Dispatches From the People’s War in Nepal by Li Onesto

From Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal:

The squad members file in and stack their rifles against the wall. Some of the young women guerrillas come and sit right next to me on the bed. They are wearing People’s Army uniforms—military green pants with many roomy pockets and matching jackets. The caps are sort of squared off on the top with a full brim—a big, bright red star declares from the front. For the next couple of hours members of this cultural squad tell me about themselves and their revolutionary passion. Almost all of them come from poor peasant families. The women are the first to speak and talk about the tremendous repression in their villages and how they came to join the People’s Army. At first the women guerrillas seem shy and hesitant. But as each one takes her turn to speak I notice strength and determination in their calm manner. They have a character about them common to teenage girls around the world—he way they sit next to each other, whisper a secret, or fix one another’s hair. But there is also a communal and disciplined way about them that comes from living and fighting together as a military unit.

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The squad commander tells about actions they have taken to get land: "The party decided to target this Indian comprador and landowner. So at night, at 10:00 pm, seven squad members encircled his house, together with nearly 100 peasants. He was sleeping on the second floor and we called out, "We are the forest rangers." He woke up and came outside on the railing but didn’t come downstairs. Then we gave a real introduction, saying, "We are Maoist guerrillas with the peasants." We gave a speech exposing his bad role and four squad members went to seize his harvested crops. We broke down the wall of his storehouse and all the peasants went inside, shouting slogans. We distributed the crops and people took as much as they could carry. But even this was only part of all his wealth."

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I can’t help thinking how these women seem to have been changed by the hope this revolution is giving them. I have been in Nepal long enough to see many other poor women, first in the city, then as we traveled through the countryside. My camera had captured images of vendors squatting beside piles of vegetables or tourist trinkets. I had given rupees to women begging in the streets with their kids. In the countryside, I crossed paths with peasant women hauling heavy loads up mountain trails. I saw the tired faces and discouraged eyes of women stoking fires as the sun began its next ascent. The women in this village are no doubt just as poor and experiencing as much, perhaps even more, hardship and poverty than the people I’ve seen outside this guerrilla zone. But the faces of these women have a very different expression. Here, the women seem confident, their body movements less heavy. They look happy and, at the same time, deadly serious. They have a vision of a better future that comes through in the edge to their words. Their hatred of the police and others who oppress them informs the hard look in their eyes. Their faith in this revolution gives them a physical confidence in how they move about.

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Word has been going round the nearby villages that "the journalist from the United States" has arrived and spontaneously, villagers have been gathering outside to greet me. We decide to take a break so I can meet these people. We go outside and I see that over 100 people have gathered on a hillside nearby. The crowd is almost all women and children, and, as we walk up the hillside, I can feel their anticipation and intense curiosity. It is late in the day and the last rays of the sun are emanating from low on the horizon, but the many different colors of people’s clothes look bright even in the dusky light. When we get to the top of the hill the crowd erupts in applause. And when I take my camera out to capture the moment, everyone, even the smallest child, raises their fists in the air. The whole scene reminds me once again how politicized the people in these war zones are and how much they want the world to know about their struggle.

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The cultural squads travel from village to village putting on programs. And they also work in the fields with the peasants, participate in people’s power committees, and carry out armed actions against the police and other enemies of the People’s War. They are constantly developing new songs, dances, and skits. I notice they all carry little dog-eared notebooks in which they write down songs and poems and they frequently pull them out to share with each other.