Some Econometrics of the Huk Rebellion*

¹ A brief history of the Huk movement is contained in the first few chapters of Scaff, A., Philippine Answer to Communism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955).

² Valeriano, N. and Bohannan, C., Counterguerrilla Operations: The Philippine Experience (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 33.

³ Pomeroy, W. J., The Forest (New York: International Publishers, 1963), esp. pp. 38–43, 156, 166–168; Valeriano arjd Bohannan, op. cit., p. 32. See also Lieberman, V., “Why the Hukbalahap Movement Failed,” Solidarity (10–December 1966), pp. 22–30.

⁴ A barrio usually contains 1000–2000 people; a municipality is generally composed of 15–40 barrios.

⁵ The pattern of incentives obviously depends upon the control situation within the community itself. In other words, HC_j appears on the right hand side of the equation as well as the left. Equation (1) must therefore be regarded as derived from an original equation, the HC_j on the right hand side having been “solved out.” The parameters of equation (1) will as a consequence be somewhat larger than those of the original equation.

⁶ Since this study is confined to a particular geographical area, municipalities on the edges of that area will have borders with external municipalities that are not represented in the summation of (2a); hence, the inequality. This is a reasonable way of handling the weights since external municipalities have no critical barrios for primarily exogenous reasons and therefore make no contribution to HCN. The alternative would be to force the weights to add to one by scaling them up, resulting in a somewhat lower estimate of k.

⁷ The best textbook reference is Malinvaud, E., Statistical Methods of Econometrics, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1966.

⁸ An estimate is unbiased if its expected value equals the true value of the parameter. An estimate is consistent if, as the sample size becomes large, the estimate tends in a stochastic sense to the value of the parameter. See Kendall, M. G. and Stuart, A., The Advanced Theory of Statistics, Griffin, London, 1961, Vol. 2, Ch. 17.

⁹ Smaller in the sense that the average element of A² is smaller than the average element of A. For particular elements this need not be true.

¹⁰ The analogy of this discussion to input-output systems should be obvious to economists. The matrix A is an input-output matrix with the special condition that each industry must sell to the same industries from which it buys.

¹¹ It should be mentioned that there are factors other than coercion that would be contained in the contiguity effect. For example, the strong kinship tie among Filipinos would imply sympathy for the cause of relatives in neighboring areas. But the quantitative importance of this and similar qualifications is likely to be small.

¹² The use of coercion does not imply a high level of violence. An efficient coercive organization does not have to carry out its threats if they are truly credible. An occasional penalty swiftly administered may be all that is necessary. The correlation between effective coercion and observed incidents of violence is probably quite weak.

¹³ Since there are virtually no Pampangos in Southern Luzon success of the movement there would imply that either the language barrier has been hurdled, considerable coercion has been employed, or the movement there has a different basis.

¹⁴ Pampangans are residents of Pampanga province; Pampangos are people who speak the Kapampangan dialect. Almost all Pampangans are Pampangos, but the reverse is not quite true. In this historical discussion the distinction, although necessary for literal accuracy, is of no great consequence.

¹⁵ Larkin, J. A., The Evolution of Pampangan Society: A Case Study of Social and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines (Doctoral Dissertation in History, New York University, 1966). There are a number of Filipino historians who dispute the importance of sectionalism in the Revolution. See for example, Kalow, T., The Philippine Revolution (Manila, 1925). Among American writers it is often referred to as the Tagalog Rebellion.

¹⁶ Landé, Carl H., Leaders, Factions and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).

¹⁷ From private conversations with Luis Taruc I gather that the Huk leadership, was unaware of this, although in recent years Taruc has reflected on its importance.

¹⁸ Tangco, Marcelo, “The Christian Peoples of the Philippines,” Natural and Applied Science Bulletin, XI, 9–114.

¹⁹ Note that Pampanga as a province has the highest overall rate of tenancy, but that there are many municipalities outside of Pampanga that have higher rates than specific Huk-dominated municipalities within Pampanga.

²⁰ Jacoby, E., Agrarian Unrest in Southeast Asia (Bombay: Asia Publishing Co., 1961).

²¹ Starner, F. L., Magsaysay and the Philippine Peasantry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961).

²² Mitchell, Edward J., “Inequality and Insurgency: A Statistical Study of South Vietnam,” World Politics, xx (04 1968), “The Significance of Land Tenure in the Vietnamese Insurgency,” Asian Survey, August 1967.

²³ See Mitchell, op. cit.; and Land Tenure and Rebellion, The RAND Corporation, RM-5181 (Abridged) (Santa Monica, 06 1967).

²⁴ The configuration representing the Hacienda in Fig. 2 is a gross approximation. For our purposes it is only necessary that its general location be correct.

* This article was written while the author was at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. The views presented are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions with which he has been affiliated.