He who rides the tiger : the story of an Asian guerrilla leader.

Citation preview

»

g E-.

' '

'

. .

-

c

b

•

i-

■

f

He Who Rides the Tiger

He Who Rides the Tiger

The Story of an Asian Guerrilla Leader

LUIS TARUC

FOREWORD

BY

DOUGLAS

HYDE

FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, Publishers New York • Washington • London

FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, Publishers 111 Fourth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003, U.S.A. 77-79 Charlotte Street, London W.l, England

Published in the United States of America in 1967 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers

© 1967 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-20494

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Foreword

. 2. 3. 4. 1

5.

.

by Douglas Hyde

vii

Prologue

3

A Revolutionary Is Born

9

Life in the Hills

36

The Cancer

54

A Dream Come True

63

A “Revolution” That Failed

67

6

“For a Long and Bitter Struggle”

100

7.

More Errors

120

Surrender

i37

The Godless Are Loveless

148

The Fight for Survival

138

Self-Re-evaluation

166

Born Again

173

Peasant Problems

181

. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 8

foreword by DOUGLAS HYDE

In the summer of 1954,1 read in a Japanese newspaper one morning that the Philippine Communist guerrilla leader, Luis Taruc, upon whose head there had been for years a great price, had come down from the hills to surrender and was now in jail. When I was in the British Communist Party, years be¬ fore, the name Taruc was magic. We knew him as the colorful, idolized military commander of the “Huks”—■ the Philippine Communist guerrillas—who, like their com¬ rades in the jungles of Malaya, were carrying on an armed fight for Communism. We also knew Taruc as a prom¬ inent leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines. We called him the “conscience of the Philippines.” Now, said my morning paper, he had given himself up to President Magsaysay. That he had surrendered surprised me. If Taruc had done this, the Communist guerrillas—who vii

viii

Foreword

not very long before had threatened Manila, the capital itself—must be in very sorry straits indeed. I wished I knew more. Later that morning, I visited Tokyo’s foremost Com¬ munist bookshop to see what books were being offered to the Japanese public. Among the works of Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-chi, and others, I saw a paperback book called

Born of the People, by Luis Taruc. It was an autobiogra¬ phy, which was just what I wanted. That afternoon I had to attend a reception organized on my behalf. Present were practically all of Japan’s lead¬ ing non-Communist trade-union leaders. After drinks, we sat down together, and they began to shoot questions at me. The first was: “What do you consider to be the sig¬ nificance of Luis Taruc’s surrender in the Philippines? Is this the beginning of the end for Asia’s Communist guer¬ rillas?” Time after time, among the other questions, the subject of Taruc came up. It appeared to be the numberone topic that day—and for many days—among the more politically alert people in Japan. In bed, at the Columban Fathers’ house in A.zabu that night, I read Born of the People. I was at once struck by the essential simplicity and sincerity of its author. Here was a man of poor peasant origin, educated and intelligent, who had continued to think and talk in the language of the common people. He wrote with that mixture of ideal¬ ism and blazing hatred of injustice usually characteristic of the new recruit to Communism but which clearly still burned in him undimmed. From his book it was plain that the things that had sent Taruc into Communism were, in a different way, the ones that had led me as a boy, years ago, into the Party, too. But I had merely observed, against a background of secu¬ rity and plenty, the injustices, the poverty and insecurity. I had been angered and distressed by seeing them at a

Foreword

ix

distance, then joined what was to me a crusade. Taruc had experienced them in his own life. As I read his book, I felt that here was a man I could understand. I had a strong conviction that he might also understand me. We were, I sensed, “sympathetic” types, even though I was thoroughly English and he a son of the Orient; I now was a Catholic, freely traveling through the world in the course of my work as a writer—while he, a lapsed Catholic and a Communist, sat somewhere in a prison cell in the Philip¬ pines. It was a “hunch,” but it was so strong that I resolved there and then that if ever I had the chance to meet Taruc, I would take it. Back traveling in the West again, I came across only occasional references to Taruc. On a visit to the United States, I learned that he was still in jail. One report I read, however, particularly stuck in my mind. It came from the NCWC News Service (the official Catholic news service in America) and told of a priest who had visited the prison and stopped to speak to members of the Philip¬ pine Communist Party’s Politburo who were all there to¬ gether. As he left, he saw Taruc sitting on the floor of the cell, a little withdrawn from the others. He had a word with him and, according to this report, Taruc whispered in response to a direct question something to the effect that he was having difficulty in accepting the atheism of Communism. In the winter of 1957, I was asked by the British Gov¬ ernment if I would go to assist with a seminar organized by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in Baguio, in the Philippines. The invitation could hardly have come at a less convenient time, but I accepted it at once, although I made it a condition that once the seminar was officially over, I must be free to get around the Philippines alone and that my sponsors should cease to have any responsi¬ bility for me from that moment on. It was only fair that

x

Foreword

I should mention this, since I was going under official auspices yet would want to visit the Catholic missions, associate with Catholic institutions and organizations, and appear on Catholic platforms. My “conditions” were ac¬ cepted. The Philippines is a Catholic country, anyway. Once the job was over, I would be free to pursue my own interests. But another idea was foremost in my mind, and it was this that made me take the trip. I still was deter¬ mined to follow my “hunch” about Taruc, and I wanted to use this opportunity to meet him by some means or another. At the seminar, we had a busy week, and I saw all too little of the astonishingly beautiful mountain province in which Baguio is situated. As the chairman of one of the seminar’s subcommittees, I was kept occupied to the very last moment. Then I got down to Manila just as quickly as I could. It was the day on which Filipinos honor Boni¬ facio, one of their great national heroes. In Baguio, I had learned that the jail in which Taruc was imprisoned was in the Manila area. Three hours after arriving in the capital, I had got myself smuggled, along with the Saturday afternoon visitors, into the New Bilibid Prison, in Rizal, some miles outside Manila. Some¬ one obligingly went to Taruc’s cell to bring him to me. I cannot as yet disclose how it was done. The whole opera¬ tion was highly irregular and unofficial, and it would be unfair to those who eased the way for me if I were to name them now. Suffice it to say that my getting in through the succession of well-guarded gates and past the various checks and counterchecks in no way reflects on the prison authorities or on their security arrangements. The jail, a modern one, looked like a great white fort. Inside the grounds, as one would expect, were gun turrets, set up at strategic points. Within the main building goodconduct prisoners walked around in the courtyard dressed

Foreword

xi

in dazzlingly bright saffron uniforms. The color reminded me of the robes worn by the Buddhist monks one sees in such numbers in every town and village in Burma. The Philippines, despite past years of Spanish and Amer¬ ican domination, is, after all, in the Orient; by Western standards, the New Bilibid Prison is tough. This was par¬ ticularly true at that time; with some 15,000 inmates, it was so hopelessly overcrowded that it was almost impossible to maintain normal discipline. Six prisoners had been mur¬ dered inside the jail during the previous four weeks. Shortly after my visit, a riot occurred in which more than twenty prisoners were murdered. As I sat waiting for Taruc to be brought to me, I re¬ hearsed in my mind the various openings I had thought up on my way to Manila. I had no idea how this man would regard my visit. To the best of my knowledge, he was a Communist, I a “renegade.” Only someone who has been in the Party can know just how much hatred and contempt can be put into the word. He might, of course, refuse to see me. But perhaps he would seize the opportunity to have the enormous satis¬ faction of taking a chair and quickly knocking me down. He was already serving a twelve-year sentence, with a cap¬ ital charge pending against him as well. He had very little to lose. I looked around the room and saw that all the chairs were chained together. But even the possibility of violence seemed to me a risk worth taking. I was resolved to take whatever was coming, and I deliberately sat as far as possible from the two armed guards who were there to keep an eye on things. If Taruc talked at all, he would be far more likely to do so, I calculated, if we were off in a corner on our own. Even though it would not be easy to begin a conversa¬ tion, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was what I had wanted when I first read his book in Tokyo. I wanted

xii

Foreword

to get him out of the Communist Party, if he was still in it; if he was already out, I wanted to win him completely away from Communism. That was my first aim. T he sec¬ ond was to bring him back to the Catholic faith in which, as a Filipino, he must surely have been brought up. But at that moment I was still wondering what our first words would be—if there were to be any. Then Taruc walked in. He was fairly tall, erect, with a fine, proud bearing, well turned out, wearing well-shined shoes and a neatly pressed prison uniform which he wore as though it were that of a field marshal. His face was sensitive and open. As he strode toward me, he reached out his hand and I wondered what was coming next. “What a Bonifacio Day this is!” he said, his face radiant with joy as he grasped my hand. “You’re the one man on this earth I have longed to meet. I read your book I Be¬ lieved here in prison. I know every word of it. I love every word of it. And as I read it, I knew that if only I could meet you, we would understand each other right away and I could discuss all my problems with you. But I never thought it would be possible—with you on one side of the world and I on the other.” We sat down, facing each other. He talked at length about his three years in jail, working off as he spoke some of the tensions and frustrations he had felt during the long periods in solitary confinement. I encouraged him to tell me how his doubts about Communism had grown and of his gropings toward a return to Christianity. He had traveled further from Communism than I had expected. His political thinking was confused, but this was understandable enough. In the same jail, and in contact with each other, were most of the members of the Polit¬ buro of the Communist Party of the Philippines. They knew that he was full of doubts and were exerting a con¬ stant barrage of pressure, which he found difficult to resist.

Foreword

xiii

“If only I could get away from here to some other jail where I could think things out for myself,” he said wist¬ fully. “But here it is impossible.” By this time, with all the impulsive warmth of his nature, he was calling me “Douggie.” It was as though we had known each other for years and had met after a long parting. When we talked of religion, and particularly of organ¬ ized religion, he again had much to work off his mind. He told me of the bad priests he had known, of the callousness of rich landowners who called themselves Christians but treated the poor like animals. Taruc believed in God and had always retained some glimmer of his belief. But he resisted the idea of coming back to the Church in which he had been reared and said he could not bring himself to confess to a priest. After some two-and-a-half hours, when we parted, he had traveled a long way. He had long been toying with the idea of writing a book and now agreed to do so. He would bring his story up to date. He stressed his lack of any special ability to write it. With his earlier book, he said, he had been helped by another Communist leader. The book had also been “worked over” by a colleague of the Politburo who in the process had written into it a certain amount of doctrinaire Marxism which did not exactly reflect Taruc’s mind at the time. I strongly urged him to write this second book. I believed that thinking things out and getting them down on paper would help him to clarify his own ideas, quite apart from the obvious usefulness this book would have for others. I told him that I would have to go back to England soon, but I would be happy to help him with the editing of the book. I had no idea at that moment when or how we would proceed in our work; but I was certain that things were

xiv

Foreword

working out according to plan, and that was sufficient for me. Two days later, I prepared to visit Taruc again. This time, however, there was no question of smuggling me in. The authorities had at once heard of my first visit, and there had been much telephoning in official circles and many attempts to trace me. Now I was told that the pur¬ pose of my visit was known and appreciated, and that the gates of Bilibid Prison were officially open to me. I went out to the jail from Manila accompanied by some¬ one responsible for Taruc’s case, an enlightened, humane, and intelligent man, whose one concern was to see Taruc made into a useful member of society again. He left me at the gate and agreed to meet me later, after my visit. This time we talked in the Superintendent’s room. The authorities had cooperated in every possible way. At Taruc’s request the Superintendent had sent for docu¬ ments relevant to the case. Taruc wished to refer to these, to explain to me some of the details of his history and present situation. We again discussed religion. He agreed to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I told him that my devotions and my family’s that night would be offered for him. By the time I left, we had agreed that Taruc should send his work, chapter by chapter as he wrote it, to me in England. I would give him the editorial help he might need and we could discuss by letter the ideas he would put forward in his book. He explained that its aim would be to make restitution for the wrong he had done as a Com¬ munist;

to make the workings of Communism better

known; to tell the story of the Philippine peasants’ revolt. I stressed that there was no need—indeed it would be wrong—to soft-pedal those social and political injustices which had driven him into Communism and about which he still felt strongly.

Foreword

xv

I asked him if he knew of a jail where he might think and work more easily. He named two, both military pris¬ ons, and indicated which of the two he would prefer. I told him I would try to get him transferred and have him set up with typewriter, paper, and all the facilities for getting on with what might well prove to be an important and useful job. I conveyed Taruc’s wishes to the Philip¬ pine authorities, and again they cooperated in every way. Within a few weeks (by which time I was back in England) Taruc had been moved to the prison he had chosen. He was provided with all the facilities for which I had asked. As his prologue reveals, he had already started to work on the book before he was moved. That is how this book came to be written. Chapter by chapter it came to me in England, and with those chapters went an exchange of letters quite unlike what one would expect from two people who had met for a total of fiveand-a-half hours. They were like letters between old friends. While the book was being written under these unusual circumstances (with 8,000 miles separating the writer from his editor), Taruc was given a life sentence—four in fact —for “kidnaping, and robbery with multiple murder.” As you read this book, you must remember the strain under which the author was writing. He was in jail. And for the whole period he worked on the book, he was facing a capital charge. Time after time he was taken from jail to the court, not knowing whether he was going to live or die. However, he was optimistic about the outcome of his trial, hoping that he might be let off, that old sores, left festering at the end of the war, might by now have healed. But the strain and uncertainty were always with him. Finally, his sentence was pronounced. He was given life imprisonment. His immediate reactions are to be found in the chapter entitled “Surrender,” written after

xvi

Foreword

he heard the sentence. He had clearly been hit very hard. By that time he had returned to Christianity. He had gone to Midnight Mass at Christmas, and, as he wrote to me at the time, “I felt that I was coming home.” A few months later, for the first time in many years, he made confession and received the Sacraments. Although, when he writes of his trial he protests very vigorously that he was “framed” and that a grave injustice was done, he felt, and continues to feel, understanding and charity for those who sentenced him. Shortly after receiving his sentence he wrote to me: “Along with my faith in God, I have faith in my fellow men, in our leaders and in the justice of our courts in general, especially our higher courts. One erring, indi¬ vidual judge will not weaken that faith. . . . But, if God wills it that I might spend the rest of my life in prison, then I bow my head and bend my knees humbly to Him if it is His wish that I must atone for all my sins in life that way.” But this is not a statement by a “tamed lion.” Taruc remains an outspoken critic of all he considers evil in the society in which he lives. But he has indeed traveled a long way. In the process, he clarified his thoughts, both with regard to his politics and to his religion. His letters to me throughout that period reflect an astonishing change. I do not believe that Taruc should spend the rest of his life in prison. He has gifts and qualities the world badly needs today. He has also a knowledge of Communist guer¬ rilla warfare, about which we cannot know too much in these days when this is the principal means by which Com¬ munism is spread in the developing countries. I make this point, recognizing that the question of his release is up to the Filipino authorities. I know that Taruc himself would be the first to urge me not to write of his book as if it were a plea for mercy. Indeed, in my first discussion

Foreword

xvii

with him I had to break down one very strong objection he raised against writing it at all. He feared that if he wrote the story of his break with Communism, inevitably some people would say that this was but a means of gain¬ ing his freedom. I assured him that if he wrote frankly, people could conclude for themselves whether or not he was the sort of man who would cringe before anyone in order to save his neck. I have good reason to believe that Taruc would be the last man to try to “buy” his freedom. It should be apparent from my story and the sequence of events I have related that Taruc was already a changed man before he received the life sentence. He had already been “born again.” When he received his sentence, he again advanced the same argument for deferring, or dropping altogether, pub¬ lication of the book. He feared the public might look upon it as an attempt to get the sentence annulled. I had told him that I would come back to him when the book was completed so that we might work on it to¬ gether. But when I made that promise I had no definite idea of just how I would be able to keep it. I was banking on the probability that I could, as a writer and lecturer, get an assignment of some sort to Southeast Asia. Eleven months later, in October, 1958, just after Taruc had re¬ ceived his life sentence, I was asked to attend a conference in Singapore. I seized the opportunity and, once in South¬ east Asia, went back to the Philippines. By now Taruc had been moved to another, smaller military prison where he was in semisolitary confinement. I asked that I might be allowed to occupy a cell near Taruc’s, so that I might spend as much time as possible with him. It also seemed impor¬ tant to me that I should share his conditions. It would be unseemly to work with him in his cell by day and return to an air-conditioned hotel or other comfortable accom¬ modation in the evening, while he stayed behind. We

xviii

Foreword

would share each other’s minds best, I believed, if we were also sharing the prison conditions. The Philippine authorities were courteous and coopera¬ tive and did their best to meet my requests. No cell was available, and so they fixed me up in an improvised “cell” at the end of the corridor. This became my home for the next month. When the time came each night for me to go to my own quarters, I found myself drawn by the relative quiet and attractiveness of Taruc’s cell. The people in charge of the prison were in no way to blame for the situa¬ tion, they offered me all they had. I had asked for the austerity of a prison cell, and the upshot was that my quarters were to be more austere than those of the man with whom I worked and talked for some sixteen hours a day. The sense of friendship which we had established eleven months earlier was maintained over the five weeks we worked together. I think that neither of us was conscious of the prison bars, the confined space, the armed guards, or the other occupants of the jail. A man may become a saint within the isolation of a monk’s cell, drawing only on his own resources and his love of God. It is difficult, however, to grow politically when one is shut off from the world outside. This was Taruc’s case. His spiritual growth was impressive. Understandably, however, his political thought had not kept pace wTith the spiritual development. Taruc discussed and examined with me the ideas behind all that he had written. Thus, I believe, his firmly held Christian faith became more integrated with his political thinking. He was acquiring a new, positive Christian-dem¬ ocratic outlook, and he was eagerly reassessing the world from his new standpoint. But it was still the standpoint of a peasant leader who believes that land reforms—along with other sweeping social reforms—are urgently needed.

Foreword

xix

We argued and bantered together from early morning un¬ til late at night. This was no attempt to produce a so-called autobio¬ graphical work which would in fact be more mine than his. Taruc never would have lent himself to such a project. As will be plain when one reads this book, it is indeed the work and writing of Taruc. When, after lengthy discussion, he was fully convinced that an addition, insertion, or modification was required, he made the necessary change. Where he was convinced that in all conscience he must tell his story in a certain way and that this was the truth as he saw it, nothing could have made him change his position—nor did I press him beyond a certain point. Chapters I and III are apt cases. I believe that he was still too near the picture to be able to see it in its entirety; this is evident in his account of the events that led the Huks back to the hills to fight once more and in the way he interpreted what followed immedi¬ ately afterward. He believed that even though there may be two sides to the case, the rebel peasants’ side must be on record. And it is that presentation he has given us. Inevitably, the account is distorted. But it holds out powerful lessons to us—lessons all the more valuable because they enable the reader to see not only how the guerrilla fighter operates, but also how he thinks and feels. For Taruc puts a search¬ ing finger on the mixture of dedication, idealism, weak¬ nesses, nastiness, intrigue, and cruelty—and the sheer evil of Communism as he knew it. Southeast Asia is a key area in the world today. Still, in many countries in that region—in South Viet-Nam, Malay¬ sia, Burma, and Laos—counterparts of the Huks fight in the jungles, swamps, and mountains. Simultaneously, in those same countries, other Communists are making

xx

Foreword

determined efforts to infiltrate democratic organizations and subvert whole sections of the population with an aim to making it impossible for newly independent countries to continue to function. I believe that Taruc’s book will make a serious con¬ tribution, not only to the problem of how to deal with Communist guerrilla fighters in general, but to a fuller understanding of the problems besetting much of the Free World. Above all, this is the story of a spiritual pilgrimage and, because of the circumstances in which it was written, the reader may observe the progress as he makes his way through the book. The book is not only the story of a conversion from Communism to Christianity and democ¬ racy, it is part of the conversion itself. Today Luis Taruc has one great desire—the one he has had all his life—to serve the peasantry from which he sprang and, along with them, all suffering, sweating, toil¬ ing humanity the world over. He wrote this book, I know, in the hope and belief that by this means, even in his prison cell, he could make some contribution to that great task. Although Taruc was a leading member of the Commu¬ nist Party, he was, quite clearly, no great Marxist. But he was a good “proletarian front” behind whom the genuine Marxists among the leaders could operate. His ability as a public speaker and leader grew out of the warmth and feeling which are so apparent throughout this book. I have met nearly all his old comrades in the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Most of those of peasant origin are tougher and grimmer, by far, than Taruc, and the intellectuals are colder, more remote from the people. This is one reason why Taruc was so useful to them and to the cause of Communism. The people in the

Foreword

xxi

barrios are, most of them, warm and feeling, too. He talked their language, operated on their wave-length. And he was a great guerrilla leader. This was, until shortly before his break with his comrades (by which time they were scheming against him), his greatest value to the Party. No doubt, he and his Huks were extraordinarily successful during the period of the Japanese occupation. Later, when he led the Huks in a new guerrilla war—this time against people of his own nation and after independ¬ ence had been granted to his country—circumstances were clearly against them. Even so, they came very near to vic¬ tory. When victory had slipped through their fingers—or rather was wrested from them by Magsaysay—the inevitable demoralization occurred within the guerrilla movement and the Communist Party leadership itself. Dissent grew among the leaders and they began to plot and scheme against each other. By then, Taruc was regarded as ex¬ pendable and treated as such by those whom he calls the “Bolsheviks” among the leaders. Taruc’s story of the merger between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party—which took him straight into the leadership of the Communist Party—is full of meaning for every socialist and anyone else who flirts with the idea of having a united front with the Communists. Unwit¬ tingly, the Philippine Socialists were about, to quote Taruc, to “take a ride on the tiger.” In all the long and dismal history of united fronts in various parts of the world, there is no example more in¬ structive, more devastating than this. It seems incredible that intelligent men like Abad Santos and Taruc would actually merge their party with the Communist Party with practically no prior discussion of their ideological and doc¬ trinal differences. “Present dangers were so urgent,” Taruc writes, “that

xxii

Foreword

we were prepared to let even the fundamental differences take care of themselves for the moment.” How many others have said much the same before taking ‘‘the ride on the tiger”? The Western reader may question Taruc’s story of the corruption and the rigged elections of the early postwar years. Thoughtful Filipinos do not for one moment deny that this was indeed the situation. Independence came to their country immediately after years of Japanese occupa¬ tion, a period in which the corrupt and the treacherous prospered while the honest and patriotic suffered. This was true in many occupied countries during World War II, in East and West alike. And these evils did not suffer instan¬ taneous death the day independence was won. Similarly, those not already familiar with the story may question Taruc’s allegations of the use of torture and atrocities against the Huk rebels. Men who led the fight against the rebels in those early days do not deny the charges. Many of them have been very frank about the atrocities in their conversations with me. Under Magsaysay’s leadership these evils were brought to an end, and Taruc’s story shows, as would the stories of many other postwar insurrections still to be written, that the use of tor¬ ture and atrocities is not only inhuman but self-defeating. This book was written several years ago. The Philippine authorities, rightly or wrongly, considered the moment in¬ opportune for its publication. But now it can and must be published. Its lessons are urgently needed today. Any doubt about this will be dispelled by the section covering the period when the security forces and their military ad¬ visers switched for six months to an all-out attack on the Huks. They used dive bombers, big guns, flame-throwers, large numbers of ground forces—they even tried to defoli¬ ate the jungle. One might be reading the story of Viet-Nam in the 1960’s. Taruc tells why, after six months of this, the

Foreword

xxiii

Huks had lost only half a dozen of their guerrilla fighters. Like the Viet-Cong, the Huks always slipped away just before the attack came. And, like the Viet-Cong, they, too, had their intelligence organization. Taruc describes how they penetrated the ranks of the counterinsurrectionary forces and those of the American advisers, too. And after Viet-Nam, where next? Sarawak? Guatemala? Venezuela? Publication of this book may perhaps help, in a small way, to prevent this from happening. Then Taruc, who is still serving his four life sentences, can believe that even from a prison cell he has played some useful part in the fight for world peace.

.

' ■

He Who Rides the Tiger

Prologue

I am writing this inside a solitary cell of the New Bilibid Prison, the national penitentiary of the Philippines. My cell is five feet wide, eight feet long, and eight feet from floor to ceiling. Its whitewashed walls are of reinforced concrete ten inches thick. The door has a heavy steel frame and bars and is covered on the inside by a thick wire screen. So is the window. In a corner of my cell stands a built-in latrine bowl; near it is a water faucet. My window faces west. The sun creeps into my cell from three o’clock in the afternoon until dusk. It is a daily reminder of the after¬ noon and evening in every man’s life. Prison routine and the setting sun compel me every eve¬ ning at twilight to sit by my window and watch the western sky. Often it is a blazing purple; then it seems to accuse me angrily of having wasted my day. Sometimes it is ashy gray, with a pale orange glow at the edges of the heavy 3

4

He Who Rides the Tiger

clouds. Then it seems to be sharing with me the monotony of prison life. The sunset always reminds me of what use I made of my life in the morning and to what purpose I devoted my afternoon. I am a “maximum security” prisoner. I am in solitary confinement, but I do not mind the solitude. Peace and quiet are precious to me. In this prologue I want to explain why I am writing a book. Many people, no doubt, will misinterpret my mo¬ tives. Others will deliberately twist them. But I do not mind what biased people of both political extremes may say of me. I am concerned with the genuinely democraticminded. For them I am writing this story of the liberation movement with which I was identified and, incidentally, my own life story, too. I waited a long time, wasting idle years of prison life, before I finally sat down to write this book. During that period, 1954 to 1956, people believed that another world war might break out, and that it would be fought between the Communist camp and the Free World. The Philip¬ pines had just been threatened with a Communist-led revo¬ lution. I was the Commander in Chief of the rebel army. It is understandable that the government should impose restrictive measures upon me, but these wTere not condu¬ cive to writing a book. I also kept silent because I wanted to avoid being mis¬ understood. A book of this kind, written in prison, could easily be the object of slander and misrepresentation by propagandists of both extremes, the Right and the Left. And this would defeat my purpose. They might claim that I wrote under duress and view me as a cowardly deserter. Or they might accuse me of the desire to win favor with the authorities. But now the time has come to speak out. The political situation at home and abroad has changed greatly, and I

Prologue

5

need no longer remain silent. The extremists may say what they want. But I am confident that fair-minded people, es¬ pecially those of my countrymen upon whom our nation can depend in time of trouble, will appreciate my efforts. Years of prison life have provided me with plenty of time for reflection. I have been able to examine my beliefs and have tried to learn from my mistakes. I have asked my¬ self where my comrades and I went wrong. This in turn has led me to clarify my approach to God, the world, and mankind. In the process, I have gained inner peace. In writing this book I hope to contribute toward peace and national unity in my country, and so to the peace of all mankind. I aim to contribute to the common effort of those who work to strengthen the faith of all genuine lov¬ ers of freedom and democracy. And I hope to help lessen the dangers of their being duped by the blandishments of Communist propagandists. But I also want to make clear that Communists are human beings and that Communism is for many an attractive “ideal.” They accept its atheism and ruthlessness for what appear to be valid reasons. For the sake of truth and justice, it is time to discard selfdefeating hatred and bitterness, prejudice, Red-baiting, and intolerance. Because I was once one of the top leaders of the Com¬ munist Party of the Philippines, readers may be surprised by my words. They may wonder if I ever was genuinely a Communist, and if so, just what a Communist really is. Yes, I have been a Communist—and yet originally I was not a Communist but a Socialist. But the Communist and the Socialist parties of the Philippines merged, in the days of the United Front. As I was then the general secretary of the Socialist Party of the Philippines, I became automati¬ cally one of the leaders of the Communists, too. The longrange purpose of this merger did not succeed. Most of the Socialist Party leaders and most of the rank-and-file mem-

6

He Who Rides the Tiger

bers did not become ideological Communists. I, for one, was never completely won over to toeing the Stalinist line. I was never “Bolshevized,” and I never accepted completely the atheism that is fundamental to Communist belief. In¬ stead, I dissented from what I did not like. On many occa¬ sions, I nearly precipitated a split in the merged party. But who and what is a Communist? A Communist, of course, is an active member of a Communist Party, and his basic principles and program of action are based strictly upon the theories and principles expounded by Marx and Lenin. Such a Communist and his Party give allegiance and loyalty to the international Communist movement, over and above all national and personal loyalties. He looks upon the Soviet Union, or China, as his socialist (Communist) homeland. I never answered to this descrip¬ tion. But I would like it fully understood that I am not re¬ pudiating any of my legitimate socialist convictions; nor do I now present my democratic-nationalist ideas for the first time. My fundamental aspirations, all through my life, have been freedom for my country and my people, broader economic and political democracy, peace, and security for every citizen. And I still want all these for my own country, and for every nation in the world. I believe that some form of Christian democratic socialism is the best of all systems of government and that it could solve the socio-economic problems of my country and my people. Such a system is not only compatible with democracy and Christianity, but it is their logical historical outcome. I believe that this sys¬ tem should be instituted by peaceful, democratic means, and by degrees. Thus it will keep pace, step by step, with the political consciousness and maturity of those who will administer it and with the willingness and understanding of the whole population who will actually live it. The de-

Prologue

7

velopment of democratic safeguards will serve to preserve such a system and keep it healthy and dynamic. In parting company with the Communist leaders, to whom I paid tribute in my book Born of the People, I am not motivated by bitterness or self-righteousness. To my dying day I will cherish the memories of our friendship and comradeship and pay tribute to their sincerity. I told the truth in that book about their good side, and because of my love and admiration for their good traits, I purposely avoided writing of their weaknesses. I hope that this is understandable, bearing in mind the circumstances under which it was written. The purpose of my first book was to promote what I believed then to be a worthy libertarian cause. It is with regret that I now take on the task of exposing their bad side. Those former but dear comrades of mine were molded and hardened by the ruthless demands of Communist principles. Eventually, they became almost the opposite of their own good selves as I had known them in the early days of our revolutionary struggle. I should also make clear that my earlier book was edited by Jose Lava, who was then general secretary of the Com¬ munist Party of the Philippines. Jose Lava edited the book before the final manuscript was sent to the United States for publication. Most of that book was written in the hills with the help of a friend. But the chapter on imperialism and many other important portions that express the ortho¬ dox Communist Party line were inserted into the book without my knowledge. Lava set out to make that book a vehicle of Bolshevik Communist propaganda rather than a manifesto of our nationalist democratic revolution, which most of us saw as our immediate aim. To represent me as a full-blooded Communist in that book, Lava made me appear as what would now be called a national Communist. Of course, he was not then fully

8

He Who Rides the Tiger

aware of the divisive importance of national Communism in Communist parties throughout the world. Before ending this prologue, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my dear friend Douglas Hyde of Lon¬ don for all the inspiration and assistance he gave me while I was writing this book, and for his valuable help in the editing of the manuscript and the final arrangements for its publication. And I would like to thank him for the fore¬ word which he has written.

/. A Revolutionary Is Born

Two forces were at work in me in my early years. They were my religion and my hatred of injustice. Both have been with me throughout my life. Sometimes, they existed side by side; at other periods, they seemed to conflict. To¬ day, they are steadily coming closer together. In my youth, the Christian faith dominated my spiritual life. But the landlord dominated the material life I knew. I was born on June 21, 1913, the son of peasants, in the barrio of Santa Monica, in the township of San Luis, in the province of Pampanga. San Luis had its own church, and we went to Mass every Sunday. We did not have far to go. The great majority of Filipinos are Catholics, and ours is the only Catholic nation in the Orient. But it would be misleading for North Americans and Europeans to equate the highly organized Catholic life they know, which re9

io

He Who Rides the Tiger

volves around the Church and clergy, with Catholic life in the Philippines. When I was eight years old, I went to live in the barrio of Batasan, in Bulacan Province, to attend the public school in the town of San Miguel. Batasan is about six kilometers from the town church. There was no priest for the barrio, and only on rare occasions did the people go to the church in San Miguel. They went on the great an¬ nual feasts, on Christmas, on the Sunday after the Ascen¬ sion. The priest from San Miguel came every year to the barrio fiesta, and the barrio people went to the annual fiesta in the town. When people died in the barrio, they were taken to the town. The poor were given only a very brief and formal burial service, because they could not afford the price of a Requiem Mass. They received only a short blessing and some holy water. In the absence of a priest, we had to rely upon our own faith and our own resources. Occasionally,

diligent

Protestant

missionaries

would

come to the barrio. In my young life I was already well acquainted with the contrast between the treatment of the rich and the poor, and this made me interested in the ser¬ mons preached by the Protestants, who emphasized the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. But I was far from conversion; I was deeply attached to my mother Church. But the Protestants’ sermons led me to some early freethinking. My father had taught himself to read and write, but he sent me to school and was determined that I get a good education. When I was seven years old, I attended a cate¬ chism school at San Luis, and when I was eight, I went off to live in Batasan to attend the public school in San Miguel. Learning came easily to me. I went quickly from one grade to the next and skipped some of them altogether. I hoped fervently to do something useful with my life. I

A Revolutionary Is Born

n

wanted to help my fellow men, and so I dreamed of be¬ coming a doctor. During my childhood years, my father had great influ¬ ence on me. He was a silent man, honest, industrious, and of great integrity. My mother’s influence had been with me throughout my life. I was fortunate to inherit her affec¬ tionate nature and her deep religious convictions. When I was fifteen years old, I went off to the provincial high school in the city of Tarlac, in Tarlac Province, which is north of Pampanga. Tarlac was about sixty miles from my home. At first I stayed there with my brother Meliton, who was twelve years older than I. He was a tailor, and for a while I helped him with his work. But he could not afford to keep me, and I went to stay in a boarding house. There I helped the people with whom I was living, in ex¬ change for their kindness to me. In my spare time, I was their baby-sitter, cook, laundry man, pig man, assistant butcher, and errand boy. I particularly liked the man. He was Eduardo Salta, of Santo Cristo. He and his wife were pious and good. In due course, I went to the national university in Ma¬ nila. I still dreamed of becoming a doctor so that I might serve mankind. But the medical course was too long and expensive. I would have had to study by day. But I could only afford to be a part-time student, working by day and studying at night. All over Asia, there are other young men who have done, or are doing, the same. Nearly al¬ ways, their ambitions are frustrated. During my first year at the university I worked as a laborer. Then I was given a job by a politician; now I be¬ came a tool keeper, working for the government depart¬ ment responsible for water and sewage. I had to record how many picks and shovels were issued to the men and to help the payroll keeper. Because I could not afford to be a medical student, I decided to study law instead. But I had

12

He Who Rides the Tiger

chosen all my studies to prepare myself for becoming a doctor. I had always been particularly interested in biol¬ ogy, botany, and everything related to animal, plant, and human life, and these were the subjects I had studied. Later, when I was a guerrilla fighter in the hills, these early studies resulted in my becoming a sort of amateur doctor, and so they served some useful purpose. I came to the university in June, 1932. In December, 1934, I had to leave because I could no longer afford to stay. When I left, I reflected ruefully on how I had often gone to my classes smelling of sewage and how I had coached the dull-witted sons of rich people. Now it was I who had to leave, while they could stay and realize their ambitions. I went back to my barrio that December, with no means to resume my studies but still eager to serve mankind. At the university, I had become familiar for the first time with the labor movement. I had met the labor leaders during a strike of cigarette and tobacco workers. We students were excited by the strike and gave it our enthusiastic support. Two of the pickets were killed in a riot fomented by “scabs,” while the police tolerantly looked on. This moved me very much. But what moved me most of all was the plight of my fellow peasants, who for centuries have been the victims of bitter oppression by feudal landlordism. In Pampanga, only 9 per cent of the land was owned by the people who worked it, and throughout the Philippines, peasants owned no more than 10 per cent of the land. Thus, for centuries, “land for the landless” has been the peasants’ cry, and the peasants’ hunger for land has been our nation’s most press¬ ing problem. This has led to the common saying among our people that social justice can be achieved only by one of two ways: either a land reform or revolution. Our his¬ tory of the past four centuries is one of successive upris-

A Revolutionary Is Born

13

ings, and their basic cause has always been the peasants’ hunger for land. Back in my barrio, I worked as a tailor. My older brother still had his tailor shop in Tarlac city, and I opened a branch in the barrio of Batasan. Once a week I went to Manila looking for employment, and I still hoped that working in Manila would enable me to resume my studies. But I could find no work. Instead, I found labor demon¬ strations. And I found an American friend. He was a so¬ cialist. I had never really spoken to an American before, and I expected him to be an imperialist. Instead, he ex¬ plained imperialism to me and told me that there were some people in the United States who hated imperialism and were the friends of people like me. This was a time of severe political and economic crisis. Unemployment and political turbulence were growing all over the world. More and more members of the labor movement were being drawn into the fight against fascism, and they were finding new allies among the peasantry and the intellectuals. The events of the time brought me closer and closer to socialism. By 1935, I was in correspondence with Pedro Abad Santos. He was a Marxist, but not a Bolshevik. He was truly a socialist. He was also a nationalist and always placed greater emphasis on his national concerns than on his Marxism. Pedro Abad Santos had come from a rich and educated background, but he had made the cause of the common people his own. It was never his method to force socialist or Marxist the¬ ories down the throats of his followers; he encouraged us to think for ourselves. His library was always open to us, and he left us to choose any book we wanted to read. He and his followers, of whom I soon was one, saw the U.S.S.R. as a great experiment. But we did not look at Moscow un¬ critically. We questioned the Moscow Trials. And we were

14

He Who Rides the Tiger

in contact with socialists in other parts of the world. For example, we maintained fraternal correspondence with Norman Thomas in the United States and with Leon Blum in France. Before Christmas, 1935, I had joined Pedro Abad Santos as a full-time organizer for the Socialist Party. By then we had a few hundred active members, and several thousand peasants and workers were our sympathizers. Many of these had no official organizational link with the Socialist Party, but agreed with its policies. The Communist Party of the Philippines was still weak. But some of its hotheaded leaders staged its first small, open rebellion in 1935, in Central Luzon. This was led by Lope de la Rosa, who was my distant relative. He had often tried to persuade me to join him in the Communist Party. I saw him as a romantic figure, as the leader of a rebel fight, but I was not in ideological agreement with him. He was openly opposed to religion, and Christianity was still a vital force in my life. He talked of the dictator¬ ship of the proletariat; but dictatorship was a bad word in my ears. I was married in June, 1935, to Feliciana Bernabe. She was beautiful and had many suitors. She was the daughter of a barrio lieutenant who, years before, had publicly hu¬ miliated my father. I had vowed then, as a boy, that I would have revenge. I well remembered that insult when I first courted his daughter. But I have never been one who could love superficially, and soon I realized how deeply I was attached to Feliciana. After one week of courting, we were married in the Catholic church of San Luis. My father had always warned me that I must not be vindictive, and soon the memory of the wrong her father had done him was forgotten. After one year of married life, we had our first and only

A Revolutionary Is Born

75

son. We called him Romeo, because our marriage had ended an old feud. At that time, I was already giving the whole of my life to the Socialist Party, under the guidance of Pedro Abad Santos. I was traveling all over our part of the country. By the time Romeo was born, in March, 1936, my wife was staying with her parents in Bulacan Province near San Miguel; but the center of my work was in Pampanga. I saw my wife very seldom, and Romeo grew up with his grandparents. She came to join me in Pampanga in the winter of 1936. There we opened a little shop; but it was not successful because I was always away. After the birth of our son, my wife developed a goiter and anemia. Eventu¬ ally, she became very ill, and I had to bring her to the Catholic hospital in San Juan de Dios. The doctors there told me they could not operate. They could not help her. After less than three years of married life, she died in December, 1938. On June 4, 1939, I married Enna Cura, an early love, in a church in Papaya, in the province of Nueva Ecija. The officiating priest was her cousin. Father Eulogio Guiao, wrhose monastery I had once visited. Religion was still a force in my life, although my revolt against social injustice was playing an ever greater part in it. Into my love for Enna went all that was best in what I had learned as a Christian. Our love was heightened by a spirit of chastity and idealism; it was based on respect and deep affection rather than on passion. The militant workers’ and peasants’ unions were grow¬ ing rapidly in the Philippines, but they were opposed and persecuted by those in power. The peasants and workers in our country had to struggle tenaciously to gain some rights and security in their work. This struggle led to my going to prison three times during the years before the war. All this time I was busy organizing the socialist move-

16

He Who Rides the Tiger

ment. But I also found time to read. Sometimes it was Socialism Today, which was published by Abad Santos. Sometimes there were pamphlets in English which came from America. There were Communist pamphlets too, including the attractive Soviet Russia Today. I borrowed the Handbook of Marxism from Pedro Abad Santos. The freedom Santos believed to be fundamental to social¬ ism attracted me; the discipline and doctrine of the Com¬ munist Party did not. Abad Santos never attacked religion, although I rarely saw him actively practicing Catholicism. He had deep respect for the religion of his parents, and I sometimes went with him to listen to vespers when he ac¬ companied his family to their home altar. He would sit with them respectfully while I sat behind them. Month by month, year by year, the world was going from one crisis to the next, hurtling nearer and nearer to fas¬ cism and war. As the political situation became more and more threatening, we Socialists were thrown into closer and closer association with the Communists. We believed that we were the champions of all who were persecuted and oppressed, no matter who they might be. Although the two parties had serious disagreements, we had sympathy for the Communists; they, too, were fighting against fas¬ cism. When a number of Communist leaders were impris¬ oned, we helped the Communist Party to get them out of jail. Pedro Abad Santos’ brother was connected with gov¬ ernment circles, both by blood and friendship, and we tried to use these connections to gain our objective. At that time, many people were attracted to Soviet Russia and to Communism. Maxim Litvinov had made his famous speech at the League of Nations, calling for total disarma¬ ment to prevent a fascist war. His slogan that “peace is indivisible” was attracting not only socialists but liberals as well. The current political atmosphere was ripe for a new attitude toward the Communists. Thus, my own fears

A Revolutionary Is Born

iy

of Communism gradually diminished. This was helped by my reading of the Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was being distributed all over the world by the Communists and became one of the most influential books of that period. On November 7, 1938, the Philippine Socialist Party merged with the Communist Party of the Philippines. A convention attended by members of both parties was held in Manila. The discussions had very little to do with ideo¬ logical and doctrinal differences. The emphasis was on an urgent program for a united front, to fight against fascism and war. It was agreed that on the ideological side we would slowly work toward agreement, by holding discus¬ sions and study groups. Both sides admitted that this was a difficult, long-range condition of the merger. But the pres¬ ent dangers were so urgent that we were prepared to set aside even our fundamental differences for the moment. We felt that there must be no obstacle to a united fight for peace and freedom. Looking back over the years, I can see how that merger was bound to lead to eventual disagreements—and to the end of our Socialist Party. Among the Communist Party leadership there were some Moscow-trained cadres who knew just what they were about and where they were go¬ ing. And they were equipped with the theories of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. We knew these writings, too, but in a much vaguer way. We were not accustomed to the iron discipline of the Communist Party, but what we lacked in discipline and doctrine we made up for in idealism and enthusiasm. When we were troubled by the things our new comrades did, we consoled ourselves with the thought that dedication to a good cause would produce good men. We could not understand or anticipate at that time where Communist indoctrination would lead us. I do not believe

18

He Who Rides the Tiger

that the majority of the Philippine Communist leaders of that period were what would now be called fully indoc¬ trinated Communists. Both the labor movement and Com¬ munism were still new in the Philippines. We did not have the political traditions, the maturity, or the sophistica¬ tion of our counterparts in the West. But the logic of history and their own beliefs were to drive our Commu¬ nist leaders to become more and more ruthless Bolsheviks. The Communists wanted to introduce their own study circle system. Our leadership did not like it. We thought that the Communists were out only to win over our mem¬ bership. But we also felt that their methods were too dog¬ matic, dull, and monotonous to convince our rank and file, who preferred the dramatic presentation of material and ideas that had been our method before the merger. And we resisted the dictatorial Communist Party discipline. To understand these two different approaches to socialist ideas and Communism, which later led to disagreements between the leaders, one must understand the character of the merger. Each party retained its own organizations, even in the barrios, and this arrangement continued until 1941 and, to a lesser extent, through the period of the Japanese occupation. We thought that even the name we took em¬ phasized that each party had kept its own characteristics. We called ourselves “the Communist Party of the Philip¬ pines (Merger of the Socialist Party and

Communist

Party).” It was as though the Italian Socialist Party, led by Nenni, had merged with the Communist Party of Togliatti, each retaining its own characteristics. In my book Born of the People, which was written under the direction of the Politburo of the Communist Party, I explained this situation in a footnote. There I wrote that: “The organizational merger of the two parties was to be undertaken gradually. In Pampanga Province, the center

A Revolutionary Is Born

19

of Socialist strength among the peasants, the old party designation was retained in the local election of 1940, when mayors were elected on the Socialist ticket in a num¬ ber of leading towns.” This situation continued for many years. I stress this point because some people may fail to realize that there were two fundamentally different trends of thought among the leadership of the Communist Party. These two trends existed throughout the period of resistance to the Japanese and throughout the fight of the Huks in the hills. This dif¬ ference continued to the time of my surrender. Had we been functioning against the background of peaceful, democratic development, the differences in out¬ look between the two groups might have led to our sep¬ arating once more into our original parties. Much later, in 1946, this nearly happened. But the moment passed, and we were swept along by the events of the period. In 1941, with the coming of war and the Japanese inva¬ sion of the Philippines, all ideological differences fell into the background. There was no time to argue about such ideas as the dictatorship of the proletariat or the virtues of atheism versus those of religion. We were fighting a bitter, bloody battle and sharing the same dangers. Out of our struggle grew the comradeship in arms every soldier knows. And that spirit of comradeship outweighed the differences that existed among us to a point where we ceased to be fully conscious of them. Even the political opponents of the Communists admit today that during the period of the fight against the Japanese occupation there was no talk among us of Communism, no emphasis on Communist ob¬ jectives. Early in 1942, the resistance movement sprang up in Central Luzon. Even before the war, there were strong peasant unions and other labor organizations in the area.

20

He Who Rides the Tiger

The Japanese invasion had given the reactionaries among our own people an opportunity to conduct vicious attacks on the labor movement. They had always feared and hated the labor movement because it threatened their privileged position in society. Now they accused labor of being proRussian. This looked to them like treachery, although by now the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States. But their behavior looked like treachery to us, for they were collaborating with the Japanese while we were calling for the defense of our country. In December, 1941, the Communist Party leadership is¬ sued a twelve-point memorandum, which was presented to President Quezon and to the American High Commis¬ sioner, Francis B. Sayre. It was signed jointly by Crisanto Evangelista, chairman of the Communist Party, and Pedro Abad Santos, who, under the merger, was now the Party’s vice-chairman. It called for all-out resistance to the Japanese. In forthright language it declared that anyone committing treason would do so at the cost of his life. It urged all pa¬ triotic Filipinos and antifascist organizations to organize squads of volunteers to begin training for guerrilla warfare while waiting for definite instructions on how and when to begin the fight. “All resistance groups,” it said, “must know ways and means of establishing and conducting free governmental institutions, especially in liberated and semiliberated areas.” It added that “All resistance groups, es¬ pecially those organized by the people’s organizations, must learn to requisition goods by confiscating enemy property to be used by the resistance movement to support guerrilla warfare.” The Commuinst Party also pledged its loyalty to the governments of the Philippines and the United States. But many people continued to suspect our motives. They accepted our cooperation, but did not give us the arms and assistance that they gave to other guerrillas. I believe that in many Asian countries occupied by the Jap-

A Revolutionary Is Born

21

anese, Communist leaders learned the art of guerrilla fight¬ ing and civil war, arming their anti-Japanese armies at the expense of the allies with the conscious purpose of using those same arms one day against their ruling class and for the Communist revolution. But I know of no such people in the leadership of the Philippine Communist Party of that period. The Communist Party of the Philippines had at that time, as far as I know, few, if any, direct connections with Moscow and the international Communist move¬ ment. We received some guidance from the American Communist Party from time to time, but it did not appear that the American Party had been given any direct respon¬ sibility for us. It may be for this reason that our leaders joined in the fight against the Japanese in all sincerity while, apparently. Communists in other countries did so with ulterior motives. Slowly, however, our own leaders were to assume a similar position. But that part of my story comes later. Our Politburo leaders emphasized in conversations with me that it was opportunism to put nationalism before Communism at that moment. They said that we must merge the two in our own minds. I replied that I was first a Filipino, then a Communist. Pedro Abad Santos took the same attitude, which our Communist comrades of the Politburo called “petty-bourgeois nationalism.” As for our belief in the international brotherhood of man, we were in agreement. I know now from experience that the national¬ ism of the Communists is indeed opportunism, and that they use it for their own ends. Any nationalist who makes an ally of the Communist is going for a ride on a tiger. We must learn our lessons from the past, and this is one that nationalists need to remember today, when once again the Communists are trying to use them. Nonetheless, I maintain that only a minority of our Communist Party leaders in those early days of the heroic

22

He Who Rides the Tiger

fight against the Japanese wanted to exploit the situation in the Philippines as Communist leaders have done in other parts of the world. Out of the Communist Party’s call to the peasants and workers to resist the Japanese, the Hukbalahap was bom. Its full name was Hukbo ng Bayan Laban so Hapon (Peo¬ ple’s Army to Fight the Japanese). We elected our own mili¬ tary committee, of which I was elected chairman. This was the Party’s committee that controlled the general head¬ quarters of the Huk. I was made commander in chief of the Huk, with Castro Alejandrino as second in command. Later, Mateo del Castillo became our political commissar. The Huk was organized on the basis of squadrons, com¬ posed of approximately 100 men each. The squadron was subdivided into platoons and squads. Two squadrons made a battalion, and two battalions a regiment. In that respect, we were organized like a regular army. But ours was an army of the common people, an army of volunteers or¬ ganized by the common people. It was a revolutionary army composed of our fellow countrymen. Its growth was spontaneous. Whole squadrons came overnight from towns and barrios. The army lived and fought in the hills, forests, and swamps. Gradually, from engagements with the enemy, we learned guerrilla tactics and became an effective armed force. Soon I was the “su¬ premo” of a large people’s army of a new type, and the Huks became a legend in the towns and barrios through¬ out the Philippines. My life as commander in chief of the Hukbalahap brought me into prominence. But whatever attention I received from my fellow countrymen was due to my identification with the simple, sincere, and coura¬ geous peasants, and all who joined the Huks. As I have noted in my book Born of the People, my training under Abad Santos had produced a disregard for Party discipline and an erratic tendency which the Stalin-

A Revolutionary Is Born

23

ists among our leaders often criticized. But under the tough conditions of the time, I tried to avoid anything in myself that might divide our ranks and weaken the leader¬ ship of our people’s army. I tried to become a better Com¬ munist. I adjusted myself to Party discipline, irksome though it was, and tried to share the mind and outlook of my comrades of the Politburo and the High Command. Gradually, I became more like them on the surface, even though deep down our differences continued. I even tried to compromise on the question of religion, going, rather unhappily, as far as I dared. I was twenty-nine years old when I came to the leader¬ ship of the Hukbalahap. I was still young enough to be excited by the tasks at hand. Like most armies, we made mistakes. We were at war, and we acted in a military fashion. Filipino puppets and collaborators had joined the enemy in hunting us down. In my experience, they often were more ruthless and resorted to worse tortures against us than even the Japanese. We decided to counteract such collaborators and their activities. We tried to prevent their treachery against our country by striking terror into their hearts. To execute this task, we created a special organiza¬ tion called the “Department of Intelligence.’’ Its job was to hunt down the traitors and to apprehend them. The ar¬ rests and sentencings for which we were responsible at that time have been called kidnapings and murders. They were a result of the anguished conditions of the times. In my book Born of the People I admitted that errors were made and that innocent people died. Invariably, such tragic mistakes were the result of unauthorized action by squadrons operating far from our general headquarters. Inevitably, too, acts of revenge were perpetrated by fight¬ ers whose families had been murdered or who had suffered at the hands of collaborators. When such acts occurred, those responsible were court-martialed and punished for

He Who Rides the Tiger committing crimes against the people. We prided ourselves on the fact that, although a ragged army, we were nonethe¬ less a disciplined one. There was a period when we had an American officer officially collaborating with our work. But most of the time, the American authorities were suspicious of this un¬ conventional army whose politics they suspected. And there were many occasions when we were fighting on two fronts—against the Japanese and against the Philippine puppet constabulary of the Japanese in our rear. The sus¬ picion with which we were viewed by those in positions of power at the time of the occupation continued to haunt us still in the postwar years. I cannot tell here the full story of those days. Much has already been written about it. But however we were hated by those in power, the common people certainly loved and respected us. When the war ended, the Party leaders said that only under unbearable provocation from the reactionary ele¬ ments would the Huks take up arms again, in self-defense. I am sincerely convinced—although I admit I may be wrong—that this was the position of most of the Com¬ munist leaders in the Philippines at the time. As far as I could judge, there was no plan to prepare for a future revolution. In July, 1945, the war was over. Our country was rav¬ aged. Manila, our capital, lay in ruins. Our people were starving throughout the land. And more than 1 million Filipinos had been killed in the war and during the Jap¬ anese occupation. The great man in the Party at that time was Vicente Lava, a humane and intelligent leader. I was very close to him. He, too, declared that we would not use arms again unless we were bitterly provoked by the reactionaries. The Huks came down from the hills and disbanded. We

A Revolutionary Is Born

25

converted our organization into a veterans’ league. But we did not give up our arms. Many of the other guerrilla forces kept theirs, too, and no one raised a voice against them at the time. It was only the former Huks who were told by the government to give up their arms. We resented this discrimination and felt uneasy, wondering if this was an indication that our fight was not over. The Huk veterans declared that their aim and that of their allies, the peasants’ and workers’ unions, was to fight for justice for the poor, for a democratic government, and for greater freedom for our country. Our opportunity came with the elections in April, 1946. These elections were in preparation for the great event Filipinos had hoped for so long: independence. On July 4, 1946, the independent Republic of the Philippines was to be born. I was then living in my home province of Pampanga. We had established the Democratic Alliance, and I was its candidate in the second district of Pampanga. Throughout the election campaign, I traveled around the country with Senator Rodriguez of the Nacionalista Party. We of the Democratic Alliance had formed a coalition with this party. When the election results vrere announced, I found that—although I had not spent any time in my constitu¬ ency—I had won the election. Some 39,000 ballots had been cast for me, as opposed to about 10,000 for my op¬ ponent, who represented the Liberal Party—whose policy was the very opposite of its name. The Huks had been so well known and so popular that I took my victory as the logical outcome of the elections.

My reputation as a

national leader of the peasant movement, enhanced by my activities in the resistance during the Japanese occupation, undoubtedly accounted for the high number of votes. Ironically, although I had not spent any time in my constituency during the course of the election campaign, the size of this victory was unprecedented in the history of

26

He Who Rides the Tiger

Philippine politics. Yet, after serving for only a few months as a congressman, I was unseated. With other Huk veterans I was accused of having used terrorism during the election campaign. How this could have been possible in my case, when I had not held a single election meeting in my prov¬ ince, is difficult to comprehend. But our policies were un¬ popular in government circles. We opposed the Bell Trade Agreement, the Parity Amendments to our Constitution, and the conditions of the Military Bases Agreement im¬ posed by the United States. This was our “crime.” I claim to this day that no terrorism of any kind was used by our side in that election campaign. There may have been isolated cases of pressure, but there was no terrorism. We were the ones who were terrorized. Events such as these led our leaders to conform more and more to the usual Communist pattern. Soon one of our leaders and many of our rank-and-file members were murdered. It now seemed to us that democ¬ racy had no meaning for those who used its tools against us and forged them into weapons on behalf of the priv¬ ileged. Once more we took to the hills. There we re-formed the Huks. We held that the grave injustices we were suf¬ fering were making a mockery of democracy and driving the peasants once more to revolt. The anti-Communists were making a serious blunder by driving us along the road to terrorism and civil war. Such tactics added im¬ measurably to the ammunition of the doctrinaire Com¬ munists and reinforced the Communist doctrine that the workers can depend only upon their own class and must always fight if they are to get justice. This persecution also added to the number of our supporters. Once more we fought in the name of nationalism, this time singling out imperialism for attack. To the majority of the ordinary rank-and-file Party members and to my¬ self, our course of action was forced upon us by events.

A Revolutionary Is Born

27

No doubt, the Communist leaders used their followers’ nationalism and love of humanity for the purposes of Communism. We adopted a “peace or martyrdom” policy. Looking back, I believe that most of us did not view our choice of action as military rebellion. To us, it was resistance to the resurgent reaction. I believe that the policies of the feudal landlords and capitalist profiteers was short-sighted, even from their own point of view. The first to take to the hills were the Huk veterans; but as soon as it became known that we had re-formed our ranks, the peasants came flocking to us in disgust at the rampant injustice, corruption, and misgovernment that were apparent everywhere. We soon had some 10,000 fully armed fighters. Counting the organizers, activists in the barrios, and other sympathizers, there were some 12,000 of us. At that time, we were always on the defensive. Occa¬ sionally, to raise morale, we acted on the principle that aggression is the best form of defense. Then we organized surprise attacks on military units that were preparing to raid us or were already on the move to attack. There were still two distinct trends of thought within our leadership. One, with which I was identified, was for true nationalism and for rapid industrialization of our country, to be achieved by means of a genuine united front of all progressive forces in the country. For me the goal was socialism; Communism was still a vague and distant theoretical idea. Our group believed that socialism would come only after genuine national freedom and industrial¬ ization had been realized. The other group believed that they could hasten the realization of socialism and Communism in truly Bolshevik terms—by using the nationalist feelings and socialist as¬ pirations of the people as a tactic. If, however, they saw

28

He Who Rides the Tiger

a chance to jump directly to the dictatorship of the prole¬ tariat, they would do so. After two years of fighting, from

1946 to

1948, we

proved, not only to ourselves but to our opponents, that we were getting stronger, not weaker, under the condi¬ tions of terrorism and misgovernment. It became evident that the Philippine government finally realized that it would be wise to follow their U.S. advisers: They changed their policy of suppression to one of leniency. In 1948, we were granted an amnesty by President Quirino, wrho had succeeded President Roxas after his death. Once more we came down from the hills. If there were different, contending trends at work within our ranks, the same was true of our opponents. There were the moderates at the one extreme, and the bitter reaction¬ aries at the other. Before long, the reactionaries were hold¬ ing the field. As a result, in Central Luzon, the attacks on us and on our peasant sympathizers never ceased. It looked as though we had been double-crossed. But our own leader¬ ship was not free of guilt. The supporters of the moderate trend were for a genuine peace settlement through the amnesty, no matter how great the odds were against us. But those who represented the other trend were anticipat¬ ing difficulties and already preparing for the repeal of the amnesty. In their propaganda, they spoke of “American imperialist interference” and the “insincerity of the puppet government.” Like the extremists on the government’s side, they, too, used violent methods. Although they were on the offensive politically, their military policy was still essentially defensive. From June 21 to August 15, 1948, I was in Manila, trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement. I met with Judge Antonio Quirino, the president’s brother and representa¬ tive. I also attended a meeting of the Politburo to review the situation. The general secretary of the Party, Jos£

A Revolutionary Is Born

29

Lava, and his supporters called for a return to the hills on the ground that the amnesty agreement had been betrayed. They said that the situation had become unten¬ able. For reasons of self-preservation, we had to return to our sanctuary in the hills and forests. At that time, I was the Party’s most open speaker at public meetings, and so the most threatened of all. Eight heavily armed bodyguards were with me wherever I went. Their presence embarrassed and disgusted me, but they were a necessity because my life was in constant danger. I would note in passing that the use of arms has always been distasteful to me. I am by nature a pacifist. I wanted then, and still want today, a world at peace. When the period of the Huk revolt is discussed, the question of atrocities is invariably mentioned. As I saw it then, we did not initiate a campaign of terror against innocent people. Such ruthlessness developed later and grew with the years, as my story will show. In 1946, after the Japanese had been driven out, the only organized military force in the land was the Military Police Command, which was still under the supervision of the American officers. To my knowledge only a few, isolated acts of terrorism were committed by Huks during that period. The military police would raid a Huk hide-out, aided by civilian guards, and the Huk would retaliate. In the process, atrocities against landlords and their friends oc¬ curred; one example I have good cause to remember is that of Monico Mandap, a landlord who was captured by Huks and “liquidated.” He was accused of organizing civilian guards against us. Accused along with him was Father Limlingan, a parish priest who was a distant rela¬ tive of Enna, my wife. Father Limlingan had been my close friend, and he had helped us through the period of

30

He Who Rides the Tiger

the Japanese occupation. He was executed together with Monico Mandap. I was a congressman at the time and was attending a session of congress when the atrocity occurred. When I heard of it, I was shocked by the news, and determined to investigate the case. But it occurred shortly before we felt obliged to take to the hills again. Soon we were caught up in the problems of our new situation, and I was unable to do anything more about it. At about the same time, Sergio Aquino, a former mayor of Concepcion and a one-time governor of Tarlac Prov¬ ince, was killed by a stray Huk. Again, I have strong per¬ sonal reasons for concern about this particular atrocity, for Sergio Aquino was killed carrying a safe-conduct pass I had given him. We had been imprisoned together as “security risks”— I as a Huk and he as an occupation governor. Nonetheless, we became good friends. The people of his province had loved Aquino and respected him as a man of integrity. Despite the pass I had given him before we had parted company, he was executed as a “collaborator and class enemy.” In Bulacan Province, similar incidents occurred during the same period. After 1947, the situation became des¬ perate for the Huks. At that time, an attractive woman teacher in San Simon, in Pampanga Province, was suspected of spying for the government troops. She was captured, molested, and killed by a group of Huks. They were led by a man whose own mother and sister had been killed by government troops. Thus, civil war lets loose a chain reaction of atrocities and counteratrocities. But we were a disciplined fighting force, and this type of sexual assault was unusual among the Huks. During the Japanese occupation we had made rape a capital offense,

A Revolutionary Is Born

5/

and we continued to uphold the ruling in the postwar years. I can recall no case in which that ruling had to be invoked. But I do remember some cases of kidnaping that ended in seduction. A prosperous farm manager of a barrio in the township of Concepcion, in Tarlac Province, was captured and killed on suspicion of spying against the Huks. His wife and daughter were taken with him and forced to come to the Huk’s mountain bases. There the daughter was given a year of indoctrination and “persuasion.” At the end of that year, she was married to the highest-ranking Huk leader of the region. Such cases did not necessarily end unhappily. I recall, for example, a girl who had been made the “beauty queen” in a barrio contest in Pampanga Province. She was taken, together with her equally beautiful sister and cousin, to the top leaders in the Huk mountain bases. After a year of indoctrination, they were “persuaded” to marry highranking officers of our Regional Command. They are now back in their barrios, still living with the husbands to whom they were first “united” under such strange cir¬ cumstances. These incidents may be viewed as an inevitable conse¬ quence of civil war.

But

they also

demonstrate

that

Communism, which claims it can make a better world, has not produced better men. There is another incident I would like to relate here, to explain how I saw it at the time. On June 21, 1948, during the period of the amnesty, I collected the back pay I had earned as a congressman, a sum of 17,500 pesos. At that time, I also received 5,000 pesos from a film company that asked to make a movie on the story of my life. The film people, incidentally, were willing to wait for their movie. But the government and the army believed that they had been made a laughing stock when I used the

$2

He Who Rides the Tiger

money to help our cause, and then, in due course, returned to the hills with the other Huks. It should be noted that I did not know we would have to go back to the hills when I took the money. We made the decision to go back two months later, in August. The government, through the president, had informed me at the end of July that August 15 was the deadline for sur¬ rendering our arms. Although strong-arm methods were being used against us, we did not think it wise to comply with these instructions. The government demanded that we hand over our arms or it would end the amnesty. Con¬ fronted with these alternatives, we had no choice but to return to the hills. Thus, I collected my money more than a month before we were told that the amnesty might end, and six weeks before we actually took to the hills again. The money was not used for my own purposes. I had collected it as a congressman, and I made use of it as a peasant leader. I gave 8,000 pesos to the Party. One-half of the remainder I used for the purchase of mimeograph¬ ing equipment, radio receivers and transmitters, and news¬ print. The remaining quarter was used for my own official expenses as a Huk leader and for the immediate personnel in my group. Our opponents saw my collecting the money and the way I spent it as a political maneuver. We retorted that it was their political maneuvering that had compelled us to take to the hills again. In passing on the money I had earned as a congressman to the Party and to the cause, I was following normal Communist Party procedure which applies in every coun¬ try of the world, as far as I know. Under Party discipline, any member who is elected to a legislature must pass back to the Party a large proportion of salaries paid to him by the state. Any member who defies this long-standing and well-recognized rule is at once expelled. At a time when our population was dislocated and starv-

A Revolutionary Is Born

33

ing, particularly the people who had elected me, I could not have used this money, which really had come from the people, for myself or for my family. Some time before I had come down from the hills under the terms of the

1948 amnesty,

the government, had

put a price of 100,000 pesos ($50,000) on my head. This sum would be paid to any person who could give infor¬ mation that would lead to my capture—dead or alive. This reward was offered again, when I returned to the hills, and it remained posted until I came down in 1954. No Huk ever tried to get that money. People have asked whether the day-to-day activities of the Communist Party of the Philippines were at that time directed by a foreign power, such as Russia or China. We were, of course, influenced by the long struggle of the Chinese Communist guerrillas. In the early days of our guerrilla fight, Huks used Edgar Snow’s book Red Star Over China as a textbook. And the Communist victory in China had inspired us and influenced our policies. But to my knowledge, no direct organizational link existed with either Russia or China during my years in the Party. As far back as 1930, when the Communist Party of the Philippines was organized, it had a separate Chinese branch in Manila. This branch was supposedly taking its instructions and supervision from the Philippine Party. In practice, however, it maintained an almost independent existence and kept the Party only vaguely informed of its connection with the Chinese Communist Party. When the Japanese war broke out, four of their highranking officials joined us in the field. Two of them claimed to have already been given training, one in pol¬ itics, the other in guerrilla warfare, on the Chinese main¬ land. They were attached to our Politburo as advisers and acted as liaison officers between ourselves and their own anti-Japanese resistance movement.

34

He Who Rides the Tiger Their advice was often resisted by Vicente Lava, who

was then our general secretary, and by myself. It seemed to us that this advice was always related to Chinese main¬ land interests rather than Philippine interests. First, they advised us to attack the Japanese relentlessly. Although we did so, we suspected that their motives were chauvinistic, that their main concern was with the battle then going on in China. It seemed to us that they viewed our struggle only as a diversionary action. When our fight resulted in a fierce Japanese counter¬ attack and we suffered heavy casualties, they switched to a defensive strategy, urging us to hide our guns and return to our barrios. They sent most of the members of their own organization home to China. They called this policy “retreat for defense.” But the Filipinos in the field refused to put it into action. We had great respect for the Chinese comrades. But when we realized the extent of their chau¬ vinism and self-interest, our respect quickly diminished. Our four Chinese advisers were reputedly the top lead¬ ers of the Chinese Communist organization in the Philip¬ pines. Their activities, I believe, were confined mainly to Manila. They continued to serve as our advisers until the liberation. But then, when the situation began to get difficult for the Communists, they left us and their own members without a word and went to join the last push for the Communist victory on the mainland. After that, no such advisers were ever again attached to our organ¬ ization. It is true that ours was a Communist-led army, but we were operating in the only predominantly Christian coun¬ try of the Far East. We devised ceremonies that took account of this fact. We had a “socialist marriage service,” and various “baptismal” ceremonies to suit all tastes. I frequently performed the wedding ceremony myself. In my “sermon,” I would remind the couple of their duties

A Revolutionary Is Born

35

to society, their class, and the cause for which they were fighting.

After the “sermon,”

the Philippine flag was

draped around the shoulders of the bride and bridegroom. As this was done, they clasped each other’s left hand and raised their right hands in the clenched-fist salute (I ex¬ plained to them that this was symbolic of the unity of the workers of the world) while I said: “In the name of the liberation movement, and in the name of the toiling masses, I hereby declare you man and wife.” Some of the baptisms were more obviously Christianinspired. I made the sign of the Cross over the baby and invoked the “God of all mankind,” the liberation move¬ ment, and the toiling masses. My atheist comrades among the Party leaders made no such reference to the name of God when they conducted such ceremonies; for this reason about 80 per cent of all the new parents came to me. We started these practices as early as 1938, and many hundreds of people were married or baptized by us. I baptized hundreds of babies in the areas we controlled for so many years. On one occasion, thirty-six babies were waiting for me in a single barrio. Some of those who were “married” by me went to a church later, when quieter times came, to have their mar¬ riage put right. It should be noted that in those days a priest was a rare figure in many of the barrios. Thus, the tradition of going to church for the sacraments of marriage and baptism had already been weakened. It is anyone’s guess whether by our practices we aided or injured the old traditions in Central and Southern Luzon.

2. Life in the Hills

The period of which I am now writing is not a pleasant one. But each man must tell the truth as he knows it. From 1946 to 1950, I and my followers were at the receiv¬ ing end of what was then known as the “mailed fist” policy. It is not my desire to point out which side was more to blame. But some of the measures taken against us were so harsh that there are few fair-minded people in the Philippines today who would attempt to justify them. Our country was new, and our rulers knew they were weak. And they were frightened. The weak and the fright¬ ened are often the ones who strike out most wildly. That was how the rich and the rulers of the Philippines be¬ haved. For those who are interested in finding intelligent and humane answers to the problems of Communism here in Asia or anywhere else, this is an example of how not to do it. 36

Life in the Hills

37

For four centuries, our people had fought for national freedom and social justice. Independence did nothing to solve our problems of social injustice. Thus, the fight had to continue. For lack of other leadership, the liberation movement, which should have been purely democratic and libertarian, was taken over by the Communist Party. After 1948, the Communist leadership in the liberation movement began to assert itself openly. The tragedy of our nation was much like that of so many others that have attained their independence from colonial rule in recent years—it found itself in the grip of civil war in which brother was killing brother. Within two years of achieving formal political independence from the United States, the reins of our government passed into the hands of those who were the traditional enemies of progress. And so this infant republic, with its immature ruling class and no tradition of government to draw upon, found itself in the midst of a civil war. I will tell the story of these tragic years, seen through the eyes of one who was in the thick of the battle. If my description of these events is unpleasant to some readers, I must ask them to remember that this is the rebel’s side of the story. This is how the events appeared to me and my comrades at that time. When the amnesty of 1948 was revoked, our opponents stepped up their terror campaign against us. And terror it was. The government itself officially spoke of the “mailed fist” policy. During this period, the so-called Skull Unit was formed. Its battle emblem was a black flag bearing crossbones and a white skull. Powerful politicians and landowners hired private guards and small armies. Peasant massacres took place at Panampunan and Bamban, in Tarlac; at Maliwalu, Bacolor, in Pampanga; at Masiku, in Laguna. About twenty-five peasants were killed. But the cruel “mailed fist” policy did not achieve its purpose. It

38

He Who Rides the Tiger

did not put down the rebellion. Instead, it fanned the embers of rebellion and strengthened the peasants’ and workers’ revolutionary tradition. Violence breeds violence, and that works both ways. Within a few months, the Huk had grown by leaps and bounds. Every time a peasant was arrested and tortured as one of our suspected supporters, able-bodied men from his barrio fled to the hills. They would rather join the Huks than suffer the same fate. For every barrio woman raped by undisciplined and demoralized soldiers or civil¬ ian guards, more peasants, including women, would be driven by hatred and indignation to join the rebels. For every barrio looted and burned to the ground by troops carrying out their superiors’ scorched-earth policy, a new Huk unit was founded. Every prisoner “shot while trying to escape” led more strong young men and girls from the nearby barrios to join the dissidents. It is universally admitted today that the morale of the government forces between 1948 and 1950 was low. This was not surprising; most of the government institutions-— except the higher judiciary—were plagued by graft and corruption. Whenever our opponents organized raids against us, they would first shell the whole area in which their objec¬ tive was located. The target area might be a big and thickly populated barrio which was suspected of having given aid to the Huks. Usually the people would get wind of the pending operation and could take to their shelters before¬ hand. Then casualties would be light. The pattern of the attack would never vary. Trench mortars and 75-mm. field guns would be used. Of course, they could hardly miss hitting the peasants’ houses. After the shelling would come the assault. Finding no sign of resistance, the troops would “capture” the barrio. If they were of the demoralized type, a field day would follow during which they would commit

Life in the Hills

39

every sort of atrocity. The peasants’ most precious posses¬ sions are these, and in the following order: his life; his honor and that of his womenfolk; his few earthly goods, particularly the carabao, which is his work animal; and his dwelling. All these he saw wantonly desecrated and destroyed, and this made him a bitter rebel. When the soldiers rounded up the barrio people, they would drive them at gun-point to the nearest town. Mean¬ while, the raiders would be busy looting and burning. For a day or two, the troops would live well off the barrio peoples’ poultry and domestic pets. When they left, they would cart off all they could carry of pigs, chickens, furni¬ ture, palay (unhusked rice), clothes, and even the farm implements and work animals upon which the impover¬ ished villagers depended. To cover their misdeeds, the soldiers would report that the vandalism was the work of the Huks who had “offered stiff resistance before finally running away.” Or their story might be that the destruc¬ tion they had left behind was the result of cross fire be¬ tween themselves and the Huks who, of course, had suffered heavy losses, but had nonetheless succeeded in burning the barrio to cover their retreat and got away with their dead and wounded. If some of the more stouthearted barrio people suc¬ ceeded in obtaining the raiders’ permission to retrieve what remained of their meager belongings, they would most likely find only heaps of ashes or the smoldering remains of their homes—charred posts pointing to the sky like so many black bony hands held up in mute supplica¬ tion to the heavens. Around the yards they would find signs of desecration and vandalism of a type that was be¬ yond their simple peasants’ comprehension. Such inhuman, unreasoning behavior fanned their already inflamed revo¬ lutionary anger. During those dark years, if government forces and irreg-

40

He Who Rides the Tiger

ular civilian volunteers wanted to raid the more remote barrios or the swamp or mountain bases of the Huks, they had to come in great numbers. And they brought with them all the modern and heavy weapons they could muster. The raiders would spend weeks training and preparing thousands of foot soldiers and baggage carriers. They would assign intelligence agents to seek out Huk units and would conduct continuous observation from aircraft, on the lookout for evidence of Huk encampments and movements. We nearly always knew of their plans long before the operation began. For this reason, our losses in battle were usually small. When, finally, the operation started, the troops would draw a tight cordon around us. They called it “a ring of steel.” It consisted of guns of all types, tanks, armored cars, cavalry, artillery units, dogs, and heavy machine-gun nests. In a typical operation at Mount Arayat, in Pampanga Province, the government forces would rarely use less than eight artillery batteries, each composed of four 105’s. These would be supplemented by 75’s, trench mortars, and flame throwers. The operation would begin with an air raid, intended to take us by surprise. Sometimes as many as twenty-four Mustang fighter-bombers would strafe and bomb us in relays from early morning until dusk. The shattering bursts of the Mustangs’ .50-cailiber machine guns and the explosions of napalm and fragmentation bombs were deaf¬ ening. The first impact of such an attack was always truly frightening. But within an hour we would get used to the noise, and by then we were able to determine the target of the attack. Now we could take cover, and we distracted ourselves by comparing the blending of different noises reverberating through the hills to a symphony. At dusk, the strafing and bombing would cease, but the stark silence that followed such a day of pandemonium

Life in the Hills

41

was as terrifying as the noise that had preceded it. When darkness finally engulfed the forests, we hurriedly did our cooking, careful that no fire be seen either from the ground or from the air. Now and then, despite all our precautions, accidents would happen; but these were not without their comic side. Some comrade’s cavelike cooking shelter which, when first built, had been a screen of green, wet grass and freshly cut, damp branches, would become tinder dry. At the touch of a spark, it would burst into a roaring bonfire spewing out a great column of sparks and flaming leaves that reached to the top of the tallest trees. The sudden glare of the bonfire would be visible for miles around and so to our enemy down in the lowland. Sometimes such fires touched off an enemy artillery barrage that lasted, with only sporadic breaks, from early evening until dawn. It was amazing to watch the behavior of the Huks, these “amateur soldiers,” during such barrages.

Most would

remain calm and indifferent to the shells whining over¬ head. They were so numbed to danger that they could exchange jokes, sing their favorite revolutionary songs and love songs until they finally fell asleep. They did not panic, not even when the shells hit near the camp. They remained in their foxholes, between boulders or between the huge protruding roots of giant trees. We learned to entrust our fate to God, good luck, or steady nerves, according to our beliefs and temperaments. During six years of such air raids and artillery assaults, we lost no more than a dozen comrades, and even these were lost only because of care¬ lessness or recklessness. Soon after an attack, the enemy’s patrols and scouts would be sent out again to pave the way for the next in¬ fantry assault. It would come if the patrols learned of some definite objective or found traces of Huks. During this stage of operations our scouts and intelligence agents were