Communist Insurgency in the Philippines (catch all)

[charter6]

You do not get the logic of my point.

When the Huks registered, the assumption was that they were a legal organization. They gave out their names, addresses, and names of immeidate relatives.

In other words, they were giving out to their potential killers all the vital information needed for the job.

I think you're conflating "Huks" with CPP or the Communist political leadership more generally. I think if you took your average Huk trigger-man in the barrios, they were not openly participating in the political process even if some of their leaders were. What I've been trying to say is that even if there were elements in the Communist leadership pursuing the political track as late as 1950, organized and directed violence against the Philippine state had begun far earlier, 1948 at the latest and I would argue as early as 1946.

The fact that the Huks started going out to Arayat and that they were re-organizing was in reaction to the intensified clashes. They were doing so for self-defense.

So they had to defend themselves despite the fact that they weren't at war? I think you're being internally inconsistent. Either these were isolated incidents of constabulary vs. Huk violence, in which case the leadership cadres who you say were participating in the political process would have nothign to fear; or there was a war going on, in which case moves to fortified positions from where they would be safe from government reprisal would be logical for the leadership cadres.

As for Quirino, he became President in April 1948. At that time the Philippine treasury was empty. Salaries for government employees and worse the military were not paid on time.

War brutalized the Philippines and the Filipinos. Guns were everywhere. It was also easy to make a quick buck. Much of it by outright stealing and graft.

It is to Quirino's credit that he got the government to function somehow. He also negotiated for US aid. The import controls he put up, a necessary stopgap then, had the unintended consequence of spurring the import substitition policy--which gave short run economic benefits up until the start of the term of President Diosdado Macapagal's father.

Again, the Huks were but one of the numerous problems a post-war and newly-independent Philippines faced. There were several others.

I agree completely. I think there were many faults with the Quirino administration, and with Quirino himself, but nobody can argue that he faced an unenviable situation on taking office.

As for the Huk commander who killed Aurora Quezon, he was a renegade leader. The province of Quezon was a marginal base for the Huks. Its strength was basically Pampanga and parts of Bulacan in Central Luzon and parts of Laguna.

I'm pretty sure Quezon's convoy was ambushed in Neuva Ecija, one of the strongholds of Huk power from the earliest days of peasant organization in the 1930's through until the end of the Huk Rebellion.

Viernes wasn't a renegade. There's a significant amount of information on him. Nicknamed "Stalin", he had been a respected Huk squadron commander through World War II. His first split with the leadership came after Taruc disavowed the attack in response to popular disapproval of the attack.

It seems you are unfamiliar with Philippine culture and that is why you assume the Huks were as highly disciplined and organized as the Viet Minh.

No, Filipinos are not that way. And that is why Filipinos will never tolerate a Communist-led regime. Too much discipline which goes against the Filipino penchant for inspired improvisation and a more creative approach to problems.

I don't deny that I don't have your familiarity with Filipino culture. I don't think I've compared the Huks to the Viet Minh though, I don't know where you're getting that.

That doesn't mean that the four years of concerted Huk efforts to roll back governmental influence throughout Central Luzon weren't centrally organized or endorsed by the Huk leadership.

If you are citing US military texts, they are then sadly outdated. Which is dangerous. Because if you will be citing lessons learned from these texts to craft strategies for another COIN campaign elsewhere, you shall be coming to grief.

I'm a college student, I have no affiliation with the US military. My interest in the Huk Rebellion is recent. A large part of my thesis is based on a comparison of the Huk Rebellion with the Malayan Emergency in terms of how experience from both were applied to Vietnam pre-1964. Based on what I've seen here, I don't think you'd disagree with the thrust of my paper.

As for the sources I've used on the Philippines: I've done a significant amount of archival work here stateside, but I'm also leaning heavily on sources like a couple RAND Corporation econometric studies of the conflict, SSI papers, some Huk-sympathizer works like Benedict Kerkvliet's The Huk Rebellion and contemporary publications.

Again, the top leaders of the Communist underground were out in the open. The incoherent reaction of the Huks to the 1946 to 1950 clashes shows there was no overriding strategic goal.

That goal happened when the decision to launch a revolution in 1950 finally took place. "See you in Malacanang," then became the greeting Huks gave to each other.

And the series of attacks against government units finally began.

Some of the CCP leadership was out in the open. What became the Manila cadre was out in the open. The military command was operating out of Arayat as early as '46.

I think your terming the pattern of violence from '46 to '50 incoherent is off base. The Huks steadily rolled back government influence in congruent, strategically important blocs of Central Luzon through this period. A Huk squadron captured Nueva Ecija in the summer of '46 after fairly intense firefights with government regulars. Through 1947 you've got a patterns of raids and ambushes in Bulacan, Tarlac, and Pampanga. These weren't isolated instances of localized violence, these are full Huk squadrons engaging in operations aimed at denying entire provinces to the Philippine army and constabulary.

This is a copyediting issue, not an issue of fact.I committed an error most Filipino English writers are prone to.

What I meant was that Huks were clashing with either the PC, civilian guards, or municipal policemen. The last were under the control of mayors.

Okay, sorry for the misunderstanding.