Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP-1930)

Also known as: Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) — original and official name · Communist Party of the Philippines — the pre-1968 bearer of this English name · PKP-1930 — designation used since the 1980s to distinguish it from the 1968 party · Partido Comunista Filipino — native label recorded in its Wikidata entry

Government

Definition

The Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP-1930) — in Filipino, Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), the name under which it was founded — is the original communist party of the Philippines, organized in Manila out of the Katipunan ng mga Anakpawis sa Pilipinas (KAP) labor federation on August 26, 1930 and formalized as a political party on November 7, 1930, the anniversary of the October Revolution, by a founding circle around the labor leader Crisanto Evangelista that included Antonino D. Ora, Jacinto Manahan, and Domingo Ponce. Heir to the earlier Partido Obrero de Filipinas and admitted to the Comintern in 1935, the party was declared an illegal organization by the Manila Court of First Instance on September 14, 1931 — twenty of its leaders were sentenced to banishment, and Evangelista to six months’ imprisonment and a 400-peso fine for sedition — a judgment the Supreme Court affirmed on October 26, 1932, fixing the formal ban. Legalized again under the Commonwealth in 1937, the PKP merged on November 7, 1938 with Pedro Abad Santos’s Socialist Party of the Philippines at the Manila Grand Opera House, with Evangelista as president, Abad Santos as vice president, and Guillermo Capadocia as general secretary; in this merged form it created the Hukbalahap guerrilla army against Japan in 1942, turned to armed struggle against the Philippine government in 1948, and was outlawed anew by the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957, before returning to legal existence under Executive Order No. 276 on July 25, 1987 — by which time it had come to be called PKP-1930, the suffix marking its founding year against the 1968 successor. (Wikipedia — Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930)

The 1930/1968 distinction is fundamental to any accurate use of the name. On December 26, 1968, Jose Maria Sison — expelled from the PKP in April 1967 after his critical report “Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party” was shelved — re-established a separate Communist Party of the Philippines on Maoist lines at Alaminos, Pangasinan, and founded its armed wing, the New People’s Army, with Bernabe Buscayno on March 29, 1969. The Sison party, not the PKP-1930, is the organization of the ongoing communist insurgency and the bearer of the terrorist designations discussed below; the two organizations are formally distinct, and Wikidata records them as different from and in opposition to each other.

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partido_Komunista_ng_Pilipinas-1930
Wikidata	Q2712402
DBpedia	http://dbpedia.org/page/Partido_Komunista_ng_Pilipinas-1930
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	Communism–Philippines
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) — original and official name
Communist Party of the Philippines — the pre-1968 bearer of this English name
PKP-1930 — designation used since the 1980s to distinguish it from the 1968 party
Partido Comunista Filipino — native label recorded in its Wikidata entry

Examples and Analogies

A party born from the labor movement: the PKP did not descend from an intellectual sect but from organized labor — the unions of the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas that Evangelista led — its founding convention reading as the political graduation of the Philippine working-class movement.
One name, two parties: the 1930/1968 split works like a firm that folds and later sees its name taken over by a new company — the younger party so eclipsed the original that the survivor rebranded itself with its birth year, PKP-1930.
From guerrilla army to registered party: the arc from the Hukbalahap of 1942 through the 1950 HMB insurrection to a minor legal party after 1987 traces Philippine communism’s first experiment — war, rebellion, suppression, re-legalization.

Usage Scenarios

1. Distinguishing the Two Communist Parties

Students and journalists encountering “CPP” in Philippine news — almost always the Sison party and its New People’s Army — use the PKP-1930 record to keep the two organizations straight, the older party legalized in 1987 being a separate entity.

2. Studying the Huk Rebellion

Historians of the Hukbalahap rebellion — the subject of this wiki’s entry of that name — treat the merged PKP of 1938–1954 as the rebellion’s directing organization, from the 1942 guerrilla army to the 1950 renaming as the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan.

3. Tracing the Legal Status of Communism in the Philippines

The party’s alternating legality — banned 1931–1937, legal 1937–1957, banned 1957–1987, legal thereafter — makes it the primary case study in Philippine anti-subversion law, from the 1932 court affirmation to Executive Order No. 276.

Strategies

Anchor every “CPP” claim to a date: before 1968 the name means this party; after December 26, 1968 it usually means the Sison party — the most common error in casual accounts of Philippine communism.
Follow the organizational paper trail: the PKP’s life runs through traceable legal instruments — the 1931 court ruling, the 1932 affirmation, the Commonwealth pardons, Republic Act No. 1700, and Executive Order No. 276 — each marking a change in status.
Read the party through its leaders’ biographies: Evangelista, Abad Santos, the Lava brothers, and Luis Taruc each anchor one phase — founding, merger, insurrection, collapse — collected as related entries in this wiki.

Security and Safety Measures

The legal framework of suppression: the Anti-Subversion Act (Republic Act No. 1700), approved June 20, 1957, declared in Section 2 that the Communist Party of the Philippines was “an organized conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the Republic of the Philippines,” and Section 3 swept in its military arm, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan “formerly known as HUKBALAHAPS,” together with any successor organizations — the statute under which the old party was illegal until the Ramos repeal of October 1992. (LawPhil — Republic Act No. 1700)
Re-legalization: Executive Order No. 276 of July 25, 1987 restored the PKP-1930 to legality; it has since operated as a registered minor party.
For researchers: statements about “the Communist Party of the Philippines” should always specify which party and which date, since official records and party histories routinely compress the two into one name.

Historical Context

Crisanto Evangelista — born November 1, 1888, in Meycauayan, Bulacan — organized printers, led the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas, the country’s largest labor federation, helped found the Partido Obrero de Filipinas after leaving the Nacionalista Party around 1924, and in 1927 sat on the inaugural executive committee of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, affiliating the COF to it on June 30, 1927. He served the PKP as general secretary (1930–1933) and chairman (1938–1942) until his arrest by Japanese forces on January 25, 1942, together with Abad Santos and Capadocia; after a failed attempt to use him in bargaining with the Hukbalahap, the Japanese executed him on June 2, 1942. (Wikipedia — Crisanto Evangelista)

Its Socialist partner arose in Central Luzon after the PKP’s ban. Pedro Abad Santos, a Pampanga lawyer who had founded the peasant union Aguman ding Maldang Talapagobra in 1929 and mentored the young Luis Taruc, established the Socialist Party of the Philippines in 1932; arrested with Evangelista on January 25, 1942, he was released in 1944 and died on January 15, 1945 at a Hukbalahap base in Minalin, Pampanga. (Wikipedia — Pedro Abad Santos)

The merged party’s armed history ran from resistance to rebellion. The Hukbalahap was founded on March 29, 1942 at Sitio Bawit, Barrio San Julian, on the borders of Tarlac, Pampanga, and Nueva Ecija, with Taruc as Supremo and Casto Alejandrino as vice commander; it grew from some 2,700 fighters in 1942 to 9,000 in 76 squadrons by 1944, claimed 20,000 regulars by war’s end, and set up its own barrio governments in Central Luzon, though it was denied recognition by the United States. After the war the party’s peasant base backed the Democratic Alliance, whose six winning senators — Taruc among them — were barred from sitting in 1946; the killing of Juan Feleo on August 24, 1946 reignited the insurrection, President Roxas outlawed the Hukbalahap on March 6, 1948, and the PKP renamed its army the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan in 1950. The capture of the party secretariat, including Jose Lava, on October 18, 1950 and the counterinsurgency of Ramon Magsaysay broke the movement — Taruc surrendered on May 17, 1954 — and the New People’s Army of 1969, not the HMB, inherited the armed struggle. (Wikipedia — Hukbalahap)

Challenges and Controversies

Which Party Is “the” Communist Party of the Philippines?

The re-establishment of December 26, 1968 produced two organizations claiming one revolutionary pedigree. The Sison party grew into the larger force and captured the name in ordinary usage; the old party survived martial law, accepted a Marcos pardon, and took the designation PKP-1930 in the 1980s to mark the difference. Accounts that conflate the two attribute the New People’s Army and the later peace process to the wrong organization.

The 1948–1954 Insurrection

The turn to armed struggle in 1948 — against the background of the 1946 electoral exclusions and the Feleo killing — cost the party its legality and, by 1954, its army. The episode remains contested terrain in Philippine historiography: for the state, an insurgency suppressed by military and civic counterinsurgency; for the movement’s sympathizers, a peasant rising answered with persecution.

Designated-Terrorist Listings

The listings attach to the 1968 party and its army, not to the PKP-1930, and are stated here as adjudicated or declared facts with dates: the United States designated the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and Sison himself a foreign terrorist organization in 2002; the European Union designated the organization in 2005 and renewed the designation in 2019, while a 2009 European court ruling delisted Sison personally; and President Rodrigo Duterte declared the CPP-NPA a terrorist organization under Republic Act No. 10168 in December 2017 — a proclamation that, as of the reporting in the cited source, Philippine courts had not converted into a judicial declaration. The PKP-1930, a legal party since 1987, appears on none of these lists. (Wikipedia — Communist Party of the Philippines)