In 1898, Spain was driven out of the Philippines as a result of a combined United States and Filipino effort to remove them. Spain had sold the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million, but the Filipinos weren’t fans of their homeland being treated as colonial real estate. 50,000 US soldiers were brought in to help the country understand its subordinate status. After tens of thousands of Filipinos were killed and many villages burned, the point was quite clearly made.

Fast forward to 1945 and the United States were once again allied with the Philippines in World War 2, this time against the Japanese. The Philippines had a force called the Hukbalahap (Huks for short) which literally means “People’s Army Against Japan”. But after the war, as was the case with the Spanish, the United States quickly turned on the Filipinos.

The United States disarmed the Huk units, removed Huk-established local governments and arrested or imprisoned many high-ranking Huks. There were combined US-Filipino guerrilla forces which terrorised the Huks and any suspected sympathisers. There were rumours spread in order to erode support, and the Japanese were even allowed by the United States to terrorise the Huks, despite the United States apparently being there to expel the Japanese. Some Japanese collaborators, as also happened in the Korean War, were restored to leadership positions. All this despite the main goal of the Huks being to attack the Japanese occupation. The Huks frequently helped U.S. soldiers in this mission.

The origin story of the Huks, and the reason why they were persecuted by the U.S., goes back to the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP), which initiated the Hukbalahap as a response to the colonisation by the Japanese in 1942. For this reason, they were seen by some in the United States as part of the International Communist Conspiracy. For others, they simply saw a people’s party with strong influence that had to be squashed.

Although the United States’ fears were misguided, the aims of the Huk did go further than expelling the Japanese. There was land reform badly needed in the Philippines. It was a largely agricultural society and nothing had been done to improve it in fifty years of US occupation. There was a common belief that the US had thwarted any attempts at industrialisation so that the Philippines could remain a playground for the industrial elites back in America. The Filipinos, on the other hand, were uneducated and suffering in poverty, with diseases such as tuberculosis and beri-beri rampant. The New York Times reported that the Huks were “an outgrowth of the misery and discontent among the peasants of Central Luzon [the main island]. A later US Army study stated that the Huks’ “main impetus was peasant grievances, not Leninist designs”. But since they were a threat to the US occupation and Filipino elite, they had to be removed.

At the end of WW2, the United States was training 50,000 Filipino soldiers for the Cold War. A US Army Major told a congressional committee that the program was “essential for the maintenance of internal order, not for external difficulties at all”. No congressmen expressed any concern, so the US soldiers were kept in the Philippines with combat training re-established. This led to protests from US soldiers who wanted to return home after the end of the war.

The Huks did not trust the occupying United States enough to surrender their weapons, but would participate in the elections of 1946. The Huks were part of a Democratic Alliance of several liberal and socialist groups. Commander in Chief of the Huks Luis Taruc, along with nine other Alliance members were not allowed to take their seats. The US, as they often did, alleged that the Huks had used coercion to influence voters. There was no investigation or review of the decision, and it was clear that it was simply to pass a piece of legislation called the Philippine-US Trade Act. This legislation yielded the US “equal rights…in the development of the nation’s natural resources and operation of its public utilities”. Eventually this kind of legislation spread to the entire Philippines economy, and if you are a student of United States foreign policy you would not be surprised.

After this election, there was a wave of brutality against Filipino peasants, essentially punishing them for voting in the wrong direction. With villages destroyed, 500 peasants and leaders killed and a further 1500 jailed, tortured, maimed or missing, the Huks were forced to take up arms once again.

The Philippines then gained “independence” on 4 July 1946. The United States establishment stated themselves that the independence was based on “a restoration of the old relationship in almost everything except in name. … Many demands were made of the Filipinos for the commercial advantage of the United States, but none for the social and political advantage of the Philippines”. The agreement for independence provided 23 sites for US bases in the country lasting 99 years. US personnel committing crimes outside the military bases could only be tried by tribunals within the bases, meaning they were effectively above the law. The Philippines government was not allowed to purchase weapons outside of US approval, and no foreigners in the country were allowed to do anything without US approval.

By early 1950, the US had provided the Philippines with over $200mn in military aid in addition to the construction of facilities. The Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) had put Ramon Magsaysay at its head. They provided the groundwork for what would be a lab experiment for counter-insurgency warfare with methods like “search-and-destroy” and “pacification” that later became famous in the Vietnam War.

Edward G. Lansdale was the head of the CIA clandestine and paramilitary operations who later in life reflected on the period. He stated that the Quirino government was rotten with corruption down to the policeman on the street, with Quirino himself elected through extensive fraud. Lansdale also agreed that “the Huks were right” in that the only way to get their own government was through violence.

Lansdale was a marketing man, so he understood what it took to deceive the population for the CIA. He created a unit called the Civil Affairs Office and studied the superstitions of the Filipino peasants in Huk-controlled areas. They would fly small planes around in the clouds broadcasting curses in Tagalog on anyone who aided the Huks. The Filipinos also had a myth of a vampire, called the “asuang”. A squad would spread rumours about the asuang, saying that it lived in the hills where the Huks were based. Once the rumour got to the Huks, they were ready to pounce. They would find trails that were frequently used and take the last man as they were walking down the trail. They killed him, put punctures in his neck and put him back on the trail for his fellow Huk soldiers to find. In addition, there was the production of propaganda films and radio broadcasts, the infiltration of Huk units by government agents, and terrorising villages while posing as Huks (who had a strong policy of treating villages with respect).

A US Air Force colonel Fletcher Prouty also talked about the fact that lumber and sugar interests forced tens of thousands of peasants from areas where they had lived for generations. “When these poor people flee to other areas, it should be quite obvious that they in turn then infringe upon the territorial rights of other villagers or landowners. This creates violent rioting or at least sporadic outbreaks of banditry, that last lowly recourse of dying and terrorized people”. The government would then explain these events as “Communist-inspired subversive insurgency”, because they were getting a “10 percent rake-off on all [paper and lumber] enterprise”.

These propaganda campaigns followed state-managed elections, including the election of former defence department head Ramon Magsaysay. Lansdale stated that he “invented” Magsaysay. They would drug Magsaysay’s opponent in order to make him seem incoherent when giving speeches, while Magsaysay was forced to read speeches given to him by the Americans. When Magsaysay insisted on reading a Filipino-written speech, Lansdale knocked him out. In the case that Magsaysay would lose an unlosable election, plenty of guns were smuggled in so that a coup could promptly take place. Magsaysay continued to act as a puppet for the United States, giving the Americans the assurance that he “would do anything the United States wanted him to do”.

As for Magsaysay’s opponent at the time, Senator Claro M. Recto, he was given a predictable treatment. The CIA planted stories calling him a Chinese communist agent, and once planned to assassinate him, preparing a substance but finally abandoning the idea. They also prepared condoms with holes in the ends of them labelled “courtesy of Claro Recto – the People’s Friend”.

When Magsaysay died in a plane crash in 1957, several Filipino politicians offered themselves as the new CIA puppet. Shortly after, in 1961, Macapagal became president. He had provided the CIA with information for years, and subsequently got massive support from the CIA for his election. Although during Magsaysay’s presidency, Macapagal was among the biggest opponents to US foreign intervention, his ideas clearly changed when the opportunity presented itself.

Although, as is often the case, the United States claimed that there was Soviet influence in the Philippines, there is no evidence for this. While the Soviets had paid lip service to the Communist movement in the Philippines, it never offered any real support.

Over the proceeding years, the Philippines were used by the United States as a launchpad for actions against Korea, China, Indonesia and Vietnam.

 
In more recent times, the election of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 meant a genuine shift in foreign policy for the Pacific nation. Duterte, often criticised in the West for his harsh policies on drug crime, has shifted his foreign policy to be more aligned with Russia and China as opposed to the United States. He is known for his tough language on Western reporters, but his domestic policies are quite good, with an initiative labelled “Build, Build, Build!” being one of the more ambitious infrastructure plans in the region.