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Philippines The Communist Insurgency
The Philippine communist insurgency of the 1990s was rooted
in the nation's history of peasant rebellion. Rural revolts--
isolated and unsuccessful--were common during the early part of
the twentieth century and before. Discontent among peasants over
land tenancy and growing population pressures inspired increasing
violence in the 1930s, especially in Central Luzon where isolated
peasant rebellions gave way to better organized, sometimes
revolutionary movements. After World War II, tensions between
peasants and the government-backed landlords grew, leading to the
Huk rebellion. Formerly anti-Japanese guerrillas, the
Huk (see Glossary)
fighters were associated with the Communist Party of
the Philippines (Partido Kommunista ng Pilipinas--PKP), which had
been established in 1930. The rebellion waned during the early
1950s, but Huk supporters and the remnants of the Huk army later
played important roles in the founding of the NPA in the late
1960s.
The CPP guerrilla movement, the NPA, was a successor to the
PKP-Huk actions. Jose Maria Sison and a handful of young
revolutionaries founded the CPP--Marxist Leninist, now usually
referred to as the CPP, in Central Luzon on December 26, 1968. It
soon became the core communist political organization, leaving
just a small remnant of the original PKP. The NPA was formed the
following March with sixty former Huk fighters. The new party has
been a result of an internal schism in the parent PKP, created by
ideological differences and by personal animosity between Sison
and PKP leaders. The CPP pursued a Maoist-inspired program unlike
the Soviet-sponsored PKP. The PKP eventually renounced armed
insurrection and, in 1990, was an inconsequential, quasi-legal
political party with about 5,000 members. The outlawed CPP,
meanwhile, aggressively pursued its guerrilla war, and in 1990
fielded some 18,000 to 23,000 full-time insurgents.
Data as of June 1991
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