This is part of the podcast series produced by the PCIJ in 2006 to mark the 20th year of the 1986 People Power. Check our page Remembering Edsa here.
'Edsa was like a new dawn for me'
Bernabe 'Kumander Dante' Buscayno, the legendary founder of the New People's Army (NPA), was rotting in a Marcos prison in Camp Crame when People Power broke out in the streets just outside his cell. Freed from detention after Marcos fell, Dante and other communists took a stab at electoral politics, running for the Senate in 1987. He lost, and was nearly killed not long afterward when unknown men fired at his vehicle. He returned to farming in Capas, Tarlac, the birthplace of the NPA. When he was interviewed for this podcast, he said he no longer believed in the primacy of armed struggle.
Photographs by Lilen Uy
Podcasts by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism