Fragments of History, Silhouettes of Resurgence: Student Radicalism in the Early Years of the Marcos Dictatorship

Abstract

Using some of the few recovered and accessible primary documents written by cadres of the Communist Party of the Philippines, this essay attempts to trace the process by which the Party revived its most dynamic "sector" during the early years of the Marcos dictatorship. It shows how these cadres introduced and implemented the strategy of "legal struggle" to create an array of seemingly apolitical student associations which soon became the backbone of the brief resurgence of radical politics in schools and campuses. The strategy however was not without its problems, the foremost being its coming into conflict with the preference of the CPP leadership for rural-based, armed struggle of which the urban mass movements, including those by the students, were only to play secondary supportive roles.