Letters from the Underground: Ang Bayan and the construction of a counterhegemonic subjectivity during the anti‑dictatorship struggle

KM Mongaya

June 2

Studies on the oppositional press that challenged the media monopoly of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship which ruled the Philippines with an iron-fist from 1972 to 1986 have mostly focused on small independent media locally known as the "mosquito press." Yet less attention has been paid to the underground newspapers run by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) which waged a nationwide armed resistance against the dictatorship. This article critically interrogates 40 Letters to the Editor (Letters) published in the pages of Ang Bayan [The People], the CPP Central Committee's publication. Diverging from the focus of existing scholarship on the faithfulness of the underground press to mainstream journalistic conventions, the article instead locates its significance as a repertoire of contention that helps in the organization and mobilization of its community of readers composed of party members, guerrilla fighters, activists, and allies. Reading the Letters draws attention to the construction of a counterhegemonic subjectivity marked by a centralizing impetus and communist militancy. The Letters also give a glimpse of the ideological reevaluations that had engulfed the communist movement in the decade following the fall of the dictatorship.

Read the article here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381092922_Letters_from_the_Underground_Ang_Bayan_and_the_Construction_of_a_Counterhegemonic_Subjectivity_during_the_Anti-dictatorship_Struggle