The Maoists’ Folly of Myth, Martyr-Making, and Hero Worship for Their Dead

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Word on the Street is Kontra-Kwento’s letter to the editor. Send yours to kontrakwento@gmail.com.

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Revolutions rise not only on ideology, but on stories. For the Maoists in the Philippines, myth-making has always been central to sustaining their half-century insurgency. From the earliest days of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), every death has been converted into legend, every fallen fighter canonized as “martyr,” and every defeat repackaged as “heroism.”

This obsession with martyrdom was deliberate. Jose Maria Sison, the CPP’s founding chairman, drew heavily from Maoist tradition, where the cult of sacrifice was a tool to enforce loyalty and discipline. Thus, when a cadre fell in battle or was executed by the movement itself, the Party ensured their memory was enshrined in propaganda, poems, and rituals. Grief was transformed into political fuel. Hence, their overused and recycled tribute phrase, Pinakamataas na pagpapugay!

Every parangal ng bayan, the CPP and its allied fronts commemorate their dead by turning village halls and campuses into shrines of remembrance. Portraits of slain comrades are paraded as though their deaths were not bitter ends but stepping stones to an inevitable victory. Ballads are sung, manifestos are read, and their names etched into the Party’s pantheon. But this ritualized remembrance is not about honoring individuals—it is about binding the living more tightly to the cause, demanding that they, too, be ready for the pinakamataas na sakripisyo.

And yet, beneath the pageantry lies the movement’s greatest weakness. The endless roll call of martyrs is not evidence of vitality but of stagnation. To sanctify loss is to normalize it. To elevate death as proof of commitment is to admit that survival, much less success, is no longer the measure.

The irony is stark: the Maoists claim to fight for life, liberation, and dignity, yet they have built their identity on death. Hero worship becomes less about valor and more about distraction—a way of masking the futility of a revolution trapped in its own nostalgia. Every name inscribed on their monuments is another reminder that the promised dawn has not come.

Meanwhile, the cult of martyrdom exacts a heavy cost. It teaches young recruits that the noblest contribution is to die, not to live meaningfully among their communities. It condemns families to cycles of grief dressed up as “pride.” And it blinds the movement from learning hard lessons about strategy, adaptation, and the very futility of armed struggle in a democratic society.

This is the Maoists’ folly: mistaking myth for momentum, mistaking the graveyard for proof of progress. A revolution that measures its legacy in corpses, not in communities uplifted, has already betrayed its cause.

History will not remember the CPP-NPA-NDF for the legends they tried to forge, but for the futures they denied—the lives cut short, the villages trapped in fear, and the generations of youth lured into a romance with death.

In the end, their pantheon of martyrs is not a monument to heroism, but a ledger of failure.

Lope Nagusara

Dating Maoista