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Title: About Anarchism in the Philippines
Author: Anonymous
Date: November 24, 2004
Language: en
Topics: Philippines, anarchist history, history, Anarkismo
Source: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/955
Notes: by a Filipino anarchism researcher

Anonymous

About Anarchism in the Philippines

Anarchism was been a widespread political belief worldwide since the

industrial revolution in Europe.

In East Asia we had histories of anarchist uprisings and anarchist

movements that radically developed the political conciousness of the

common people in Japan, China and Korea.

The Shanghai Commune was organised by Chinese anarchists before Mao Tse

Tung came into power, while the Korean Anarchists formed a cooperative

commune in some parts of the Manchurian area as their answer against the

Japanese occupation. Japanese anarchists are one among the collaborator

of this succesful cooperative of workers and peasants in Korea. they

organised it while they fled from the Japanese Authorities who commanded

to arrest and kill all anarchists in tokyo and some parts of Japan after

the rice riots.

While the anarchist movements in East Asia were very vibrant during the

two World Wars, in the Philippines, south east of Asia... the resistance

against foreign occupation was also overwhelming. but during the famous

Philippine revolution against Spain there were prominent intellectuals

and key persons to the revolution who were briefly influenced by the

anarchists in the west.

In Benedict Anderson’s lecture about his suspicion that the famous

Filipino intellectual Jose Rizal was influenced by the revolutionary

anarchists during the period of 1800’s while Rizal was staying in France

finishing his two famous books that believed to be the spark of 1886

Philippine revolution.

In his lecture, Anderson pointed it out that it was not Rizal who was

directly influenced by the anarchists in Europe but Rizal used some

anarchist characters in his book/novel to portray the metaphor of

revolutionary uprising against Spain and the Friar system in the

Philippines.

Meanwhile, after several years since the Philippine liberation against

Spain was realised there was a Ffilipino named Isabelo delos Reyes who

organised the very first militant trade union movement in the

Philippines and it was organised under the influence of

anarcho-syndicalist organising which inspired him during his long stay

in Spain and his brief involvement with the anarchist civil war of CNT.

But eventually, it was the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP) that

was organised as the political backbone of the very first Filipino

militant trade union movement. The essence of anarchist principle

naturally died down as the marxist-leninist philosophy dominated the

conciousness of the Filipino working-class.

Until now, I am still looking for some traces of old anarchist practices

in the Philippines.

Recently, there was an anarchist network organised in the big area of

Manila. This network is more into the pop-anarchy character, since most

of its prime movers are into punk subculture. Well, there were also some

of them who came from the prominent left and decided to work within the

anarchist principles, but, the political maturity is still an undergoing

process and part of this process was the disolution of the network

itself.

Anarchism in the Philippines has still a long way to go.

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Discovered while searching in the Manila Indymedi