Return of the Huks

For eleven hours one day last week, Philippine Constabulary troopers nervously ringed a low frame house in the town of Mabalacat, 55 miles northwest of Manila. Finally, an officer arrived with a search warrant. What the Con stabulary found inside was worth waiting for: shadowy Dominador Garcia, 34, alias Commander Ely, the No. 3 man in the Hukbong Magpapalaya sa Bayan,-the backwoods Communist guerrillas known as Huks. Garcia surrendered without a fight.

The arrest underscored the resurgence of an old menace that has returned to plague the 15-month-old regime of President Ferdinand Marcos. In the late 1940s and early '50s, the

Huks nearly tipped over the Manila government before they were decimated and pushed back into the hinterlands by Ramon Magsaysay. Now, capitalizing on the erosion of law and order that has spread across the country despite Marcos' reforming policies, the Huks are once more stepping up their activity in their old stomping grounds in central Luzon--particularly in four provinces. Says Senator Manuel P. Manahan, chairman of the Philippine Senate's National Defense and Security Committee: "The Huks have established an in visible government in Pampanga [north of Manila], in western sections of Bula-can and in the southern fringes of Nueva Eciha and Tarlac. They have entrenched themselves in four vital activities: Huk taxation, Huk justice, Huk business and Huk politics."

Instant Reprisals. Not to mention Huk terrorism, which is the tie that binds together all the other Huk influences. The Huk organization is small, dedicated and tightly disciplined. Led by Faustino Delmundo, alias Commander Sumulong, it has purposely kept down its size so as not to attract the main force attention of the Philippine military. The terrorist arm of the movement comprises no more than 160 killers (supported by another 150 local armed guerrillas), who roam the central Luzon countryside in bands of three or four, meting out instant reprisals to anyone who dares defy Huk orders. In the past year, 84 Filipinos, including some anti-Huk mayors, police and other officials, have died in fusillades of Huk bullets. Says Brigadier General Rafael Ileto, who leads the 3,000-man Constabulary force in the Huk area: "If you are the only man with a .38 in the barrio, that barrio belongs to you." The Huks are the men with the guns.

The Huks have set up their own courts, which are the law of the land in broad stretches of central Luzon. Huk justice is swift and decisive: cattle thieves and rapists, for example, are often executed on the spot. Huk agents exact tribute and taxes from thousands of Filipinos. The biggest collection center is Angeles City near the U.S. Air Force's Clark Field. Maids for American families must pay five pesos ($1.25) monthly to the Huks; Huk treasurers take a big rake-off from the gambling parlors and bars frequented by U.S. troops.

Influence & Power. The Huk aim is simple: to eradicate U.S. influence in the islands and set up a Communist-style "people's democracy." Remembering their earlier mistakes, the Huks no longer call for instant revolution but aim instead at a gradual subversion of the country's political system. That work is carried on by an estimated 1,500 so-called "legal cadres," members who carefully skirt the law forbidding Communism in the Philippines. Many of them openly strive to win positions of power. According to Filipino intelligence estimates, at least 176 barrio captains, dozens of mayors, a handful of Congressmen and at least one, possibly two, provincial governors are either Huks or under Huk discipline.

The Huks already have control in varying degrees of 1,400 square miles and 500,000 people, but their political power is growing even faster than their geographic boundaries. Two weeks ago, the Huks were able to get together 150 buses and 5,000 Pampanga villagers to drive into Manila and complain to Marcos about the "brutality" of the Constabulary, which is the chief hunter of the Huks. Matters might be much worse if the Huks and their urban comrades, the Communist Party of the Philippines, could get along. Fortunately, they are so split by ideological and personal rivalries that they have so far been unable to agree on any concerted action.

Hopelessly Poor. Trying his best to contain the Huk threat, Marcos has launched in central Luzon a civic-action program that has built 178 new schools, dug dozens of wells and irrigation ditches and paved dirt roads. But the area is so hopelessly poor that his efforts have made little impact. The President's fear is that the Huk movement will spread to other impoverished areas before he can stamp it out in Luzon. "The battle can start any time," says Marcos. "If I must end my political career going after the Communists, I wouldn't mind it."

* Tagalog for People's Liberation Army.

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