Related Post: “Cordillera Day”
Cordi Day – April 24 or July 15? The Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA) takes the first date, the Cordillera Bodong Administration (CBA) prefers the second. The former hoists Macli-ing Dulag’s icon, the latter flashes Conrado Balweg’s.
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Who was Balweg? Let me try to answer the question from four perspectives:
Chadli Molintas Command & His Former Comrades in the New People’s Army (NPA): He was a traitor to the Revolutionary Cause, he had become corrupt, he deserved the death of a criminal.
His Former Allies in the Cordillera Bodong Administration (CBA) and the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA): He started out right, but ended up being co-opted by the System; he started out as a true Revolutionary and Reformist, but ended up becoming the typical Politician and the despicable Treasure Hunter he once despised.
His Supporters in the CBA/CPLA/AFP Integrees: He was fallible as everyone is, circumscribed by his time as most are. He still remains an icon of the Cordillera’s fight for justice and development.
His Other Friends: He was a real father figure who cared for his men as he would his children, a selfless leader who strove to identify himself with the plight of his comrades.
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A wee boy in the last half of the ’80s, I was one of those whose dreams were colored by this fellow Ibvyanao whose exploits were romanticized by the 1987 film, “Balweg: The Rebel Priest.” He was our Robin Hood and William Tell. I was then the proudest of all the young boys in our hometown of Tabuk when I sat on Ka Ambo’s lap in a Philippine Information Agency (PIA-Kalinga) car on our way to the provincial military HQ, Camp Juan M. Duyan, from the Radyo ng Bayan station. I was part of the small group of well-wishers who anxiously watched while two Huey helicopters whisked him and his bodyguards away to, presumably, Baguio City and wondered whether there was something ominous in the second helicopter’s near crash when its rotor whacked the tip of a tree branch just after take off.
Camp Juan M. Duyan, Tabuk - AUS photo
Before that, I was part of the nervous throng in the St. Williams Academy gymnasium of Tabuk during the initial negotiations between Ka Ambo and government representatives. I gawked at the gaunt-looking but evidently fiercely determined CPLA troops whose queer-looking weapons included “frankenstein” automatics designed with metallic and wooden materials. They were as armed to the teeth and as alert as the military troops sent to secure the area. Somehow, seeing my father at the negotiation table with Angelo Daguio and Rene Quijano of DZRK behind him assured me that all would be well.
Ka Ambo, St. Williams Academy (now St. Louis College) gymnasium, Tabuk
When we moved to Baguio in 1988, I frequented the “Cordillera House” atop Wright Park just to espy on the black-clad and fully armed “Sipla” (CPLA troops) and to get a glimpse of “Father Balweg.” I was only able to see him a few times for he seemed to be always on the move in his white “Turtletop.” My father eventually joined Balweg’s CBA but, together with Atty. Joel Obar, Mailed Molina and James Sawattang, broke away from Ambo’s leadership some years later. I would still see many Sipla in our house and elsewhere even after that — without their freshly tailored black uniforms, good-looking combat shoes, and fresh supply of toothbrushes.
Among the issues and controversies Balweg found himself in was his alleged treasure hunting ventures which his critics said did not even spare the late Dictator’s bust along Marcos Highway, his suspected “ghost projects,” and his being implicated in the murder of his tribesmate, Banao pangat (tribal elder) and military reservist Col. Manuel Banggawan.
13 years after breaking away from the CPP-NPA, Balweg would be assassinated on 31 December 1999 in Malibcong, Abra by his former comrades led by his brother Jovencio (Ka Rudy) for a long list of “crimes against the people.”
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Was Balweg a figure worthy of emulation or one worthy of condemnation? Was he a true fighter for the people, or a dyed-in-the-wool pretender whose personal ambitions overshadowed the greater cause which he was supposed to live and die for?
Whatever ideological leanings or personal background informs your opinion of the late “Rebel Priest” Conrado “Ka Ambo” Balweg, I suppose you can’t deny that he was once a force to reckon with, a potential unitive and punitive instrument against the ills we Igorots have commonly faced, like marginalization and intramural discord.
Thinking of Balweg on this 21st anniversary of Cordillera Day makes me consider how much about his life tells us about ourselves, how his failures and achievements are reflective of our (i.e., Cordillerans’) struggles as a people.
I suggest we continue to reflect on who he was and what he stood for. In this respect, it doesn’t really matter much whether we belong to the Right, Right of Center, Center, Left of Center, or Left. What really matters is how far our maturity can go as we attempt to examine and reflect upon the life of a friend and hero minus his/her halo, wings and whitewashed robe — or of a foe without his horns, trident and blazing cloak.
Talna ken Kappia! 
ca August 1986. Interview with Rebel Priest Fr. Conrado Balweg in the house of the Ganggangans in Sadanga, Mt. Province by Augustus Ulat Saboy, then Station Manager of Radyo Ng Bayan Kalinga (DZRK), before the Mt. Data Sipat on 13 September 1992. This was Balweg's first and last interview with the government radio station before he surrendered to the government. With Saboy was Architect Guido Kub-ao of DPWH Kalinga Engineering District.
Hi. I am a long time reader. I wanted to say that I like your blog and the layout.
Peter Quinn
There you go with your simplistic communistic ideology.
Father Balweg discovered that he was a man; not some automated robot of the people and for this you executed him? Oh but you still senitimentally admire him.
You are the inheritors of the Khemer Rouge and Mao’s Cultural revolution. You seek to annihilate anyone who deviates from your confused and economically unvieable creed.
Fortunately the world has moved on and all you have to offer as a People’s Paradise, and possible goal of your revolution, is the starving, totalitarian regime of North Korea.
Get Real….
Good day kapatid!
Thanks for taking time to comment. You might not believe it, but i think we’re practically on the same side on the issue of whether the road of communism is really the way to utopia. Although it seems like i haven’t made my position clear in this post, i think your vitriolic outpouring against me is uncalled for and should instead be addressed to the webmasters of philippinerevolution.net
I respect your frankness though, and your response should cause me no offense in the final analysis for after all, you might not know me personally as to be able to understand fully where i am speaking from. Allow me then to briefly introduce myself to you.
Ideologically, I don’t consider myself a communist. I teach at the University of the Philippines Baguio, and I do have communist friends but I don’t think these facts necessarily make me a communist. I consider myself a Christian, and, although I have recently bidden goodbye to a sectarian cause and am not currently an active member of any institutional church, i still believe that Christianity can still be a powerful force in personal transformation and social reform were it stripped of the metal plates riveted to it by the powers-that-be entrenched in the various ecclesiastical high places (I suggest you read my articles under the category “Religion: My Commentaries”). As a Christian, I find it impossible to reconcile most of the basic tenets of communism to those of my faith.
However, that I disagree with many of the methods and programs and even question the feasibility of the teleological vision of a true-blue Maoist-Leninist-Marxist-etc. should not mean that i can’t engage in dialogues with communists and learn from them in the process. My being at the other side of the ideological fence doesn’t excuse me from not attempting to understand the historical or socio-cultural background/millieu the communist is speaking from. Being in an academic environment and having had to witness sectarianism in politics and religion for over two decades now, I have learned to try looking at competing “metanarratives” dispassionately as best as I can and figuring out what philosophy (and i use this term in a general sense) informs a particular discourse, and what it is that makes me accept or reject it.
Balweg was a man of his times. I may not approve of everything that he believed in or applaud everything that he did, but I don’t have to condemn everything that he ever said or did or thought, either. I just have to continue studying about him to see what I can learn from his life.
“Sentimentally admire him”? In some ways, yes — based on at least some points in his life, like when he fought against the intrusion of the Cellophil into indigenous lands. I always admire people who fight for the preservation of our indigenous heritage, or the rights of the underprivileged and the voiceless. One reason I “sentimentally admire” my father — a distant relative of Ka Ambo — despite his failings as a man, is that he fought for the preservation of our cultural integrity which included helping codify the provisions (pagta) of our indigenous peace pact system (bodong), and lobbying to secure a forest cover in Balbalan, Kalinga which later became as the “Balbalan-Balbalasang National Park” (BBNP). Parenthetically, one reason I adore Jesus is his being a champion of the masses, a revolutionary of some sorts in ancient, Sadducee/Pharisee/Herodian-dominated Palestine. At the risk of being flamboyant, let me just say that for all you know, were we to get acquainted with each other, I sure could find some qualities in you that I may be able to “sentimentally admire” in my graying years.
I subscribe to the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said, “Every man [sic] is my superior in some way — in that, I learn of him.”
You mentioned Mao. I think I have quite an idea why today, many Chinese folks would say “Mao was 70% right, and 30% wrong” — something unthinkable (more accurately, unpronounceable) in Mao’s time. Having earned a degree in Political Science and having taught ESL in China for half a year (within which time I had striven to deeply immerse myself into the Chinese culture), I think I have a little idea as to why communism failed to keep its promise of creating a paradise on earth. But then again, I don’t have to be a devotee of Mao before I can learn from his life and works. In relation to this, you might want to read my article, “Antonio Miclat’s ‘Antonio and His China Wall’” which you can find under the Critical Essays category.
Amani!