Abstract
Thus sounded powerful voices during the transition from authoritarian rule in the Philippines of the late 1980s. On the one hand, the most notorious manifestation of uncivil society, the so-called vigilante volunteers of the Alsa Masa (“Masses Arise”), reverberating with widely reported anticommunist fanaticism and extrajudicial violence. On the other hand, the highest-ranking official of coercive state apparatuses, AFP chief of staff Fidel V. Ramos, reasserting with formal authority raison d’état and rule of law. While seeking to distance itself from widespread military and para-military abuses under the long authoritarian reign of Ferdinand E. Marcos (1972–86), the AFP oversaw a reinvigorated counterinsurgency drive, deploying new men and methods against the enduring the fanatical cultists; death that precludes justice, that invites only forgiveness or revenge.68
Kill for Peace! Kill for Democracy
—Alsa Masa Checkpoint Slogan, Davao, 1987
Due to the spontaneous proliferation of these volunteer organizations for community self-defense all over the country, it is necessary to define the police guidelines and limitations for such organizations in order that respect for the law and human rights is observed.
—Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) “Guidelines for Civilian Volunteer Self-Defense Organizations,” April 1, 1987
Thanks to Arthur Brenner, Bruce Campbell, Sheila Coronel, and Geoff Robinson for some early inspirations for this chapter, and to Robert Cribb, Ron May, Rosanne Rutten, and John Sidel for helpful comments and criticism on a previous draft. As usual, the shortcomings are all mine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Benedict J. Kerkvliet, “Patterns of Philippine Resistance and Rebellion, 1970–1986,” Pilipinas, no. 6 (Spring 1986): 35–49.
Walden Bello, Creating the Third Force: U.S.-Sponsored Low-Intensity Conflict in the Philippines (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Policy Studies, 1987).
See, for example, Justus van der Kroef, “The Philippines: Day of the Vigilantes,” Asian Survey 28 (June 1988): 630–49, and “The Philippine Vigilantes: Devotion and Disarray,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 10, no. 2 (September 1988): 163–81; and Ronald J. May, Vigilantes in the Philippines: From Fanatical Cults to Citizens’ Organizations (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Center for Philippine Studies, 1992).
David Kowaleski, “Vigilante Counterinsurgency and Human Rights in the Philippines: A Statistical Analysis,” Human Rights Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1990): 257.
Victor N. Corpus, Silent War (Quezon City: VNC Enterprises, 1989), 181. Of course, official military strategy as well as more localized initiatives by PC/AFP commanders in the field revealed considerable efforts to copy—or rather counter—the NPA’s guerrilla methods. For an illuminating discussion of the NPA’s strategic shift towards its own “Total War” in Negros Occidental, see Rosanne Rutten, “Popular Support for the Revolutionary Movement CPP-NPA: Experiences in a Hacienda in Negros Occidental, 1978–1995,” in The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics After 1986, ed. Patricio N. Abinales (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1996), 110–53.
Cf. Alfred W. McCoy, “Demystifying LIC,” Kasarinlan 4, no. 3 (First Quarter 1989): 31–40.
Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, “Beyond Beycott: The Philippine Left and Electoral Politics After 1986,” in Revolution Falters, 87–89.
Lawyers Committee, Vigilantes in the Philippines, xi; Senate Cornmittee, Report on Vigilante Groups, 10; and U.S. Department of State, “Citizens Self-Defense Groups in the Philippines,” 28 April 1989, 12.
Lawyers Committee, Out of Control, 31. See further Lawyers Committee, Vigilantes in the Philippines, and Amnesty International, Unlawful Killings.
Kenneth M. George, Showing Signs of Violence: The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 96.
Alfred W. McCoy, “The Restoration of Planter Power in La Carlota City,” in From Marcos to Aquino: Local Perspectives on Political Transition in the Philippines, eds. Benedict J. Kerkvliet and Resil B. Mojares (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1991), 130.
Cited in Sheila S. Coronel, Coups, Cults, and Cannibals: Chronicles of a Troubled Decade (1982–1992) (Manila: Anvil Publishing, 1992), 134. Other examples cited by Coronel included “Alsa Tasa” and “Alsa Baso” to refer to vigilantes with a noted weakness for drinking coffee or getting drunk, typically at the people’s expense.
See further Bello, Creating the Third Force Corpus, Silent War; and Gareth Porter, The Politics of Counterinsurgency in the Philippines: Military and Political Options (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Center for Philippine Studies, 1987).
Benedict Anderson, “Cacique Democracy in the Philippines: Origins and Dreams,” New Left Review, no. 169 (May-June 1988): 28.
Ruby R. Paredes, ed., Philippine Colonial Democracy (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1989).
Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 196–218.
Ronald King Edgerton, “The Politics of Reconstruction in the Philippines: 1945–48” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1975), 19.
Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance 1950 to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1977), 28.
Otto D. van den Muijzenberg, “Political Mobilization and Violence in Central Luzon (Philippines),” Modern Asian Studies 7, no. 4 (1973): 702.
Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Walter Benjamin Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 277–300. See also Michael Taussig, The Nervous System (London: Routledge, 1992), 11–13.
Patricia Startup, M.M., and Eileen Laird, M.M., eds., Truth Uncovered: Fact-Finding Mission Report—Cotabato—Zamboanga del Sur May 1985 (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1985), 15.
See, for example, H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg, eds., Vigilante Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976).
Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, “In the Name of Civil Society: Contesting Free Elections in the Post-Colonial Philippines” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1998).
Alan Berlow, Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge on the Philippine Island of Negros (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 56–57.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2000 Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hedman, EL. (2000). State of Siege: Political Violence and Vigilante Mobilization in the Philippines. In: Campbell, B.B., Brenner, A.D. (eds) Death Squads in Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108141_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108141_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-6094-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10814-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)