DANGER ZONES: Proposition from El Supremo

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The Philippines Free Press, a responsible, English-language weekly and most widely read publication in the islands, broke into print last week with an eye-opening beat. It was an open letter to Philippine President Elpidio Quirino.

"Allow me," said the letter, "to make some humble suggestions on how we could combat Communism in the Philippines." The letter attacked the large Philippine landholders, corporations and the church, but it also assailed Communism. Filipinos blinked when they got to the letter writer's proposition—a truce in the government's war on the Communist Huk guerrillas and a national conference of Philippine landlords, churchmen, corporation executives and President Quirino to agree on wholesale division of the land and political reform for the Philippines.

They blinked even more when they got to the end. It was signed by Luis Taruc, the slight, young (in the 30s) Communist who is El Supremo of the Huks and commander in chief of the guerrilla war which has terrorized the islands for six years.

Device. The technique was not a new stunt to Taruc—he had used the same device before to parade his causes, and once to promote a short-lived amnesty for the Huks in 1948, which Taruc used to his advantage and then violated. But his specific and detailed renunciation of Soviet Communism was something new: "It negates the existence of God ... advocates a Godless society. As a Christian, I cannot fathom the depth of the spiritual emptiness of living under such a kind of society." Stalin's Russia, the letter continued, is "a ruthless form of tyranny perpetrated upon a hapless people." Even when the party line says to dissemble, Communists do not usually talk like this. What was going on?

A sickly, intense peasant's son who moved from the feet of Philippine Socialist Pedro Abad Santos into the more militant ways of the Communists, Luis Taruc had received none of the marrow-deep Marxist schooling characteristic of the usual Red guerrilla leader. But he had proclaimed loud & often his devotion to Soviet Russia and the Communist ideology.

Doubt. The Philippine government warily called in a handwriting expert to examine the signature. The expert, matching it with a five-year-old Taruc signature, pronounced it phony. But Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay, boss of the government's fight against the Huks, was not so sure. Once before, the Free Press had carried a letter from Huk Leader William Pomeroy, former American G.I. who is now a captive in Manila. It had proved to be genuine. In recent months, Taruc had shown signs of wanting to talk peace with Magsaysay.

Magsaysay dashed off a reply for the pages of the Free Press. "Come down and let us talk things over," he urged. "There will be no double dealing." Then Manila sat back to wait for word from Luis Taruc.