Pioneer Filipino Marxist
Instead Pedro, who was already 50 years old, joined his friends Crisanto Evangelista, Antonio de Ora and Cirilo Bognot to study at the Lenin Institute in Moscow, Russia.
Pedro's protégé, Luis Taruc, described Pedro as a Marxist but not a Bolshevist. Marxist principles found fertile ground in Pampanga and the other provinces of the Central Luzon region because of the poverty which farmers blamed on the land tenancy system prevalent at that time. Although the government repeatedly promised relief, land reform in the Philippines would not take off until the 1960s.
On 26 October 1932, Pedro founded the Socialist Party of the Philippines. The following year Pedro established the Aguman Ding Maldang Talapagobra (Kapampangan for 'Union of the Toiling Masses') which espoused land reform and mutual protection from landlord abuses.
In the 1930s, Filipino farmers frequently came to bloody encounters with their landlords that the government had to send several units of the Philippine Constabulary to keep the peace.
On the anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7, 1938, Filipino socialists and communists gathered at the Manila Grand Opera House and agreed to merge their organizations. They called the merged group Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (Tagalog for Communist Party of the Philippines). They also elected the following as their officers: Crisanto Evangelista as president, Pedro Abad Santos as vice president and Guillermo Capadocia as secretary-general.
The following year, the administration of President Manuel Luis Quezon formulated a reform program that was meant to address social problems in the Philippines. Quezon decided to launch it in Pampanga and Pedro's group organized a gathering of farmers and workers at San Fernando in February for the purpose.
Pedro's brother Jose, who was already justice secretary, pleaded with Pedro not to embarrass Quezon when Pedro introduced the President. Dutifully, Pedro introduced the President as a 'friend of the masses and the poor'. But before Quezon spoke, Pedro enumerated farmers' grievances and criticized the legal system that, he said, landlords used against the poor. He challenged his brother, who was sitting beside Quezon, to clean up the courts and sarcastically remarked that the 'secretary cannot help us if he just sits in his office.'
Read more about this topic: Pedro Abad Santos
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