Word: magsaysays
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...great week for Ramon Magsaysay (rhymes with fog-sigh-sigh), Defense Secretary of the Philippines...
Last month, Magsaysay alerted all military installations at Manila, on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the founding of the Communist-led Huk organization. Magsaysay was sure that the Huks would try to celebrate by an attack. Magsaysay s men caught 40 Huks as they stole into town to try to free six members of the Philippine Communist Party's politburo who had been captured last fall. He put the 40 in jail, sent the six politburocrats on a cruise in Manila Bay, where they would be safely out of reach of any more rescuers, and where...
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...