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Chapter 3: The
Philippines: "Molded in the image of American democracy"
I walked the floor
of the White House night after night until midnight;
and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my
knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than
one night. And one night late it came to me this way - I don't know
how it was, but it came: (1) that we could not give them back to Spain
- that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not
turn them over to France and Germany - our commercial rivals in the
Orient - that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we
could not leave them to themselves - they were unfit for selfgovernment
- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over
there worse than Spain's was; and (4) that there was nothing left for
us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift
and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace, do the very
best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.
--
William McKinley, President of the United States, 1899 [1]
From a colony to a dependent nation in the
periphery of the world system
It was with great irony that Ronald Reagan, after making his famed
June 1982 speech before the British parliament at Westminster on a
"worldwide campaign for democracy," traveled on to the Philippine
capital of Manila, where he announced in a public homage to the
dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, that "the Philippines has been molded in
the image of American democracy."2
The US conquest of the Philippines, an aftermath of the 1898
Spanish-American War, took place at a moment when the United
States was emerging as a modem imperial power. The United States,
driven by Manifest Destiny, spent much of the nineteenth century in
western territorial acquisition, involving the annexation of one-half of
Mexico and the systematic extermination of the indigenous populations
of North America. In 1892, the Census Bureau declared the
"Indian wars" over. The severe economic depression that began in
1893 convinced US rulers that the problem which they had identified
as overproduction at home could only be resolved with the conquest of
markets overseas, to be opened by military force. The passage to
empire required promoting political stability and a military presence in
those areas where the United States had established commercial
interests. With attention turned from westward expansion to overseas
intervention, the possessions of a feeble and declining rival, Spain,
became the most suitable new acquisitions. Spain's remaining colonial
possessions in Latin America, Cuba and Puerto Rico, became important
platforms for expansion in the Western Hemisphere, the US
traditional "sphere of influence." On the other hand, the conquest of
the Philippines established the United States as an Asian power for the
first time. The Philippines became the springboard for expansion
throughout Asia via the Pacific, and particularly, to the vast and
lucrative Chinese market.
After enduring 300 years of Spanish colonialism, Filipino nationalists
were at the point of defeating Spanish forces and had already
proclaimed their own sovereign republic when the US navy, as part of
the 1898 Spanish-American War, defeated Spain's flotilla in Manila
harbor. The US forces then proceeded to turn their guns on the Filipino
nationalists, with the objective of transferring the country from
Spanish
to US colonial control. The ensuing war of conquest, from 1899 to 1902,
known as the Philippine-American War, was a protracted and bloody
exercise in colonial conquest involving over 70,000 US troops.3 "It may
be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining
half
of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their
present semi-barbarous state affords," explained one US commanding
officer, General Shafter.4 In the end, up to one million Filipinos lost
their lives.
The conquest and subsequent colonization established a pattern of
US intervention in the country's affairs. The US colonial administration
cultivated an upper-class elite of wealthy landowners, exporters,
administrators, and later, commercial and industrial groups - the same
elite, known as the ilusfrados, that had been the junior partners of the
Spanish colonialists in an earlier era. This Filipino oligarchy readily
collaborated with the Japanese occupation force during World War II,
and were then restored to power by the United States following
liberation. Brought up under colonial tutelage, this elite was handed
the reins of power in 1946, when the US conferred formal independence
on the Philippines and the country moved from a colony to a
neo-colony.
Over the following decades, a series of elite civilian regimes ruled
the Philippines through a vice-ridden political culture of corrupt party
machines, back-room deals and competition over the economic largesse
that came with political office. Elections were held on a regular
basis, checkered by routine vote-buying, fraud, and violence by the
private armies of the elite. The fragile post-eolonial political system
rested on enough of an inter-elite consensus for functional civic
competition between ruling groups and effective control over the
popular sectors - a protopolyarchic political system which was
illequipped
to deal with the pressures of the early neo-colonial period.
Contending elite factions from the two major parties, indistinguishable
in terms of ideology, the Nacionalista and the Liberal, rotated in and
out of office. "The firmly established two party system is a strong
asset," noted with satisfaction one CIA report in 1965. "The similarity
of the parties, while depriving the voter of clear choices between
programs, nevertheless encourages moderation, readiness to compromise,
and lack of dogmatism in the political elite." [5]
The basis of a tenuous Philippine stability during the 1950s and
1960swas the alliance between this elite and the United States, which
exercised external domination through a myriad of informal mechanisms,
ranging from military aid and counterinsurgency programs to
economic aid programs, covert CIA operations, and outright political
imposition. The Philippines became a key client regime in the post-
World War II US empire. Washington set up the Clark Air Base and
the Subtic Naval Base, which became the largest US military facilities
outside the US mainland, and were key staging points for US military
interventions in the Pacific. The Pentagon also created, supplied, and
trained the Philippine military as a repressive guarantor of "internal
security," under the direct supervision of a permanent US military
advisor group. The US military advisors and the CIA designed and led
the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbalahap (or "Huk")
uprising in the 1950s.6
Notwithstanding Cold War ideological musings, the real threat to
US and elite interests in the Philippines in this period was not
external
aggression but the demands of the impoverished Filipino masses for
social change and democratization of Filipino society, as one secret
1950NSC assessment openly acknowledged:
External threats to the Philippines appear to be relatively remote ... a
sound Philippine military policy justifies maximum emphasis on
effective forces required for internal security and, under existing
conditions, minimum expenditure for defense against external invaders
... The United States has as its objectives in the Philippines the
establishment and maintenance of: a) An effective government which
will preserve and strengthen the pro-US orientation of its people. b) A
Philippine military capability [sic) of restoring and maintaining
internal security. c) A stable and self-supporting economy. [7]
Meanwhile, the Philippines became an appendage of the US
economy under trade agreements and economic aid programs
imposed by Washington. The United States demanded, and was
granted, trade treaties providing it with "equal access" with Filipinos
to Philippine natural resources and utilities, and "parity," or
unrestricted
entry to Filipino markets. In accepting US aid packages,
explained Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the Philippines "will
accept American advisers throughout their Government. We will come
up to Congress with an aid program, which will be modest in
dimensions but which lays the foundation for American technicians
and American advisers all through their Government."B Military and
economic aid were thus used quite effectively, and they remained key
elements of US policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Political aid was still
handled by the CIA, which conducted widespread covert operations,
among them, stage-managed elections to assure the preferred US
outcome, payoffs to government officials, financing for favored business
and civic groups, pro-US propaganda campaigns among the
population, the supply of intelligence on dissidents to the Filipino
security forces, and so on.9
As United States and other foreign investment poured in, the
economy grew to the benefit of US capital and the Philippine elite
simultaneously with the increasing impoverishment of the majority
and deep social polarization. In 1974, the International Labor
Organization
reported that the country's development model "nurtures and
sustains trends in the structure of earnings that result in steadily
increasing inequality [and] cannot expect to continue for very 10ng."10
By the early 1970s a popular movement was snowballing, based in
trade unions, peasant groups, students, grassroots neighborhood
organizations
in the cities, and the clergy. Nationalism and radicalism
spread throughout the country. The desperate social and economic
conditions also spawned a growing insurgency, led by the New
People's Army (NPA), the military arm of the Communist Party of the
Philippines. Repression, mass jailings, systematic human rights
violations,
street conflict and rural insurgency became the order of the day.
Ferdinand Marcos, who had assumed the presidency in 1965 in
questionable elections and was then "reelected" in 1969, declared
martial law in September 1972. Although martial law was also a means
for Marcos to perpetuate his personal hold on power (new elections
were scheduled for 1973), it was foremost a means for the Philippine
elite and the United States to face the crisis-level challenge of a
popular
rebellion against the status quo.
Shortly before he imposed martial law, Marcos met secretly with US
Ambassador Henry Byroade to seek endorsement of "stronger measures"
to deal with the unrest sweeping the country. Byroade delivered
to Marcos a confidential State Department message promising US
support.ll A 1972 US Senate report on the declaration of martial law
noted that the United States was "altogether uncritical of what
occurred in the Philippines." It continued:
We found few, if any, Americans who took the position that the
demise of individual rights and democratic institutions would adversely
affect U.S. interests. In the first place, these democratic
institutions were considered to be severely deficient. In the second
place, whatever U.s. interests were - or are - they apparently are not
thought to be related to the preservation of the democratic process...
U.s. officials appear prepared to accept that the strengthening of
presidential authority will... enable President Marcos to introduce
needed stability; that these objectives are in our interests; and that
military bases and a familiar government in the Philippines are more
important than the preservation of democratic institutions,
[12]
The report went on to note that Marcos was drafting a new constitution
which Washington considered to be highly favorable to foreign investors,
and that US business welcomed martial law prohibitions on
strikes and lockouts, the lifting of work restrictions on Sundays and
holidays, and other presidential decrees favorable to foreign capital.
At
the time, Business lnternational reported that "the overwhelming
consensus
of the foreign business community in the Philippines was that
martial rule under President Marcos was the best thing that ever
happened to the country."13
As the tenuous post-colonial order thus crumbled, the United States
sustained its support for Marcos and authoritarianism as the preferred
instrument of social control. As with such strongman and dictatorial
regimes in other countries, the US relationship with Marcos was a twoway
street. Marcos proved adept at manipulating Washington for his
own ends as much as Washington utilized the dictatorship as an
instrument in its policy (just as the Philippine elite utilized the
dictatorship
to preserve its interests and in turn granted special privilege and
authority to the dictator's inner circle). But the two found a symbiotic
meeting place in the preservation of the social order. Although
President Jimmy Carter had declared human rights the centerpiece of
his foreign policy, his administration provided the Marcos regime with
nearly half a billion dollars in economic and military aid, and when
Marcos lifted martial law Carter advised the Philippine opposition to
accept Marcos's action as a "generous offer" and to forswear violence.
14 The incoming Reagan administration applied the same kind of
"quiet diplomacy" it had developed towards the Latin American
Southern Cone dictatorships to the Philippines, expanding support for
the Marcos regime. President-elect Ronald Reagan personally received
Marcos's wife, Imelda, on the eve of his inauguration, and advised
against a too-hasty lifting of martial law. Six months later, in August
1981, Vice-President George Bush raised a toast to Marcos during his
visit to Manila, declaring "We love your adherence to democratic
principle and to the democratic process." [15]
Nonetheless, enthusiasm among the Philippine elite and the United
States for the crackdown gradually tapered, as Marcos converted his
rule into the most vulgar form of "crony capitalism," similar to that of
the Somozas in Nicaragua or the Duvaliers in Haiti. Corruption and
the spoils of state, which in an earlier period had been "equitably"
distributed among the upper and middle classes through the competition
of different factions and rotation in office, now became monopolized
by Marcos and his own family and clique. Beyond being a
political liability, "crony capitalism," by disturbing free markets,
eventually became a hindrance to transnational capital and neo-liberal
restructuring in the Philippines as the global economy emerged. Far
from resolving the crisis of elite rule, authoritarian political
structures
ended up rupturing minimal inter-elite consensus and accommodation
necessary for stability. Meanwhile, the crackdown, rather than
suppressing
the popular movement, gave further impetus to it. The NPA,
a minor force in 1972, grew rapidly after the imposition of martial law.
The National Democratic Front, formed in April 1973,brought together
the Communist Party, the urban poor, radical youth, and clergy
influenced by liberation theology. By the early 1980s, observers began
to speak of the coming Philippine revolution.
A key turning point came in August 1983 with the assassination by
Marcos henchmen of the most prominent leader of the elite opposition,
former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. For over a decade, the poor and the
popular sectors had been fighting the dictatorship. Now, the Aquino
murder had galvanized the non-Marcos elite - the business community,
the Catholic Church hierarchy, the politicians, and the middle
classes - into active opposition. By rendering the inter-elite split
irreversible, the Aquino murder marked the beginning of the end for
Marcos. The middle classes soon joined the popular sectors in massive
street demonstrations and a burgeoning nationwide movement for
democracy ensued. A convergence between a radicalized elite opposition
and a radicalized popular opposition became a real possibility.
The Aquino murder also hastened debate in Washington over support
for Marcos. Behind this debate loomed the larger issue of the merits of
authoritarian versus polyarchic methods of transnational social
control, as analyzed earlier.
In theoretical perspective, developments from Philippine independence
after World War II to the early 1980s reflected a gradual process
of transition from a formal colonial relationship with the United States
to a country's entrance into the emergent global economy as a
dependent and peripheral country, with concomitant social and
political repercussions. From a mere narrow appendage of the US
economy, the Philippines was becoming a haven for transnational
corporate capital which poured into the country from the 1960s on.
The earlier colonial relationship was based, for the most part, on
feudal and semi-feudal production relations in much of the Philippines,
and on the provision on the part of the Philippines of raw
materials for the US metropolitan power. In the theoretical discourse
of world system and dependency theory, a largely pre-capitalist social
formation in the periphery was articulated to a capitalist social
formation in the core. The penetration of transnational capital,
starting
in the 1960s, disrupted rural communities, forged new solidarities,
and led to mobilization among subordinate classes in these communities
and in expanding urban communities.16 The internal political
structure of authoritarianism, and the "crony capitalism" tendencies
which authoritarianism tends to generate, had served the purpose of
social control in the first few decades of this process. But as this
process unfolded, authoritarianism proved unable to respond to the
twin challenges of containing popular pressures from below generated
by capitalist penetration and of providing mechanisms for intra-elite
accommodation.
Shifting from this structural analysis to behavioral analysis, US
policymakers were witness to a dual crisis in the making in the early
1980s:an irreconcilable inter-elite split alongside a burgeoning mass
popular movement and armed insurgency. It was the same type of
prerevolutionary
situation that had developed in Nicaragua and led to the
Sandinista triumph in 1979.As US policy began to shift in the first half
of the 1980s, Washington's challenge became: (1) to transfer support
from Marcos to the anti-Marcos elite (2) to assure that the anti-Marcos
elite would gain hegemony over the anti-dictatorial struggle, and (3) to
reconstruct consensual, polyarchic behavior among the elite as a
whole.
Managing the transition
The shift in policy was checkered by a fierce debate and infighting
among policymakers. This reflected a surface split between "hardliners"
who argued for staying the course and "pragmatists" who
argued for active intervention in the Philippines to redirect the
antidictatorial
struggle, and behind it, the deeper debate between authoritarianism
and polyarchy in the Third World. US policy became
ambivalent and contradictory from 1983 to 1985, as this debate was
played outY However, sufficient consensus emerged following the
Aquino assassination that continued economic and military aid should
be made conditional on steps by Marcos towards reform. Thus, while
military involvement in the counterinsurgency campaign escalated,
overall policy shifted from unqualified support for the dictatorship to
active and critical intervention in the country's political affairs. At
this
point, explained Ambassador Stephen Bosworth in a 1984 speech to
the Philippine Rotary Club, "it is not a question of how to avoid
change; it is rather a question of how change can best be managed."18
By 1985,US state managers had entered a stage of managing a highrisk
transition from dictatorship to polyarchy.
In November 1984, a secret NSC Study Directive made the call for a
concerted US intervention in the Philippines to facilitate a transition.
"The United States has extremely important interests in the Philippines.
.. Political and economic developments in the Philippines
threaten these interests," stated the directive. "The US does not want
to remove Marcos from power to destabilize the GOP [Government of
the Philippines]. Rather, we are urging revitalization of democratic
institutions, dismantling 'crony' monopoly capitalism and allowing the
economy to respond to free market forces, and restoring professional,
apolitical leadership to the Philippine military to deal with the
growing
communist insurgency." "These efforts," it went on, flare meant to
stabilize [the country] while strengthening institutions which will
eventually provide for a peaceful transition." The directive concluded
by recommending "an occasional presidential letter, regular visits by
administration officials, close Embassy contact, and regular one-on-one
meetings between President Marcos and Ambassador Bosworth."19 In
particular, the directive proposed the visit of a high-level US emissary
and a presidential letter.
These recommendations were implemented. In May 1985, CIA
director William Casey visited Marcos in Manila's Malacanang Palace,
the presidential residence, to press for an early presidential election.
Five months later, in October, Reagan dispatched his close friend,
Senator Paul Laxalt, to Marcos with the same request, and in addition
to deliver a personal letter from the US president. A fanfare of
publicity
accompanied Laxalt's mission in order to maximize public perceptions
in the Philippines and in the United States of an imminent change in
US policy.20 Following the Laxalt visit, Marcos called for "snap"
elections, to be held in February 1986. During this same period, in a
track parallel to the pressures on Marcos, the United States began to
develop broad contacts with the elite political and military opposition
as a counterweight',to the popular sectors, a strategy detailed in the
1984 NSC directive. In July 1985, the CIA, DIA, and the State Department
prepared a joint study on the situation in the Philippines. It
predicted a growth in the left-wing military insurgency over the
following eighteen months, but, more significantly, it estimated that
left-wing and popular political influence and sentiment among the
masses would spread if the dictatorship remained in place until the
scheduled presidential elections of 1987 (these elections were
subsequently
moved up when Marcos called "snap elections"). Washington
turned to facilitating Marcos's removal under circumstances which it
could control.
The opposition forces were diverse and well organized, ranging
from the NPA insurgency, to the mass, left-of-center civic movement
BAYAN (New Patriotic Federation, which went by its acronym in
Tagalog), which brought together millions of Philippine citizens, to
numerous parties and groups of the center, center-right and right.
Perhaps the weakest among the opposition were the center and
conservative sectors which, as in Nicaragua and other authoritarian
Third World regimes, had vacillated during many years between
support for, and opposition to, the dictatorship. It was precisely these
sectors that the United States had set about to develop in the mid-
1980s through new political aid programs targeting civil society.
Between 1984 and 1990, Philippine organizations received at least $9
million from the NED and other US sources. These included: the
Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), which mobilized
the business community against Marcos; the Trade Union Congress
of the Philippines (TUCP), a minority, conservative union
federation affiliated with the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU) and which competed with more radical and leftleaning
labor organizations; Philippine "youth clubs" established
under the guidance of US organizers to mobilize Philippine youth; the
KABATIDPhilippine women's organization (KABATIDis the Tagalog
acronym for Women's Movement for the Nurturing of Democracy),
also established under the guidance of US organizers; and the National
Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL).21I analyze below the
significance of this political aid, both before and after the
transition.
Washington was becoming increasingly concerned over the prospects
for the coalescence of a nationalist and independent-minded
bloc within the moderate opposition. In late 1984, at a meeting in the
home of Corazon Aquino, the wife of the assassinated Benigno, a
declaration that became known as the Convenors' Statement was
drafted and signed by twelve of the most important leaders of the
opposition to Marcos, among them prominent business executives and
nationalist politicians, most of whom were regarded as possible
presidential candidates in a future election. The document spelled out
a nationalist-oriented program of social reform and development and
also called for the removal of US military bases from the Philippines.22
As the "snap" elections approached, Cory Aquino and Salvador
"Doy" Laurel emerged as the two favorites in the field of opposition
candidates. Both were members of the Philippine elite. Aquino, from a
wealthy landholding family, also enjoyed genuine popularity as an
anti-Marcos symbol. The leader of the right-wing opposition was
Salvador "Doy" Laurel, a long-time Marcos loyalist who finally broke
with the strongman in 1980.He maintained close contacts with the US
embassy, and had refused to sign the 1984 Convenors' Statement. As
the head of the opposition UNIDO party, he had a well-oiled political
machine at his service. On the other hand, Aquino had won the
backing of many in the center-to-left opposition, who were exercising
important influence in her coalition. Fearing the possible emergence of
a left-center popular alliance, Washington thus set about to forge a
center-right alliance and to minimize popular and leftist influence in
the anti-Marcos ticket. The State Department despatched a team of
officials to Manila to meet with Aquino and Laurel and convince them
to run under a united ticket that would stress anti-communism and
refrain from opposing US bases in the Philippines (Laurel subsequently
became Aquino's running-mate as candidate for vice-president). US
Embassy Charge d'Affaires Philip Kaplan began assembling key
leaders of the anti-Marcos political parties and, according to a
confidential
embassy cable, "emphasized the need for the [US assembled]
opposition to get its act together given the limited time left before a
campaign starts."23
In the weeks leading up to the elections, on voting day and in the
days that followed, the Philippines were swept by what became
known as "people power." The Philippine people voted en masse for
Aquino and then launched a popular insurrection when, in the face of
widespread fraud, Marcos declared himself the winner. "People
power," it should be stressed, was not a creation of US political
intervention; to the contrary, it was what Washington had hoped to
avoid. However, faced with the inevitability of a mass, popular
.uprising, US actions sought at all times to control its development and
minimize its effects, and to bolster simultaneously the positions of
those institutions and leaders most allied to US interests. The State
Department sent at-large ambassador Philip Habib to Manila to urge
Aquino to keep her followers off the streets and to convince Marcos to
step down. In the weeks before the elections, reported the Far Eastern
Economic Review, "the US Embassy, which had been augmented by
dozens of officers with some Philippine expertise, was engaged in
intense secret contacts with the opposition, Marcos' ruling party, and
the military in an effort to bring about a reconciliation of the two
political groups, without Marcos."24
At the same time, Washington sought to assure an important role for
the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), having developed extensive
contacts with key AFP officers and supporting a loosely organized
reform movement within the AFP that had been established in
February 1985. The goals of this reform movement were not to
democratize the Philippines but to "professionalize" the armed forces,
improve the counterinsurgency campaign, and preserve the institutional
integrity of the military in the face of the crisis of the dictatorship.
The reform movement secured the support in mid-1985 of the
Defense Minister, General Juan Ponce Emile, and the acting Chief of
Staff, General Fidel Ramos, both right-wing and long-time Marcos
loyalists who switched sides in the dictator's final hour. Emile and
Ramos led a military reformers' revolt against Marcos's attempt to
steal the elections, an event which was crucial in convincing Marcos,
on February 23, to step down and leave the country.
Although the military revolt against Marcos was clearly crucial in
the dictator's overthrow, it was also crucial to the US strategy for
managing the transition and preserving the social order in the post-
Marcos period. In the days following the vote, Aquino had announced
a campaign to protest Marcos's efforts to steal the elections, which
included an economic boycott and a general strike. Such actions would
have greatly enhanced the labor movement, with its militant base and
left-wing tendencies, in both removing Marcos and in shaping the
post-Marcos government and policies. The military revolt not only
assured the preservation of the repressive AFP in the post-Marcos
period, but left Aquino more indebted to, and dependent on, the
conservative military than to the labor movement. US military aid and
involvement in the counterinsurgency expanded dramatically in the
Aquino period and the military gained major influence in the new
government. The preservation of the coercive apparatus and military
impunity and the active role played by the "armor of coercion" during
and after the transition placed clear limits on social transformation
and
demands for equity in the post-Marcos period.
Meanwhile, the Philippine left and sectors of the mass, popular
movement made a serious tactical mistake in boycotting the elections,
with the reasoning that Marcos would steal them anyway and then
legitimize his dictatorship. However, the population overwhelmingly
wanted to partake in these elections as an act of rejection of Marcos
and an expression of its desire for democratic change. The left boycott
thus facilitated the concentration of both popular and elite support
around Aquino and helped the United States push through its own
agenda.
In backing Aquino, the United States latched on to her popularity
and posited itself as the firm champion of a new "democratic"
government in the Philippines. Although the US claimed for itself a
pivotal role in organizing the Aquino victory, it is difficult, in the
general context of Philippine politics and the special circumstances
attending to the demise of a moribund dictatorship, to measure the
influence of US intervention in the Philippine political process on the
outcome of the anti-dictatorial movement. This became a hotly debated
issue in both Washington and Manila. But whether or not US intervention
was itself the determining factor in the overthrow of Marcos
obscured a much more significant issue: US intervention was decisive in
shaping the contours of the anti-Marcos movement and in establishing the
terms and conditions under which Philippine social and political
struggles
would unfold in the post-Marcos period.
By 1983 it had become clear that the dictatorship's days were
numbered; from that point on, for all actors involved, including those
seeking a polyarchic outcome and preservation of the social order and
those seeking a project of popular democracy and basic change in the
social order, the underlying issue was not whether Marcos would go
but what would take the dictatorship's place. The underlying struggle
shifted from democracy versus dictatorship to the terms and outcome
of the anti-dictatorial movement and the reach of the Philippine
democratization process. US intervention in the transition was crucial
in limiting the extent of popular democratization in the post-Marcos
era. By accelerating the removal of Marcos before further polarization
could take place, by helping to supplant popular with elite leadership
in the anti-Marcos movement, by preserving the integrity of the armed
forces, by bolstering those constituencies responsive to elite and US
interests, and so on, the United States was able to channel the anti-
Marcos movement into a less threatening outcome, and then to win
more favorable circumstances for shaping the post-Marcos period. This
new period involved heightened US political and military intervention
aimed at diminishing left and popular influence in the new government,
reconstructing consensus within the dominant groups around a
polyarchic political system, and building up allied constituencies in
Philippine civil and political society.
The role of "political aid"
Political aid and the new modalities of intervention analyzed in
chapter 2 began to play an important role in US policy towards the
Philippines from 1984.After helping to bring to power "a government
with legitimacy and democratic commitment," the NED and other US
agencies set about, following Aquino's election, to ''build and
consolidate
a new democratic system."25
The United States gained important experience in electoral intervention
in the 1986 Philippine elections, particularly in giving the character
of a plebiscite to elections, in which political forces are polarized
into two camps, a "democratic opposition" (which US aid and
advisors ensure will be dominated by moderate, pro-United States
elites) and dictatorship. This tactic of turning elections into a
polarized
referendum was subsequently developed and adroitly applied in
Chile and Nicaragua. In particular, the creation of an observer
apparatus for the 1986 election, and for subsequent ones, gave US
officials important experience in the use of electoral observation as
part of overall policy. In 1951, the NAMFREL was set up by a former
civic affairs director of the Philippine army with the help of US
government funds and officials. This "good government" organization
played an important role in the political-electoral aspects of the
massive counterinsurgency underway at that time against the Huks.
In particular, NAMFREL became the vehicle for building a political
machine that could deliver the 1953 electoral victory of the CIAbacked
candidate, Ramon Magsaysay.26
In 1984, the NED renewed US funding for the NAMFREL, which
then played an important role in denouncing Marcos's attempted
fraud. Money for the TUCP also went to finance the participation of
some 7,000 TUCP members in NAMFREL's observer program. In
addition, the NED funded a joint delegation from the NDI and the
NRI, which also denounced the attempted fraud. On the eve of the
election, President Reagan appointed Senator Richard Lugar to lead a
congressional team to monitor the vote. Lugar then commissioned
Allen Weinstein, head of the Center for Democracy (CFD), to organize
the delegation. Weinstein was one of the original organizers of Project
Democracy, which led to the formation of the NED, and was the
Endowment's first president, a post from which he resigned after
setting up the CFD in 1984. His observer delegation played an
important role, upon its return from Manila, in advising US policymakers
on how to proceed in the tense days of the transition from
Marcos to Aquino.
International electoral observation is not equivalent to foreign
intervention
in a nation's internal political process, and such observation
may play an important role in democratization processes. However,
the United States has developed international observation into an
instrument for achieving its objectives in each target country, in close
synchronization with US policy and political intervention programs.
First, electoral observance places the United States in a position to
decide when an election is "free and fair" and who the victor is.
Second, with the broad publicity they achieve, electoral observer
groups financed and organized by the US government are in a position
to set the international public relations agenda in accordance with
overall US goals. Third, in distinction to neutral or impartial
observation,
the new political intervention has utilized electoral observation as
an instrument for penetrating foreign electoral processes and
manipulating
them. Under the guise of "observation," US operatives become
deeply involved in the activities of the groups and candidates being
promoted by the United States. In the case of the 1986 Philippine
elections, US and other observer delegations did contribute to exposing
and denouncing Marcos's attempt to steal the election. Although this
coincided with the Philippine people's efforts to defeat Marcos, the US
denunciation was intended to serve not the aspirations of Filipinos but
concrete US policy objectives. Following the Philippine experience,
electoral observation became an important component of political
intervention projects in Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, and elsewhere.
Similarly, the NED set up an assistance program for the PCCI,
channeled through the CIPE. "The overall goal is to support the
restoration of private enterprise values in place of the 'crony
capitalism'
system as a key element in the overall transition to democracy,"
stated a NED report.27 Funds went for the PCCI to build a nationwide
business federation, with local chambers all over the country, to
"assist
in generating active programs to reach local businessmen and opinion
leaders." The purpose of this program was to cultivate consensus
within the Philippine private sector, and elites in general, around the
project of neo-liberalism, and to provide transnational kernels within
the Philippine elite with a capacity for developing concrete neo-liberal
policy reform proposals and interacting with the Philippine government
so as to have these proposals adopted.
Washington also funded and promoted the creation of a new
women's organization, the KABATID.Funds went to pay for a headquarters
in Manila, regional offices and equipment, the publication of a
monthly magazine (KABATID Express), and salaries for paid staff,
among other items. Why would Washington create an entirely new
women's movement in the Philippines, a country that could boast by
the early 1980s of having the broadest and most vibrant feminist
movement in Asia? Women form a significant portion of the 20 million
Filipino workers. Women became highly active in the trade union
movement and constituted a major force in the anti-Marcos and
democratization struggles. In the late 1970s, women's organizations
proliferated. In 1984, many of these groups came together in a
coalition, the General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity,
Equality, Leadership, and Action (GABRIELA). GABRIELA
brought together poor women workers with middle-class professionals,
and also attracted the support of some women from the elite.
The organization enunciated four objectives: the restoration of
democracy;
the attainment of a genuinely sovereign and independent Philippines,
"where women will be full and equal partners of men in
developing and preserving national patrimony"; support for "the
struggles of women workers, peasants, and urban poor settlers to
attain their economic well-being"; and "women's liberation" as an
integral component of "national liberation."28
The existing women's movement thus put forth a program of
popular democracy that threatened the transnational agenda for the
post-Marcos period - an agenda which the KABATID would
promote.29 The purpose of the NED program was not to help poor
Filipino women to democratize their society; if this were the intent
there already existed dozens of active women's groups which Washington
could have supported. Instead, KABATID was to compete
with the existing women's movement, undercut its progressive tendencies
and popular leadership, and at the same time organize women
from the elite around the efforts to stabilize a polyarchic political
system. The KABATID,as is the case with similar civic groups created
and/or funded by the United States abroad, did not envision itself as a
mass women's movement. US funds, provided in relatively small
doses, were intended not to finance a large-scale operation, but to
deliver the resources necessary for a small group of women from the
country's elite to network and become mobilized. The KABATIDwas
to be a club to groom women leaders well placed in the country's civil
and political society. The KABATID'snewsletter, for instance, was not
published for mass distribution or for news-stand sales, but for
exclusive circulation to "KABATIDmembers, the Executive and Legislative
Branches of government, major media outlets, and other nongovernmental
organizations."3o The magazine was intended to link,
organize, and provide strategy guidelines to core constituencies
around the US-transnational agenda, including neo-liberal restructuring,
the continued presence of US military bases (for which the
KABATID lobbied unsuccessfully), and opposition to legalization of
the Communist Party and to negotiations with the insurgency, and to
"counteract the powerful propaganda machine of the Left forces."31A
glance at the KABATIO trustees indicates that the organization was led
by middle- and upper-class professionals, business women, and government
officials from state agencies, the private sector, and the
educational system, and that all were drawn from the transnationalized
fraction of the elite.32 Four of its five top officers were also
NAMFREL leaders. The KABATIO's chairperson was Oette Pascual,
who also served on the board of NAMFREL and was that organization's
director for external affairs until she resigned to head the
KABATID.
In turn, the KABATIO was to gain hegemony - in the Gramscian
sense, not of domination, but of leadership - over the mass women's
movement and help influence the contours of post-Marcos society
along the agenda of the transnational elite. One KABATIO document
warned that the economic crisis in the post-Marcos period "makes the
lower income masses susceptible to ideological solutions," and that,
therefore, the organization should "develop a core of women
citizenleaders
who can respond effectively to the needs of their community ...
Since women are the traditional nurturers and transmitters of family
traditions and values, KABATIO members will be catalysts in their
community, and [will] sustain an effective middle force group that will
serve as role models to the young and impressionable."33 The idea was
to cultivate core constituencies of leaders which could become public
opinion makers, simultaneously competing with popular sectors and
inculcating in the elite as a whole the virtues of consensus-building
and polyarchic procedure. This was part of the broader efforts to
cohere a "political center" and have it exercise hegemony in the organs
of civil society and the internal political system. The KABATIO
documents
stressed "the creation of a visible middle force," the "bonding
together of women" around "a visibly moderate force," the creation of
"circles of influence" around the country, training for KABATIO
members in "leadership skills and value orientation," and exercising a
"catalyst function" in the formation of public opinion over national
issues.34 The core of "women citizen-leaders" cultivated by the
KABATIO was expected to reach out to women in the TUCP trade
unions, the Philippine "youth clubs," business groups, and elsewhere,
in tandem with US political aid programs in those areas. In this way,
the leaders of the NAMFREL, the rucP/ and the KABATID sat on
each other's boards and came to constitute a national network, with
interlocking directorates as discussed in chapter 2. The KABATID also
used the "multiplier effect" analyzed in chapter 2 to set up regional
officesand local leadership structures.35
Seen from a more structural level, the penetration of the global
economy from the 1960s and on had thoroughly disrupted the traditional
sexual division of labor, had thrust millions of women into the
capitalist sector of the economy, particularly in to the external sector
tied to transnational capital. The peculiar gender dimensions of the
shift in the labor-intensive phases of international production to the
South are the concentration of female labor in these externally linked
sectors, and notorious export-assembly platforms (maquilladoras),
where labor is largely female, although management remains male.
This new sexual division of labor - springing from pre-capitalist
divisions and patriarchal social relations and cultural patterns -
provides advantages to transnational capital in the form of wage
differentials between male and female workers, an alleged "docile"
and "dexterous" workforce, and the creation of new hierarchies
among oppressed strata that deflect challenges to exploitation. But the
disruption of traditional gender roles, the new experiences of
capitalist
exploitation superimposed on gender oppression, and the subjective
experience of broader gender, group, and class solidarities which
develop, often catalyze and politicize women to challenge their
exploitation
as laborers and to challenge residual and new types of patriarchal
relations. US political aid programs, such as those in the
Philippines, were designed precisely to contain mass mobilization
among women displaced from traditional roles and to utilize, and even
strengthen, patriarchal social relations, as part of the broader
strategy.
In this way, transnational political and economic practices conjoin to
sustain relations of class domination in a process properly conceived as
the reproduction of social order during the integration of national
societies into an emergent global social formation.
Philippine youth were also identified as a key sector, given young
people/s rapid politicization and radicalization in the anti-Marcos
struggle, especially those in the militant high-school and university
student movement. In 1986/ the NED began its Youth Democracy
Project in the Philippines, channeling funds through the International
Division of the YMCA for "seminars on democratic procedures" with
thousands of high-school students around the country.36 Also in 1986,
the NED provided the NDI and the NRI with funds to conduct
"training courses" for Philippine congress members.37 US officials
conducted the courses with the Evelio B. Javier Foundation, a Philippine
think-tank whose trustees included many leaders of the
KABATID, the TUCP and the PCCI.
Probably the most important plank in the political aid program
was support for the conservative TUCP. Post-World War II
industrialization
generated a 20-million-strong urban workforce by the late
1970s, and labor had become a central component of the democratization
movement by the end of the decade. In an effort to curtail labor
militancy, the Marcos regime, with the assistance of the AAFLI, set
up the TUCP in 1977, under the operating principle of tripartite
cooperation among labor, management, and government. Established
when the country was under martial law, it was the only legally
recognized union during the Marcos years. Right up to his downfall,
the TUCP maintained friendly relations with the dictator, who, until
1984, was the regular featured speaker at the TUCP's annual May
Day Breakfast.38
Meanwhile, eight union federations dating back to the previous two
decades, disenchanted with the TUCP's pro-government program, had
set up the Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement), or KMU, in
1981. The KMU spread throughout Manila and other urban centers
and became the largest anti-Marcos union center. Branded as "communist"
by US officials, the KMU was, in fact, a multi-tendency labor
federation, uniting workers of communist, Christian, social democratic
and other political persuasions, and controlled by its membership, not
by any outside organization, whether of the left or the right. Following
the overthrow of Marcos, the KMU continued to grow. It became the
largest labor federation in the country, and one of the most dynamic in
the world. The KMU waged campaigns in the late 1980s for national
control over natural resources, the removal of all US military bases, a
comprehensive agrarian reform (the TUCP supported the Aquino
program - see below), for worker participation and improvements in
wages and benefits. The real threat to US interests posed by the KMU
was clearly its program of nationalist political demands and popular
democratization.39
In 1984, the NED took over funding for the TUCP and supplied
neaerly $7 million between 1984and 1991, channeled through the FfUI
to AAFLI field offices in the Philippines.4o "A major effort to
strengthen democratic unions is being undertaken in the Philippines,
where democratic forces have been stymied by martial law, the
turbulence following the Aquino assassination and the growth of
Marxist-oriented organizations," explained the NED, in inaugurating
its Philippine program in 1984.41 US policymakers were particularly
concerned about the dramatic decline in worker support for the TUCP,
whose ranks had dropped from 2 million when it was formed to 1.2
million workers in 1985.42 The NED report made clear that the main
objective of the program was not to bring down the Marcos dictatorship,
but to counter left-wing unionism. The purpose of the TUCP
funding is to "strengthen pro-democratic unions in the Philippines so
that they will become the preeminent representatives of workers under
the umbrella of the TUCP," according to the NED. Funds went for the
purchase of office and press equipment, staff salaries, the maintenance
of regional offices, "training in democratic ideology" and in "technical
organizational skills," and a "media relations and communications
program" to "counteract left-wing propaganda."43 With the massive
infusion of funds, the TUCP was able to set up a nationwide patronage
network. "Some of the regional [labor leaders receiving AAFLI money]
are becoming powerful politically," explained Bud Phillips, AAFLI's
administrator in the Philippines. "Imagine if you have $100,000 to give
out to families in $500 chunks: Your stock goes way up, faster than the
stock of any of the militant labor groups" (at the time, per capita
annual income was $790). Phillips went on to explain: "If people
hadn't had immediate assistance then, the success of the political left
in
the trade unions would have been phenomenal. It would have been a
Waterloo. Our help saved the free trade union movement here."44
One of the reasons for such emphasis on Philippine labor was the
challenge from the militant KMU and the importance of labor in
national political struggles. However, another reason was that, with its
already-existing infrastructure and leadership, the TUCP was in a
good position to develop what NED documents described as "sectoral
linkages" with women, youth, political parties, religious, and civic
groups, and thus act as the centripetal nucleus for the cultivation of a
nationwide network of "agents of influence" endowed through US
assistance with a "political action capacity," that is, with the skills
and
resources to mobilize distinct constituencies.45 Thus, the FTUI funded
specific programs designed to "strengthen organizational relations"
between the TUCP and the women's, youth and church groups and to
eclipse popular leadership in all areas. "Such relationships serve to
establish bulwarks against Communist front groups," explained a
FrUI document. In addition, AAFLI funds went to NAMFREL programs,
including the training of thousands of TUCP members to staff
NAMFREL offices and conduct poll-watching.46 Ernesto Herrera,
TUCP's Secretary-General, was also a member of the Executive
Council of the NAMFREL. Similarly, NED funds, passed through
FrUI, on to the AAFLI, and from there to the TUCP, were used in 1988
to establish the Workers-Student Forum (WSF) as "a counterweight"
to the left-leaning Filipino Federation of Students and League of
Filipino Students.47
Between 1984 and 1990, the TUCP became the second largest
recipient of FrUI funds worldwide, surpassed only by Poland's
Solidarity. The objective became an all-out war against the KMU. The
primary goal of the KMU, warned one FrUI document, was not "to
bargain with employers or work through the country's fragile democratic
institutions," but to "radically change the country's entire
political system." It explained: "A variety of approaches will be used
to reach disparate groups of workers. These efforts will directly
address KMU attempts to bring workers in specific industries in key
economic sectors under their control [sic] ... [and] will allow the TUCP
to supplant the KMU as the spokesman [sic] for working men and
women in the Philippines."48 The NED also funded a TUCP thinktank,
the Center for Social Policy and National Issues.49AAFLI officials
working at this center helped the TUCP to "develop a formal capability
to lobby the Philippine Congress" and ran "training and education
projects designed to provide every union with political action
capabilities."
so The center endorsed Aquino's conservative agrarian reform
and advocated approval of a referendum to endorse the continuation
of US military bases in the country (see below).
Through these efforts, the TUCP garnered a working-class base of
support in urban areas for a gradual realignment of the Aquino
coalition from the center-left towards the center-right. The TUCP
leadership established close working relations with Vice-President
Laurel and the right wing of the Aquino administration. US funding
also went to the TUCP's affiliated rural unions, grouped into the
National Congress of Farmers Organizations (NCFO). The NCFO, in
its competition with militant groups from the National Peasant Union
(KMP), which was founded in June 1985,lent support to the traditional
rural oligarchy and agri-business in their efforts to reestablish
authority
in the countryside following the turbulence of the mid-1980s. Most
chilling was TUCP and NCFO collaboration with landowners who had
begun organizing politically and militarily, forming private armies and
"vigilante groups" (death squads) with official government sanction.51
US allied groups and "agents of influence" cultivated with political
aid pushed the US post-Marcos agenda. Apart from the general
program of polyarchy and neo-liberalism, the specific points on this
agenda of concern to US policymakers included the renewal of the
1947 Military Bases Agreement, which was set to expire in 1991. The
TUCP, the KABATIDwomen's organization, the PCCI, and other USfunded
groups all endorsed a renewal of the lease.52 Despite the efforts
of constituencies cultivated through US economic and political aid
programs, mass sentiment, expressed in a 1992 referendum, opposed
the bases and the treaty was allowed to expire. While the loss of the
Philippine bases was a setback for US geo-political concerns,
policymakers
were able to link the base closings to the transnational agenda
for the Philippines: the AID designed and financed a program for the
conversion of the Philippine military bases into a duty-free zona franca
for transnational corporate investment, as part of the country's
neoliberal
program.
Conclusion: Consolidating polyarchy and
neo-liberalism in the Philippines
Although Filipinos were genuinely elated by the overthrow of the
dictatorship, different political projects had been masked by broad
national and international convergence around the removal of Marcos
and under the generic term "democracy." These now became manifest
in new conflicts as the country entered a highly fluid political
situation.
53 Mass constituencies pushing diverse programs of popular
democratization contended with the efforts by the United States and
much of the elite to achieve a conservative stabilization. Aquino's
assumption to the presidency was followed by institutionalization of
the post-Marcos order. A new constitution was approved in a February
1987plebiscite by over 75 percent of those voting. Legislative elections
in May 1987 and local elections in January 1988 consummated the
efforts to legitimize the new regime.
After six years in power, amidst a precarious period of mass
mobilization, attempted coups, and the ebb and flow of insurgency
and counterinsurgency, Aquino left office in 1992 in national elections
which brought General Fidel Ramos to the presidency. The 1986
"revolution" had been effectively divested of its popular promises and
polyarchy seemingly institutionalized. On the one hand, there was
electoral competition and constitutional rule, including a separation of
powers, formal respect for civil and political liberties, and so on.
Although still factionalized, the elite had apparently reached consensus
on the rules of polyarchic competition, which became quite intense,
with a thriving press and a plethora of political parties. On the other
hand, after six years, social and economic structures remained frozen
and the formal political system continued to be a domain of the rich
and powerful, as closed as ever to meaningful popular participation. A
series of studies conducted by Philippine and foreign scholars in
different rural and urban locations around the Philippines in the late
19805 on the actual extent of social, economic, and political change
since 1986 concluded: "The overwhelming evidence shows that what
was achieved by Aquino replacing Marcos is much more modest than
what is suggested by the notion of 'a transition from authoritarianism
to democracy' ... no decisive reform of iniquitous social structures has
taken place."54
As noted earlier, the unfolding of events in the Philippines before,
during, and after the Marcos-Aquino transition cannot be reduced to
the results of US policy. Rather, US policy interacted with distinct
Philippine sectors in seeking preferred US outcomes. These sectors
included the Philippine military, civilian elites, and the left. One
State
Department official commented several weeks after Aquino's inauguration:
"Our objective was to capture ... to encourage the democratic
forces of the center, then consolidate control by the middle and also
win away the soft support of the NPA. So far, so good."55US objectives
in the new period were to marginalize the Philippine left, consolidate
and gain leverage over a center-right alliance, and "professionalize"
the military, which meant achieving its subordination to civilian elites
(an "apolitical" military leadership) but also preserving its repressive
capacity. Political aid was not a crucial determinant, but one of
several
factors, affecting the outcome of the anti-Marcos movement. Along
with economic and military aid, it played an important role in the
consolidation. Gradually, a transnational kernel was gaining control
over the state and positioning itself to exercise hegemony in civil
society, in consort with US economic, political, and military aid
programs, and in consort with transnational capital and international
financial agencies.
Shortly after Aquino's inauguration, the US Congress approved the
Assistance for Democracy Act of 1986, and several supplemental
appropriations, involving some $700 million in economic and military
aid for the Philippines for 198~7. The objectives were to keep the
Philippine economy open and closely tied to foreign capital, promote
free..trade and neo-liberal reform programs along the lines of the
export-oriented development model, and also to keep US military
facilities open.56 "Crony capitalism" was not to be replaced by any
popular economic program but by free-market reforms and deeper
integration of the Philippine economy into the global economy. Also,
high in the minds of foreign creditors was assuring that the Philippines
would continue to repay its $30 billion foreign debt. "[An] important
test for the government is its ability to pre-empt the insurgents'
promises of nationalized industry and radical redistribution of land
and wealth, which have fallen on fertile ground, especially in the rural
areas where 70 percent of Filipinos live," warned Sandra Burton, a
fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations.57 US officials organized
the Multilateral Assistance Initiative consultative group, which
brought together international financial agencies, private banks,
government
donors, and the AID. The group conditioned the flow of
several billion dollars in external resources in the late 1980s on
privatization, deregulation, currency devaluations, the lifting of trade
barriers and restrictions on foreign capital, and so on. In this way,
the
AID, a US government agency, acted on behalf of transnational capital
and its interests in the Philippines.
Of particular concern was promoting to positions of authority local
Philippine counterparts of the transnational elite. Between 1986 and
1989, cabinet positions and economic policy were arenas of struggle in
Manila among diverse fractions. ''There are powerful dissenters, vocal
elements in the democratically-elected Congress vociferously oppose
key elements [of the neo-liberal reform program], and the 1992
elections loom over the entire process," cautioned an AID document.
The US "role is to mobilize its resources to support, encourage,
leverage, and assist, where possible and as most likely to ensure
success, in this absolutely vital undertaking" of continued reform.58 By
1990, the job was accomplished with the "purging" of "leftists" and
"protectionists" from the cabinet, and the appointment of the
technocratic
finance minister Jesus Estanislao to head the government's
economic team. Under Estanislao's New Economic Program, sweeping
neo-liberal restructuring was launched. The transition to polyarchy
involved the ascent to intemal leadership of a transnationalized
fraction of the Philippine elite over the elite as a whole, and the
ideological and political incorporation, or at least neutralization, of
enough of the popular sectors to restore social order in the wake of the
Marcos crisis. The ascent of the transnationalized kemel, linked
organically
to the transnational elite, tied intemal hegemonic order in the
Philippines to emergent transnational hegemony.
Following the ouster of Marcos, Washington lifted the ban on
military aid to Manila applied in 1985, and allocated $50 million in
fresh military aid, to what was now known as the New Armed Forces
of the Philippines (NAFP). Although Washington opposed any new
military takeover, it adopted a strategy of penetrating and gaining
leverage over the military. The NAFP had an important role to play in
creating a new post-Marcos environment. Philippine specialists
Walden Bello and John Gershman described this new environment as
"politically sanitized - in which anti-elite candidates with radical
political programs have been driven from the electoral arena by the
threat of force - so that even intense electoral competition would not
be too destabilizing."59 Between 1986 and 1991, factions within the
NAFP launched six coup attempts. Although all were put down (the
one in November 1989 by US air force jets and the threat of direct US
military intervention), .each plot helped expand the military's
autonomy and influence. The military won not only a blank check to
conduct the counterinsurgency unscrutinized and as it saw fit, but
also power of veto over vital areas of national policy. The coup
attempts forged an accommodation between the civilian and military
elite, and more importantly, imposed a consensus among the elite that
any substantial social or economic reform was outside the accepted
parameters of the new "democracy." While the spate of abortive
coups had provided Washington with greater leverage over Aquino
(who survived the military revolts thanks to US support), it also gave
Washington influence over the NAFP.
Containment of the insurgency remained a key US goal in the post-
Marcos period. The Pentagon expanded a large-scale training program
that it had first introduced in 1982, and used its influence in the NAFP
to isolate reformist and populist currents in the military. These
elements had grouped together into the Young Officers Union (YOU).
"YOU's leaders look towards a 'coup cum revolution,' meaning a
military seizure of power associated with a 'people's uprising',"
cautioned political scientist Carl H. Lande in the NED's Journal of
Democracy. "Critical of the present political system, they hope to
replace it with a reformist military regime. Thus YOU, like the NPA,
represents a populist reaction to the elite-dominated democracy now
presided over by Corazon Aquino. Were YOU and the NPA ever to
join forces, they would become a formidable threat to the state."60 By
the early 1990s, the Pentagon and the CIA were assuming an everdeeper
role in the design and command of counterinsurgency. Following
the ouster of Marcos, US officials set about to transform the
NAFP into an effective counterinsurgency force that would integrate
military, political, economic, and social initiatives, including broad
"civic action" campaigns, psychological operations, military aid and
training, and so on. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Philippines
became a key staging ground of low-intensity warfare.61
This effort involved pressuring Aquino to back down from her
policy of "reconciliation" with the NPA, and the left in general,
similarly to US pressuring of the Chamorro government in Nicaragua
and other post-authoritarian elite regimes in the 1980s and 1990s to
marginalize popular and left participation in new polyarchic political
systems.62Policymakers did not want to see a radical left integrated
into the country's political and civic structures, pushing a program of
popular reform. Upon coming to office, Aquino released political
prisoners from jails, and in September 1986, after a month of
negotiations,
the government signed a temporary truce with the guerrillas. But
under intense pressures from Washington, the military, and the rural
oligarchy, peace talks broke down in November. A month later,
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage publicly lashed out at
Manila for pursuing reconciliation. Aquino apparently got the
message; shortly afterwards, she declared in a speech at the Philippine
Military Academy that "the answer to the terrorism of the left and the
right is not social and economic reform but police and military
action."63
The struggle over agrarian reform is a clear example of how US
intervention intersected with complex local struggles with the aim of
controlling social change, as James Putzel documents in his study on
the subject.64The Philippines is the fourteenth-largest food producer in
the world, yet hunger and poverty are endemic in the countryside. In
the mid-1980s, a mere 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent
of the land. The remaining 80 percent either worked as landless
laborers or subsisted on tiny plots, often rented at exorbitant prices
in
usury arrangements with landlords.65 Behind this system was an
alliance between Philippine landowners and foreign agri-business,
based on lucrative cash crops for export and a ready pool of cheap
rural labor. At the time of her 1986 victory, Aquino made agrarian
reform the centerpiece of her promise of broad social and economic
change, and the new constitution specified that ownership of land
should be transferred to those who tilled it.
Following the ouster of Marcos, a coalition of popular organizations,
the Congress of Peoples' Agrarian Reform (CPAR), was formed with
the aim of mobilizing for a comprehensive agrarian reform. The CPAR
included the KMU trade union federation and its rural counterpart, the
KMP peasant association, numerous civic organizations, political
parties, and a plethora of clerical groups. It called for the abolition
of
absentee landownership, the redistribution of lands usurped during
the Marcos years, and the legalization of landholdings by peasants
who actually tilled the land. At the other end of the spectrum, the
USbacked
TUCP and the NCFO, which had publicly endorsed what
Aquino described as the hub of her economic program, a "partnership
between labor and capital," drafted their own position on land tenure
under a US-funded and advised program.66 Between 1986 and 1990
diverse groups struggled in civil and political society to shape the
contours of an agrarian reform. The AID set up its own agrarian
reform office, working out of the TUCP's Manila offices. The AID's
objective was to design an agrarian reform that would not disrupt the
agro-export sector and that could be synchronized with the
counterinsurgency
program and could diffuse peasant unrest.67
With the help of the AID, the endorsement of the TUCP, and the
backing of a Congress dominated by large landowners and business
interests, Aquino drafted a bill, approved in 1988,which was blatantly
biased in favor of the traditional, politically powerful families,
agribusiness
corporations and large landowners (for instance, 75 percent of
all lands remained exempt from reform). In the first three years of the
law, only 7 percent of the total land area which the legislation was
intended to cover had actually been distributed to farmers. The
agrarian reform subsequently sputtered to a standstill.68 In addition to
resistance from traditional landowners, the exporting commercial elite,
transnational agri-business and multilateral lending agencies did not
want to see a disruption of the country's agro-export sector, which,
along with zona franca labor-intensive manufacturing, linked the
Philippines
to the global economy. Blocking authentic agrarian reform
resulted in heightened social polarization, which fueled rural unrest,
the simmering NPA guerrilla movement, counterinsurgency and
militarization
of the countryside. As a result, the human rights situation,
after having shown an improvement in the first few years of civilian
government, dramatically deteriorated. By the early 1990s, international
human rights groups were once again documenting widespread
and systematic human rights violations and government repression.69
To be sure, US policymakers did want to see a social reform process
in the Philippines. But it had to be a process which could be carefully
managed, and under elite hegemony. For instance, Washington, along
with the international financial agencies, expressed support for their
own version of an agrarian reform, one that would preserve and
expand the capitalist agricultural export sector and also divert the
assets of landlords into urban, export-oriented industry, as had taken
place earlier in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. However, such a
scheme was simply not applicable to the particular social, political,
and
economic conditions of the Philippines. And when push came to
shove, the first priority was to avert fundamental transformation of the
social order. Moreover, political intervention specialists viewed
consolidation
of "democracy" in the Philippines not in terms of socioeconomic
reform but of strengthening polyarchic political culture and
institutions,7o In 1991, Washington allocated $12 million in new
"democracy enhancement" funds, via the State Department's aDI and
the NED, not for social reform but explicitly for "democratic
institution
building [in conjunction with) a strong free-market private-sector
orientation." [71]
The left, seemingly unable to adapt to the post-Marcos circumstances,
contributed to US endeavors.72 The boycott of the 1986
elections allowed the centrist elements to seize the political
initiative
from the left. Ambivalence towards electoral participation persisted in
subsequent elections, which contributed to isolating the left from mass
constituencies that viewed electoral politics as a legitimate arena of
political struggle. The armed and unarmed left remained a vital - even
ascendant - force in the national equation. Yet it seemed unable to find
a formula for operating effectively in the new political-ideological
terrain - a challenge posed for much of the left internationally in the
post-Cold War world and which is closely related to the lack of any
viable programmatic alternative to integration into global capitalism.
However, it should be pointed out that serious attempts by the left
groups, such as the Partido ng Bayan (People's Party), to run candidates
in elections ran up against repression and the vastly superior
resources of the elite. One specialist writing in the NED's Journal of
Democracy acknowledged, for instance, that in the 1992 elections "it
cost $25 to $50 million to run for president, $1 to $5 million to run
for
senator, and anywhere from several hundred thousand to $1 million to
run for the House," a barrier "which narrowed the field to people from
(or supported by) the middle and upper classes."73
The democratic aspirations of the masses of Filipinos might have
been further away than ever from fulfillment, but, in the view of the
State Department, the Philippine government since 1986 had "brought
about fundamental political change," involving "a strong free-market,
private-sector orientation," and "human rights" and "social justice."74
Washington assessed that the Philippine political system was
consolidated
enough by the 1990s to stand on its own and that the 1992
elections posed little threat to transnational interests. In April 1992,
a
month before the vote, US ambassador Frank Wisner told a group of
business leaders that the United States expected the vote to be
"decisive and not contested, and that you can get on [with] the job of
governance ... [the US] took an active role in putting [sic] a return of
an
election process in 1986... what matters to us is that there is a
democratic system in place."75
In summary, the mid-1980s Philippine "transition to democracy"
gave a crucial impetus to the new political intervention. The successful
outcome of the crisis of dictatorial rule there, and the contribution
made by novel US political operations to that outcome, proved decisive
in consolidating consensus in Washington around the new strategy.
Thus, as crisis brewed in Chile, there was little debate in Washington,
as well as valuable accumulated experience, on the course of action to
be taken by the United States.
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