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

Full text

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 3,0004 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): 8. https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/special-report-issue-
45-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): 41. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB625.pdf.
3 Abuza, Zachary. "The Philippines Internal and External Security Challenges." Special Report, Australian
Strategic Policy Institute, no. Issue 45 (2012): 9. https://www.aspi.org.au/publications/special-report-issue-
45-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.

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 1492. 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, 2015. http://www.interaksyon.com/article/102927/crushing-
communist-force-in-e--mindanao-crucial-to-defeating-npa-nationwide---afp-general.
6 Dalumpines, Joey. "PIA | Less than Half of NPA Rebels in Eastern Mindanao-AFP." Republic of the
Philippines, Philippine Information Agency. April 29, 2015.
7"A 2011 International Crisis Group report puts the number 60-70%.
""

and non-Islamized tribes relying on agriculture, fishing, and hunting; Islam had arrived
with Muslim traders in the 13th and 14th 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 1898. 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.

of until 1902. 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, 1899–1902 - 1899–1913 - Milestones - Office of the Historian. (n.d.).
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war
11 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.

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.

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, 1945-46 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.

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
1954. 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 1970. 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.

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 fellow-
defectors.
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, 2011.
23 Weekley, K. (2001). From the Katipunan to Mao: Reclaiming the Past for the Future. In The Communist
Party of the Philippines, 1968-1993: A story of its theory and practice (p. 21). Diliman, Quezon City:
University of the Philippines Press.

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 band26 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, 2011.
25 Weekley, K. (2001). From the Katipunan to Mao: Reclaiming the Past for the Future. In The Communist
Party of the Philippines, 1968-1993: 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.

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 1969. 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, 2011.
29 Weekley, K. (2001). Philippine Society and Revolution. In The Communist Party of the Philippines,
1968-1993: A story of its theory and practice (p. 70). Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines
Press.

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 1983. 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 prison31 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, 2011.
31 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.

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 19th 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 13th 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 Post-
conflict Peacebuilding, 9. London: Earthscan, 2013.
34 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.

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, 2013.
36 Weekley, K. (2001). The People’s Army 2: Battling for Survival and Legitimacy. In The Communist
Party of the Philippines, 1968-1993: A story of its theory and practice (p. 155). Diliman, Quezon City:
University of the Philippines Press.

evidence… increased population density, decline of land to people ration, and, in settler-
dominated 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,
1996.
38 Quitoriano, Eddie. "Land, Foreign Aid, and the Rural Poor in Mindanao." Focusweb. September 1, 2009.
http://focusweb.org/sites/www.focusweb.org/files/MINDANAO-Quitoriano.pdf.
39"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,
1996.
40 Quitoriano, Eddie. "Land, Foreign Aid, and the Rural Poor in Mindanao." Focusweb. September 1, 2009.
http://focusweb.org/sites/www.focusweb.org/files/MINDANAO-Quitoriano.pdf.
41
Abinales, P. N. "When a Revolution Devours Its Children." In The Revolution Falters: The Left in
Philippine Politics after 1986, 164-165. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell
University, 1996.

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 1985.
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,
1996.
43
Ibid

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, 1968-1993: 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, 2007.
46 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, 2003. Accessed May 8, 2015.
47 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.

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, 33-44.
49 Holden, William N. "The New People's Army and Neoliberal Mining in the Philippines: A Struggle
against Primitive Accumulation." Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2014, 65.
50 Erasga, Dennis S. "Ancestral Domain Claim: The Case of the Indigenous People in Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM)." Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, 2008, 39.
51 Vargas, May. "Indigenous Groups Decry 7 Years of IPRA Law." Butalat, October 30, 2004.
http://bulatlat.com/main/2004/10/30/indigenous-groups-decry-7-years-of-ipra-law/.

NPA, who have come to dominate its membership base. Some of these indigenous
recruits support the local NPA ideology, but this does not always necessarily reflect
official CPP positions, which the local commands of the Mindanao NPA have
increasingly diverged from, certainly in practice if not always in rhetoric. The NPA
continues to decry social injustice and human rights abuses but commits them themselves
and “several armed communist cells now effectively exist as full-fledged kidnapping and
crime syndicates.”52 In addition, the NPA collects significant revenues from so-called
“revolutionary tax,” the extortion it imposes on companies operating in territories in
controls, which otherwise suffer from acts of sabotage. Despite it’s “pro-environment”
stance, the NPA also has connections to both illegal mining and logging.
Rocks and Hard Places: Counterinsurgency and the Lumad
Today, at least half of the NPA’s operational forces are believed to be in Mindanao, with
a “particularly strong presence in the provinces of Agusan del Sur, Suriago del Sur, and
Compostela Valley, areas where many mining, logging, and plantations project
operate.”53 But the loss of land and sustenance, as well as the toxic pollution and erosion
caused especially by open-pit mining, and other development-based encroachments such
as logging and chemical-heavy plantation agriculture, are not the only forces that have
created a Cordillera-style “alliance” between the Lumad and the NPA in Mindanao. The
government counterinsurgency program itself has also played a role.
The Eastern Mindanao command is responsible for implementing government
counterinsurgency policy in Mindanao, where the highest concentrations of the NPA
currently operate, and locals complain that all Lumad villagers are suspected of being
either NPA guerillas or supporters. The AFP relies on a number of paramilitary groups
deployed in Lumad areas, including “Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units” or
CAFGUs and additional Lumad militias. Ironically, these groups recruit the Lumad with
the same incentives as the NPA; it is not an ideological opposition to the NPA but the
promise of cash, rice, and security that draws recruits. As one tribal leader explained,
“The main reason to join the CAFGUs is really to earn, not to fight;” 54 a similar
assessment was heard from a Manobo leader commenting on why Lumad join the NPA:
“they join for a gun and a bag of rice.”55
52 Chalk, Peter. "Southeast Asian Terrorist Groups Continue To Pose a Serious, but Manageable, Threat."
The Evolving Terrorist Threat to Southeast Asia: A Net Assessment. 2009.
53 "Living in the Shadows : Displaced Lumads Locked in a Cycle of Poverty." International Displacement
Monitoring Center. August 1, 2013.
54 Ibid
55 Interview with the author

These groups however have been responsible for a number of human rights abuses, and
commonly target not just NPA members but Lumad activists and tribal leaders who are
attempting to organize against natural resource extraction projects in their lands. A 2003
report from the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of
Indigenous Peoples, Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen, noted that “Indigenous resistance
and protest are frequently countered by military force involving numerous human rights
abuses, such as arbitrary detention, persecution, killings of community representatives,
coercion, torture, demolition of houses, destruction of property, rape, and forced
recruitment by the armed forces, the police or the so-called paramilitaries, such as
Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs).”56 This list of abuses is almost a
mirror of the human rights abuses that the government has found the NPA guilty of. The
same report found that to many Lumad groups, the military operations in Lumad
communities seem to be more often about “clearing the way” for resource extraction
enterprises and “suppressing resistance against them than they are really about fighting
the NPA.”
The Lumad in Mindanao have historically been recruited and victimized from all sides,
including the Moro armed groups, the ILAGA (still an issue of contention between the
Lumad and Moro groups within the proposed Bangsamoro territory), the AFP, the NPA
and the CAFGU paramilitaries and militias that the AFP supports against the NPA, as
well as some private forces (much like the old “Civilian Guards”) employed by
companies themselves.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The reasons for the strong Lumad membership in the NPA are not ideological but
tragically historical, dating all the way back to the ecomiendas system under the Spanish,
the land laws under the US colonial regime, the peasant Huk rebellions and a system of
government repression through the Philippine Constabulary and the use of paramilitary
organizations, a dynamic that become more entrenched under the Marcos administration.
With the increasing militarization of the Lumad population in Mindanao and the ongoing
threat of dispossession not just by violence but also by “development,” the
counterinsurgency campaign may succeed in not just eliminating the NPA but
eliminating the Lumad along with them.
There have been numerous efforts along the way to address these issues by the Philippine
government, including recognition of indigenous rights under the new 1987 constitution,
the 1988 Comprehensive Agricultural Reform Program or CARP that was designed to put
56
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. "Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, MISSION TO THE PHILIPPINES." United Nations Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. March 5, 2003.

the ownership of small plots of land back in to the hands of the farmers who work them,
and 1997’s IPRA, which while flawed, still offers the best legal hope so far for the
protection of indigenous lands, and greater commitment to both of these acts, while
adjusting for legal contradictions, is needed to effect real change in the context that has
nurtured the long and multi-faceted conflict in which the NPA has arisen and operated in.
While revenue sharing schemes may be effective particularly with NPA units and the
Lumad communities that have engaged in illegal mining and logging and should be
pursued, these arrangements are ill-suited to address traditional tribal concerns that are
incompatible with revenue sharing assumptions; for instance pollution from open-pit
mining destroys the rivers and lands that some Lumad communities rely on for
sustenance fishing and food cultivation, but the best example of this incompatibility is
reflected by the language differences our peacebuilding group heard while visiting a
Manobo NGO “PAMAS”; the Manobo members described the need to protect their
“sacred forests” while the local mayor emphasized the development potential of the
“local timber.”
The new Aquino government that has successfully negotiated the Framework on the
Bangsamoro and the Bangsamoro Basic Law with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) has failed, like other administrations before it, to make progress with the
CPP/NPA/NDF leadership over the years. There are many reasons for this ongoing
failure, including, no doubt, that the CPP leadership remains committed to the Maoist
strategy, which has not regional autonomy but government overthrow as it end. However,
the successful ceasefire agreement between the RPM-M, an NPA splinter group
supposedly in control of half of the NPA territories, and the government might provide a
model for what a negotiated progress might look like, not so much in its results, which
have been mixed, but in the process through which it was pursued.
At the end of 2002 the Mayor of Iligan City was contacted by the RPM-M, composed of
Lumad, Christian, and Muslim members, expressing an interest in entering into a peace
process that would end their decades long insurgency. Mistrustful of government
interlocutors the RPMM nominated Kaloy Manlupig of the local NGO Balay Mindanaw
in Cagayan de Oro as their mediator, which the Mayor accepted. Manlupig and Balay
Mindanaw had established credibility through their sincere efforts to engage with and
develop local leadership and understand and meet community needs. Government and
RPM-M Peace Panels were subsequently convened, and Manlupig and Balay Mindanaw,
accepted the role of mediator, recognizing that “our community-based development work
is actually also community-based peacebuilding work.”
The organization solicited the consulting assistance of UK advisor, Paul Clifford, an
expert in peace negotiations, but proceeded with the process in its own unique way,

pursuing a highly democratic consultation process that directly engaged community
members to build a peace and holistic development agenda that responded directly to
their expressed input. Clifford was greatly impressed and moved by this process, saying
“This is the first time that I’ve been involved in a peace process where the emphasis
really is on the development of communities rather than on the political process.”
Manlupig elaborates saying that the goal was to let the peace process create
“opportunities or spaces for people to experience how it is to win, not the big war, not the
big revolution, but their own struggle against inequity.”57
The negotiations resulted in a successfully implemented ceasefire and mobilizing
participation and hopefulness among the communities involved but the government
implementation of agreed-upon development measures have yet to be fully fulfilled. The
fact that the ceasefire has remained in place, however, speaks to the profound impacts
conferred by the process itself. While the (increasingly isolated) CPP leadership would
not and could not approve government negotiations with local NPA commanders for both
ideological and security reasons,58 empowering local peacebuilding NGOs to work
directly with Lumad groups on the issues that concern them might create a neutrel and
relevant space for the local NPA to enter the process; according to PAMAS, there has
been an increasingly expressed desire in the last year by Lumad NPA members to “come
in.”
This long term and unconventional approach combined with national action on the CARP
and IPRA Acts, and partnering with multinationals to implement targeted regional
revenue sharing agreements (potentially offset by the costs saved through reduced
sabotage and extortion activities), requires a highly complex mix of centralized and
decentralized coordination, but could create numerous models for peace that, much like
the long years of conflict in the Philippines, might build their own momentum.
57 Beyond Politics and Power: A New Peace in Mindanao. German Development Service (DED) 2005.
Film.
58 "The Communist Insurgency in the Philippines: Tactics and Talks." International Crisis Group. Asia
Report, 202. February 14, 2011.

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