Hunting Specters: Paranoid Purges in the Filipino Communist Guerrilla Movement

In 1986, a popular uprising ended the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who had been dictator of the Philippines since declaring martial law in 1972 (which was officially lifted in 1981). Despite defeating their enemy, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) – the principal anti-Marcos force – went through a period of disorientation in the 1980s. In that decade, it is estimated that the CPP had an armed forces of around fifteen thousand, political cadres also numbering some fifteen thousand, and about a million supporters.¹ During this decade, CPP members tortured and killed hundreds of their own comrades in an