by Rose Cruz Churma
“Born of the People” is the 1953 autobiography of labor leader and revolutionary Luis Taruc, who led the HUKBALAHAP (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon) in the Philippines soon after the end of World War II.
It is widely known that this autobiography was ghostwritten by William Pomeroy, an American communist, poet, author, and ghostwriter who served the American army in the Pacific during World War II and had connections with the Philippine guerrillas during that war. He had married a Filipina who was a member of the Hukbalahap.
As a child growing up in the rural town of San Marcelino, Zambales, the terms “Huks,” “Taruc,” and “Pomeroy” were words I’ve heard often at the dinner table or when my grandfather would comment on an article he read in the weekly Free Press (he was the distributor for the town’s six subscribers).
This was often coupled with mention of Ramon Magsaysay, my grandmother’s nephew, who, as the Philippines’ Secretary of Defense (before he became the president), was able to get Luis Taruc and his Huks to surrender.
Last week, it was a pleasant surprise to get a phone call from Susan Halas of Maui that she was sending me an autographed copy of the Luis Taruc autobiography—a book that the revolutionary had gifted her parents when he visited Detroit in 1974.
Susan’s parents, Jock and Petra Netzorg, were book dealers based in Detroit and owned Cellar Book Shop. They were our mentors who encouraged us to establish Kalamansi Books in 1993. Jock was born in Naga City, the son of Thomasites, teachers sent by the U.S. government to establish public schools in the Philippines.
Jock, a prolific writer and collector, selected the books to be acquired, and Petra managed the business side. By the time both passed away, their collection of Filipiniana materials was the most extensive outside of the Philippines.
Published by International Publishers of India, the book details the history and struggles of the Huk movement, framing it as a peasant-led fight against feudalism and U.S. control.
It includes a foreword by Paul Robeson, an African American concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.
In the first paragraph of Robeson’s foreword, he mentions Hawai’i:
“When I was in Hawai’i a few years ago, it was my privilege to sing for, and with the sugar and pineapple workers, to clasp their hands in firm friendship, and to share for a short time their way of life.”
Invited by the Hawai’i labor unions, he had the opportunity to talk with the Filipino workers of Hawai’i, who shared their views on Hukbalahap and their fight to survive the Japanese fascism during the war, and later against American imperialism and its Filipino collaborators.
It is in this context that Robeson read Luis Taruc’s story to write his foreword and he notes that:
“This is an intensely moving story, full of the warmth, courage…Here is certainly proof that the richest humanist tradition is inherited and will be continuously enriched by the working class…How necessary that we learn the simple yet profound lessons of united action, based upon the deepest respect for the people’s wisdom, understanding, and creative capacity.”
Written in the early 1950s while Taruc was still leading an underground rebellion, the book chronicles Taruc’s rise from a peasant background in Pampanga to the head of a massive agrarian revolution.
The first few pages describe the particulars of Taruc’s young life. But most parts of the book are dedicated to the history and workings of the Huk movement.
One of Taruc’s early mentors was Pedro Abad Santos, founder of the Philippine socialist movement, who felt that the peasants’ chances of gaining concessions would increase if they could draw strength from one another and use their collective voice to demand their rights.
By 1929, Pedro Abad Santos had founded a workers’ union and encouraged the peasants to be more militant, well-organized, and able to articulate their demands and grievances. He formed his own indigenous theory of socialism, which Taruc likely absorbed and influenced his beliefs.
In May 1935, among Pedro Abad-Santos’ party co-founders and loyal cadres of the movement was Luis Taruc, and by the late 1939, the workers gained militancy and labor unions emerged throughout the country.
With the certainty of a Japanese invasion, the movement had one basic theme, which was preparing against the Japanese invasion.
In Chapter 8, Taruc notes that Hukbalahap was born on March 28, 1942, a few months after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, in a clearing of the forest that joined the corners of the provinces of Pampanga, Nueva Ecija and Tarlac.
A few months before the end of the war, his mentor Pedro Abad Santos was brought from detention at Fort Santiago to Luis Taruc’s base in Pampanga for medical treatment but passed away in January 1945.
After the war against Japan, the Hukbalahap continued their demands for agrarian reform. Taruc, as well as seven colleagues, were elected to the House of Representatives in the Philippine Congress, but the Philippine government disallowed them to take their seats in Congress.
The Taruc faction opposed the parity rights that the U.S.demanded from the newly “independent” Philippines as a condition for rehabilitation funding. Taruc gave up on pushing for reforms via the parliamentary struggle and took up arms instead.
At the height of its popularity, the Hukbalahap reached a fighting strength estimated at between 10,000 and 30,000.
After months of negotiations, Taruc surrendered unconditionally to the government in May 1954. This effectively ended the Huk rebellion. Taruc met with then President Ramon Magsaysay in June 1954 where he agreed to a trial.
The trial started in August 1954, where he pleaded guilty to rebellion. On September 11, 1968, more than a decade since his trial, Taruc was pardoned by President Ferdinand Marcos who gained the former Huk leader’s support. Taruc continued to work for agrarian reforms after his pardon.
In September 1972, Marcos declared Martial Law, and with it the directive to implement Land Reform. The first on the list to be “land reformed” was my grandparent’s lands in Zambales in 1973. As the oldest grandchild, I witnessed the “turn-over” as I helped my grandmother (my grandfather had passed away that year) navigate the changing landscape.
In May 1974, Taruc visited the United States and one of his stops was Detroit, Michigan. At Detroit’s Filipino Center, Taruc who was by then National Chairman of the Filipino Agrarian Reform Movement was hosted by several Filipino organizations.
The invitation to the dinner event included a quote from Taruc that said, “I am cooperating with President Ferdinand Marcos in his program of agrarian reform in the interest of stability that will end martial law.”
By the time Taruc died in May 2005, martial law had ended—but it wasn’t due to the stability brought about by agrarian reform. In fact the implementation of agrarian reform had been extended to 2014. However, despite these efforts for reform, inequities in land ownership persists, even to this day.
For those with opposite political views this book “exaggerates, misinterprets and twists facts to suit his convenience…and that this book was written primarily for foreign consumption.”
One of the conservative reviewers also noted that: “the author’s condemnation of the landowning class is too sweeping, his criticism of the government machinery and processes of justice too narrow, his story of the Huk’s part in the liberation of the Philippines too fantastic, his tale of American imperialism dripping with the Moscow brand of prejudice.”
This book was published in 1953, more than seven decades ago. Every reader has the right to his or her opinion on whether the book is “the greatest of all things I have read about colonial struggles for liberation” as described by Howard Fast (an American novelist and television writer) or one filled with hyperbole as criticized by some Filipino reviewers.
From one who grew up in a land-owning household, I lived through the distinctions of the social hierarchies. In my grandparents house, for example, there were three doorways and an unwritten rule of who enters which door, or which table to eat from.
I recall the imperious directives of my sweet grandmother to her tenants to allow their sons or daughters to serve as household help for my mother’s household in Baguio.
I remember also the discussions on how the harvest would be divided between tenant and landlord—which changed from the traditional 50:50 to 70:30.
Or the admonitions to keep close to home and not stray from typical routes lest one be captured by the Huks, where the implications were that these were “bad” people.
I’m glad I read the book, even if it was seven decades late. What shocked me though was the part on “The Struggle for National Liberation” of the years soon after the end of WWII. In Chapter 24, “The Fight for Survival” Taruc chronicles the brutality received by the farm workers in Central Luzon.
He writes that the orgy of killing, torture, burning and looting that was let loose in Central Luzon exceeded the violence of the Spanish execution squads, or the butcheries carried out by the American army, or the terrors from the Japanese invaders. This was done by Filipinos to their own. Then he lists all the barrios and towns impacted by this violence.
The book provided not just food for thought, but a new set of lenses to view the past. Thank you, Susan, for sharing this book. It will be treasured.
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA is a former President of the FilCom Center. She is also the co-owner of Kalamansi Books and Things, an online bookstore promoting works by Filipino Americans. For inquiries, email her at kalamansibook@gmail.com.
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