"Our Friends Outside"

The week's big news seemed to be concentrated in Korea. But behind Korea lay bigger news: what was happening in the whole of Asia. The sudden Communist attack on the relatively small and weak point of U.S. influence in the Far East faced the U.S. with a challenge which its Government had doggedly ignored and evaded. The challenge was: how to keep the people of Asia from falling to Communism.

It was not merely a matter of the poverty which beset Asia (and which, in the minds of some well-meaning Americans, could be cured by "land reform"); nor was it merely a matter of political unrest caused by war and undigested Western ideas; nor merely of outright Communist military attack. It was all these things together, plus the simple, brutal fact that Asia was in chaos. Millions in Asia are not only not sure where the next day's bowl of rice is coming from they cannot be reasonably sure whether they will see a next day.

Most Americans used to assume rather smugly that in the Philippines, where U.S. power, U.S. wealth and U.S. good will had been working for years, things are different. Recently they have discovered that the difference is not so big as they thought. The Philippines are torn by the chronic rebellion of the Communist-led Huks. The majority of the Philippine people have only the vaguest idea of what Communism is. The fact is that the West has failed to bring millions of Filipinos an order under which they can lead reasonably secure lives. LIFE Editor John Osborne has been touring Central and South Luzon, heartland of Huk power. The people he met--the fears, confusions and baffling contradictions in which they are caught--make a story not only of the Philippines but of Asia. His report:

THE first thing to be learned about the Huk rebellion is that there are no facts, American style. How many Huks are there, and how are they doing? One of the few "facts" to be stated with some certainty is that the authorities do not know. They will tell you that there are 12,000 to 14,000 armed Huks on "The Outside," as the shadowy world of the guerrillas is called here, and that since the government launched its new campaign against them in April, the Huk organization, has been mortally hurt. But this estimate is just a guess. A more precise statement would be that the Huks were taking the initiative early this year, and are not taking it now. This is literally all the authorities know. The rest is hidden behind a wall of silence--the silence of thousands upon thousands of peasants and field workers and townsmen, who, from fear or from loyalty, almost never tell what they hear from "The Outside."

Lately this situation has improved a little, as the Philippine army ground forces have gradually taken over the campaign from the mistrusted, abusive Philippine constabulary. If this trend continues, the Huks will be finished, for they cannot live without the aid--voluntary or forced--of the people in the countryside. In this sense, the Huk war is a struggle for the confidence of thousands of peasants and rural workers who in their underpaid, underprivileged past have never been given much reason for confidence. Who is winning this struggle now? Maybe a certain Colonel Abay knows a little of the answer. And the men of Bamban in Tarlac, and a peasant boy of Nueva Ecija--maybe they know a little. Let them speak now.

"At Night, Look Out." Colonel Eustaquire Abay (rhymes with buy) is deputy commander of the Second Military Area, which includes the entire region south of Manila. He is displayed as an example and spokesman of the new order which started when the ground forces took over the "pacification campaign." Things are better, he says. Many people in troubled Batangas province, who had been afraid to live in their barrios (villages), and who fled to the relative safety of the towns, are moving back to their old homes. The roads are safe. In this area the Huks are weaker, much weaker, than they were in the spring. All this is said with difficulty, in the hot, frame headquarters of an old prewar training camp. It is a surprise to the American visitor, who has supposed these islands to have been completely Americanized, that the colonel's English is as broken as his teeth.

But the difficulty goes deeper than language. I want facts, facts to be set down with finality in my notebook. I prod the colonel: How many people have gone home? How much weaker are the Huks? How can he tell? He looks more & more harassed; suddenly he grins with a certain ferocity, and jabs his lean, dark hand at me and at each of the small group of officers who surround him.

"Sometimes you know a Huk is that one"--jab--"that one"--jab--"or that one? How you know? You do not know"--here he waves at the window, opening on nearby rice fields. "Sometimes you see them. You fight them, maybe. But you do not know"--a huge shrug--"they go away."

I keep asking questions. He has said Huks are weaker now. How does he know? "How we know? We do not know. But we feel it--we feel it." He has said the roads are safe. How safe? "Oh, very safe. Now you can go anywhere." And at night? The colonel looks at me with pity. "At night, look out," he says.

Colonel Abay's young intelligence officer, Captain Herman Sevillia, tells with great earnestness of new efforts to win the people's trust. It is a matter of convincing them that the army can protect them. "Then the people talk to us," the captain says. "They tell us their troubles. If we do not have the aid of the people, we do not know which ones to shoot."

A Show of Hands. The men of Bamban are at a meeting. Bamban is a town in the province of Tarlac, north of Manila, where many thousands have left their barrios and crowded into towns. Now some 70 representative citizens--a few small landowners, many tenants, a few barrio lieutenants or deputy mayors--have come to the town hall to hear speeches by officers of the 5th battalion combat team. The battalion surgeon, a young major who grew up near Bamban, is speaking in Pampango, the liquid dialect of Pampanga and Tarlac provinces. I almost never hear the word "Hukbalahap." Speakers use euphemisms for the Huks--"The New Faces," "The Mistaken People" or "Our Friends Outside."

This meeting is like many others being held all over Luzon where the ground forces have moved in. The people are told: you are safe now, we will protect you, go back to your barrios. In the noon heat, the men of Bamban--young men in immaculate sport shirts and pressed linens, old men in soiled shorts and wide straw hats, nearly all of them with poverty in their faces--listen with silent intentness. After the speeches there are questions. Gonzales Guilas, a gaunt, tall man who is the lieutenant of his barrio, suggests a nightly password--else how will they be able to tell patrolling soldiers from "New Faces?" The major dodges this one.

With the major interpreting, I ask the men how many of them have fled their barrios. Some 30 hands are raised. How many of them are going back? There is a great shout of "Yes, sir, yes, sir." This sounds too good to be true, and I ask again: How many are actually going back to the villages--now? There is a long silence. The men of Bamban look at each other, and at the watching officers, and at the town's mayor. The major and the mayor talk urgently in Pampango. Across the room a hand is raised, another & another, until ten or twelve are up. Everyone else in the room stares at the men with their hands up; two or three arms are lowered again. The room is hot with unspoken tension. But the mayor and the battalion officers look pleased as they declare the meeting closed. With obvious relief, the men of Bamban drift away.

Later, the mayor tells me that eight young men of Bamban are known to be "Outside." All, he says, are the sons of tenants, some poor, some not poor. How about the amnesty which the army has promised to Huks who give themselves up? The mayor says that for the eight it is very difficult, for all are charged with "known offenses," and therefore must face trial if they surrender. It is not known exactly what kind of offenses, but they are on "The Outside," and is it not logical that they be charged with illegal association, illegal detention? Yes, but how can they then be expected to come in and surrender? The mayor shrugs: "That is for higher authority to say."

"Oh, Many Huks, Many Huks." Lieut. Colonel Jesus Vargas, commander of the 5th battalion, is addressing a very important meeting, His hearers are some 400 field and factory workers of the Hacienda Luisita near San Miguel, a huge sugar estate which is owned by a Spanish combine called "Tabacalera" and is managed by a Spaniard, one Miguel Franco. The Hacienda has its own private police and detachment of constabulary, and many people from outlying barrios have moved within its boundaries. It is also famous as one of the first estates where a rural union was organized before the war, and nowadays it is said to be rich recruiting ground for "Outsiders." Colonel Vargas is aware of all this, and he gives the people a kind of talk that Filipinos hear too seldom from their national leaders.

Vargas is a big man, and his whole bulk seems to lunge at the crowd in the shaded plaza of Luisita. He tells them in so many words that they are responsible for "Our Friends Outside," that their troubles will end only if the people want them to end. If they listen to the "Outsiders," if they do not report to authorities when the "New Faces" appear in barrios, then what can the ground forces do? Again & again he begs the people to go home, to live normally, to trust the authorities.

The people listen with respect. But there is something strange in the atmosphere of the plaza, and a little later Mr. Franco gives a clue to this strangeness. He broadly implies that a good many of Colonel Vargas' audience were Huks.

"Oh, we have many Huks here, many Huks," Mr. Franco says with a kind of pride. His pride is that of a manager who has the wit and acumen to deal with a difficult situation. "We have no troubles," he says. "Plenty of Huks, but no trouble." He conveys the impression that he knows how to get along with his Huks. His Huks are the kind who do not take up arms and go "Outside." They stay home, feeding the "Outsiders" who flit in, deceiving authorities with gusto, and on occasion dutifully attending such meetings as the one addressed by Colonel Vargas.

The Tall Grass. Servan Santos and Patricio Bayangas were serving their country. A truckload of soldiers had recently been ambushed near the borders of Tarlac and western Nueva Ecija; with a hundred or so other tenants and field workers, the two men had been summoned to cut and burn the tall cogan grass which gives Huks ready cover along the road. Both Santos and Bayangas spoke fair English, and they were happy to halt their hot work and talk.

Santos, very dark, almost Negroid, looked like a boy; he said he was 21. How many people were there in his family? He paused to count on his fingers, and finally said, his mother, his wife and three children. He farmed three hectares (7 1/2 acres) on shares, and he had two carabao of his own. He could make 250 pesos in a good year from his land, and there were odd jobs--2 pesos 50 centavos a day for road work, for instance. Then he was fairly well off? Santos said, well, it was hard; after all, he had to spend--counting again on his fingers--5 pesos a week for food, and, well, he was always in debt to his landlord.

How about the Huks? Ever see them? Ever have any trouble with them?

Santos fell silent and looked down at his bare feet. Patricio Bayangas, an older man who had been standing by, spoke up. He said he was lieutenant of his barrio, and perhaps he should explain that people here did not like to speak of the Huk-balahap. But he would ask Santos to talk to us. He did, in dialect, and Santos said quietly, in good English: "I'd rather not."

Then I put my questions to Bayangas. What about the Huks here? Were there many? Did they make trouble? And Bayangas in his turn said: "Rather not say, it is better that we not speak of the Hukbalahap."

Santos nodded, and they returned to their work in the tall grass by the road.

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