Why is the Membership of the New People s Army (NPA) 70% Lumad?: Historical Context, Causes, and Recommendations

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1 Myshel Prasad Middlebury Institute of International Studies Terrorism in Southeast Asia NPTG 8674, Spring 2015 Why is the Membership of the New People s Army (NPA) 70% Lumad?: Historical Context, Causes, and Recommendations Introduction The New People s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is the longest running communist insurgency in the world, 1 and is on the US terrorist list, but otherwise attracts little international attention. Zachary Abuza wrote in September of 2005 that The single greatest threat to the Philippine state continues to come from the CPP/NPA, 2 and yet by 2012 he described it as a low-level security threat in the country with little revolutionary or ideological substance, that engages in wide-scale criminal and extortion activities, 3 reflecting the declining threat level of the NPA and a perceived decline in ideological coherence. This is usually explained as a direct result of counterinsurgency efforts and defections, and typically represented in numbers; the group was estimated at up to 25,000 members in 1986 but is now estimated to have under 5,000, possibly as few as 3,000 4 members throughout the Philippines. But the numbers themselves say little about why and where the group continues to endure, the current composition of its membership, how the interests of the dominant recruiting base may be impacting or be impacted by the ideology of the group, or more to the point, who that dominant base is. I recently had the opportunity to travel to Mindanao, the southern-most island in the Philippine archipelago, as part of fieldwork course on challenges to peacebuilding with the Center for Conflict Studies and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. 1 Abuza, Zachary. "The Philippines Internal and External Security Challenges." Special Report, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, no. Issue 45 (2012): the-philippines-internal-and-external-security-challenges/SR45_Philippines.pdf. 2 Abuza, Zachary. "Balik-Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf." Strategic Studies Institute, no. Publication 625 (2005): Abuza, Zachary. "The Philippines Internal and External Security Challenges." Special Report, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, no. Issue 45 (2012): the-philippines-internal-and-external-security-challenges/SR45_Philippines.pdf. 4 Dalumpines, Joey. "PIA Less than Half of NPA Rebels in Eastern Mindanao-AFP." Republic of the Philippines, Philippine Information Agency. April 29, 2015.

2 Mindanao has been called the center of gravity of the NPA 5 where more than half of the NPA guerillas are located, and Eastern Mindanao in particular was recently described as a hotbed of communist insurgency. 6 Yet during our many visits with local constituencies we learned much about the Moro autonomy movement and the peace process between the Aquino Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) embodied in the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) but very little about the NPA, other than a few- often very guarded- references. But one fact was consistently repeated, from the Brigadier General of the Mindanao Eastern Command to a Manobo leader working with an NGO, which is that 70% of NPA guerillas are Lumad or IPs (Indigenous People). 7 Why is that case? This paper explores possible answers to this question and finds that the reasons for the majority Lumad membership of the NPA are not ideological convergences between the Maoist agrarian ideology on which the CPP was founded and Lumad beliefs and practices regarding land tenure, but instead reflects local adaptations on the part of the NPA itself, which assimilated indigenous rights issues as a means of conferring legitimacy in a phase of declining ideological coherence. Other reasons for the majority Lumad membership include a common enemy alliance in the face of repression and encroachment, and cash and/or security motivations on the part of the Lumad, in light of uniquely pronounced poverty and vulnerability amongst a proliferation of armed groups. The recognition that the majority membership of the NPA in Mindanao are Lumad and analyzing the nature of this relationship has policy implications for counterinsurgency but most especially conflict resolution efforts that address not just the numbers of the NPA but the conditions of the Lumad that have allowed the group to sustain itself in Mindanao, the last real stronghold of NPA guerillas. To understand the latter, it is important to consider the historical context of the Philippines in depth, in which both the CPP/NPA as well as the conditions of the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) or Lumad developed, and which has given shape to the conflict space in which they have come to interact. Reconquistas: Colonials, Rebels, and Land The Philippines has a long colonial history. The Spanish arrived in 1521, having just completed the reconquista in Spain that ended with the fall of the last Muslim outpost of the former of Caliphate, Granada, in Pre-colonial Mindanao was home to a sizable merchant class but the economy was primarily agrarian, with both the Islamized 5 Sinapit, Jaime. "Crushing Communist Force in E. Mindanao Crucial to Defeating NPA Nationwide - AFP General." InterAksyon.com. January 13, Dalumpines, Joey. "PIA Less than Half of NPA Rebels in Eastern Mindanao-AFP." Republic of the Philippines, Philippine Information Agency. April 29, A 2011 International Crisis Group report puts the number 60-70%.

3 and non-islamized tribes relying on agriculture, fishing, and hunting; Islam had arrived with Muslim traders in the 13 th and 14 th centuries, after the fall of the Buddhist trading empire of Srivijaya. The Spaniards, who discovered the islands in their expansive quest for spice and access to trade routes, were greatly surprised to be confronted with the Islamic Sultanates of the southern island, and the Muslims of Mindanao came to be called Moros after the Spanish Moors. The Spanish Regalian Doctrine ceded all lands of the Philippine islands (named thusly for the Spanish King of the time, King Phillip) that were not privately owned to the property of the Spanish crown. Under the ecomiendas system, large land grants were given to Spanish colonizers, which included control of the indigenous people living on it. Much of this land was granted to orders of the Church and was converted to cash crop land, and signaled the shift from subsistence to export farming. 8 Tribal populations already living, hunting, farming on these lands were displaced or turned into plantation labor. This same arrangement was later conferred upon the emerging Philippine elite, who leased small tracts to peasants, who farmed the land but were required to offer a share of their produce as tribute, inaugurating the tenancy system. The population in Luzon and Visayas converted to Catholicism in large numbers under the Spanish, but Mindanao remained a frontier, with its own distinct culture and traditions until 1898, 9 when the US took possession of the Philippine islands at the end of the Spanish American War. Like the Spanish, the US had just completed something of a reconquista of its own. Inspired by the concept of Manifest Destiny, the US had won large tracts of additional territory in a war with Mexico and conquered the western indigenous tribes; Sitting Bull had been killed and the decisive massacre at Wounded Knee had occurred eight years before US warships arrived in Manila Bay. A year later, in 1899, despite their informal alliance against the Spanish, the Philippine-American War broke out between US forces and Philippine nationalists, mainly a guerilla force known as the Katipunan. The Katipunan was a Philippine clandestine group founded in 1892 with the goal of gaining independence from the Spanish. When the organization was discovered in 1896, leader Andres Bonifacio called for an open revolution. Following Bonifacio s death, the Katipunan was lead by Emilio Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo had a loose alliance with the United States, and continued the Katipunan attacks against the Spanish following the US victory in Manila Bay in May of By June, the Philippine fighters had won control of most of the Philippines, and Aguinaldo issued the Philippine Declaration of Independence, and established the First Philippine Republic, which he was the President 8 Broad, R., & Cavanagh, J. (1993). Life Along the Death March. In Plundering paradise the struggle for the environment in the Philippines (p. 84). Berkeley: University of California Press. 9 Oki, Yuri. "Land Tenure and Peace Negotiations in Mindanao, Philippines." In Land and Post-conflict Peacebuilding, 70. New York: Earthscan, 2012.

4 of until But soon Katipunan rebels found themselves fighting a new colonial power. The Philippine-American War lasted three years and resulted in the death of over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease. 10 New land laws issued by the American colonial authorities further invalidated traditional tenurial customs and exacerbated displacement; the Public Lands Act of 1902 declared all land grants and agreements by tribal Chiefs or Datus, or under the Sultanate, to be void. The US also followed a policy of Philippinization that included pursuing a purposeful demographic shift in Mindanao. Thomas McKenna writes in Muslims Rulers and Rebels how in 1917, Governor Frank Carpenter stated that the problem of civilization in Mindanao could be addressed by directing Christians from the Visayas and Luzon to settle in the Mohammedan and pagan regions. The 1919 Act expanded the land ownership of corporations and private interests and that same year the National Development Corporation (NDC) was established for the purpose of acquiring land for corporate investment. The economics of these transitions are described succinctly and comprehensively by Miriam Coronel Ferrer, who writes that following the classic colonial pattern, the Philippines played the subordinated role of supplier of raw materials Vast tracts of lands were converted into mono-crop plantations, and cleared for forest and mining activities. Traditional relations of production gave way to new economic players, monopolization of lands in the hands of a few, landlessness of the indigenous populations, the heightened exploitation of natural resources, and increased importance of global market forces. 11 The shift in traditional relations of production is important; in addition to displacing indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, the increasing corporatization of the old Spanish feudal system transformed the landlord-tenant relationship, already one that created extraordinary hardship for Philippine peasantry, into that of employer-employee that reduced the social responsibilities of now absentee landlords, including rations and interest-free loans, and where tenants faced evictions and wages were as low as possible to maximize profits, 12 or as one farmer put it, The most important thing that affected 10 The Philippine-American War, Milestones - Office of the Historian. (n.d.) Coronel Ferrer, M. (2005). The Moro and the Cordillera Conflicts in the Philippines and the Struggle for Autonomy. In Ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia (p. 112). Bangkok], Thailand: Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University. 12 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). Conclusion. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 252). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

5 this area was that relations between tenants and big landowners went from decent to indecent. 13 Peasants and Paramilitaries: The Huk Rebellion Part 1 Philippine peasants created and joined unions to organize and strike for better tenancy conditions in the 1930s across the rice and sugar plantations of Central Luzon, eventually developing as large peasant organizations that attracted hundreds of thousands of members. The first communist party of the Philippines, the PKP (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas), was founded in 1930, but its focus was primarily on urban labor unions and generally had little connection with the peasants of the countryside, although a few leaders of peasant organizations also became PKP members or leaders. Nevertheless, a common belief was that the peasant movement was communistic and manipulated by a few clever leaders. On occasion, the PKP did attempt to exert control over various movements, but ironically, the attempt to streamline operations and increase profits on the part of the large landowners, typically growing for export to the US, lead to the homogenized contracts and relations with tenant farmers that ultimately consolidated peasant grievances and facilitated their organization. A series of peasant uprisings occurred, usually easily suppressed by government forces. Landowners could rely on the Philippine Constabulary to support their interests; it was practically a private army for the landed elites. 14 Many landowners were also members of local or national government or at least well connected. New tenancy social justice laws were enacted under the government of the Philippine Commonwealth, which was established in 1936, but left a wide berth for interpretation and were largely unenforceable. It was under these conditions that the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation for the People s Anti-Japanese Army, Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon) or the first Huk rebellion emerged, following the 1941 invasion by the Japanese. Huk fighters were not all committed nationalists. Some were members or leaders of the peasant organizations or the PKP or both, but many joined the guerilla movement as a direct result of abuses suffered from Japanese soldiers or the Philippine Constabulary that worked directly with the occupation. They targeted Japanese soldiers but also landowners who supplied the Japanese with rice while their tenant farmers went hungry. Some villagers joined the Huk and roamed from village to village, pausing only to rest and eat. Others remained in their villages but were peasants by day and guerillas by 13 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). Origins of Rebellion. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 6). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 14 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). Unrest. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 54). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

6 night. 15 Huks committed sabotage, kidnapped, and assassinated government officials. Eventually in combination with the peasant organizations, they formed their own countergovernment. While the Huks fought the Japanese alongside American and Philippine forces at the end of WWII, frequently collaborating directly with American squadrons, those appointed to power in the Philippine government after MacArthur s victory included previous collaborators with the Japanese authorities and members of the paramilitary force USAFFE (United States Army in the Far East); the Huk found themselves not just excluded, but soon after, hunted down. Unlike the USAFFE guerillas, the Huks, deemed as subversive and communist, were required to disarm by American military police and leaders were arrested. On one occasion, a USAFFE commander disarmed and summarily executed 109 Huk members; that commander was subsequently appointed as a mayor by American authorities. 16 Peasants and Paramilitaries: The Huk Rebellion Part 2 Landowners who had abandoned their lands during the war retuned demanding backrent payments from tenants. Aware of the overlap between the peasant movements of the 1930s and the Huks, with the end of the war, landed elites were eager to see the movement destroyed. With landlords charging higher interest rates on loans to their tenants, resisting sharing a greater percentage of the harvest with farmers, and increasing evictions, many members of the older peasant organizations joined the new umbrella organization the PKM or National Peasants Union. The PKMs focus was agrarian reform, still primarily defined as an improvement on existing terms between landlords and tenants. Juan Feleo and Luis Tarac were the movements spokespeople and were well-known former members of older peasant unions, the PKP, and the Huks. The PKM negotiated directly with the government for better harvest shares and succeeded in winning seats in the April 1946 elections, just three months before the official date of Philippine independence from the US. But the response to this movement was largely a repressive one; this period, saw the rise of armed units referred to as Civilian Guards, who were often former USSAFE guerillas now privately employed by landowners, and armed with support from the military police and Department of Interior. Accused as being communists and terrorists, peasants and villagers, regardless of their associations, found themselves routinely harassed and terrorized themselves by the Civilian Guards. 15 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). The Hukbalahap. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 70). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 16 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). Prelude to Rebellio. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 113). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

7 Then, in May of 1946, the newly elected PKM associated candidates were prevented from taking their seats, largely over concern for the passage of the Bell Trade Act, which would allow the US continued access to Philippine markets and exploitation of Philippine natural resources in line with previous colonial laws. 17 This escalated violence between the peasant army and the Huks on one side and the military police, Civilian Guards, and Philippine Constabulary on the other. Juan Feleo and other PKM leaders attempted to negotiate a truce with the government, which was only minimally successful. Finally, in August of that year, men wearing the uniforms of the Military Police kidnapped Feleo and his decapitated body was later positively identified, convincing Luis Taruc and other PKM leaders that a peaceful settlement was impossible and the violent rebellion of 1946 commenced, with peasant forces now known as the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan or the People s Liberation Army, shortened again as simply the Huks. This phase of the Huk rebellion lasted through the early 1950s and can be said to have officially ended when Luis Taruc surrendered himself to the Philippine government in Understanding the Katipunan resistance but especially the peasant movements and Huk rebellions are important for understanding the historical context in which the CPP formulated its strategy and in which the NPA would operate, and the many similarities between them imply a social continuity. Gregg Jones notes that following the end of the Huk rebellion, efforts at social reform were shelved and that government agrarian reform programs were thwarted by intransigent landlords, and life for millions of indebted and impoverished tenant farmers and field hands had changed little since the rumblings of peasant rebellion in the 1930s. 18 Thomas Homer Dixon writes, The Huk rebellion provides some of the best evidence for the link between economic conditions (especially unequal land distribution) and Filipino civil strife. 19 Meanwhile, peasant unrest over land tenancy and rapid growth in the Philippine population, which more than doubled between 1919 and 1939, drove a growing number of settlers to the frontier of Mindanao, which became a matter of policy under the US colonial authority. According to Jones, the Philippine population doubled yet again between 1948 and The pressures caused by the increased population and concentration of lands in the hands of wealthy entrepreneurs, were eased by encouraging greater migration to the undeveloped lands of the south. But by 1970, 17 Kerkvliet, B. (2002). Prelude to Rebellio. In The Huk Rebellion a Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. (p. 150). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 18 Jones, G. (1989). A People s Army Takes Shape. In Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine guerrilla movement (p. 41). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. 19 Dixon, T. (1999). Notes to Chapter 7. In Environment, scarcity, and violence (p. 234). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

8 Jones writes, there were no more frontiers and those who had fled to the mountains had nowhere else to go. 20 Children of the Revolution: The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People s Army (NPA) Jose Maria Sison, a professor of literature, founded the CPP formerly on December 26, 1968, the birthday of Mao Tse Tung, although in reality the founding congress (Sison and 11 followers) was canceled that day due to fears of exposure, and rescheduled for the following week. Sison was the child of a wealthy landowning family, but was nevertheless grounded in the history of Philippine resistance; Sison s great-grandfather had been a Katipunan supporter, questioned by the Spanish for involvement with treason and Sison s Great Uncle was killed by US soldiers for his participation in Aguinaldo s resistance. 21 Sison himself had been a youth member of the PKP, which he believed had become irrelevant under the later leadership of the Lava brothers (Jesus and Jose Lava were also former Huk rebels) and his first followers were also fellowdefectors. Referred to as the CPP s revolutionary bible, 22 Sison s social analysis in Philippine Society and Revolution (written under a pseudonym), described Philippine society as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, had some marked similarities to a tract written by the PKI chairman. 23 Sison, along with other small groups of Filipino students, also visited China in the early throes of the Cultural Revolution, and many returned convinced that by following Mao s instructions, they could succeed with their revolution at home. According to Sison s early writings, the key forces arrayed against a more just society were U.S. imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and feudalism, and a national democratic revolution could only occur through a protracted people s war, surrounding the cities from rural bases in the countryside. But drawing heavily from the example of the Maoist revolution, the emphasis was always on the rural peasantry, who would rise up, surround the centers of government and overthrow them. The NPA was established in 1969 and lead by Bernabe Buscayno, who would subsequently be known as Commander Dante. The son of a former Huk and peasant 20 Jones, G. (1989). A People s Army Takes Shape. In Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine guerrilla movement (p. 42). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. 21 Jones, G. (1989). Launching the Struggle. In Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine guerrilla movement (p. 20). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. 22 "The Communist Insurgency in the Philippines: Tactics and Talks." International Crisis Group. Asia Report, 202. February 14, Weekley, K. (2001). From the Katipunan to Mao: Reclaiming the Past for the Future. In The Communist Party of the Philippines, : A story of its theory and practice (p. 21). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

9 farmer, Buscayno was a member of one of the few remaining active Huk guerilla groups, mostly reduced to criminal activity, and Buscayno was eager to join a movement that would politically address the needs of poor farmers. Sison was introduced to him by Senator Benigno Aquino, who was a noted opposition leader under the Marcos regime, (and the father of the current President). 24 Dante organized around fifty initial recruits, older farmers who were veterans of the agrarian reform battles, and village youths inspired by the promise of better living conditions or adventure. The latter were quickly discouraged; Sison personally provided ideological training for the first NPA cadres, and they in turn provided political education and a strict code of conduct for the new peasant recruits. A Central Committee was established that included Dante and some of the peasant commanders but tellingly, Sison s attempts to make friendly conversation with them failed as he could not speak their local dialect, a harbinger of the divide between the party leadership and the poor non-tagalog ethnic groups that eventually become the last adherents of the NPA. People Power, Monkees, and Molotovs Ferdinand Marcos became President in 1965 and was reelected in 1969, an election that was fraudulent, bloody, and had more to do with elite petty antagonisms than substantial ideological differences. 25 Marcos was firmly committed to Philippine development, largely defined as maintaining the export-oriented economy but dependent on foreign loans. At the behest of the US and the IMF, Marcos was implementing austerity measures at the same time that popular sentiment against the presence of US military bases and involvement in the Vietnam War, and for improved wages and land reform was growing among a growing youth population. Street protests were responded to with violence and arrests, and student protestors began to be more violent as well, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails while police and members of the military chased them down with tear gas, water cannons, and gunfire. Marcos ascribed the student violence to CPP/NPA organizing, which was generally not the case, although the CPP praised the students revolutionary courage. Pro-government death squads, called The Monkees after the US television rock band 26 began appearing in villages where NPA forces were operating. 24 "The Communist Insurgency in the Philippines: Tactics and Talks." International Crisis Group. Asia Report, 202. February 14, Weekley, K. (2001). From the Katipunan to Mao: Reclaiming the Past for the Future. In The Communist Party of the Philippines, : A story of its theory and practice (p. 28). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. 26 Jones, G. (1989). A People s Army Takes Shape. In Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine guerrilla movement (p. 36). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

10 In 1971, Senate elections were held and Liberal party candidates, the opposition party, won 6 of the 8 contested seats. Preceding the election, a Liberal Party rally in Manila was attacked with grenades; 9 were killed and approximately 100 people were wounded. According to Gregg Jones, the CPP was behind this attack as Marcos had originally claimed, but most at the time believed that the act was committed by Marcos loyalists or ordered by Marcos himself, which shows how cynical public perception of him was at the time. 27 But this low public opinion would be more than justified following the declaration of martial law 1972, responding not only to the Liberal party rally attack, student protests, and the CPP/NPA but also to the threat of the armed Moro separatist groups in Mindanao, such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which like the NPA was also founded in But martial law also allowed Marcos to move against his political rivals, such as Benigno Aquino, who was immediately imprisoned. The CPP parlayed the worse abuses of the Marcos regime, into significant popular support; those who were driven underground by the threat of arrest, torture, or death for their political activities were frequently recruited into the NPA. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF or NDFP) was established in 1973 in an effort to create a popular coalition of activist organizations but was largely unsuccessful given the CPPs insistence on control of the coalition s program. In 1974, Sison established the policy of centralized leadership and decentralized operations; self-reliant NPA guerillas throughout the Philippines should operate from the mountains and launch ambushes and raids against small Philippine police and military units. 28 This policy of decentralized self-reliance, allowing NPA groups to adapt to local contexts, is especially important in considering the NPA s development in the Cordilleras and in Mindanao. Sison was arrested and imprisoned in 1977 but this was a time of enormous growth for both the CPP and the NPA. The abuses of the Marcos regime provided the CPP/NPA with the opportunity to offer a clear counter-narrative, connecting the effects of local injustice with an analysis of the structure of the state. NPA guerillas worked as ideological proselytizers in the villages, but also joined the peasants working in their fields, and partnered with workers on the large plantations. But one of the most important sources of approval, acceptance, and support the NPA was its enforcement of peace and order in the villages; 29 following the precedent of many Huk groups, the NPA provided security and ad hoc justice against the carabao rustlers and bandits that 27 Weekley, K. (1996). From Vanguard to Rearguard. In The revolution falters: The left in Philippine politics after 1986 (p. 38). Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University. 28 "The Communist Insurgency in the Philippines: Tactics and Talks." International Crisis Group. Asia Report, 202. February 14, Weekley, K. (2001). Philippine Society and Revolution. In The Communist Party of the Philippines, : A story of its theory and practice (p. 70). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

11 villagers were otherwise defenseless against. They also had surprising success organizing within the Catholic Church and recruited several priests and nuns. Martial law was officially lifted in 1981, but terror, torture, and extrajudicial killings perpetrated by paramilitary groups and other security forces actually increased. 30 Benigno Aquino, who had been permitted to travel to the US for medical treatment, attempted to return to the Philippines in Surrounded by bodyguards provided by Marcos, he was assassinated as he exited his plane at the Manila airport. The assassination of Aquino brought an even wider population into the resistance movements, as even the most moderate citizens felt compelled to protest, and launched three years of popular protest and civil disobedience, often referred to as the People Power movement or EDSA (an acronym for the stretch of road that most of the protests occurred on). By 1986, the NPA was estimated to have up to 25,000 members. Marcos called for a snap election and Corazon Aquino, Benigno s widow, ran against him. However, the CPPs attempt to galvanize a boycott of the election created division within the party, which then split further around the argument of whether or not to pursue legal political mechanisms in tandem with or instead of armed struggle following the victory of Corazon Aquino. Both of these divisions contributed to the decline of membership as moderates abandoned the party but others who had been committed to the armed struggle, including NPA founder Commander Dante, also broke with the party in favor of political struggle. Aquino released Sison from prison 31 and engaged the NDF, the coalition group and political front of the CPP/NPA, in peace talks but faced serious opposition within the military establishment, which pressed for an all-out war against the NPA. Despite her progressive agenda, extra-judicial killings and human rights abuses actually increased under the Aquino administration, and the 1987 Mendiola Massacre, in which 21 peasants were shot and killed while protesting for land reform on the Mendiola bridge, is considered one of the worse massacres in contemporary Philippine history. 32 Peace talks failed and total war began between the NPA and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) who (in keeping with what was now a long tradition) were assisted by anti-communist paramilitary groups; one of the largest was called Alsa Masa. Parallel peace talks with the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA), a breakaway group from the NPA that represented the indigenous people of the Cordillera, were only a little more successful. 30 "The Communist Insurgency in the Philippines: Tactics and Talks." International Crisis Group. Asia Report, 202. February 14, In 1986, Sison then embarked on an international lecture tour from which he has yet to return; his passport was canceld while he was in the Netherlands where he still resides today. 32 Weekley, K. (1996). From Vanguard to Rearguard. In The revolution falters: The left in Philippine politics after 1986 (p. 38). Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University.

12 The NPA and the Indigenous Peoples Struggle: Cordillera and Mindanao The struggles in the Cordillera and in Mindanao, took on a very different character than in Central Luzon, where most of the inhabitants had converted to Catholicism during the years of Spanish colonialism, and who accepted- and fought for- the nationalist Filipino (Tagalog speaking) identity. But the issues related to the economic transformations that began in the late 19 th century under the US colonial phase, and the centralization efforts of the national government, which increased under Marcos, had a very different effect in the periphery where Philippinization was resisted. The struggle over land took on a distinctly different character in these regions. In Land: A foundation for peacebuilding, Unruh and Williams note that in land conflicts, identity can be (or can become) powerfully and intricately bound up in perceived rights to specific lands. Ethnic identity, in particular, may be linked to conceptions of land, homeland, or territory. 33 Miriam Coronel Ferrer affirms this in the Philippine context, where landlessness fed rural unrest in all parts of the country but the issue of landlessness assumed an ethnic dimension in Mindanao and the Cordillera. While many indigenous people in both these regions had been Christianized by the Spanish, and in the case of Mindanao, Islamized by 13 th century traders, colonial administration and culture had never been fully assimilated and tribal communal land tenure customs and identities were retained. 34 That both of these regions have launched autonomy movements is a testament to this lack of assimilation. The Cordillera is a mountainous region in Northern Luzon. Two projects initiated by the Marcos government in the 1970s resulted in the organization of the indigenous communities, collectively referred to as the Igorot or merely highlanders ; one was a plan to build hydro-electric dams along the Chico and Pasil rivers, which would displace the communities living on lands scheduled to be submerged, and the other was a logging concession to Cellophil Resources in the forests of Abra in the Cordillera range. Indigenous resistance to these projects created an opening for the CPP/NPA, which expanded into the indigenous villages and by some accounts organized and united the different tribes in the region under a common Cordilleran identity. But this interaction was far from seamless and some felt that the CPP/NPA s analysis did not apply to tribal communities for whom continuity of their unique customs, identities, and lands were more important than a Maoist program, and some believed that the NPA was simply 33 Unruh, Jon Darrel, and Rhodi C. Williams. "Land and Post-conflict Peacebuilding." In Land and Postconflict Peacebuilding, 9. London: Earthscan, Coronel Ferrer, M. (2005). The Moro and the Cordillera Conflicts in the Philippines and the Struggle for Autonomy. In Ethnic conflicts in Southeast Asia (p. 112). Bangkok], Thailand: Institute of Security and International Studies, Chulalongkorn University.

13 exploiting the indigenous resistance, or as one CPLA member put it, the goddamn NPAs took advantage of us. 35 Father Conrado Balweg, a member of the Tingguian tribe in Abra, was a leader of the opposition to the Cellophil project who later joined the NPA after the repressive state response made overt political operation untenable. Initially, the 1981 program of the Cordillera People s Democratic Front called for self-determination but was still essentially subordinate to the general goals of NDF, augmented by assertions of the distinctive Cordilleran identity, ancestral lands, and indigenous cultures. However, in 1986 Balweg formed his own group, the Cordillera People s Liberation Army (CPLA) and many others abandoned the NPA and joined him. Significantly, according to Balweg, the Cordillera struggle revolved around tribal interests, not sectoral or class interests and that while the Cordillera peoples and the CPP/NPA formed an alliance against the common enemy of Marcos dictatorship, the indigenous people did not see their struggle in CPP terms. 36 Balweg s CPLA was not concerned so much with foreign imperialism but rather condemned the internal colonialism of the Philippine state. But even further, Balweg disagreed with the CPPs decision to continue the armed struggle under the new administration of Corazon Aquino and he and Aquino together conducted a traditional ceremony that symbolized the end of their armed conflict and the beginnings of negotiations for a planned Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR). These negotiations proved so contentious, however, that both the CPP and CPLA abandoned and ultimately campaigned against it. Plebiscites were held twice to establish an autonomous Cordillera, however both times the votes were not sufficient and the autonomy measure failed. The Cordillera NPA continued to exist but was greatly weakened by the CPLA split. In Mindanao, however, a number of factors caused the NPA to adapt itself more explicitly to local indigenous causes but the decline of ideological consistency in the context of Mindanao s wider conflict and the success of the government counterinsurgency efforts lead to the Mindanao NPAs reliance on indigenous issues for legitimacy and on extortion and other criminal activities to sustain itself and its members. Mindanao: Wild West, Wild East The NPA arrived in Mindanao as the frontiers of the Promised Land, as the island was often described, were closing. Everything associated with a frontier filling up was in 35 "The Philippines: Dismantling Rebel Groups." International Crisis Group. June 19, Weekley, K. (2001). The People s Army 2: Battling for Survival and Legitimacy. In The Communist Party of the Philippines, : A story of its theory and practice (p. 155). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

14 evidence increased population density, decline of land to people ration, and, in settlerdominated areas like southeastern Mindanao, the re-emergence of early stages of land concentration, tenancy, and class stratification. 37 The colonial land laws that nullified longstanding indigenous traditions of ownership among the Islamized and non-islamized tribes of Mindanao and the resettlement policies offered titles to homesteading Christian settlers from the northern islands (many of whom were escaping poverty and conflict in Luzon) resulted in dramatic displacement and demographic shifts in Mindanao; the former Muslim majority became a dwindling and increasingly impoverished minority and by the 1980 s, Muslim landownership was reduced to less than 20%. Meanwhile, corporate expansion into Mindanao under the Marcos regime was increasingly aggressive; both domestic and foreign corporations sought access to the island s rich agricultural lands, forests, waters, and minerals. The National Development Corporation (NDC) established under the US colonial authorities had leased 117,000 hectares to 8 foreign-owned corporations. 38 In the efforts to incorporate Mindanao into the deeply indebted state s development agenda and attract much-needed investment, Marcos launched a major infrastructure program. Road projects opened up previously inaccessible areas to facilitate investment which despite some benefits to the indigenous populations, typically contributed to further displacement and land re-classification. 39 The island of Mindanao, once the most developed communal and feudal agrarian institutions of all the Philippine islands 40 became the site of the most pernicious land title disputes and violent protracted conflict. Intensive armed conflict between the Moro secessionist group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) erupted in the late 1960 s and over 60% of the AFP were engaged the western Muslim provinces. 41 This heavy focus on the MNLF allowed the CPP/NPA Mindanao Command or Mindacom a certain freedom of action to organize and recruit especially among the newly landless populations throughout the north and southeastern areas of the island. As in Luzon, the 1972 declaration of martial law was a salient rallying point and the anti-marcos coalition in Mindanao included human rights groups, 37 Abinales, P. N. "When a Revolution Devours Its Children." In The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics after 1986, 165. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, Quitoriano, Eddie. "Land, Foreign Aid, and the Rural Poor in Mindanao." Focusweb. September 1, Abinales, P. N. "When a Revolution Devours Its Children." In The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics after 1986, 167. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, Quitoriano, Eddie. "Land, Foreign Aid, and the Rural Poor in Mindanao." Focusweb. September 1, Abinales, P. N. "When a Revolution Devours Its Children." In The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics after 1986, Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 1996.

15 the MNLF (in provinces like Lanao where the NPA and MNLF overlapped) and the radicalized church. By 1985, there were approximately 3750 members of the NPA operating in Mindanao. From the beginning, Mindacom leaders were given wide latitude in their mobilization strategy, many of them disagreed with the strict Maoist program, and to some degree they operated autonomously from the Central CPP leadership, an autonomy that was permitted as a result of their apparent success in mobilizing resistance, including mass struggles that engaged as many as 150,000 people. Mirroring events in Luzon, the Benigno Aquino assassination engaged the island s middle classes and Mindacom launched mass strikes that blocked key roadways disrupted commercial and military movements. But the source of the CPPs growth in the 1970s came not so much from its cadres organizing skills but from the social context of Mindanao itself. 42 The increasing destabilization an extraordinary escalation of violence in Mindanao would challenge the institutional weaknesses of Mindacom and become a key factor in the Kahos purges that began in The violence between the MNLF and the AFP combined with the growth of the NPA created a massive arms proliferation and new population movements as internal refugees from conflict flooded into other areas (the Davao, Bukidnon, and Suriago provinces especially), exacerbating religious and ethnic tensions and increasing general crime from roving armed bandits who were sometimes indistinguishable from or shared members with the ideologically motivated groups, and government sponsored paramilitaries such as the anti-npa Alsa Masa and the infamously brutal Christian paramilitary, the ILAGA. Military action in Mindanao increased, and the years between 1977 and 1985 saw a total of 445 recorded disappearances, 1,511 recorded extra-judicial killings, and nearly 13,000 arrests in Mindanao, the highest numbers by far in all three categories of any other region in the Philippines. 43 In 1985, while the main leadership of Mindacom was in Manila for a Central Committee meeting, the remaining group received intelligence that military agents had infiltrated the Mindanao CPP/NPA. The party central leaders attempted to end the purge and control the violence but the order spread slowly and the atmosphere of paranoia was difficult to penetrate. Within the next 6 months the investigation that ensued resulted in the torture and execution of 950 cadres. Party membership and popular support declined as 42 Abinales, P. N. "When a Revolution Devours Its Children." In The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics after 1986, 176. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, Ibid

16 dramatically as it had risen, and importantly, a number of NPA guerilla groups isolated themselves from contact with outsiders, including CPP leadership. The unique demographics and security situation in Mindanao combined with the internal effect of Kahos and the CPP split that emerged following the boycott of the Aquino election altered the nature of the CPP but especially the NPA forces in Mindanao in the late 1980s, which had from the beginning been more of a militarist force than the ideological vanguard it was intended to be. 44 As the NPA became increasingly isolated and marginalized, it found itself operating on the fringes with Mindanao s most marginalized population: the Lumad. The struggle for recognition has been a particular challenge for Mindanao s Lumad, or non-islamized indigenous tribes, who today represent only 8.9% of the total population of the island. There was no analogue for the comparative unity that Islam afforded the Moro resistance for the Lumad, which consisted of 18 different ethno-linguistic groups and over 30 tribes. Displacement by settlers as well as encroachment by mining, logging, and agribusiness interests, have had a dramatically corrosive effect on the Lumad who did not develop within the Muslim trading networks and whose subsistence has historically been entirely dependent on agriculture, hunting and fishing. Consequently, the Lumads, or Indigenous People (IPs), are among the poorest and the most disadvantaged social group in the country. Illiteracy, unemployment and incidence of poverty are much higher among them than the rest of the population. IP settlements are remote, without access to basic services, and are characterized by a high incidence of morbidity, mortality and malnutrition. 45 Sadly, this poverty itself is a cause of displacement, as poorly educated Lumad youth migrate to poor urban areas or seek employment abroad. 46 But even further, Lumad spiritual practice is deeply linked with land tenure in a unique way; according to Manobo practice, one can only claim land when one cultivates it only spirits are believed to own lands. These are borrowed from them in a ritual that asks for permission to use land. 47 The loss of land is not just 44 Weekley, K. (2001). The People s Army 1: Army Building Under Martial Law. In The Communist Party of the Philippines, : A story of its theory and practice (p. 99). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. 45 de Vera, David. "Mapping Today and the Future: Participatory Mapping and Planning with the Talaandig in Bukidnon, Mindanao, Philippines." Lecture, Korea-ASEAN Academic Conference on Information Revolution and Cultural Integration in East Asia, Ho Chi Minh, Viet Nam, January 25, Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People." United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. March 5, Accessed May 8, Buenconsejo, Jose. "Rivers of Exchange." In Songs and Gifts at the Frontier: Person and Exchange in the Agusan Manobo Possession Ritual, Philippines, 13. New York: Routledge, 2002.

17 a historical injustice for the Lumad; territory is integral to their identity and the basis of tribal self-governance. 48 The Mining Act and IPRA The NPA had been in rapid decline since the height of its membership in 1986 but the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) noted a rise in NPA in 1995, coincident with the 1995 Mining Act, which contained extraordinary incentives to encourage foreign investment in mining. 49 Mindanao, the site of small-scale mining since the 1970s, is rich in gold, copper, silver and nickel, and many of these resources lay beneath the tribal lands of the Lumad. The Mining Act, therefore, became a key motivation for Lumad tribes to organize and assert their claims over and receive titles for their tribal ancestral lands, typically referred to as Ancestral Domain (AD). The landmark Indigenous People s Rights Act or IPRA was passed two years later, in 1997, and established mechanisms for indigenous people (defined here as Lumad, Muslim, or Christian descendants of people who settled in Mindanao before the colonial era) to make a legal claim to title lands owned or occupied communally or individually since time immemorial. Promising on the surface, IPRA has proven to be extremely problematic. By providing mechanisms for the individual titling of ancestral lands, critics claim that through IPRA ancestral lands become privately owned, destroying our traditional communal practice of ownership and land use. With private ownership, foreign companies can easily coerce or entice IPs to sell their ancestral lands with only the consent of an individual vs. the whole community 50 leading some Lumad to perceive IPRA as a Trojan Horse, designed to facilitate the legalization of transfers to resource extraction companies, leaving us as squatters in our own lands. 51 IPRA also protects existing corporate contracts on ancestral lands, and is directly contradicted by guarantees in the 1995 Mining Act, which allows foreign firms to exploit mineral resources in any part of the country. The conflict between indigenous claimants to ancestral domain and mining companies in particular has lead to the murder of indigenous activists and has contributed to a culture of corruption and violence, supporting the massive recruitment of Lumad youth into the 48 Erasga, Dennis S. "Ancestral Domain Claim: The Case of the Indigenous People in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)." ASIA-PACIFIC SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW, 2008, Holden, William N. "The New People's Army and Neoliberal Mining in the Philippines: A Struggle against Primitive Accumulation." Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2014, Erasga, Dennis S. "Ancestral Domain Claim: The Case of the Indigenous People in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)." Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, 2008, Vargas, May. "Indigenous Groups Decry 7 Years of IPRA Law." Butalat, October 30,