Central Luzon is a fertile plain directly to the north of metropolitan Manila. This region, thoroughly colonized and densely populated, has been a centre of agrarian unrest for decades. In the forties and fifties Central Luzon formed the nucleus of a peasant movement which produced the strongest anti-Japanese guerilla-army in the whole Southeast Asia, the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of Anti-Japanese People's Army) or in short Huks. The strength of this army came primarily from the fact that the struggle against the national enemy could be combined with the pre-war conflict between the peasants and the landowners.The latter, together with the Constabulary, sided for the most part with the Japanese. At the time of the liberation in 1945 most of the local and provincial administration was in the hands of the Huks. However,having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared to this. When this elite first refused to allow the radical people's represen-tatives delegated from Central Luzon to take their seats in parliament,and then attempted to recapture political mastery in Central Luzon by means of force, the Huk movement was compelled to adopt an ever more militant attitude.In the process,the leadership of the popular front set up by the Hukbalahap moved more and more towards the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The result was no less than a complete incorporation of all guerillas into the CPP in 1950. It had already been decided in 1948 that the policy of a parliamentary and legal conflict which had hitherto been pursued was not adiquate,and that force would have to play a decisive role. The Anti-Japanese People's Army was re-christened the People's Liberation Army(HMB).i