Within the baranguy, the status system, though not rigid, appears to have consisted of five classes: the datu and his family; nobility; the freeholder; the sharecropper; and, at the bottom, the debt peon or war captive, termed slaves by Spanish observers. The lowest status was inherited but, through manumission and interclass marriage, seldom extended over more than two generations. The fluidity of the social system was, in part, the consequence of a bilateral kinship system in which lineage was reckoned equally through the male and female line. Marriage was apparently stable, though divorce was socially acceptable under certain circumstances.

Animism was the religion of the early Filipino, a mixture of monotheism and polytheism in which the latter dominated. The propitiation of evil spirits required numerous rituals, but there was no religious hierarchy. In religion, as in social structure and economic activity, there was considerable variation between - and even within - the islands.

Islam was brought to the Philippines by traders and proselytizers from the Indonesian islands. By 1500 Islam was established in the Sulu Archipelago and spread from there to Mindanao; it had reached the Manila area by 1565. Muslim immigrants introduced a political concept of territorial states ruled by rajas or sultans who exercised suzerainty over the datu. Neither the political state concept of the Muslim rulers nor the limited territorial concept of the sedentary rice farmers of Luzon, however, spread beyond the areas where they originated. When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, the majority of the estimated 500,000 people in the islands still lived in barangay settlements.

Ferdinand Magellan headed the first Spanish foray to the Philippines in 1521, meeting an untimely death in Cebu. After three further expeditions had ended in disaster, Philip II, "the most Catholic of kings," after whom the islands are named, sent out Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, who established the first permanent Spanish settlement, in Cebu, in 1565. The Spanish city of Manila was founded in 1571, and by the end of the 16th century most of the coastal and lowland areas from Luzon to northern Mindanao were under Spanish control. Friars marched with soldiers and soon accomplished the nominal conversion to Catholicism of all the natives under Spanish administration. But the Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu, whom the Spanish called Moros, were never completely subdued by Spain; a 20th-century U.S. army was to be required for that task.

Spanish rule for the first 100 years was exercised in most areas through a type of tax farming imported from the Americas known as the encomienda. But abusive treatment of the native tribute payers and neglect of religious instruction by the encomenderos, as well as frequent withholding of revenues from the crown, led to the abandonment of the system by the end of the 17th century. The governor general, himself appointed by the king, began to appoint his own civil and military governors to rule directly.

Central government in Manila retained a medieval cast up to the 19th century, and the governor general was so powerful that he was often likened to an independent mornarch. He dominated the Audiencia, or high court, was captain general of the armed forces, and enjoyed the privilege of engaging in commerce for private profit.

Manila dominated the islands not only as the political capital. The galleon trade with Acapulco in present day Mexico assured Manila's commercial primacy as well. This exchange of Chinese silks for Mexican silver kept in Manila those Spaniards seeking a quick profit, as well as attracting a large Chinese community. The Chinese, despite several massacres at the hands of the suspicious Spaniards, persisted and soon established a dominance of commerce that they have never relinquished.

Manila was also the ecclesiastical capital. The governor general was civil head of the church in the islands, but the archbishop vied with him for political supremacy. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, buttressed with the legal status of lieutenant governor, the archbishop frequently won. Augmenting their political power, religious orders, Catholic hospitals, and schools, as well as bishops acquired great wealth, mostly in land. Royal grants and devises formed the core of theirs holdings, but many arbitrary extensions were made beyond the boundaries of the original grants.

The power of the church was derived not simply from wealth and official status. The priests and friars had a command of the native languages that was rare among lay Spaniards; and in the provinces they outnumbered civil officials. Thus, they were an invaluable source of information to the colonial government. The cultural goal of the Spanish clergy was nothing less than the full Christianization and Hispanization of the Filipino. in the first decades of missionary work, native animism was vigorously suppressed; old practices were not tolerated. But as the Christian laity grew in number and the zeal of the clergy waned, it became more and more difficult to prevent the preservation of ancient beliefs and customs under Catholic garb. Thus, even in the area of religion, pre-Spanish Filipino culture was not entirely destroyed.

Economic and political institutions were also altered under Spanish impact, but perhaps less thoroughly than in the religious realm. The priest tried to move all the people into pueblos, or villages, surrounding the great stone churches. But the dispersed demographic patterns of the old baranguys largely persisted. Nevertheless, the datu's once hereditary position became subject to Spanish appointment.

Agricultural technology changed very slowly until the late 18th century, as shifting cultivation gradually gave way to more intensive sedentary farming, partly under the guidance of the friars. The socioeconomic consequences of the Spanish policies that accompanied this shift reinforced class differences. The datu's and other representatives of the old noble class took advantage of the introduction of the Western concept of absolute ownership of land to claim, as their own, fields cultivated by their various retainers, even though traditional land rights had been limited to usufruct. These heirs of pre-Spanish nobility played an important role in the friar-dominated local government.

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The 19th Century

By the late 18th century, political and economic changes in Europe were finally beginning to affect Spain and, thus, the Philippines. Important as a stimulus to trade was the gradual elimination of the monopoly enjoyed by the galleon to Acapulco. The last galleon sailed in 1811, and by the 1830s Manila was open to foreign merchants almost without restriction. The demand for Philippine sugar and hemp grew apace, and the volume of exports to Europe expanded even further after the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869.

The growth of commercial agriculture resulted in the appearance of a new class. Alongside the landholdings of the church and the rice estates of the pre-Spanish nobility there arose haciendas of coffee, hemp, and sugar, often the property of enterprising Chinese-Filipino mestizos. Some of the families that gained prominence in the 19th century still play an important part in Philippine economics and politics.

Not until 1863 was there public education in the Philippines, and even then the church controlled the curriculum. Less than 20 percent of those who went to school could read or write Spanish, and far fewer could speak it properly. The limited higher education in the colony was entirely under clerical direction, but in the 1880s many sons of the wealthy were sent to Europe to study. There, nationalism and a passion for reform blossomed in the liberal atmosphere. Out of this talented group of overseas Filipino students arose the so-called Propaganda Movement. Magazines, poetry, and pamphleteering florished. Jose Rizal, this movement's most brilliant figure, produced a political novel, Noli me Tangere (A Social Cancer), which had a wide impact in the Philippines. In 1892, Rizal returned home and formed the Liga Filipina, a modest reform-minded society, loyal to Spain, that breathed not a word of independence. But Rizal was quickly arrested by the overly fearful Spaniards, exiled to a remote island in the south, and finally executed in 1896. Meanwhile, within the Philippines there had developed a firm commitment to independence among a somewhat less privileged class.

Shocked by the arrest of Rizal, these activists quickly formed the Katipunan under the leadership of Andres Bonifacio, a self-educated warehouseman. The Katipunan was dedicated to the expulsion of the Spaniards from the islands, and preparations were made for armed revolt. Filipino rebels had been numerous in the history of Spanish rule, but now for the first time they were inspired by nationalistic ambitions and possessed the education that made success a real possibility.

The rebels were poorly led and had few successes against colonial troops. Only in Cavite Province did they make any headway. Commanded by Emilio Aguinaldo, the twenty-seven-year-old mayor of the town of Cavite who had been a member of the Katipunan since 1895, the rebels defeated Civil Guard and regular colonial troops between August and November 1896 and made the province the center of the revolution.

Under a new governor, who apparently had been sponsored as a hard-line candidate by the religious orders, Rizal was brought before a military court on fabricated charges of involvement with the Katipunan. The events of 1872 repeated themselves. A brief trial was held on December 26 and--with little chance to defend himself--Rizal was found guilty and sentenced to death. On December 30, 1896, he was brought out to the Luneta and executed by a firing squad.

Rizal´s death filled the rebels with new determination, but the Katipunan was becoming divided between supporters of Bonifacio, who revealed himself to be an increasingly ineffective leader, and its rising star, Aguinaldo. At a convention held at Tejeros, the Katipunan's headquarters in March 1897, delegates elected Aguinaldo president and demoted Bonifacio to the post of director of the interior. Bonifacio withdrew with his supporters and formed his own government. After fighting broke out between Bonifacio's and Aguinaldo's troops, Bonifacio was arrested, tried, and on May 10, 1897, executed by order of Aguinaldo.

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The Philippine Revolution

In late 1896, Spanish friars uncovered evidence of the Katipuan's plans, and its leaders were forced into premature action. Revolts broke out in several provinces around Manila. As 1897 wore on, Aguinaldo himself suffered reverses at the hands of Spanish troops, being forced from Cavite in June and retreating to Biak-na-Bato in Bulacan Province. The futility of the struggle was becoming apparent, however, on both sides. Although Spanish troops were able to defeat insurgents on the battlefield, they could not suppress guerrilla activity. In August armistice negotiations were opened between Aguinaldo and a new Spanish governor. By mid-December, an agreement was reached in which the governor would pay Aguinaldo the equivalent of US$800,000, and the rebel leader and his government would go into exile. Aguinaldo established himself in Hong Kong, and the Spanish bought themselves time. The Spaniards promised reforms as well. But reforms were very slow in coming, and small bands of rebels, distrustful of Spanish promises, kept their arms; clashes grew more frequent.

Meanwhile, war had broken out between Spain and the United States. After the U.S. naval victory at Manila Bay in May 1898, Aguinaldo and his entourage returned to the Philippines with the help of Admiral Dewey. Confident of U.S. support, he reorganized his forces and soon liberated several towns south of Manila. Independence was declared on June 12, which is now celebrated as Independence Day in the Philippines. In September a constitutional congress met in Malolos, Bulacan, drawing up a fundememntal law derived from European and Latin American precedents. A government was formed on the basis of that contitution in January 1899, with Aguinaldo as president.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops had landed and, with important Filipino help, forced the capitulation in August 1898 of the Spanish commander in Manila. The Americans, however, would not let Filipino forces enter the city. It was soon apparent to Aguinaldo and his advisers that earlier expressions of sympathy for Filipino independence by Dewey and U.S. consular officials had little significance. They felt betrayed.

U.S. commisioners to the peace negotiations in Paris had been instructed to demand the cession of the Philippines to the U.S.; such cession was confirmed with the signing of the peace treaty on December 10, 1898. Ratification followed in the U.S. Senate in February 1899, but with only one vote more that the required two-thirds. Arguments of ¨manifest destiny¨ could not overwhelm a determined anti-imperialistic minority.

By the time the treaty was ratified, hostilities had already broken out between U.S. and Filipino forces. Since Filipino leaders did not recognize U.S. sovereignty over the islands and the U.S. commanders gave no weight to Filipino claims of independence, the conflict was inevitable. It took two years of counterinsurgency warfare - marked by several unfortunate similarities with the later U.S. military involvement in Vietname - plus some wise conciliatory moves in the political arena to break the back of the nationalist resistence. Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901 and shortly thereafter appealed to his countrymen to accept U.S. rule.

The Filipino revolutionary movement had had two goals, national and social. The first goal, independence, though realized briefly, was frustrated by the U.S. decision to establish a new empire. The goal of fundemental social change, manifest in the nationlization of friar lands by the Manolos Republic, was ultimately frustrated by the power and resilience of the entrenched institutions. Share tenants who had ralied to Aguinaldo´s cause, partly for economic reasons, merely exchanged one landlord for another. In any case, the proclamation of a republic in 1898 had marked the Filipinos as the first Asian people to try to throw off European colonialism.

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The Period of U.S. Influence

The juxtaposition of U.S. democracy and imperial rule over a subject people was sufficiently jarring to most Americans that, from the beginning, the training of Filipinos for self-government and ultimate independence - the Manolos Republic was convieniently ignored - was an essential rationalization for U.S. hegemony in the islands. Differences between Democartic and Republican policies focussed on the speed with which self-government should be extended and the date on which independence should be granted.

In 1899 President MvKinley sent Cornell University president Jacob Schurman at the head of a five-man fact-finding commision to the Philippines. Schurman reported back that Filipinos wanted ultimate independence, but this had no immediate impact on policy. McKinley sent out the Second Philippine Commision in 1900, under William Howard Taft; by July 1901 it had established civil government.

In 1907 the Philippine Commision, which had been acting as both legislature and governor general´s Cabinet, became the upper house of a bicameral body. The new 80-member Assembly was directly elected by a somewhat restricted electorate from single-member districts, making the first elective legislative body in Southeast Asia. When Govenor General Harrison appointed a Filipino majority to the Commission in 1913, the U.S. voice in the legislative process was further reduced.

Francis B. Harrison was the only governor general appointed by a Democratic president in the first 35 years of U.S. rule. He had been sent by Woodrow Wilson with specific instructions to prepare the Philippines for ultimate independence, a goal that he enthusiastically supported. The term of Governor General Francis Harrison (1913-21) was one of particularly harmonious collaboration between Americans and Filipinos. Harrison's attitudes (he is described as having regarded himself as a ¨constitutional monarch¨ presiding over a ¨government of Filipinos¨) reflected the relatively liberal stance of Woodrow Wilson's Democratic Party administration. In 1913 Wilson had appointed five Filipinos to the Philippine Commission of the legislature, giving it a Filipino majority for the first time. Harrison undertook rapid "Filipinization" of the civil service, much to the anger and distress of Americans in the islands, including superannuated officials. In 1913 there had been 2,623 American and 6,363 Filipino officials; in 1921 there were 13,240 Filipino and 614 American administrators. Critics accused Harrison of transforming a ¨colonial government of Americans aided by Filipinos¨ into a ¨government of Filipinos aided by Americans¨ and of being the ¨plaything and catspaw of the leaders of the Nacionalista Party.¨

A major step was taken in the direction of independence in 1916, when the United States Congress passed a second organic law, commonly referred to as the Jones Act, which replaced the 1902 law. Its preamble stated the intent to grant Philippine independence as soon as a stable government was established. The Philippine Senate replaced the Philippine Commission as the upper house of the legislature. Unlike the commission, all but two of the Senate's twenty-four members (and all but nine of the ninety representatives in the lower house, now renamed the House of Representatives) were popularly elected. The two senators and nine representatives were appointed by the governor general to represent the non-Christian peoples. The legislature's actions were subject to the veto of the governor general, and it could not pass laws affecting the rights of United States citizens. The Jones Act brought the legislative branch under Filipino control. The executive still was firmly under the control of an appointed governor general, and most Supreme Court justices, who were appointed by the United States president, still were Americans in 1916.

Elections were held for the two houses in 1916, and the Nacionalista Party made an almost clean sweep. All but one elected seat in the Senate and eighty-three out of ninety elected seats in the House were won by their candidates, leaving the National Progressive Party (the former Federalista Party) a powerless opposition. Quezon was chosen president of the Senate, and Osmeña continued as speaker of the House.

The Jones Act remained the basic legislation for the administration of the Philippines until the United States Congress passed new legislation in 1934 which became effective in 1935, establishing the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Provisions of the Jones Act were differently interpreted, however, by the governors general. Harrison rarely challenged the legislature by his use of the veto power. His successor, General Leonard Wood (1921-27), was convinced that United States withdrawal from the islands would be as disastrous for the Filipinos as it would be for the interests of the United States in the western Pacific. He aroused the intense opposition of the Nacionalistas by his use of the veto power 126 times in his six years in office. The Nacionalista Party created a political deadlock when ranking Filipino officials resigned in 1923 leaving their positions vacant until Wood's term ended with his death in 1927. His successors, however, reversed Wood's policies and reestablished effective working relations with Filipino politicians.

Although the Jones Act did not transfer responsibility for the Moro regions (reorganized in 1914 under the Department of Mindanao and Sulu) from the American governor to the Filipino-controlled legislature, Muslims perceived the rapid Filipinization of the civil service and United States commitment to eventual independence as serious threats. In the view of the Moros, an independent Philippines would be dominated by Christians , their traditional enemies. United States policy from 1903 had been to break down the historical autonomy of the Muslim territories. Immigration of Christian settlers from Luzon and the Visayan Islands to the relatively unsettled regions of Mindanao was encouraged, and the new arrivals began supplanting the Moros in their own homeland. Large areas of the island were opened to economic exploitation. There was no legal recognition of Muslim customs and institutions. In March 1935, Muslim datu petitioned United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking that ¨the American people should not release us until we are educated and become powerful because we are like a calf who, once abandoned by its mother, would be devoured by a merciless lion.¨ Any suggestion of special status for or continued United States rule over the Moro regions, however, was vehemently opposed by Christian Filipino leaders who, when the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established, gained virtually complete control over government institutions

Some substantial restrictions on Philippine autonomy remained during this period. Defense and foreign affairs remained exclusive U.S. perogatives. U.S. direction of Philippine domestic affairs was exercised primarily through the govenor general and the executive branch of the insular government. In the final form of the ¨Jones Act of 1916¨ the wording merely stated that it is the ¨purpose of the people of the U.S.¨ to recognize Philippine independence ¨as soon as a stable government can be established therein.¨ By 1925 the only American left in the governor general´s Cabinet was the secretary of public instruction, who was also the lieutenant governor general, an indication of the high priority given education in U.S. policy.

In the first few years of U.S. rule, hundreds of schoolteachers came from the United States. But Filipino teachers were trained so rapidly that by 1927 they constituted nearly 99 percent of the 26,200 in public schools. The school population expanded 500 percent in a generation; education consumed one-half of governmental expendtures at all levels, and educational opportunity in the Philippines was greater than an other colony in Asia.

As a consequence of this pedagogical explosion, literacy doubled to nearly 50 percent in the 1930s, and educated Filipinos acquired a common language and linguistic key to Western civilization. In education policy was found the only successful U.S. effort to establish a socio-cultural basis for political democracy.

U.S. attempts to create equality of economic opportunity were more modest and less successful. In a predominantely agricultural country the pattern of landownership is crucial. The trend toward greater concentration, which began in the 19th century, continued during the American period, despite some legal barriers. Vast U.S.-owned plantations were forestalled, but legal restrictions had little effect on those politically well-connected Filipinos who were intent on amassing fortunes. The percentage of farmers under share tenancy doubled between 1900 and 1935; and the frustration of the tentants erupted into three small rebellions in central Luzon during the 1920s and 1930s.

The Tenancy Problem

The limited nature of United States intervention in the economy and the Nacionalista Party's elite dominance of the Philippine political system ensured that the status quo in landlord and tenant relationships would be maintained, even if certain of its traditional aspects changed. A government attempt to establish homesteads modeled on those of the American West in 1903 did little to alter landholding arrangements. Although different regions of the archipelago had their own specific arrangements and different proportions of tenants and small proprietors, the kasama (sharecropper) system, was the most prevalent, particularly in the rice-growing areas of Central Luzon and the Visayan Islands.

Under this arrangement, the landowners supplied the seed and cash necessary to tide cultivators over during the planting season, whereas the cultivators provided tools and work animals and were responsible for one-half the expense of crop production. Usually, owner and sharecropper each took one-half of the harvest, although only after the former deducted a portion for expenses. Terms might be more liberal in frontier areas where owners needed to attract cultivators to clear the land. Sometimes land tenancy arrangements were three tiered. An original owner would lease land to an inquilino, who would then sublet it to kasamas. In the words of historian David R. Sturtevant: "Thrice removed from their proprietario, affected taos [peasants] received ever-diminishing shares from the picked-over remains of harvests."

Cultivators customarily were deep in debt, for they were dependent on advances made by the landowner or inquilino and had to pay steep interest rates. Principal and interest accumulated rapidly, becoming an impossible burden. It was estimated in 1924 that the average tenant family would have to labor uninterruptedly for 163 years to pay off debts and acquire title to the land they worked. The kasama system created a class of peons or serfs; children inherited the debts of their fathers, and over the generations families were tied in bondage to their estates. Contracts usually were unwritten, and landowners could change conditions to their own advantage.

Two factors led to a worsening of the cultivators' position. One was the rapid increase in the national population (from 7.6 million in 1905 to 16 million in 1939) brought about through improvements in public health, which put added pressure on the land, lowered the standard of living, and created a labor surplus. Closely tied to the population increase was the erosion of traditional patron-client ties. The landlord-tenant relationship was becoming more impersonal. The landlord's interest in the tenants' welfare was waning. Landlords ceased providing important services and used profits from the sale of cash crops to support their urban life-styles or to invest in other kinds of enterprises. Cultivators accused landowners of being shameless and forgetting the principle of utang na loob, demanding services from tenants without pay and giving nothing in return.

As the area under cultivation increased from 1.3 million hectares in 1903 to 4 million hectares in 1935--stimulated by United States demand for cash crops and by the growing population--tenancy also increased. In 1918 there were roughly 2 million farms, of which 1.5 million were operated by their owners; by 1939 these figures had declined to 1.6 million and 800,000, respectively, as individual proprietors became tenants or migrant laborers. Disparities in the distribution of wealth grew. By 1939 the wealthiest 10 percent of the population received 40 percent of the islands' income. The elite and the cultivators were separated culturally and geographically, as well as economically; as new urban centers rose, often with an Americanized culture, the elite left the countryside to become absentee landlords, leaving estate management in the hands of frequently abusive overseers. The Philippine Constabulary played a central role in suppressing antilandlord resistance.

Resistance Movements

The tradition of rural revolt, often with messianic overtones, continued under United States rule. Colorum sects, derived from the old Cofradía de San José, had spread throughout the Christian regions of the archipelago and by the early 1920s competed with the Roman Catholic establishment and the missionaries of Gregorio Aglipay's Independent Philippine Church (Iglesia Filipina Independiente). A colorum-led revolt broke out in northeastern Mindanao early in 1924, sparked by a sect leader's predictions of an imminent judgment day. In 1925 Florencio Entrencherado, a shopkeeper on the island of Panay, proclaimed himself Florencio I, Emperor of the Philippines, somewhat paradoxically running for the office of provincial governor of Iloilo that same year on a platform of tax reduction, measures against Chinese and Japanese merchants, and immediate independence. Although he lost the election, the campaign made him a prominent figure in the western Visayan Islands and won him the sympathies of the poor living in the sugar provinces of Panay and Negros. Claiming semidivine attributes (that he could control the elements and that his charisma had been granted him by the Holy Spirit and the spirits of Father Burgos and Rizal), Florencio had a following of some 10,000 peasants on Negros and Panay by late 1926. In May 1927, his supporters, heeding his call that "the hour will come when the poor will be ordered to kill all the rich," launched an abortive insurrection.

Tensions were highest in Central Luzon, where tenancy was most widespread and population pressures were the greatest. The 1931 Tayug insurrection north of Manila was connected with a colorum sect and had religious overtones, but traditionally messianic movements gradually gave way to secular, and at times revolutionary, ones. One of the first of these movements was the Association of the Worthy Kabola (Kapisanan Makabola Makasinag), a secret society that by 1925 had some 12,000 followers, largely in Nueva Ecija Province. Its leader, Pedro Kabola, called for liberation of the Philippines and promised the aid of the Japanese. The Tangulang (Kapatiran Tangulang Malayang Mamamayang--Association for an Offensive for Our Future Freedom) movement founded in 1931 was both urban and rural based and had as many as 40,000 followers.

The most important movement, however, was that of the Sakdalistas. Founded in 1933 by Benigno Ramos, a former Nacionalista Party member and associate of Quezon who broke with him over the issue of collaboration, the Sakdal Party (sakdal means to accuse) ran candidates in the 1934 election on a platform of complete independence by the end of 1935, redistribution of land, and an end to caciquism. Sakdalistas were elected to a number of seats in the legislature and to provincial posts, and by early 1935 the party may have had as many as 200,000 members. Because of poor harvests and frustrations with the government's lack of response to peasant demands, Sakdalistas took up arms and seized government buildings in a number of locations on May 2-3, 1935. The insurrection, suppressed by the Philippine Constabulary, resulted in approximately 100 dead and Benigno Ramos fled into exile to Japan.

Through the 1930s, tenant movements in Central Luzon became more active, articulate, and better organized. In 1938 the Socialist Party joined in a united front with the Communist Party of the Philippines (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas--PKP), which was prominent in supporting the demands of tenants for better contracts and working conditions. As the depression wore on and prices for cash crops collapsed, tenant strikes and violent confrontations with landlords, their overseers, and the Philippine Constabulary escalated.

In response to deteriorating conditions, commonwealth president Quezon launched the "Social Justice" program, which included regulation of rents but achieved only meager results. There were insufficient funds to carry out the program, and implementation was sabotaged on the local level by landlords and municipal officials. In 1939 and 1940, thousands of cultivators were evicted by landlords because they insisted on enforcement of the 1933 Rice Share Tenancy Act, which guaranteed larger shares for tenants.

The Beginnings to The Huk Movement

The Hukbalahap movement, known simply as the Huk (pronounced "hook"), was the culmination of events and internal Philippine conditions that predated World War II by centuries and was rooted in the country's pre-colonial period. Economic, social, and political inequities existed before the arrival of the Spanish, who further co-opted it into their own variety of mercantilism, and were perpetuated into the twentieth century by American policy. This social and political history divided the Filipinos into classes where the "haves" reaped the nation's profits while the "have-nots" were left with little but their desperate desire for change.

When the United States annexed the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, Filipinos were given greater responsibility for governing their own land. Local government was assisted by limited American efforts to improve both economic and social conditions. Philippine officials advanced in the civil service and many of these bureaucrats joined a growing number of prosperous businessmen to replace Spanish haciendas with their own large plantations. Collectively, they formed a new Philippine elite and sought to retain the status quo that had provided them the opportunity to succeed -- whether through business, agriculture, or corruption in government.3 There existed little indeed for honest government servants when the system rewarded corruption, nepotism, and favoritism so handsomely.

American policy toward the Philippines was first tested during the bloody 1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection. Although the nearly three year long war suppressed overt Philippine nationalism, at least for the time, the bitterness it produced among many Filipinos endured well into mid-century. As normalcy returned to the islands in 1903, the United States attempted to address one of the long-term problems faced by the islands--land-tenure. Many large parcels of Church-owned land that had been expropriated by the Spanish in the sixteenth century and given to the Church to administer were offered for public sale. However sincere the effort, few Filipinos were able to take advantage of this opportunity. Those who attempted to purchase land were often victims of usury and fraud at the hands of local officials more interested in graft than in helping the peasants acquire land. The land sale program failed to transfer land ownership to the farmers but did allow those few Filipinos with resources to increase the size of their holdings. This had the effect of perpetuating the landlord-tenant relationship that had become synonymous with Philippine agriculture. Rampant corruption in government, coupled with an unchanging socioeconomic climate, continued under the new American administration in Manila throughout the 1920s.

During the next few years, American concerns about the Philippines were limited almost entirely to economic matters and establishing a date for Philippine independence. In 1934, the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 127, the Tydings-McDuffie Act. The act, ratified in May by the Philippine Congress, promised full Philippine independence on 4 July 1946 and established conditions under which the islands would be governed until that time -- the Philippine Commonwealth. The United States retained control of Philippine foreign relations, defense, and major financial transactions but granted the Philippine president and legislature power to administer internal affairs. The Tydings-McDuffie Act created dissension within the Philippine government, for it promised independence at the price of formalizing economic ties with Washington for the next twelve years. Many critics in Manila, and in the growing communist and socialist parties as well, objected strongly to the near total disregard for Philippine nationalism that these strict controls mandated.

After the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, U.S. economic and political policy did little to alleviate the basic Philippine problems of poverty and land-tenure.

Although the Philippine economy showed marked improvements before World War II, internal distribution of wealth remained much as it always had been. Landlords grew rich at the expense of the peasant farmer who found it increasingly difficult to repay loans for seed or lease money made by the landlord. Confronted with these obstacles, individual initiative was stifled, productivity remained low, and whatever profits a farmer managed to scrape together went toward paying his landlord.

By 1941, 80 percent of Luzon's farmers were hopelessly indebted to their landlords with no expectations of a brighter future at all. Although improvements had been made in education, transportation, health care and communications, the absence of social reforms served only to raise local frustrations with their central government. In Luzon's provinces of Balacan, Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Tarlac, Bataan, and Laguna, few farmers owned their land. The majority were either tenants or hired labor. In Pampanga Province, 70 percent of the farmers were tenants. As a result, annual income during this period hovered at only 120 pesos, about $65. This agrarian region proved ripe for anti-government insurgencies as the local population continued to struggle against landlords and had little faith in the central government which the peasant saw as unconcerned with their plight.

Peasant farmers, many of whom were literate by this time thanks to American efforts to abolish mass illiteracy under Spanish rule, were demoralized by stagnant social conditions and the failure of the United States to grant Philippine independence after the war with Spain. They realized landlords were taking advantage of them and began to seek outlets for their frustrations. The farmer tilled land owned by an absentee landlord or by the Church, either of which demanded not less than half of his crop, sometimes 70 percent, as rent and payment for seed. Additionally, the landlord controlled almost every aspect of his life. A story recalled by the Huk supreme commander, Luis Taruc, shares the experiences of many Filipino farmers during the early 1920s. Taruc told of his family moving by carabao cart from their home in San Luis, Pampanga, to take over the farm worked by his uncle in Bataan. Although they moved with great expectations about the land's productivity, they realized that it was owned by the Pabalan family, landlords from San Miguel, Bulacan, who would exact their 50-70 percent of the crop as rent and interest payment. But because the land was more productive than that in Pampanga, they hoped to end up with a larger share than before. Faced with a government content to maintain the status quo, it was not surprising to find serious unrest on Luzon, Panay, Negros, and Mindinao by 1920.

In 1920, the Third International, or Comintern, headquartered in Moscow, met in Canton, China. The worldwide growth of interest in communism coincided with the rising level of disaffection in the Philippines. Following the International, an American Comintern representative, Harrison George, joined with several Philippine socialists to form the base for the first Philippine communist party. Together with Isabelo de los Reyes, Dominador Gomez, Crisanto Evangelista, and Antonio Ora, he fought an influential Church and established a small foothold for the communist cause in Luzon. In May 1924 they founded the Kapisanang Pambansa ng mga Magbudukid sa Filippinas (KPMP), or National Peasant's Union in Nueva Ecija Province, a stronghold of peasant unrest and violence. Soon the National Peasant's Union spread across Luzon and into the Philippine capital of Manila.

The Peasant's Union exploited social conditions, the continued colonial status of the islands, the land-tenure system, and the deteriorating climate between landlords and peasants, to become the leader of a confederation of labor unions, the Philippine Labor Congress. In 1927, the organization officially associated itself with the Comintern and organized the nation's first legal communist political party, the Worker's Party. Within the year, Evangelista, as head of the Worker's Party, took advantage of his position and visited Chou En Lai and Stalin. Upon his return to Luzon, he organized four new socialist and communist organizations and began to plan the "class struggle" against the Manila government.

On the 34th anniversary of the 1896 Katipunan Revolt, 26 August 1930, Evangelista announced the birth of the Partido Komunista ng Filipinas, the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP). Less than three months later, on the 13th anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, he formally established the PKP and proclaimed its objectives. In his address of 7 November, he set forth five guiding principles for the Philippine communist movement: to mobilize for complete national independence; to establish communism for the masses; to defend the masses against capitalist exploitation; to overthrow American imperialism in the Philippines; and to overthrow capitalism. With these guidelines and the PKP banner that displayed the communist hammer and sickle emblem on a red background, surrounded by the words "Communist Party of the Philippines," Evangelista set out on his mission.

Exactly two years after the birth of the PKP, the Philippine Supreme Court declared it illegal and Evangelista and several of his chief lieutenants were imprisoned. They were charged with plotting the overthrow of the government and instigating large-scale, bloody riots in Manila. Other PKP members went underground and began to fight against landlords on behalf of the peasants. Although not widespread, PKP attacks unsettled central Luzon. Landlords were murdered, farm animals slaughtered, and many fields were put to the torch. In reaction, President Quezon instituted several minor land reform measures, including putting a 30 percent limit on the amount of a tenant's crop that could be demanded by the landlord. Although highly lauded at its conception, this reform was all but ignored by landlords, courts, and the government.

An unfortunate side-effect of the 1932 court decision was a dramatic rise in prestige and size of the heretofore weak Philippine Socialist Party (formed in April 1932 in Pampanga) and the militant Worker and Peasant's Union (WPU). With the PKP in an outlaw status, the socialists and WPU became the legal foci for many PKP supporters. Both organizations gained considerable influence during the next six years as poor socio-economic conditions remained unchanged for Luzon's tenant farmers and urban poor.

Amidst increasing incidents of violent communist-sponsored demonstrations in Manila in 1938, Quezon released PKP leaders Evangelista, Taruc, and de Los Reyes when they pledged their loyalty to the government and to American efforts to resist fascist and Japanese expansion. This action soon proved less than desirable for Quezon. Almost immediately after his parole, Evangelista assumed leadership of a united socialist front when the PKP merged with the Socialist Party on 7 November. The new organization openly proclaimed the communist doctrine and spread from its traditional stronghold in central Luzon to Bataan, Zambales, and to the islands of Cebu, Panay, and Negros.

To be continued . . .