Magsaysay and the Huks

Kasen Aboitiz is finishing his thesis in political science at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA. The title of his thesis is “An investigation of the consequences and nature of the United States involvement in the Huk conflict in 1949-1953.”

He asked several questions which may well be a reexamination of that uprising.

Landlordism with its injustices is endemic in Philippine society even during the Spanish regime. The Hukbalahap peasant uprising was not unforeseen, and neither was the involvement of the United States. We must not forget that there is a Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the United States, that Filipinos in World War II fought side by side with Americans. The Hukbalahap uprising erupted at the time when the Cold War between Russia and the United States had just started and a powerful anti-communist sentiment pervaded American thinking.

By this time, the Communist Party of the Philippines was already established, and it had mustered a very strong guerilla force called the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap). Luis Taruc, who was a leader of that movement, had from the very beginning considered himself a socialist, never a communist. This is the major reason for the split in the leadership.

The New People’s Army (NPA) as organized by Jose Maria Sison is a component of the new pro-China Communist Party. There was great animosity between the Lavas and Sison, whose Party is now dominant.

Way back, I asked Ka Luis Taruc, who was a personal friend and compadre, if he or any of his leaders were approached at all by Sison’s NPA to learn tactics, or simply to bond a continuum. Luis Taruc said no. In other words, the NPA is completely different from the old Hukbalahap.

I have talked with veteran Army officers who have had experience with the Huks as well as with the New People’s Army, and they observed that many of the NPA recruits are from urban areas and from the universities while the majority of the Huks were barrio born. In terms of fighting skills, the Huks were much better and also more dedicated to their cause. I know little about how extensive the network of the NPA is today, but they seem to have more sympathizers in media and government now than the Huks in their time.

Certainly, they are more active in schools than the Huks, and they have also made inroads in the ethnic communities which the Huks did not reach. Has the insurgency therefore worsened? First, the attraction of a radical communist movement in the Philippines will continue for as long as poverty and injustice are perceived to be a major problem that cannot be resolved by government.

To the best of my knowledge, however, the Duterte government is working very hard to provide justice to Filipinos. People today feel more secure. For all the corruption even in the highest echelons of power, economic development was ongoing, stalled however by this pandemic. The perceived solutions in the past that lie in agrarian reform no longer apply; for one, there is hardly any public land left for distribution to the landless. What is needed in agriculture is modernization and maximization of the use of the land.

Farming involves hard physical labor that provides very little profit for the farmer who also eats what he produces. Many of the beneficiaries of land reform had sold their land to become small landlords themselves.

General Lansdale typified the American patron, the personification of the “compadre colonialism” that American colonialism is. There is no stigma for this kind of relationship or the assistance that the Americans bring to Filipinos, particularly the politicians. This stigma is only in the minds of the communists and their sympathizers who had equated communism with nationalism. Always remember that for many Filipinos, America is their second home.

Magsaysay liked his American connection. He was, however, his own man. Bear in mind that the Americans can pour all the money they want in support of a candidate, but that support will come to naught if the people themselves do not appreciate the American supported agent. Magsaysay was perhaps the most popular politician in his time. The Lopezes, however, did not like him. They wanted Recto to be president. They knew they could not manipulate Magsaysay. He was a genuine man of the people. I watched him in his public appearances and have had the opportunity to talk with him at length. He was not intellectually sophisticated, but he believed that if he had a good government, he would be able to give justice to the Filipino people. He sympathized with the Huks. I had a feeling that he had dealt with them when he was a guerilla leader. I also said that the Americans must have pressured him so much that he consented to have Taruc jailed, a major collateral victim of the Cold War.

I said earlier that I do not think that Magsaysay was able to sunder the Hukbalahap movement by himself or even with Lansdale’s help. I have a special issue of my journal, Solidarity, devoted to a seminar between the four surviving Huk leaders – Luis Taruc, Kapampangan; Fred Saulo, Tagalog; Casto Alejandrino, Kapampangan; and Jesus Lava, Tagalog. All were imprisoned for ten years. I thought that what broke up the Huk movement was the ethnic and social differences of the leaders. That conference started warmly enough, but after lunch, they started heatedly blaming one another. Listening carefully to them, I realized it was their vaulting egos that broke up the organization, the same vaulting ego of Sison that evoked tragic opposition to him, the same vaulting egos that sooner or later break up Filipino organizations.

Every Filipino wants to be top dog. When Magsaysay died, it would have been very easy for his vice president, Carlos Garcia, to continue the Magsaysay legacy, but the Lopezes seduced him, that is how they got Meralco for a song.

Patricia Kelly, the wife of General Lansdale, was the secretary to Henry Miller, long-time public affairs counselor of the American embassy here. To the best of my knowledge, Hank Miller was the quiet American, or is it the ugly American in Graham Greene’s novel on Vietnam. As a Filipina, Pat Kelly had a wide range of contacts which I am sure was also known to General Lansdale.

What now is the objective reality? The first is that this country cannot be sundered anymore by whatever rebellion. After 50 years of trying, the communists should accept this. The young revolutionary could still achieve his goal if his efforts are diverted into the shaping of a good government and in joining the modernizing elite composed of the enlightened upper class (you), professionals, the middle class and the organized labor and farm groups who realize that they have a stake in the building of a just and sovereign nation. Remember, the modernization of Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and Japan was not brought about by proletarian revolutionaries.