Deeper Ground, Darker Shadows

Deeper Ground, Darker Shadows is the memoir of Eddie L. Quitoriano, who grew up in a rural part of the Philippine island of Mindanao and eventually became one of the top organizers of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and commander of the party’s New People’s Army (NPA). Coming to political consciousness as a university student, Quitoriano chooses revolution over the priesthood and embarks on a life of unforeseen danger. Sent abroad as an envoy to seek military assistance from sympathetic governments and other radical factions, he travels from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua to Syria, Libya, North Korea, Peru, Brazil, and Yugoslavia.

Quitioriano finds revolutionary life thrilling but dangerous, with secretly arranged meetings and drops, doctored passports, and hastily planned plastic surgery. He wrestles with the global implications of his work, experiences daily struggles to survive in always-changing political circumstances, and is profoundly human in his love and concern for the family he has left behind in the Philippines. What emerges is a view of international revolutionary movements that only an insider could write. Quitoriano provides an essential and unique missing piece of twentieth-century Philippine and leftist history.

The book includes a critical introduction by Patricio N. Abinales and Francisco J. Lara Jr., situating Quitoriano’s story within the larger context of Southeast Asian political history, as well as a foreword by Patricia G. Steinhoff.