Tensions

Prosperity during the central era did not necessarily generate harmony within the sugar industry, and the maldistribution of profits created tensions. Planters observed stockholders at centrals, particularly private ones,

receiving high dividends while they struggled under debt burdens, and they concluded that a bigger share of those rewards should go to them. Although locked mainly into thirty-year contracts, hacenderos sought to improve their situation in a shorter time.

The first signs of hacendero pressure surfaced sometime in mid-1929 as Negrense planters began approaching politicians about improving their share of milled sugar—called participation from an average 55 percent to 60 percent. Within a year planters instigated their first legislative proposal to change the terms by statute, a bill the legislature narrowly defeated because Senate President Quezon opposed it on the constitutional grounds that it went against the laws of contract. Despite his legal objections, Quezon sympathized with the hacenderos and supported Amando Avanceña's proposal that the government have the bank centrals voluntarily offer higher participation. In early July, however, PNB declined to change the terms at its centrals. Centralistas proffered the sanctity of contracts argument and the somewhat specious contention that landowners, rather than planter-lessees, would benefit most from a change in terms. The second reason lacked validity in that only a fraction of planters rented lands; besides, in July 1930 landowners belonging to the Federation of Planters of Negros Occidental agreed to reduce rents by five percentage points in the event of altered participation.

Angered by their defeats, hacenderos adopted a more militant attitude. During August they threatened (1) to vote for the opposition Democrata party, (2) to halt purchases of fertilizer for the coming year, and thus (3) to reduce cane production. Suggested compromises that centrals, land-owners, and planters share their fertilizer costs more equitably and that PNB lower its interest rates did not appear to soften planter ire. The protests failed, the centrals reported a bumper crop for 1930-31, and Negros remained a Nationalista stronghold.

By 1931 the situation began to improve slightly for planters. In January, Quezon, backed by a plea from Negros Occidental Governor Isaac Lacson, endorsed a plan to have Isabela Central raise hacendero participation by 5 percent and even advocated that another 5 percent go to mill hands. PNB responded by granting the planters a 5 percent bonus, thus keeping the prior contract intact. The central did not offer workers anything extra. The idea of providing bonuses instead of altering the contract caught on, and other centrals adopted it. Binalbagan gave 5 percent in the form of shares of stock, and Talisay and La Carlota returned the equivalent of 25 centavos per picul. In the event that sugar prices turned upward, centrals could then revert to the old standard. The confederation still pressed for a uniform 60 percent, but many centrals resisted, and only hacenderos at Ma-ao and some at San

Carlos received the higher rate. With the prospect of limitations came added planter clamor for sixty-forty; however, centralistas increasingly resisted the appeal, and the bitter dispute continued. Some Negrenses favored a planter strike in 1932, and by August 1933 some growers advocated, to no avail, abrogating all contracts and selling cane directly to centrals. As the era of quotas dawned, the issue remained unresolved.

Despite the fact that planters in Pampanga received a smaller participation than did those on Negros, hacendero protests in the former area did not arise until 1934 when quotas loomed. Perhaps, as Sugar News suggested, the minimal amount of leaseholding made a difference in the planters' attitude; then, too, Capampangan also owed fewer debts and paid less interest than did southerners. While both Negrenses and pampangan derived much of their income from sugar, the latter also grew rice as a cash crop so had diversified sources of livelihood. The tenant system as well had the effect of cushioning Luzon planters against losses incurred by low prices. Possibly, too, planters simply enjoyed better relations with centrals than was the case in Negros.^[66]

Without effective organizations and influential spokespersons, field hands in sugarlandia lacked the means to protect their interests or to voice their objections to changes occurring around them. For the most part the poor remained dependent on the casual, often insincere generosity of powerful and wealthy patrons for whatever benefits they derived from the newfound wealth. The evidence of prosperity and modernity in towns contrasted sharply with the poverty and unchanging life of barrios and haciendas. Poorer wages and working arrangements among plantation workers and diminishing shares for casamac led sugarlandia's labor force to begin pressuring planters, just as hacenderos leaned on the centrals. Old forms of folk protest reappeared alongside more up-to-date expressions of dissatisfaction.

Inadequate medical services meant that faith healers in Pampanga continued to attract a following among the rural poor, and certain of these practitioners enjoyed a wide reputation as possessors of strong curative powers. One healer, Mang Tanong, caused considerable alarm among authorities. This former carpenter appeared in 1931 in Arayat, the site of Felipe Salvador's earlier religious passion, and drew a large crowd of poor folk from the surrounding area. Reminiscent of Apong Ipe, Mang Tanong claimed that six years before he had lost his way on Mount Arayat and returned a changed man. Local officials observing his success ordered him to cease his activity, and the healer desisted. Clearly, however, the tradition of messianism persisted in Pampanga, and followers of Santa Iglesia still held services in the depths of the Candaba Swamp.^[67]

Millenarianism made a rare appearance in the western Visayas in the mid-1920s and elicited only limited enthusiasm from duma'an throughout Negros. From a palatial home in Iloilo, Emperor Florencio Intrencherado preached the coming of a reign of justice throughout the Philippines, based on independence, reapportionment of national wealth, and removal of the Chinese. An attractive feature of his program for the poor was his plan to reduce the head tax from P2.20 to 20 centavos. His agents fanned out to surrounding towns, signing up members for his paramilitary organization and selling them pictures and medals.

Historian David Sturtevant has traced Intrencherado's life and career from his early years as a petty merchant along the Guimaras Strait to his incarceration and death in 1937 in a mental asylum. Here one need only mention a few points concerning the response of sugar workers in Negros. Intrencherado's flamboyant style and urban location brought him considerable notoriety, and the government, ever on the alert for signs of rural unrest, paid particular attention to this highly visible figure.

On May 13, 1927, in the face of Intrencherado's imminent departure for mental examinations, five protests occurred in Negros, the two most serious in Victorias and La Carlota. In the first town, two policemen were killed, tax and land records were destroyed, and Chinese stores were pillaged by an estimated three hundred supporters led by the Montarde brothers. In La Carlota a policeman died and another was wounded. In Bago and Silay local officials and the constabulary prevented any serious violence, and in La Castellana three Spanish hacenderos and a Swiss were flogged. All these events happened the same day, and no others followed. The constabulary arrested fifty-six of the putative three hundred rioters in Victorias but released most of them shortly thereafter. Some supporters in Victorias and Murcia were beaten and sent home by the constabulary, and fifty-nine adherents from La Castellana served six-month terms in jail; the ringleaders, however, all received long sentences.

Newsmen reported on Intrencherado during the asylum years, keeping his name before the reading public and making him the most noticed messianic figure in Philippine history, but it does not appear that he attracted much of a following among the poor of Negros. Lists taken by the constabulary from his house claimed that he had 14,275 followers in the towns of Negros Occidental; however, there exists no clear notion of just what constituted membership. Did that number represent all those who paid P2.50 to enroll in the organization, those suspected of joining, or those who simply purchased a picture or medal as a talisman? Among older sugar hands interviewed in 1970, only 75 out of 257 had any recollection of Intrencherado, and of those, 29 had heard his name but knew

nothing else about him or his movement; furthermore, another 7 confused him with someone else. An additional 15 possessed only negative memories, dismissing Intrencherado as a madman, fanatic, or flimflammer. Altogether, only 8 admitted to paying dues to the organization, and of that number, just 3 could recall in some detail the medals, pamphlets, and uniforms they acquired, while 1 admitted to being a sergeant in the organization. The distinct impression emerges that few comprehended much about Intrencherado, sympathized with him, or had any faith in his movement.

The movement never achieved any provincewide cohesion, and in only five of the province's twenty-six towns did any incidents happen, and then on only one occasion. Furthermore, among the interviewees knowledge of the Victorias and La Carlota raids was confined to individuals living in or near those towns. Heuristic evidence suggests that in the three towns where any violence occurred, local tensions between duma'an and a landlord or landlords served at least as a partial cause. Perhaps the clearest evidence of the movement's weak reception rests in the experience of Policarpio Montarde, known locally as "Karpo," the chief agent of Intrencherado and leader of the attack on Victorias. Following the raid Karpo fled to other islands because he could find no sanctuary on Negros, and upon his return two years later to eastern Negros, he was quickly captured.

Negros's single flirtation with messianism seems to have affected little those oppressed who might otherwise have sympathized with such movements. Perhaps the cellular nature of the hacienda system made it difficult for Intrencherado or his followers to reach duma'an. He rarely, if ever, traveled to the province. Or possibly messianism—as opposed to shamanism—better suited peasant societies like Pampanga than the plantations of Negros. Perhaps the historical ties of Negros and the western Visayas to babaylanism simply precluded success for a millenarian movement.^[68]

Attacks upon isolated Negrense haciendas persisted into the central era, and marauders still found sanctuary along the mountain core where traditional religious practices flourished within isolated, poverty-ridden settlements of aborigines, kaingeros (slash and burn farmers), and lowland escapees. In these backwoods communities, memories of Papa Isio still survived. In late June 1928 policemen in Barrio Camangcamang, Isabela, confronted a band of forty pulahanes (bandits) led by Lucio Brender, a former member of Papa Isio’s movement. Brender, pardoned by Governorgeneral Wood in 1922, returned to his old haunts and formed a new group called Siete Sagrados (The Sacred Seven) to whom he explained the hidden messages of his former chief. The sect exhibited all the trappings of babaylanism: the anting-antings, secret signs and words, black robes and

priestesses. Members took nicknames redolent with dissent and folk heroism, names like "Quintin Intrencherado" and "Bernardo del Carpio." The police managed to fend off the attack, killing or capturing several gang members, meanwhile having nine of their own seriously wounded. Brender fled, only to die in another engagement with the constabulary in rural Isabela. Those captured received prison terms, and the raids ceased. Babaylanism, however, continued to thrive in the province's interior wilds.^[69]

Alongside traditional protest, more secular forms began to appear in sugarlandia, often led by aspiring politicians. As conditions worsened for workers and as the modern sugar industry encroached upon their lives, they turned to leaders and organizations that proffered help in dealing with governments and solidarity against the economic and political power of the big hacenderos and centralistas.

Perhaps the most blatant manipulation of hacienda and central workers for political ends involved two mutual-help societies, Kusug Sang Imol (The Strength of the Poor) and Mainawa-on (Merciful), that operated during the 1920s. The idea for such groups did not originate on Negros and may have come from Panay, where they had existed since at least 1919. The societies functioned primarily to offer members or their widows financial help in the event of personal catastrophe or death. This type of organization with its local chapters fit the autonomous nature of the plantation labor structure while presenting workers with some insurance in an insecure world. For an initiation fee of 1-5 pesos, plus 20-50 centavos a month in dues, one became a member, wore the triangle ring of Kusug Sang Imol (KSI) or the eagle ring of Mainawa-on, and enjoyed other benefits. Supporters regularly attended services for their deceased colleagues, conducted flag-raising ceremonies on special occasions, and in the case of KSI, received a twice-weekly newspaper. Membership of the two organizations included not only laborers, but also doctors and lawyers who provided services to members and Chinese merchants seeking to maintain good community relations and to guard against possible intimidation.

Despite its economic attraction to the poor, at its establishment in Bacolod in mid-1922, KSI had basically political aims. The founder, Felix Severino, a former newspaperman and nephew of revolutionary leader Melecio Severino, induced General Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, Manuel Roxas, Senator Esperidion Guanco, Governor Gil Montilla, and Assemblyman Vicente Jimenez Yanson to act as honorary patrons. Such important leaders agreed to affiliate with a group supposed to appeal to workers because, as McCoy notes, the real power behind its formation was Montilla himself, who used the organization to ensure his election as governor in 1922. Severino took advantage of these connections too: when

Emilio Aguinaldo visited Negros, members appeared on daises everywhere with the Revolutionary War hero. Also, after the court of first instance came down with a ruling unacceptable to the association, its leaders felt confident in writing Quezon to have the judge transferred.^[70]

Jealous of Montilla's success and anxious to build a counterforce, opponents in late 1922 introduced Mainawa-on from Panay to Negros. The latter group included as its sponsors Iloilo politician Julio Hilado, planter Federico Lazarate, newspaperman Esteban Vasquez, and Cesar Barrios, president of Iloilo's main wharfage and shipping concern, Visayan Stevedore Transportation Company (Vistranco). Both associations quickly spread to all towns in Negros and lined up with locally powerful liders. For instance, Assemblyman Enrique Magalona and Jose Ledesma headed the Saravia chapter of Mainawa-on. To reach out into the countryside both groups began at this point to stress the mutual aid facet of their organizations.

Mutual-help societies proliferated in Negros during this period, usually possessing brief life spans, limited areas of operation, and small member-ships, numbering in the hundreds; however, KSI at its height had an estimated twenty thousand adherents throughout the province. Its following included policemen, justices of the peace, contratistas, cabos and other supervisory personnel, and central employees as well as acsas and duma'an. So prominent had the organization become that local authors composed a zarzuela and a fox trot titled "Kusog Sang Imol." Mainawa-on, constructed along the same lines, enrolled a slightly smaller constituency, perhaps fifteen thousand, drawn from essentially the same clientele. The charge lodged by KSI that Mainawa-on more clearly represented the rich does not seem justified, either by contrasts in membership or by the nature of the leadership. The major differences seem to have been that KSI was larger and more powerful than Mainawa-on and that the former originated in Negros and later established chapters on Panay while the latter followed the reverse course.^[71]

If any distinction existed, it lay within the membership of each group. Town proper residents involved themselves more in the societies' social activities, while rural workers participated mainly in their mutual-aid programs. This compartmentalization became most apparent when competition between the two societies escalated into violent conflict. From late in 1923 to mid-1925 Negros was transformed into a battleground as KSI and Mainawa-on vied for control of politics and other financi resources. Incidents varied from a scuffle between the heads of the two groups to the assassination of the justice of the peace in Escalante. Most towns witnessed Chicago-style gang warfare, coercion, and corruption as local policemen

and toughs sided with the two organizations in the struggle. At this time Negros Occidental became notorious for violence. Meanwhile, rural workers went on paying their dues and assisting their friends in trouble.

Severino apparently behaved like a local dictator, strutting about in a khaki uniform with red tie, leather leggings, and pistol. KSI enforcers intimidated workers, political leaders, and even American managers of local companies. When Echaús raided Binalbagan Central in early 1924, he did so with the assistance of KSI thugs. Mainawa-on tried to respond in kind to assaults upon its members but seemingly suffered more damage. Constabulary troopers spent much of their time confiscating weapons from the antagonists but faced difficulties in trying to control the situation, given the participation of planters and politicians in the melee.

Gradually the insular government won the upper hand. In July 1924 Governor-general Wood wrote to Montilla insisting that he resign from KSI, and the governor of Negros did distance himself from the organization; nevertheless, six months later provincial office holders still feared being seen by KSI members in the company of Montilla's enemy Rafael Alunan. The Bureau of Justice sent attorneys and auditors to check the books of both organizations and to ensure that no fraud occurred. Mainawa-on eventually closed down because of lack of funds, and KSI diminished in scope and size after Severino went to prison, ironically for adultery.

Violence and the backing of masoniclike organizations have been a part of Philippine politics since the nineteenth century; however, political historians may wish to look to the battles between KSI and Mainawa-on as early instances of a more intense level of rough-and-tumble electoral competition for which the Philippines has become so well known. Negrense liders have sometimes achieved notoriety for their employment of personal armies, and the KSI episode provides a very visible instance of that type of usage.^[72] At the same time, KSI and Mainawa-on, while they did not primarily help duma'an and acsas, did highlight the worth of mutual-help societies, and such groups have operated in the province to this day.

Likewise, union activism produced but little improvement for sugar workers. Field hands occasionally walked away from plantations when conditions became too harsh, but genuine union organizing did not reach the province much before early 1930, by which time several small locals existed for cargadors, sawmill hands, pakyadors, and central workers. The only major strike action during the central era occurred from January 23 to February 28, 1931, when Federacion Obrera de Filipinas (FOF) sought to obtain union recognition on the docks and in the centrals of Negros. Founded in Iloilo in 1928 by newspaperman Jose Nava, FOF possessed the largest union membership (185,000) in the Visayas and exerted consid-

erable control over shipping in the central Philippines. The strike on Negros failed, however, when the centrals refused to recognize the union and brought in scab labor from Panay and Negros. The Philippine Constabulary sided with the centrals, as did the provincial government under Governor Agustin Ramos. In the end only some of the strikers recovered their jobs, and centrals granted no concessions. Sugar output for the 1931-32 season reached its highest level to date.

A sidelight to the 1931 strike was that planters supported neither the centrals nor the strikers but sat on the sidelines, hoping to gain some leverage in their own pursuit of better participation. This action—or inaction—seemed typical of protest on Negros. Like the sporadic burnings of hacienda cane fields in the early 1930s by anonymous, disgruntled workers, dissent went unsupported, unanswered, and perhaps worse, unnoticed, ensuring failure for attempts to rectify the industry's economic inequities.^[73]

Labor activism in central Luzon had its origins among the Manila work force in the late nineteenth century, but in its early years it had little success. In 1913, with the founding of Congreso Obrero de Filipinas (Philippine Labor Congress), union bosses such as Hermenegildo Cruz (later the director of labor), Crisanto Evangelista, and Jacinto Manahan introduced more effective management, developed a larger following, and won some concessions for their members. During and following World War I union activity widened, and a group of labor leaders attended their first worker conference outside the country, in Canton in 1924. With the encouragement and support of two Comintern agents, the American William Janequette (a.k.a. Harrison George) and the Indonesian Tan Malacca, Evangelista and Manahan in the mid-1920s steered the union movement in a leftist direction. In 1929 the Congreso Obrero split into right-and left-wing factions, and out of this rift sprang Kongreso Proletario de Filipinas (Katipunan ng mga Anakpawis ng Pilipinas) and Partido Komunista (1930) both under the leadership of radicals like Evangelista, Manahan, and Juan Feleo. Trade unionism remained firmly tied to the Manila and surrounding Tagalog area where Philippine industry concentrated; hence, its activities had little to do initially with sugar-growing tenants in Pampanga. Nevertheless, union leaders introduced to Philippine protest movements the idea of labor organization and a leftist and nationalist ideology, notions that traveled throughout central Luzon and beyond.^[74]

The first tenant union, Pagkakaisa ng Magsasaka (Union of Peasants), later called Union de Aparceros de Filipinas, appeared in Bulacan Province in 1917. This association was but one of many that proliferated in central Luzon in the 1920s and that became constituents in 1924 of Katipunang

Pambansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (National Association of Peasants in the Philippines or KPMP). Manahan, Feleo, and other leaders of the left took an active role in this organizing, and such unions, along with other peasant protest movements like Tanggulan, Colorum, and Sakdal, attested to the growing dissatisfaction with conditions in the archipelago's paddy bowl.

Pampanga's rice casamac joined in the unrest as well. The first recorded incident, the burning of landholder rice stocks, took place in Candaba at the beginning of 1921, and during the following year the Bureau of Labor arbitrated seven more agricultural disputes in the province. In 1924 Governor Olimpio Guanzon tried unsuccessfully to create a system to resolve the growing number of conflicts that spread as far as Tarlac; meanwhile, peasants formed a five thousand-member organization called Anak Pawas (Sons of Sweat). Incidents of violence persisted throughout the decade and into the 1930s, especially in rice-growing sections of Santa Rita, Arayat, Mexico, San Luis, Candaba, and Masantol, but no town stayed free from unrest.^[75]

While protest lapped the shores of central Luzon's sugarlandia, casamac who grew cane did not participate to any extent in the movement before the mid-1930s. In 1923 the Manila Times reported Jacinto Manahan's observations on the agrarian situation in Pampanga:

The reason for Pampanga tenants' assuming a rather lukewarm attitude on the situation may be the fact that they get tolerably good treatment from their landlords. The province, besides, is not totally devoted to the production of rice, and the spread of the movement seems to be rapid only in those places where rice production is the principal occupation of the people. The people of the province of Pampanga are principally engaged in the raising of sugar cane, while in many of the lowland towns fishing is the chief source of the peoples' income.

"The tenants' movement will certainly spread throughout the provinces of central Luzon," declared Jacinto Manahan, president of the National Confederation of Tenants and Farm Laborers, "but it will take time. "^[76]

The Tribune supported this commentary when in 1932 it reported on a Bureau of Labor survey that pointed to the fact that Pampanga's sugar tenants received better participation than did those in Batangas Province; however, rice tenants in Batangas fared better than their counterparts in central Luzon.

Evidence suggests that during most of the central era, even as relations between Pampanga's aparceros and landlords became strained, those who

raised sugar on just part of their holding earned more than those who grew only rice. The difference had to do with dissimilar circumstances that resulted from improvements in both the rice and sugar markets. The Philippines, with its rapidly rising population and so much of its land devoted to cash crops, needed vastly increased amounts of rice, and the Central Luzon Plain proved the best place to produce those stocks. However, central Luzon, especially the longer-settled areas like Pampanga, was becoming more crowded, and its denizens consumed more of their own output. Density rose in the province by 30 percent between 1918 and 1939, from 349 per square mile to 456; meanwhile, agricultural hectarage expanded only 22 percent, from 100,400 hectares to 122,006. Rice land increased 26 percent, from 52,936 hectares to 66,453.^[77]

To increase rice output in Pampanga (without interfering with sugar production), landowners needed to improve their yields, either through better farming methods or by further gouging the peasants. Since more scientific agriculture demanded heavy capital investments, landholders preferred first to tighten terms of aparcero contracts, charge higher interest rates on farm loans, remove inefficient tenants, agglomerate holdings, and demand more work from casamac. Some proprietors also resorted to outright cheating of tenants on the annual division of crops. Landlords tended to term these practices "making the tenant-landlord arrangement more businesslike," but casamac viewed the changes as unjust. Because of the increasing competition for holdings, however, tenants found themselves in a poor bargaining position and could not rectify the situation. Protest resulted.^[78]

In the meantime, however, while the sugar market held, casamac growing cane maintained an acceptable standard of living. Income derived from a combination of sugar profits and some sales of rice, supplemented possibly with off-season work, kept sugar tenants from turning to the more radical organizations. Of those 149 cane growers questioned in the 1964 survey who might have joined such groups, only 17 did, while another 9 enrolled in the conservative, landlord-sponsored Katipunan Mipanampun (Mutual Protection Association or KM). This latter organization, founded by Representative Zoilo Hilario, an ally of Quezon and Sotero Baluyut, began in Pampanga and eventually spread throughout central Luzon. Writers of the era described KM as similar to KSI, with the same mutual-aid function and masoniclike structure. The group drew mainly from the towns, enlisting teachers, workers, local politicians, and casamac; it even had a women's auxiliary called the Amazons. A superpatriotic group, KM's members conducted flag-raising ceremonies, sponsored beauty contests, and supported economic protectionism; however, KM's chief function was

to provide counterdemonstrations to those of the peasant unions. Lasting from roughly 1922 to 1924, KM represented the largest organization in the growing backlash against tenant radicalism.^[79]

Only twice during the 1920s did sugar tenants briefly protest their treatment at the hands of landlords, and both complaints had to do with shifts in sugar prices. The rapid fall in price in 1922 and 1924 following the exceptional highs of the respective preceding years led tenants to believe they had been cheated, that they had received too little during the boom and had dropped back too far afterward. On these occasions they sought redress from landlords and, unsuccessfully, from Governor Olimpio Guanzon. As soon as prices stabilized, however, the protests ceased.^[80]

Another factor favoring peace among sugar casamac was that they obtained some satisfaction from the government. During their two protests, aparceros complained that landlords provided them with incorrect mill data. In time the government passed a measure requiring landlords to furnish tenants with full documentation on the milling and disposing of sugar stocks. By contrast, rice farmers never succeeded in obtaining an effective law to protect them in their contracts with landlords. Sugar tenants thus appeared to have more clout than those who grew only rice.^[81]

In an indirect way the sugar industry also contributed to unrest among rice tenants by forcing many of them off parcels of land and planting cane in their stead. Perhaps the most notorious case occurred in Dinalupihan, Bataan, where Pasumil acquired rights to farmland belonging to the Catholic Church. The central removed the rice tenants and in the process raised a storm among those evicted. Although the tenants lost, the area remained thereafter a hotbed of protest. Similar incidents on a smaller scale, involving landowners and tenants, happened elsewhere in Pampanga and Tarlac during these years of sugar prosperity.^[82]

Two circumstances changed the relative passivity among sugar tenants: the coming of limitation and the rise of effective local leadership of the peasant movement. Beginning in 1933, talk of market restrictions, on top of already depressed sugar prices, began to alarm tenant farmers and to encourage landlords to harden the terms of sugar contracts. As the era of quotas dawned, close observers of the industry noted in the new situation a potential for unrest.^[83] Meanwhile a new leader of Pampanga's tenants had recently emerged on the scene, in time to lead the next round of strikes against landlords and centrals.

One of the more pressing needs in the study of twentieth-century Philippine history is a good biography of Pedro Abad Santos, given his contributions, long unappreciated and misunderstood, to his country's intellectual and political development. Too often his reputation has been

overshadowed by that of his younger brother, Supreme Court Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos, executed in 1942 for his refusal to collaborate with the Japanese military government.

The few scraps of source material on Pedro Abad Santos that have so far surfaced present a paradoxical view of him. Born in 1876 into a professional family of San Fernando, he grew up in the company of the local elite, enjoying such pastimes of the wealthy as tennis. Large sugar land holders including Alfredo Ganzon of Magalang and Roberto Toledo III of Floridablanca considered him a friend. Abad Santos attended the elite Manila school San Juan de Letran with schoolmates Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmeña and completed his education at Ateneo de Manila and University of Santo Tomas. After passing the bar in 1907, he became a justice of the peace and provincial fiscal in the succeeding years. He and brother Jose briefly formed a law partnership in 1920-21, practiced in the capital area, and had as one of their clients the Manila Railroad Company. Despite his background, however, Pedro exhibited a genuine sympathy for and understanding of the plight of the poor and in later years spent much of his time in their company. Even so, he liked being referred to as "Don Pedro" or "Don Perico."

Abad Santos had a taste for public office, yet he chose to become a political outcast defending peasants in suits against landlords and founding Aguman ding Talapagobra ning Filipinas (Workers' Union of the Philip-pines) in 1929. Before then he served two terms in the Philippine Assembly from 1916 to 1923 and vied unsuccessfully against Sotero Baluyut for governor of Pampanga in 1927. He ran several times more for governor in the 1930s. Yet this same ambitious politico adopted a spartan personal lifestyle, electing to live in a nipa hut in the yard of his family house near the center of San Fernando, where he daily met with casamac seeking his legal help and moral support.^[84]

There remains a core mystery as to why Abad Santos moved from his role as a conventional politician to spokesman for the peasants of his province. His siblings stayed within the fold: Antonio, a successful hacendero and businessman, served as president of San Fernando's municipal council; Irineo was successful in both farming and finance; Jose, a favorite of Quezon, worked his way up in the Department of Justice; while Quirino, a local justice of the peace, carried out provincial political chores for Quezon. Even Quirino did not understand why his eldest brother drifted so far to the left; however, he believed that Pedro's defeat at the hands of Baluyut affected this transformation. Other unsympathetic commentators also saw the move as one of revenge against the ndowners and politicians who helped bring about his 1927 loss. Even supporter Casto Alejandrino

felt that the landlords abandoned Abad Santos in the election because of his aid to tenants, and that this betrayal by his own class made his jump inevitable. The vengeance explanation scarcely accounts for Abad Santos's seventeen-year commitment, filled with great personal sacrifice and fraught with danger, to the cause of the aparcero. Deeper motivations surely lay behind his decision.

Present-day historian Antonio Tan sees in Abad Santos's record as a legislator evidence of a longstanding sympathy for the poor; however, the latter's opposition to a head tax and support for women's suffrage and legalization of divorce provide testimony only of a liberal attitude. Those stands indicate simply that Abad Santos possessed a social conscience, not that he might someday advocate dismantling the existing socioeconomic structure in favor of the casamac.

Luis Taruc and others explain the turn to the left as due to Abad Santos's association with communists and suggest that Evangelista and Manahan may have converted the lawyer from Pampanga. Local historian Mariano Henson hints that the visiting Tan Malacca affected Abad Santos's thinking. Conceivably, he might have learned something about Marxism from others, but that he altered his life because of their persuasion seems improbable. Testimony by relatives and associates makes one thing clear: Abad Santos possessed a keen intellect; indeed, he was, perhaps, the most original thinker the Left ever had, and he exerted a tremendous influence on those who came in contact with him, not the other way around.^[85]

Ironically, for all his considerable intellectual prowess, Abad Santos left few written clues as to why he made his deep commitment to the cause of the poor. One needs to examine his actions for insight into his thoughts, and the events of his life reveal much about him. Furthermore, in some letters he wrote in the late 1930s to his friend the American Communist Sol Auerbach (a.k.a. James Allen), he demonstrated how far his thinking about social and political matters had progressed since his days in formal politics.

Above all, Abad Santos was a nationalist devoted to his country's independence. At the turn of the century he left a teaching job in Bacolor to become military secretary to General Maximino Hizon, one of the Revolution's diehard holdouts. For crimes committed Abad Santos faced a twenty-five-year sentence and stayed in prison until pardoned by President Theodore Roosevelt. Described at the time as being small in size and sickly, Abad Santos had already learned English and earned the respect of his prosecutors for his intellectual prowess. Despite his pardon, the patriot never wavered in his nationalism and in later years labored to have the exiled Hizon's remains brought back from Guam for reburial and to erect

a statue in Pampanga to his former chief. In 1918 as a member of the Assembly, he urged the sending of the first Philippine independence mission to Washington and raised money toward that end. He himself joined the second mission in 1922.

Upon his return from Washington he withdrew from insular-level politics sometime in 1923 and repaired to Pampanga, which became his permanent base. Here he commenced defending peasants in their suits against landlords. One wonders if by this time he had become disillusioned with the duplicity of the Philippine leadership on the independence issue. At any rate, he now supported Osmeña rather than his friend Quezon, and during the debates over the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act the two became involved in a bitter exchange when Quezon accused Abad Santos and his ally Honorio Ventura of cheating in earlier elections. Abad Santos answered the charge coolly, and cordiality between the two ceased.^[86]

The weakening nationalist ardor of elected representatives in favor of more pragmatic economic goals clearly left Abad Santos disappointed and could account for his rejection of conventional politics and politicians; however, as both a nationalist and an inventive thinker, he still sought ways to gain his country's freedom and pondered the socio-political structure of an independent Philippines. From comments he made to Auerbach, it would appear that the protest swirling around him in Pampanga deeply affected his thought and that he became swept up in his late forties in the tide of unrest. He wrote in 1937:

But in the Philippines we have no strong bourgeoisie. The bourgeois revolution has not been completed and left the feudal landlord system untouched. The ruling Filipino bourgeoisie is timid, ignorant and backward. It is timid because it is aware of its weakness. It is ignorant for even its intellectual leaders lack understanding of advanced political and economic thought. It is also backward for its outlook and methods are almost feudal. Therefore, I believe that in the Philippines an agrarian revolution will precede the proletarian revolution, as it has happened in China.^[87]

Some have argued that he had little familiarity with theoretical Marxism, but as the above statement reveals, he knew the literature. Throughout his life he remained a voracious reader, and Auerbach and others supplied him with books. Nevertheless, Abad Santos fits the pattern of Asian leftists, including Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, who sought to adapt communist theory to indigenous society. Like those contemporaries, he drew ideas from a variety of sources, perhaps the most important of

which was local circumstances. He lived in the arena, not the ivory tower, and expressed himself in action rather than print.

A passage from another letter reveals the way Abad Santos operated. In considering the merits of shortening the commonwealth period in the face of a threatening Japan, he wrote: "All these things confuse me greatly. I intend to consult with fellow-workers in the labor movement, so that we may in common counsel find a way out for the right solution of our problems."^[88] Abad Santos realized, as did Quezon, that the Philippine elite lacked strength, weakened as they were both by Quezon's machinations and by their economic dependency on America; however, the Capampangan sought not to lead in the same dictatorial manner but rather to build a new political edifice based on more democratic consultation. To make such a system work required enhancing the peasant's role in society. Abad Santos thus not only challenged Quezon, he also threatened the sugar industry with its rigid socioeconomic structure and its reliance on America's favors. Nestled too in Abad Santos's thought lay the principle of cooperative action, so natural to the Pampangan aparcero and small farmer.

After the courts declared the Communist party illegal in late 1931, Abad Santos formed the Socialist party the next year, using his peasant Aguman ding Maldang Talapagobra (League of Poor Workers; AMT) from Pampanga to provide a base of membership. He hoped thus to maintain an above-ground voice for the Left and an arm for carrying on the struggles in court. Peasants now boasted their own party, and the Philippine sugar industry faced an implacable political foe with a resourceful and dedicated spokesman. To the new organization Abad Santos attracted such talented younger cadre as labor organizer Casto Alejandrino from a nationalist landholding family in Arayat and the charismatic speaker Luis Taruc, originally from smallholder stock in San Luis. As the era of quotas dawned, the new party stood ready to challenge further planter exploitation.^[89]

Independence promised retrenchment for the sugar industry, and its leaders started weighing new strategies for survival. Appraising the international market as inescapably grim, they contemplated expanding the domestic market by exciting the Filipino taste for their product. Free packets of sugar in workers' rations would create a craving, and ad campaigns could be designed to convince the poor to spend extra pesos for white sugar rather than save on the "less healthy" dark. Other sugarmen examined the prospect of crop diversification, of planting cotton, fruit trees, beans, mulberry bushes, and vegetables; meanwhile, the pages of Sugar News contained thoughts about gold-mining ventures and poultry raising. The era that commenced in bright optimism concluded in gloom.^[90]