struggle against the Marcos dictatorship, Joma and Julie were left in exile after the revocation of their passports by the Aquino government.

The film follows Malcolm’s “terrorists” through their busy daily lives in Utrecht, reminiscing on their classmate days in the early 1960s, their three marriages to one another, their time in prison, and their leadership in the peace talks between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the then Duterte-led Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). Their forced separation from their homeland is highlighted as the film moves to the Philippines, embedding the audience with diverse members of the New People’s Army (NPA), the military wing of the CPP, as they celebrate an important anniversary, and mourn the deaths of several leading members.

The NPA members are workers, peasants and Indigenous peoples, with sincere causes and motivations; mutually helped and supported by the people of the countryside, members express their desire to help others in interviews throughout the film, and describe camaraderie with those around them as their inspiration to persevere through hardships. Their families worry for them, but a tearful reflection from two parents shows sympathy and understanding for their son’s participation in the movement. The film shows the close connections between Joma and Julie, in their European exile, and the struggling masses of the Filipino people in their beloved homeland.

Produced amidst another ongoing liberation struggle in Palestine in which resistance forces and solidarity organizations have earned a “terrorist” designation from Canada, MFT reaffirms the rightfulness international peoples’ struggles, shines a light on the material forces which propel them to take up arms, and offers a window unto the thoughts, feelings and everyday lives of those embroiled in the fight for collective liberation.

My Friend the Terrorist: A Tale of Love and Revolution is screening on February 15, at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave, Toronto), at 2:30pm EST. Tickets are available at cpso.pw/mft, or in small numbers at the screening itself. Inquiries may be directed to cpso.toronto@gmail.com.

CPSO Toronto is the Canada-Philippines Solidarity Organization’s Toronto branch. The national CPSO website can be found here.

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