Many facts have been blasted as “conspiracy theories”, but the single most enduring fact still widely looked down on was the collaboration between Ninoy Aquino and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Widespread knowledge of this fact was partially responsible for the collapse of the post-EDSA political consensus, along with the failure of EDSA Tres and Noynoy Aquino’s empty promises. However, defenders of the EDSA consensus continue to malign this fact as so-called “conspiracy theory”. Ninoy’s collaboration with the CPP thus joins other facts like CIA funding of Rappler through the National Endowment for Democracy or the complete failure of lockdowns and vaccination drives against the pandemic that are maligned as “conspiracy theory”.
One will ask for historical evidence behind this fact. Look no further than Joseph Scalice’s Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines, 1959–1974. Joseph Scalice is a Trotskyist Marxist, and his ideological alignment may cause suspicion in some. One may rest assured, however, that Scalice uses sources that orthodox Philippine historians ignore, yet Annales School historians glee in: newspapers, political party documents, interviews with obscure outlets, and much more. The 800 page doctoral dissertation remains one of the best histories of the 1960s and early 1970s in the Philippines. It also attests to foreign historians’ enduring superior quality over local ones.
The first important fact that one should know is how the CPP formed under Ninoy’s protection:
The PKP [Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930], with its intimate and growing ties to Marcos, built an armed wing which was deeply connected to the PC [Philippine Constabulary], while the CPP formed its armed wing with the support of Marcos’ leading rival, Ninoy Aquino. Aquino and Congressman Jose Yap played a crucial role in connecting Sison with his guerrilla army under Dante.
Jose Yap in fact traveled to Beijing in 1967, under the pretext of private travel. Yap would collect Maoist documents, hoping to take advantage of the incoming Sino-Soviet split. His chance came when Sison was expelled from the PKP-1930 from political infighting. Yap personally gave Bernarbe Buscayno (Commander Dante) a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, while inoculating Maoist thought in Sison’s followers. From here, the CPP would rise.
While a Maoist group that focused on agricultural over industrial liberation, the CPP first found allies with sugar barons. This unlikely alliance came from the latter’s motives regarding Central Luzon:
[Eduardo] Lachica explained the motives of Aquino and Yap, “[T]here were important politicians to whom an independent Huk command in Tarlac would not be unwelcome. It could be used both as a buffer against the ambitious Sumulong and as a form of leverage in dealing with rival politicians.” Sumulong was Marcos’ man and his forces backed the interests of Malacañang. Dante provided Aquino with an armed base of popular opposition to Sumulong and his men, and therefore to Marcos. Connecting Dante with Sison and the CPP presented Aquino the possibility of expanding his base of armed support to a national scale. In October 1968, Aquino and Sison met and discussed “how big a problem Marcos was,” and Yap, Aquino, and Rodolfo Salas arranged a meeting between Sison and Dante. The meeting took place in late January 1969 in Dante’s hometown of Talimundoc, Capas. According to Jones, Aquino later reported to his friends that he personally drove Sison to this meeting. Among the crucial conditions which facilitated both the discussions between Sison and Dante from January to March 1969, as well as the founding of the NPA at the end of March, was the demilitarization of Tarlac from November 7 1968 to April 10 1969. Dante and his men moved about in peace throughout the province, and Sison and his cohort traveled freely between Manila and Tarlac. The demilitarization, which effectively removed the massive military build up of Task Force Lawin from the province, lasted precisely from the founding of the party to the establishment of the New People’s Army. The negotiated removal of the military was entirely the doing of Aquino and was referred to in the press as the “Ninoy Aquino peace plan”.
In fact, the New People’s Army (NPA) was formed in Hacienda Luisita itself:
Art Garcia went back to Tarlac with Dante and Rodolfo Salas. Garcia set about the military training of new recruits to the NPA. Dante and Salas became political instructors in a party training school set up within the Voice of America radio relay station compound, housed on Aquino’s Hacienda Luisita. Dante’s men worked as security guards there and they gave Dante and Salas, dressed in blue security guard uniforms, access to the compound.
Knowing their rivals’ plans, Marcos Sr and the PKP staged false flags attacks throughout Metro Manila as precursor to Martial Law. Plaza Miranda, however, was the CPP’s own doing: they wanted to pressure opposition politicians into supporting the CPP more against the PKP. Popular belief calling it a way to bring about Martial Law and drive more recruits into the NPA also rings false, for Martial Law saw the complete destruction of the NPA’s allies in both the private and public sectors. PKP soldiers and officers would join the Philippine Constabulary, performing many abuses attributed to Marcos’s reign.
We end on a poignant note by Scalice about the mythology that has justified the post-EDSA order’s expansion of bureaucratic, technocratic, and Managerial rule:
Had history proceeded along an alternate track in which Aquino out-maneuvered Marcos, Martial Law was just as inevitable. The rival Stalinist1 parties had allied with the leading contenders for the throne, and both were positioned to ride the coattails of dictatorship. Neither scenario—victory for Marcos and the PKP or Aquino and the CPP—provided a way forward in the struggle against dictatorship and repression.
Read also:
Mourn the Man, Question his Legacy by Allen Severino.
In Marxist terms, Stalinism refers to the tolerance of capital-owners to foster national industrialization in pursuit of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Their existence is an example of de Jouvenel’s high/low middle mechanism.