Founded in 1930, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (now called the PKP-1930 to distinguish it from the Communist Party of the Philippines, formed in 1969) was soon declared illegal by the U.S. colonial authorities. Regaining its legality later in the decade, by 1942 it was at the helm of the Hukbalahap, the most effective guerrilla organization during the Japanese occupation. With the reconquest of the Philippines by the returning American forces, the PKP and the Huks found themselves under attack by their presumed wartime allies. As congressmen elected as part of the postwar Democratic...

The author traces the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas' (PKP) painstaking attempts to rebuild in the 1950s, its conclusion of a political settlement with Ferdinand Marcos in 1974, and the development of the increasingly anti-imperialist stance that informed its approach to Marcos.