Word: magsaysayism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since he took office last September, 41-year-old Secretary of Defense Ramon Magsaysay has realized that pacifying Luzon's 15,000 Communist Huk rebels is more than a military problem. The Huk rank & file-and most Huk sympathizers-are poor, landless peasants, led into rebellion by Communist promises of Utopia. Magsaysay has come to believe that a little government help and a few acres of land would transform Huk guerrillas into peaceful citizens...
Last month he announced a plan for doing this. With 4,000,000 pesos of government aid, Magsaysay started a land resettlement project in the fertile but undeveloped plains of Mindanao. Instead of jail sentences, each Huk who is captured or gives up will get ten hectares (25 acres) of this land, plus a house, tools and work animals. "Here is a good way to give those boys in the mountains something to come down...
...Luzon's hills, 500 Huks have surrendered and applied for resettlement. Three hundred hectares of flat, virgin land in Mindanao have been cleared for the first batch of Huk settlers, who will leave Luzon within the next few months. More are expected. "We keep hammering at them," said Magsaysay, "and looking for them in the jungles, and promising them this green valley where they can have their own homes and live happily with hot coffee and ice cream every...
...Magsaysay wasted no time in announcing his own, three-point program for dealing with the Huks. It was a lulu. The program : 1) organize a unit of Negrito tribesmen to clean the Huks out of three major provinces ("The Negritos," said Magsaysay, "know the mountains better and are more deadly with the bow & arrow than the Huks are with a gun"); 2) import some bloodhounds from the U.S. to help track the Huks through the jungles; 3) dump all captured and surrendered Huks on an uninhabited island and there teach them the democratic way of life...
Meantime, as the Huks gathered in the mountains to prepare for further raids- as soon as they could stop laughing over Magsaysay's silly maunderings-plain Filipinos were wondering about their citizens' army. "How can you form a citizens' army," asked one Manilan, "if you cannot tell who is the loyal citizen and who is the dissident...