WhereIsAtlas · Insurgency

Hukbalahap & the NPA

The two great Philippine insurgencies — from anti-Japanese guerrillas to Maoist revolutionaries

Concluded — Two Philippine insurgencies: the WW2-era Hukbalahap and the Marcos-era New People's Army (NPA).

The Hukbalahap — short for the 'Anti-Japanese People's Army' — was a guerrilla movement that rose in the Philippines during World War II, fighting the Japanese occupation. Drawing its strength from peasant communities in Central Luzon, it combined the war against Japan with a deep agrarian grievance: the struggle for land and against the landlord system that dominated the countryside.

After 1945 the Hubs refused to disband, and the movement transformed into an insurgency against the postwar republic, particularly in the 1940s and 50s. The Philippine government and the United States, fearing a communist uprising, crushed the rebellion with a mix of reform and counterinsurgency, and by the mid-1950s the Huk movement had effectively collapsed. Its leaders — including Luis Taruc — surrendered, and the movement's base was dispersed.

Two decades later the communist insurgency was reborn. In 1969, a small group of radicalized leaders founded the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the re-established Communist Party of the Philippines. Channeling the same Huk-era grievance about land, poverty and inequality, the NPA grew into one of the largest and longest-lasting insurgencies in the world, fighting the government throughout the Marcos dictatorship and beyond — a conflict that continues, in diminished form, into the present.

Quick facts

Hukbalahap
1942 (anti-Japanese guerrilla)
Huk collapse
1950s (defeated by reform + force)
NPA founded
1969
NPA ideology
Maoist, CPP-aligned
Root grievance
Land and peasant poverty

Sources

Related: ferdinand marcos · hacienda luisita