Luis Taruc

Luis Mangalus Taruc (June 21, 1913 – May 4, 2005) was a Filipino political figure and rebel during the agrarian unrest of the 1930s until the end of the Cold War.

Luis Mangalus Taruc was born of peasant stock in the barrio of Santa Monica, township of San Luis, Pampanga on 21 June 1913.

Luis states, "In my youth, the Christian faith dominated my spiritual life. But the landlord dominated the material life I knew."

At age eight, Luis attended public school in San Miguel, Bulacan.

At fifteen, he attended high school in Tarlac City.

His involvement with the movement came after his initiation to the problems of agrarian Filipinos when he was a student in the early 1930s.

During World War II, Taruc led the Hukbalahap in guerrilla operations against the Japanese occupants of the Philippines.

He attended to the University of Manila for two years (June 1932–December 1934), studying medicine and law, but no longer able to afford the expenses, returned to Batasan without getting a degree to set up a tailor shop with his brother.

As a teen he was inspired by the stories of the Katipuneros who had fought for independence and for agrarian reform against Spain.

Certain people within his home village and province came to regard him as the incarnation of the prominent Katipunan leader Felipe Salvador.

He was influenced by Pedro Abad Santos, a Marxist, whom Luis regarded as a true socialist.

In June 1935, he married Feliciana Bernabe, and his son Romeo was born in March 1936.

Before the end of 1935, he joined Santos as a full-time organizer of the Socialist Party of the Philippines, which numbered a few hundred members and several thousand sympathizers.

Influenced by his socialist idol Pedro Abad Santos of San Fernando, and inspired by earlier Katipunan revolutionaries such as Felipe Salvador, Taruc joined the Aguman ding Maldang Tala-pagobra (AMT, Kapampangan for 'Union of Peasant Workers') and in 1938, the Partido Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (Socialist Party of the Philippines).

The latter merged with the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas as part of the Common Front strategy, and Taruc assumed the role of Commander-in-Chief of the military wing created to fight the Japanese.

After the war against Japan, the Hukbalahap continued their demands for agrarian reform.

Taruc and seven colleagues were elected to the House of Representatives, but the government of Manuel Roxas did not allow them to take their seats in Congress.

The Taruc faction opposed the parity rights that the U.S. required from post-independence Philippines as a condition for rehabilitation funding.

In the next five years, Taruc would give up on the parliamentary struggle and once more take up arms.

At the height of its popularity, the Hukbalahap reached a fighting strength estimated at between 10,000 and 30,000.

His wife died in Dec. 1938, suffering from goiter and anemia.

On November 7, 1938, the Philippine Socialist Party and the Communist Party of the Philippines merged, forming a united front "to fight against fascism and war", though each party retained its own organizations until 1941.

He then married Enna Cura on 4 June 1939.

Luis would serve time in prison three times before the war, in his struggle for the militant workers' and peasants' unions.

They pledged loyalty to the Philippine and United States government's anti-Japanese crusade in December 1941.

He was the leader of the Hukbalahap group (from Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon) between 1942 and 1950.

Following the Japanese invasion, Taruc formed the Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the "People’s Army Against the Japanese" in English), along with Casto Alejandrino and other guerillas, in central Luzon on March 29, 1942, became its commander-in-chief, and chairman of the Communist Party's Military Committee.

He led a large people's army against the Japanese invaders, and their "puppet constabulary", as Supremo Luis Taruc, or "Lu-Lu" ("the racing one"), then "Alipato" ("the flying spark that spreads a fire").

According to Luis, "There was a period when we had an American officer officially collaborating with our work."

Taruc credited his prominence through his "identification with the simple, sincere, and courageous peasants."

However, Luis noted, "...most of the time, the American authorities were suspicious of this unconventional army whose politics they suspected."

Yet, the Hukbalahap under Taruc did become an effective armed guerilla force.

Enna died of sepsis and diabetes on 8 March 1946.

Luis later married Gregoria Calma (Liza).

Taruc was elected to the Philippine House of Representatives in 1946 as a member of the Democratic Alliance (the party led by Sergio Osmena).

He and five other elected Democratic Alliance candidates opposed the constitutional amendment that would give American businessmen parity rights with Filipinos in exchange for US rehabilitation funding.

In particular, Luis opposed the Bell Trade Act, the Parity Amendment to the Constitution, and the Military Bases Agreement.

To secure the majority necessarily to pass the amendment President Manuel Roxas arranged for Taruc and the other oppositional Democratic Alliance members to be ejected from office by the Commission on Elections on the grounds that they had been committing election fraud and terrorism.

She was killed by government soldiers on 11 April 1952.

In 2017, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines declared Taruc a hero for being a "nationalist and defender of the rights of farmers and workers".