Pedro Abad Santos

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy Template:Family name hatnote Pedro Abad Santos y Basco (, ; January 31, 1876 – January 15, 1945) was a Filipino Marxist politician. He founded the Partido Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PSP) or Philippine Socialist Party in 1932. He ran for several local elections but never won. He also ran for president in the 1941 Philippine presidential election, but later withdrew, weeks before the election. Luis Taruc of the Hukbalahap Rebellion was under his tutelage and was his right-hand man.

Early years

Early life and education

Pedro Abad Santos was born to a wealthy family in the town of San Fernando in Pampanga. He was the eldest of the 10 children of Vicente Abad Santos and Toribia Basco. He is a brother of José Abad Santos, who would become chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. He was also the uncle of another Vicente Abad Santos, who would become an associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court.

Pedro, or Perico as he was known, completed his secondary education at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. He later studied medicine in the University of Santo Tomas where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1891.Template:Sfn

Katipunan and Philippine-American War

Pedro joined the Katipunan in 1896 and became a major under Gen. Template:Interlanguage link. He was arrested and failed for being a suspected member of the Katipunan, but was eventually released with the help of his family's influential friends.Template:Sfn After the declaration of Philippine independence, he settled down to a teaching job in Bacolor, but was recruited by Hizon and promoted to chief of staff in 1899 for the Philippine–American War.Template:Sfn He was eventually captured by the Americans in June 1900 and was incarcerated at an American camp in San Fernando. He was allowed to walk freely in the camp and have family visitations as he was made an official English interpreter.Template:Sfn Toribia and her son, Jose Basco Abad Santos, traveled from the evacuation town in Angeles, Pampanga, to the San Fernando camp. They found Pedro sickly and thin in their visit.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Still, Pedro was in trial for banditry and guerilla activities, which was punishable by death. His family hired prominent American lawyer John Haussermann to defend him during his trial. Pedro received a life sentence of exile in Guam, which was reduced to 25 years of imprisonment in Old Bilibid Prison in 1901. He was released in 1903 due to a general amnesty proclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt in July 4, 1902.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Pedro arrived in the Philippines with a recurrent stomach ulcer.Template:Sfn

Political career

File:Pedro Abad Santos y Basco's passport application.jpg

Abad Santos on his U.S. passport application in 1922

In 1906, Pedro was admitted to the bar. From 1907 to 1909, he served as justice of the peace and as provincial fiscal in San Fernando, Pampanga. As provincial fiscal, he was also Pampanga's prosecuting attorney. He served as councilor of San Fernando from January 1910 to March 1912. From 1916 to 1922, he represented the Second District of Pampanga in the House of Representatives of the Philippine Islands for two terms.Template:Sfn

He began offering pro bono legal services when he was a municipal councilor. Around a third of his cases were composed of peasants and workers, who were subsidized by the rest of his clients, who were from prominent families. His law office was a nipa hut near the Abad Santos ancestral house.Template:Sfn

He founded a private law firm with sibling Jose Abad Santos from 1920 to 1921 in Calle Azcarraga (now Recto Avenue) in Manila.Template:Sfn He was also included among the 28 members of the second Philippine Independence Mission to the United States in 1922, headed by Sergio Osmeña.Template:Sfn

But in 1926, when his younger brother Jose was already an undersecretary in the Department of Justice of the American colonial government, Pedro lost the election for governor of Pampanga. He would never again serve in any official capacity in the colonial or Philippine governments.

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, in then Soviet Union.Template:Sfn

Pedro's protégé, Luis Taruc, described Pedro as a Marxist but not a Bolshevik. 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.

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 October 26, 1932, Pedro founded the Socialist Party of the Philippines when the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) was outlawed by the Supreme Court. Two years later, together with his assistants Agapito del Rosario, Luis Taruc, Lino Dizon, and others, he organized the Aguman ding Talapagobra ning Pilipinas (ATP) into the Aguman ding Maldang Talapagobra (AMT), similar to the general workers’ unions in Spain, Mexico and France, which advocated the expropriation of landed estates and friar lands, farmers’ cooperative stores and the upliftment of peasants’ living conditions.

On November 7, 1938, during the 21st anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, Filipino socialists and communists held a convention at the Manila Grand Opera House where they agreed to merge their organizations to form the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (Template:Translation). Crisanto Evangelista was elected the organizations' president, Pedro Abad Santos its vice president, and Guillermo Capadocia its secretary general.

The following year, the administration of President Manuel 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 Secretary of Justice, 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".

Final years and death

File:Pedro Abad Santos monument.jpg

Monument of Abad Santos in San Fernando, Pampanga

File:Pedro Abad Santos NHI historical marker.jpg

Historical marker

Pedro threw his hat in the November 11, 1941 elections, running for president, alongside his Vice-Presidential running mate, Pilar V. Aglipay (widow of the late Bishop Gregorio Aglipay) of the Republican Party, and a 23-man senatorial slate, among them Crisanto Evangelista, Juan Feleo, Jose Alejandrino, Jose Padilla Sr., Mateo del Castillo, and Norberto Nabong. However, he withdrew his candidacy a few weeks before the elections, citing differences with the then COMELEC, which did not grant him the right to place election watchers, after the Popular Front faction of former senator Juan Sumulong was declared the dominant minority party, instead of Abad Santos' faction. His slate did not fare well in the elections, losing in the vice-presidential and senatorial races.

On January 25, 1942, the Japanese occupation forces arrested Pedro, Crisanto Evangelista, Guillermo Capadocia, and other Filipino leaders during a meeting at the Abad Santos residence compound in Ermita, Manila.Template:Sfn He was still incarcerated at Fort Santiago when his brother Jose, who was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in December of the previous year, was executed by the Japanese.Template:Sfn

Pedro, who was then 66 years old, would stay in prison for two years,Template:Rp but he was released to his family because of a failing eyesight and stomach ailment in 1944. He remained under house arrest in the house of his niece Estrella Abad Santos in Paco, Manila. After a few months of recovery, he reported to President Jose Laurel, who refused to return him to Japanese custody. He was then sent to a Hukbalahap base in Minalin, Pampanga, via a boat from Pasig River to Pampang River.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

A bachelor, he joined his protégé Luis Taruc, who had founded the guerilla force Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap) (Tagalog for People's Army Against the Japanese).

On January 15, 1945, Pedro died from an acute ulcer with intestinal complications at the base.Template:Sfn He was buried in Minalin, but his grave is not yet found.Template:Sfn

See also

• History of the Philippines
• José Abad Santos

External links

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