Fighting on all Fronts (61 page)

We tried to step up education to the maximum, but after a time we couldn’t hold schools because we were continually on the move to evade enemy military operations… We turned out masses of propaganda materials, but very little of this reached the lower organs, let alone the masses.
¹¹⁴

Yet even if there had been a greater layer of educated cadre, communist forces, numbering perhaps 7,500, were like a drop in a bucket in a country of more than 16 million people. Working class urban insurrection and mass rural revolt might have stood a chance of creating a genuinely independent republic—if the mood had existed, if a general crisis of the Philippine state had come about and if there had been a mass and coherent revolutionary organisation available to lead it. Of those “ifs”, only the second seems arguable—but the support of US imperialism for the new government was always a given. Somewhere in an isolated forest HMB camp in August 1950 Pomeroy, cut off from general developments, remained optimistic:

The revolutionary situation is flowing toward a revolutionary crisis, which is the eve of the transfer of power. We are in the period of preparation for the strategic aim of seizing power. Our tactical aims are all those
steps that can effectively mobilise the allies and the reserves of the revolution into an increasing assault on the main enemy and their allies.
¹¹⁵

By late 1951 there was increasing war weariness among the people. US concern about the depth of the rebellion led President Truman to intervene with financial and military aid. This proved decisive, with 100,000 or more armed soldiers and others now directed against the rebels and the state’s integrity strengthened. The PKP Politburo had been captured in Manila in late 1950; many would spend the next two decades behind bars. Prominent Huk leaders were killed and the losses mounted. Those remaining were pursued by the army even into the mountains. Villagers became weary of lending support or just viewed the guerrillas as irrelevant as conditions changed. Fresh national elections turned out to be peaceful and the Nationalist Party victorious. This stoked hope that tangible reforms could be gained through legal means. Police reduced their abuses of the peasants, so the latter were less likely to feel the need for “Huk justice”. Pomeroy’s enthusiasm by now was sapped. He described the darkening mood in guerrilla ranks:

Fear is beginning to replace daring in many places. Enemy agents swarm everywhere and have arrested some distributors. Why do they surrender? Because many have joined in the hope of quick victories and they have lost their taste for it. Because…more Huks are dying now than ever before… Because they worry about family back in a barrio without a breadwinner… We had thought that by the leaders setting a high tempo we could set high the tempo of revolution. We have been living in a fool’s paradise… It is no longer victory that preoccupies us. It is survival.
¹¹⁶

By 1955 the HMB was disbanded and the PKP in tatters; almost all surviving leaders were now in prison. Here the party nucleus at least was maintained. Three years later the membership was estimated to be just 700.
¹¹⁷
The coming of the dusk over this remarkable movement, however, would not put the aspirations and grievances of the labouring classes to bed. The defeat of the resistance would prove only an extended interlude to the rising of another rebellious sun.

1
      The Huk nickname is widely used for both the People’s anti-Japanese Army and its post-war successor the People’s Liberation Army. The name stems from the Tagalog: Hukbalahap Hukbo ng Bayan Labon sa Hapun (People’s Anti-Japanese Army) and Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (People’s Liberation Army).

2
      An estimated 260,000 guerrilla fighters in 277 units were engaged throughout the country. These numbers include US troops, and a range of organisations with various alliances. See L Schmidt, American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance Movement on Mindanao During the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945, Master of Military Art and Science thesis (US Army Command and General Staff College, 1982), p2; H Crippen, “American imperialism and Philippine independence”,
Science and Society
, vol 11 (2), 1947, pp104-108.

3
      L Taruc,
Born of the People
(International Publishers, New York, 1953), p56.

4
      Taruc, 1953, p212.

5
      J V Ocay, “Domination and resistance in the Philippines: from the pre-Hispanic to the Spanish and American period”,
Lumina
, vol 21 (1), 2010, pp3-10.

6
      Ocay, 2010, pp10-11.

7
      W L Schurz,
Manila Galleon
, p127. Referenced in R Constantino,
A History of the Philippines
(Monthly Review Press, New York, 1975), p74.

8
      D Sturtevant,
Popular Uprisings in the Philippines 1840-1940
(Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1976), fn11, p26.

9
      R Constantino,
Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness
(Merlin Press, London, 1978), p30.

10
    N Cushner and J Larkin, “Royal Land Grants in the Colonial Philippines (1571-1626): implications for the formation of a social elite”,
Philippine Studies
, vol 26 (1/2), 1978, pp102-111.

11
    According to Phelan, the peasantry was neither destroyed nor greatly transformed. “In the provinces…no numerous class of wage earners emerged.” The indigenous population engaged in agriculture “under a complex system of debt peonage and sharecropping” that lasted through the 20th century. See J L Phelan,
The Hispanization of the Philippines
(University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1959), pp98, 116. According to Ocay, drawing on the more recent scholarship of Corpuz, “the old right of the native people to ownership of land was extinguished. The native people were only assigned a piece of land to cultivate and these were not titled under their names. As a result, the families in the pueblo were reduced to a single class of farmers who were obliged to work their assigned land. In this new system…there were no longer sharecroppers because everybody became a farm worker.” See Ocay, 2010, p12.

12
    “Some of the most famous revolts during the early phase of Spanish occupation were the Dagami Revolt in Cebu in 1567, the Manila Revolt (also known as Lakandula and Sulayman Revolts) in 1574, the Pampanga Revolt in 1585, Magat Salamat Revolt in 1587-88 in Manila, Magalat Revolt in Cagayan in 1596, Tamblot Revolt in Bohol in 1621-1622, Bankaw Revolt in Leyte in 1621-22, Maniago Revolt in Pampanga in 1660, Sumuroy Revolt in Samar in 1649-50, and many others. Most of these early revolts were directly caused by the exaction of tributes and forced and corvée labour and other forms of abuses by the Spanish colonialists”—Ocay, 2010, p14.

13
    J L Phelan, “Some Ideological Aspects of the Conquest of the Philippines”,
The Americas
, vol 13 (3), January 1957, p225.

14
    Phelan, 1959, p103.

15
    J Le Roy, “The Friars in the Philippines”,
Political Science Quarterly
, vol 18 (4), December 1903, p662.

16
    Until “the very end of the Spanish regime no more than 5 percent of the local population had any facility with the colonial language”—B Anderson, “Manila’s Cacique Democracy”,
New Left Review
, no 169, May/June 1988, p6.

17
    
P W Stanley,
A Nation in the Making: The Philippines and the United States 1899-1921
(Harvard, Cambridge, 1974), p43.

18
    Feodor Jagor quoted in J Le Roy,
Philippine Life in Town and Country
(GP Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1905), p151.

19
    J Israel,
Radical Enlightenment
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002), p3.

20
    R Constantino,
A History of the Philippines
(Monthly Review Press, New York, 1975), pp147-148.

21
    Carlos María de la Torre, letter of 4 January 1870, quoted in J N Schumacher,
Revolutionary Clergy
(Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City, 1981), pp18-19.

22
    Constantino, 1978, p123.

23
    Schumacher, 1981, p269.

24
    Tagalog: Kataastaasang Kagalanggalang na Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan—Highest and Most Respectable Society for the Sons of the People, founded in 1892.

25
    Constantino, 1975, pp161-163.

26
    L Fernăndez,
The Philippine Republic
(Columbia University, New York, 1926), p22.

27
    And by 1898 the friars controlled fewer than 50 percent of the colony’s parishes—M Martinez,
The Philippine Revolution
(International Academy of Management and Economics, Makati City, 2002), p164.

28
    Schumacher, 1981, pp81-112.

29
    Fernăndez, 1926, p45.

30
    Emilio Aguinaldo, “Filipinos, beloved brothers”, proclamation issued 6 December 1898, quoted in J Richardson,
Komunista
(Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City, 2011), p9.

31
    S Karnow,
In our Image
(Random House, New York, 1989), pp111-115.

32
    Karnow, 1989, p124.

33
    Schumacher considers this a biased exaggeration, but not without truth. See Schumacher, 1981, p275.

34
    This was not the case everywhere. In some places, such as the island of Negros, the US was welcomed. In Cebu some clergy took a neutral position, both in the initial revolution against Spain—because many parishes were already under secular Filipino control with the blessing of the local friar—and subsequently in the war against the US.

35
    Schumacher, 1981, p155.

36
    Schumacher, 1981, p144.

37
    Richardson, 2011, p13.

38
    Anderson, 1988, p11.

39
    Sturtevant, 1976, p204.

40
    Quoted in B Kerkvliet,
The Huk Rebellion
(Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford, 1977), p6.

41
    Taruc, 1953, pp13-15.

42
    Constantino, 1978, p70.

43
    Richardson, 2011, pp10, 30-31.

44
    Tagalog: Katipunan ng mga Anakpawis sa Pilipinas.

45
    Richardson, 2011, p195.

46
    See A Tan, “The ideology of Pedro Abad Santos’ Socialist Party”,
Asian Center Occasional Papers
, series ii, no 3 (University of the Philippines, Quezon City, 1984), p2.

47
    The article was penned by A V H Hartendorp. Quoted in Sturtevant, 1976, p212.

48
    See Richardson, 2011, pp172-179, 197, 211.

49
    “Commentaries and prescriptions emanating from the Comintern, respected as embodying the accumulated experience of communists throughout the world, were beyond question the decisive determinants of the PKP’s own overall line. Statements issued by the International were frequently echoed and occasionally quoted directly in party documents and were never subjected to open critical appraisal, let alone challenged”—Richardson, 2011, p217.

50
    Quoted in K Fuller,
Forcing the Pace
(University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City, 2007), p121. See also A Saulo,
Communism in the Philippines
(Ateneo Publications Office,
Philippines, 1969), pp32-33.

51
    E Lachica,
Huk
(Solidaridad Publishing House, Manila, 1971), p89.

52
    L Taruc,
He Who Rides the Tiger
(Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, 1967), p17.

53
    Richardson, 2011, p252.

54
    M Bolasco, “Marxism and Christianity in the Philippines 1930-1983”, in Third World Studies (ed),
Marxism in the Philippines
(Third World Studies Center, Quezon, 1984), p106.

55
    Crippen, 1947, p99.

56
    Richardson, 2011, p164, and fn 155, pp312-313.

57
    PKP, “An appeal to our Catholic brothers”, 1938. Quoted in Fuller, 2007, p125.

58
    M R Henson,
Comfort Woman
(Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 1999), pp28, 30-31.

59
    Kerkvliet, 1977, p66.

60
    This is apparent in early Huk propaganda and song. Maria Rosa Henson related: “The Huk explained that the Japanese…wanted to free us from American colonialism… But the Japanese failed to do good things in the occupied countries. They were oppressive and abusive.” And the final lines of a famous Huk song read: “They blighted our people with misfortune, they killed those who opposed them, yet they say they are not our enemy because we belong to one race.” See Henson, 1999, p28.

61
    M Thompson,
The Anti-Marcos Struggle
(Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995), p177.

62
    W Pomeroy, “The Philippine peasantry and the Huk revolt”,
The Journal of Peasant Studies
, vol 5 (4), 1978, p505.

63
    Taruc, 1967, p22.

64
    Lachica, 1971, p107.

65
    For this paragraph and more, see V Lanzona,
Amazons of the Huk Rebellion
(University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2009).

66
    Taruc, 1953, pp102-103. Liwayway became known as the “Joan of Arc of the Philippines”. See Lanzona, 2009, pp151-156

67
    L Greenberg,
The Hukbalahap Insurrection
(US Army Center of Military History, Washington DC, 1987), pp18-19.

68
    Lachica, 1971, p104.

69
    T Agoncillo,
A Short History of the Philippines
(New American Library, New York, 1969), p237, quoted in Fuller,
Forcing the Pace
, pp181-182.

70
    Quoted in Fuller, 2007, p169.

71
    Taruc, 1953, p117.

72
    Taruc, 1953, p127.

73
    The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia,
pwencycl.kgbudge.com/H/u/Hukbalahap.htm