The Ecological Terrain of Class War in the Cadre Poetry of Mayamor / Maya Daniel / Roger Felix Salditos

• Main Author: Sy, Jose Monfred C.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: cadre writing; ecopoetics; Edel Garcellano; National Democratic literature; partisan poetry; Roger Felix Salditos
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss39/29; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2008/viewcontent/KK_2039_2C_202022_2028_20Forum_20Kritika_20in_20Honor_20of_20Edel_20E._20Garcellano_20__20Sy.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

In his cultural criticism, Edel Garcellano protests that literature is a politically partisan act in a “terrain of class war.” Cadre writings from “liberated” or “red” zones, Garcellano writes, demonstrate a clear partisanship with the peasants, workers, and other participants of the liberation struggle waged by the National Democratic movement in the Philippines. His commentary on the ideologization of writers invites us to investigate works produced in the context of the protracted people’s war to better understand the so-called “liberated consciousness” of cadre writers. Mobilizing Garcellano’s interpretive model of partisan symmetry between author and text, this paper critiques poems written by martyred red fighter Roger Felix Salditos—also known by his noms-de-guerre/plume Mayamor and Maya Daniel— published recently in the collection 50: Mga Binalaybay ni Roger Felix Salditos (Mayamor/Maya Daniel) with translations by Kerima Lorena Tariman (2020). Specifically, I take interest in the tropification of the natural environment in his writings. It has been observed that the figuration of ecology in National Democratic literature rejects representations of nature that reify the domination of the human species-being over their environment. I argue that Salditos’ poetry dramatizes a cadre’s inhabitation of the ecological terrain of the guerilla zone, shaped by conflicts over land rights and resource ownership. His ecopoetics gives readers insight on how a liberated consciousness involves learning from praxis within and a dialectical understanding of the natural environment.