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Introduction


The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) has fought for popular democracy and economic justice and against U.S.-backed fascism and U.S. imperialism since its foundation in 1971. It sprang from the militant student and worker movement in Manila and quickly spread to all sectors in Philippine society and across the archipelago. It now has a mass base of several million.

The United Snakes annexed the Philippines in 1899--days after Filipinos broke free from three hundred years of Spanish rule. The United Snakes exploited the Philippines as a colony until 1946, when it "granted" the country nominal independence. Since then, the U.S. has dominated the economy and controlled the puppet Government of the Republic of the Philippines from behind the scenes; the Philippines has been an Amerikan neo- or semicolony.

The U.S.-backed ruling elite subjugates the Filipino people to the World Bank and IMF (under)development policies, which secure high return on investments for Amerikan imperialists but leave the broad masses impoverished. Seventy percent of the population of the Philippines is landless, often receiving only a dollar a day harvesting sugar or coconuts for absentee landlords and multinational corporations. Sixty percent of Filipinos live under the poverty line, 55% of arable land is used for growing crops to export, and close to 50% of the national budget services debts made by the elitist government.

Unfair treaties ensure that the Amerikan military has easy access to the Philippines and controls the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The CIA and other Amerikan military operatives are stationed in the Philippines to train government troops in "counterinsurgency" techniques. The "insurgents" are none other than the Filipino workers and peasants, mobilized into anti-imperialist and anti-feudal organizations like the New People's Army (NPA) of the National Democratic Front.

The National Democratic Front is an alliance of revolutionary organizations led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The CPP and the NDF are leading a Protracted People's War against the U.S.-Ramos regime. Through painstaking political work among the people, the NDF builds areas of support in the countryside. It carries out land reform, builds new, popular organs of political power, and gathers forces to defeat the state's military.

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) prints these articles in order to expose our North American readers to the conditions in the Philippines and the politics and history of the NDF. RAIL encourages its readers to support the Filipino people's right to self determination, to expose the crimes of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and elsewhere, and to get involved in the anti-imperialist struggle here in the belly of the beast.

All power to the people of the Philippines!

(-Facts and figures from Jose Maria Sison's The Philippine Revolution: The Leader's View.)