Anarchism in the Philippines has its roots in the anti-colonial struggle against theSpanish Empire, becoming influential in thePhilippine Revolution and the country's early trade unionist movement. After being supplanted byMarxism-Leninism as the leading revolutionary tendency during the mid-20th century, it experienced a resurgence as part of thepunk subculture, following the fragmentation of theCommunist Party of the Philippines.
The roots of anarchism in the Philippines lie in the numerousPhilippine revolts against Spain during theSpanish Colonial Period. One of the earliest signs of resistance was theBattle of Mactan, in which native warriors led byLapulapu overpowered and defeated the forces of theSpanish Empire, resulting in the death ofFerdinand Magellan.[1] A commonly cited revolt is theuprising led byTamblot in 1621, during which 2000 indigenous rebels burnt down the Christian churches and monuments throughout the island ofBohol.[2] This uprising spilled over to the island ofLeyte, where theBankaw revolt took place.[3] The Spanish military brutally suppressed the uprisings and executed many of the rebels, under orders by the clergy.[4] TheMoro people also led a prolongedconflict against the Spanish inMindanao, which prevented the empire from subjugating much of the southern archipelago for most of its history there.
The many diverse indigenous communities that inhabited the various islands of the archipelago were not submitted to any centralizednation-state. It was only with the subjugation of the islands by the Spanish Empire that these communities were forcibly integrated into a singular polity, a state that spanned the entire archipelago.[5]
Filipino nationalism began to spread rapidly throughout the archipelago following theGlorious Revolution of 1868. A number of Filipino intellectuals, includingJosé Rizal andMarcelo H. del Pilar, launched aPropaganda Movement which called for reforms to the governance of theSpanish East Indies.[6][7] In 1890, Rizal had moved to Europe, where he became acquainted with theFrench andSpanish anarchist movements. In Spain, Rizal was mentored by theProudhonist federalistFrancisco Pi y Margall.[8][9] The idea ofpropaganda of the deed particularly inspired Rizal's second novelEl filibusterismo, which depicts a revolution of national liberation against the Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippines.[10] In that book, Rizal depicted a failed attempt at propaganda of the deed through his character "Simoun" who tried to bomb a party attended by colonial elites.[10] Upon his return toManila in 1892, Rizal founded theLa Liga Filipina, a secret society dedicated tomutual aid and the establishment of cooperatives, among other activities.[9] Rizal was arrested for his activities in the league and deported toDapitan.[11] There he built a hospital, a water supply system and a school, where he taught and engaged in farming and horticulture.[12]
Upon the deportation of Rizal, many Filipino nationalists established theKatipunan, another secret society, but this time with the aim of gaining independence from Spain through a revolution. Inspired by Rizal's works, the Katipunan organized an armed resistance to Spanish rule, led byAndrés Bonifacio.[13] After the activities of the Katipun were discovered in August 1896, thePhilippine Revolution began. Members of the Katipunanrevolted inCaloocan,[14] establishing theTagalog Republic and declaring a nationwide armed revolution.[15] Rizal, who had no part in the revolution himself, wascourt-martialed forrebellion,sedition andconspiracy. He was convicted on all charges and executed by firing squad.[16] In 1897, Bonifacio was deposed and executed byEmilio Aguinaldo, who assumed the leadership of the revolutionary movement.[17] After driving the Spanish out of the archipelago, Aguinaldo subsequently established adictatorship anddeclared independence. However, thetreaty of Paris officially ceded the Philippines to theUnited States, which ignited anarmed conflict with the newly establishedFirst Philippine Republic.[18]
During the revolution,Isabelo de los Reyes was among the revolutionaries that was deported to Spain, where he was imprisoned inMontjuïc Castle. There he became acquainted with a number of anarchists and syndicalists, familiarizing himself with anarchist literature supplied by a sympathetic guard.[19][20] After his release, he met a number of anarchist thinkers, includingFrancesc Ferrer,[21] and read the works ofPierre-Joseph Proudhon,Mikhail Bakunin andPeter Kropotkin.[22] After the surrender of Aguinaldo's forces and the establishment of theInsular Government in 1901, Isabelo was repatriated to Manila,[23] bringing with him a large collection of anarchist and socialist literature.[24] Inspired byanarcho-syndicalism, Isabelo organized a wave of workers' protests and strikes in Manila, leading him to establish theUnión Obrera Democrática (UOD), the country's first modern trade union federation.[25] When the UOD called ageneral strike in August 1902, they came under police surveillance and Isabelo was arrested.[26][27] Isabelo tendered his resignation from the UOD while in prison, but his work was carried on by the labor organizerHermenegildo Cruz and the strike leader Arturo Soriano, who translatedErrico Malatesta's dialogueFra Contadini (Between Peasants) into theTagalog language entitledDalawang Magbubukid. The UOD eventually collapsed due to internal divisions, with the moderates led byLope K. Santos forming the US-backedUnión del Trabajo de Filipinas (UTF),[28] and the radicals led by Hermenegildo Cruz going on to form theCongreso Obrero de Filipinas (COF).[29] Santos subsequently began writingBanaag at Sikat, a novel about two friends: one a socialist and the other an anarchist.[30]
As part of theMay Fourth Movement, Chinese anarchists established a cell in Manila, where they published anarchist literature for distribution throughoutSoutheast Asia.[31] However, the dissolution of the UOD had already caused much the anarchist movement to go into remission throughout the archipelago. Anarchist ideas would persist among the peasantry, particularly within peasant unions such as theAguman ding Maldang Talapagobra (AMT; League of Poor Workers), a front of theSocialist Party of the Philippines.[32] These anarchist ideas was facilitated through literature introduced by Isabelo de los Reyes andDominador Gómez within the Socialist Party.[32] In the wake of theRussian Revolution,Marxism-Leninism began to take root in left-wing circles during the 1920s. Under the influence of thePartido Obrero de Filipinas, the COF became affiliated with theRed International of Labor Unions in 1927.[33] This affiliation provoked a split between moderates and revolutionaries within the COF, eventually causing the disintegration of the union.[34] In 1930, theCommunist Party of the Philippines emerged from this split and began centralizing control of the workers' movement.[21] The Communist Party was initially outlawed by theSupreme Court,[35] but was later legalized after theCommonwealth of the Philippines was established, due to the growing threats from theEmpire of Japan.[21]
When theJapanese occupation of the Philippines began, aresistance movement was organized in the archipelago to wage a guerilla war against the occupation forces. Peasants led byJuan Feleo organized theHukbalahap, which played a key role in wresting control ofLuzon from the Japanese Empire.[21] In 1945, the Japanese-sponsoredSecond Philippine Republic wasbrought down and the Commonwealth re-established.
Shortly following theindependence of theThird Philippine Republic, Feleo was assassinated by the administration ofManuel Roxas, beginning theHukbalahap Rebellion against the republic.[36] After negotiations between the two sides failed, the Hukbalahap forces began to dwindle.[37] The rebellion was finally put down in 1954 and the guerilla leaderLuis Taruc was forced to surrender.[38] The Communist Party was once again outlawed and continued repression caused their movement to falter during the 1960s. This led to theFirst Great Rectification Movement, in which theNationalist Youth (KM) led byJose Maria Sison began to criticize the old Communist Party for its failures and initiated a process intended to revitalize the communist movement.
With theelection of the right-wingFerdinand Marcos as President of the Philippines in 1965 and the advent of theCultural Revolution in 1966, the Nationalist Youth became increasingly inspired byMaoism and in 1967 were expelled from the Communist Party for their critical line, which advocated for aprotracted people's war against theRepublic of the Philippines.[39] This expulsion caused a further fragmentation of the communist movement, with some young Marxist-Leninists remaining loyal to the party's old guard and splitting from the KM to form theFree Union of Filipino Youth (MPKP). But the majority of those that left the KM were themselves Maoists, seeking to enhance their political autonomy rather than submit to Sison's centralized authoritarian structure, going on to establish theFederation of Democratic Youth (SDK) in January 1968.[40] Inspired by the Cultural Revolution and the concept of themass line, the SDK developed an anarchist tendency in their program.[41] Meanwhile, the Nationalist Youth reacted to their expulsion by establishing a newCommunist Party,[42][43] which launched a renewedrebellion against the Republic of the Philippines.[44]
In 1970, the SDK aligned itself once again with the KM, which initiated a purge of the SDK leadership and restructured the group along more tightly organized lines, renaming it to the "Democratic Federation of Youth".[45] The anarchist tendencies within the SDK were subsequently pushed to the fringes of the organization, causing an explicitly anarchist group led byJerry Araos to form, known as the Federation of Democratic Youth - Mendiola (SDKM).[46] The SDKM adopted the black flag as its symbol and began to form the front-lines at protests, earning the nickname "gunpowder brains" due to their inclination towards violence, use of explosives and construction ofpillboxes.[47]
The SDKM played a prominent role during theFirst Quarter Storm; during the battle onMendiola Street a fire truck being used to blast protestors with water was commandeered by the SDKM, who used it as a battering ram against the gates ofMalacañang Palace. When a number of explosions forced the retreat of protestors away from the palace, they constructed barricades along the bridge. When the SDK leader Sixto Carlos called on the SDKM for help, members of the SDKM posted themselves at every barricade.[47] Protestors battled with the police on the bridge for several hours, but the barricades eventually fell and the protestors were again forced to retreat.[48] In February 1971, a student uprising at theUniversity of the Philippines Diliman led to the establishment of theDiliman Commune. Here too, members of the SDKM played a prominent role at the barricades, but according to Araos, the barricades only fell due to an order from the Communist Party to abandon them.[47] The SDKM was eventually brought back into alignment with the SDK, now engaged in community service work and the organization of small protests. The two eventually merged entirely, with Jerry Araos being elected vice-chair of the newly united SDK.[49] However, due to these waves of protests, on September 23, 1972, Marcosproclaimedmartial law in the Philippines, marking the beginning of an era ofmilitary dictatorship. Many of the existing communist organizations, including the SDK, were driven underground in the repression and were eventually dissolved by 1975.[50]
Despite playing a prominent role in the resistance to the Marcos dictatorship,[51] the communist's opposition to thePeople Power Revolution that overthrew Marcos ultimately caused their movement to be largely sidelined during theFifth Republic of the Philippines.[42] The fallout from this decision, combined with theRevolutions of 1989 and the beginning of theSecond Great Rectification Movement in 1992, led to further splits within the Communist Party, which fragmented into several competing factions.[52] This fragmentation of the authoritarian left gave way for other forms of radical leftism to begin emerging towards the end of the 20th century.[53]
In the 1970s, the Filipino anarchist movement began to reemerge as part of the nascentpunk subculture in the archipelago, bringing with it a strong philosophy ofanti-authoritarianism. Under the dictatorship, punk music was brought to the country by returning members of the diaspora, and was broadcast illegally throughout Manila, giving rise to thePinoy punk movement. Punk music gave an expression to youth dissatisfaction with conservative society and began to develop an explicitly political nature during the 1980s, with many punks explicitly espousing anarchist ideas.[54]
The fragmentation of the Communist Party in the wake of the People Power Revolution led to a further surge of anarchist activity in the archipelago.[53] In one account, a cadre cell in the Communist Party was converted to anarchism.[53] One of the tendencies that emerged from the split waspopular democracy, which proposed that proper setting for democratic initiatives was incivil society, rather than in the state.[55] The "popular democrats" were mostly divided betweenminarchists, who engaged inelectoralism, and anarchists, who engaged incommunity organizing.[56] In theKasarinlan journal, the former Communist Party member Isagani Serrano published the articleReimagining Philippine Revolution, in which he advocated for popular democracy and criticized the party's ideology, proposing ananti-statistsocial revolution.[57]
The anarchist movement continued to attract people throughout the 1990s, particularly after the1999 Seattle WTO protests brought anarchism into mainstream discourse.[54] One group that formed around this time was the Metro Manila Anarchist Confederation (MMAC), which sought to coordinate individuals and collectives to take action, rather than forming apolitical party.[58] Other organized anarchist groups also began to form, with a number of collectives coming together to establish the Anti-Capitalist Convergence Philippines, in order to organize protests against theInternational Monetary Fund and theWorld Bank.[59] In 2001, Filipinos were further drawn to anarchism during theSecond EDSA Revolution against the government ofJoseph Estrada, during which anarchists distributed a leaflet titledOrganize Without Leaders!, contrasting themselves with other opposition groups that sought to achieve political power.[60] AfterGloria Macapagal Arroyo took power, many of the country's leftists became disillusioned with the EDSA revolutions, which they considered had only amounted toregime change.[61] This disillusionment accelerated following the abortedEDSA III, which was swiftly repressed and resulted in the arrest of opposition leaders, but had raised public awareness of the possibilities ofself-organization.[62] Some Communist Party members have even begun to call forsystemic change, rather than their usual line of regime change.[63]
In the wake of these revolutions, contemporary Filipino anarchists such as Bas Umali began to call for the dismantling of the Philippine nation-state and the establishment of a decentralized "archipelagic confederation" in its place.[64] Anarchist modes of problem-solving, grounded in precolonialbayanihan and supported by, among others,Christiansubsidiarity,[65] have also emerged back into the mainstream as an alternative todisempowered dependence,[66] an example being the setting up ofcommunity pantries during theCOVID-19 pandemic and their persistence amid a backdrop ofpolitical-economichostility.[67][68][69] As of 2009 there were various anarchist groups in the Philippines, some examples are the regionalDavao Anarchists Resistance Movement (DARM),anarcha-feminist organizationLiberate the Clit Kolektiv (LiCK), as well as publishersDumpling Press,Animal Liberation organizationYouth Collective for Animal Liberation (YCAL) and theLocal Anarchist Network (LAN), self-described as "a loose association of anarchists" of different tendencies.[59]
