Amazons of the Huk Rebellion: Gender, Sex, and Revolution in the Philippines

5 Amazons in the Unfinished Revolution

5 Amazons in the Unfinished Revolution In early 1952, while Celia Mariano and William Pomeroy were preparing notes for their next educational session, their forest camp came under surprise attack from the Philippine military. They were nearly killed and were temporarily separated while fleeing the camp. But they recovered and established another forest camp in an even more secluded area of the Sierra Madre. A few months later, however, in April 1952, they sustained another attack, and this time they did not escape. “Around noontime,” Celia recalled, “a volley of gunfire descended on our huts and sent us dashing down a hillside. Some of our comrades, including women, were killed.”1 Bill Pomeroy detailed these dramatic events in his memoir: When the rapid fire begins we are for one moment stunned, heads jerked to each other. Then we are on our bared feet, racing for the edge of the drop beyond the hut. The enemy has come over the top of the mountain and has descended behind us, into the middle of the camp, and is firing upon us from among the empty huts. The noise is deafening. The ground is churned at our feet and bits of twig and bark fly about our heads.2 A bullet grazed Bill’s ankle, and he tripped down a steep descent. With his “glasses smashed and head cut,” he lay “senseless behind a large tree.” Injured and virtually blind without his glasses, Pomeroy was unable to go any further. He recalled Celia saying, “I have to leave you.” Then they “exchanged a look of love, pity and terror,” touched hands, 250 and separated.3 The next thing he knew he was surrounded by cursing men who were threatening him with their rifles. This “strange, blind struggle in the forest” was the end of the line for Bill Pomeroy. With a handful of comrades Celia was able to escape and find a hiding place in the dense forest. But the soldiers were everywhere and clearly determined to continue their search for the fugitive Huks. Once, as a group of soldiers were eating in a clearing, Celia and her fellow guerrillas watched silently from the trees. When the soldiers left the Huks ran into the clearing to scavenge scraps of food, licking the insides of empty cans. Celia remembered that the inside of an empty can of lard “tasted like butter to me.”4 Trying to elude the pursuing soldiers they “scurried like rabbits all over the mountains,” but after six days of running Celia and her comrades were captured, “exhausted, starving, feeble, and frightened.”5 Celia and Bill were reunited at the headquarters of the Philippine army. All the major Manila newspapers hailed their capture as a triumph for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The assault on the forest camp was part of a larger plan, code-named Operations Four Roses, whose intent was to capture the four highest-ranking leaders of the HMB: Luis Taruc, Jesus Lava, Alfredo Saulo, and Jose de Leon (known as Kumander Dimasalang). The “prize catch,” the “Yank Huk” William Pomeroy, after a mere two days of operations was treated by the Manila press as a victory for the AFP, and the headlines were accompanied by photos of Pomeroy dressed in military fatigues, looking “pale and haggard, unkempt . . . badly needing a haircut . . . [and] scared as he was helped out of a jeep.”6 “I am delighted to hear of Pomeroy’s capture,” declared Philippine president Elpidio Quirino in a telegram conveying his “warmest congratulations and the people’s gratitude to the gallant officers and men” of the AFP.7 The U.S. embassy was equally quick to disown Pomeroy, assuring the Philippine government that it would not intervene in his case despite the fact that he was an American citizen. He “should be tried by a Philippine court,” declared the embassy , “for his association with the Huks and the local communists.”8 His capture, according to a reporter for the Philippines Free Press, was the “sorry ending of the sad story of former American GI turned Huk, William Pomeroy.”9 When newspapers covered the capture of Celia Mariano several days later, the press coverage was more restrained and Celia was invariably referred to as the “wife of Pomeroy,” undermining her prominent position in the Huk organization. Found with three other Amazons Amazons in the Unfinished Revolution 251 w “sitting dejectedly...