Word: huks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Only Humans Vote. A fighting minority of Filipinos had threatened to make the election a shambles. But the Communist-led Huk* were too disorganized to carry out the threat. The Philippine army, which had dominated past elections as the gun-twirling bully of the politicians in power, dominated this one as the disciplined protector of the voters. Politicians who had ridden into office in 1949 on the votes of "the trees, the birds, the insects and the monkeys" could this time use only human votes...
...islands, dropping in unannounced on one army outpost after another; in regions Pag-asa could not reach, he traveled by car or carabao cart. He gave the soldiers better food, better quarters, promise of advancement. At one post he went out with a patrol to do a little Huk-shooting himself, and handed a battlefield commission to a sergeant who bagged three. At another post he found soldiers sleeping without blankets...
...demoralized population in Huk country, Magsaysay sent civil officers to explain the new army and to solicit their support. He posted rewards for Huks dead or alive, and saw to it that they were paid. But the claimants had to submit proof, preferably a photograph. He went after the Huks with their own tricks and their own cunning. They dressed their fighters in women's clothes; so did Magsaysay. They picked at army communications with phony messages and fake letters; Magsaysay disrupted their communications even more with the same tactics and with sharp, well-planned forays...
...most important of all, he struck at the source of the Huk strength-the social conditions that had made them what they were. He sent out word that all who surrendered would be spared, and offered each Huk ten hectares (about 25 acres) and a government-built house in a resettlement project in the lush, underpopulated island of Mindanao...
...government because they want a house and land of their own," said Magsaysay. "All right, they can stop fighting, because I will give it to them. And if they are not satisfied with that, by golly, I have another big deal for them. I am going to make the Huk a capitalist. I am going to set up a carpentry shop and let the Huks run it." The Huks began to come in, at first a trickle, then by the hundreds. Many signed up with Magsaysay as special anti-Huk commando teams ("When I turned over arms and ammunition...