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Political Mobilization and Violence in Central Luzon (Philippines)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Otto D. Van Den Muijzenberg
Otto D. Van Den Muijzenberg
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Extract

Central Luzon is a fertile plain directly to the north of metropolitan Manila. This region, thoroughly colonized and densely populated, has been a centre of agrarian unrest for decades. In the forties and fifties Central Luzon formed the nucleus of a peasant movement which produced the strongest anti-Japanese guerilla-army in the whole Southeast Asia, the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of Anti-Japanese People's Army) or in short Huks. The strength of this army came primarily from the fact that the struggle against the national enemy could be combined with the pre-war conflict between the peasants and the landowners.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , May 1973 , pp. 691 - 705
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Pomeroy, William J., Guerilla and counter-guerilla warfare (New York, 1964), pp. 63–4.Google Scholar

2 Pomeroy, op. cit., pp. 59–72, and Taruc, Luis, He who rides the tiger (New York, Washington and London, 1967),Google Scholar and Saulo, Alfred B., Communism in the Philippines (Manila, 1969), give facts and views from inside.Google Scholar This episode is described from the army's point of view by Valeriano, Napoleon D. and Bohannan, Charles T. R., Counter-guerilla operations: the Philippine experience (New York and Washington, 1962);Google ScholarLieberman, Victor, ‘Why the Hukbalahap movement failed’, Solidarity, Vol. I, 4, 1966, pp. 22–30,Google Scholar and Salmon, Jack D., ‘The Huk rebellion’, Solidarity, Vol. III, 12, 1968, pp. 1–30, give an analysis from outside on the failure of the rising.Google Scholar

3 Since the completion of this text, the following books on the present-day problems affecting Central Luzon have appeared: Guerrero, Amado, Philippine society and revolution (Manila, 1971);Google ScholarLachica, Eduardo, Huk, Philippine agrarian society in revolt (Manila, 1971). These recent works are written respectively by the ideological leader of the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought), and a journalist of the Philippine Herald.Google Scholar

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9 Even the anti-communist Federation of Free Farmers, which pressed for implementation of the agricultural reforms strictly within the terms of the law, was often troubled with opposition from civil authorities, the army, the PC and the police; see Cater, Sonya Diane, The Philippine Federation of Free Farmers (Data Paper No. 35, Southeast Asia program, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1959), pp. 51–2, 98–100,Google Scholar and Huizer, Gerrit, Peasant organization in the Philippines, Land Authority, Quezon City, 1971 (mimeograph). The radical MASAKA which is recognized as a legal farmers' union was attacked in January 1969 by the military as a ‘Front-organisation for the CPP’. The reaction of high government functionaries and of the president, who a few weeks later addressed the annual MASAKA congress, prevented the PC from initiating a systematic persecution of MASAKA leaders and members, which had in fact already begun with the death of 5 MASAKA members who were regarded as Huks (14 January 1969).Google Scholar

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13 Data on the present-day Huk-movement have been acquired from careful comparison of newspaper reports and analyses by various journalists and politicians during my stay in the Philippines. This has been augmented by facts and views acquired in interviews with some very well-informed key informants. The interviews with Sumulong took place in Spring and July of 1970. The interviewers were members of the Philippine Congress. See the weekly The Philippines Free Press, 6 June and 25 July 1970. For Sumulong's capture, the same periodical 26 September 1970.Google Scholar

14 Later developments are extensively treated in Lachica, op. cit., Chapters 1, 8 to 11.Google Scholar

15 The figures are respectively borrowed from The challenge of Central Luzon by the Senate Committee for National Defence and Security, May 1967, p. 17; newspapers, specifically the Manila Times; this second figure is certainly too low; The Philippines Free Press, 19 September 1970.Google Scholar

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18 Van Doorn and Hendrix have given a comprehensive analysis of these conditions in their book of this title, op. cit., passim.Google Scholar

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20 Landé, op. cit., p. 34.Google Scholar

21 Landé, op. cit., passim, and Landé, Carl H., Leaders, factions and parties (Monograph series No. 6, Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University, 1965), for a more extensive treatment of the dyadic model, and a convincing proof of the applicability of that model to the Philippine situation.Google Scholar