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“Comrade Carlos Bulosan”: U.S. State Surveillance And the Cold War Suppression of Filipino Radicals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Rick Baldoz
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Carlos Bulosan, in a 1949 letter to Philippine labor leader Amado Hernandez, warned his friend and political ally that they must be guarded in their future correspondence. Referencing FBI surveillance of left-wing labor activists in the United States, Bulosan tells Hernandez, “I'm being watched too.” To cover their tracks they employed aliases in their communiqués, Carlos adopted the nom de guerre, “Julie” and addressed his letters to Hernandez using his middle name “Victor.” “Julie” was but one of many anonyms that Bulosan used in his political communications during the Cold War to circumvent the watchful eye of the FBI. The letters to Hernandez along with similar dispatches to Luis Taruc, leader of the Hukbalahap (Huk) peasant movement were eventually discovered by Philippine police after the arrest of Jesus Lava, a key figure in the Philippine Communist Party (PKP). This information alarmed American intelligence operatives who worked closely with the Philippine government to suppress left-wing political opposition in the newly independent nation. Consequently, federal authorities redoubled efforts to disrupt transnational ties linking Filipino partisans in the United States and the Philippines.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 33 , August 2013 , e3
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2013

References

Notes

i The author would like to thank Trevor Griffey, Shelley Lee, Madeline Hsu, and Mark Selden for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

II FBI FOIA File: 105-882-37. At the time of their correspondence Hernandez was the head of Philippine Congress of Labor Organizations.

III FBI FOIA File: 105-WF-2457; ibid. 100- HQ-370827.

iv For more on the radical politics of FTA see, Karl Korstad, “Black and White Together: Organizing in the South with the Food, Tobacco, Agriculture and Allied Workers Union, 1946-1952,” in Steve Rosswurm, ed., The CIO's Left-Led Unions, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, (1992), 69-94.

v FBI FOIA File: 100-HQ-370827. See also, Marilyn Alquizola and Lane Hirabayashi's “Carlos Bulosan's Final Defiant Acts: Achievements During the McCarthy Era,” Amerasia Journal, 38(3), 29-50.

vi The UFW was formed in the mid-1960s with the merger of the Filipino-led Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the Mexican-led National Farm Workers Association. C. Scharlin and L. Villanueva, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, University of Washington Press, (2000); M. Garcia, From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement, University of California Press, 2012.

vii FOIA File: 105-SF-1530; 105-HQ-16743.

viii N. Tsou and L. Tsou, “Asian Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: A Report” Science and Society, v.68 (3), 342-350; See also, Fallen Sparrows: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, American Philosophical Society (1994).

ix Cited in B. Kerkvliet, Unbending Cane: Pablo Manlapit, A Filipino Labor Leader in Hawaii, University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 70-71. See also, R. Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America 1898-1946, NYU Press (2011), 55-59; E. Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History, University of Hawaii Press, (1985), 203-224.

x H. Dewitt, Violence in the Fields: California Farm Labor Unionization During the Great Depression, Century Twenty-One Publishing, (1980); S. Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, Washington DC, Government Printing Office (1945).

xi For more on the proliferation of anti-Filipino violence on the U.S. mainland see, R. Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion 135-155; and H. Dewitt, Violence in the Fields, California Filipino Farm Labor Unionization During the Great Depression, R & E Publishers, (1980).

xii The 1940 Nationality Act passed a few months later prohibited suspected communists from becoming American citizens. For more on the Nationality Act's implications for Filipinos see, R. Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion, Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 199-204.

xiii Harry Truman, Executive Order 9835, Federal Register vol. 12, no. 1935 (1947); E. Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 54-55.

xiv E. Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 43-46, 61; L. Ceplair, Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America, Praeger, (2011), 96-115.

xv D. Moloney National Insecurities: Immigrants and US Deportation Policy Since 1882, (UNC Press (2012), 176-190.

xvi E. San Juan, On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan, Temple University Press, (1995) and Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of Class Struggle, University of Philippines Press, (1972) see also A. Espiritu, Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino Intellectuals, (Stanford University Press, (2005) and M. Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, (1998).

xvii There was a sizeable Filipino farmworker community in Central Washington made up primarily of Illocano immigrants. FBI FOIA file 100-SE-20689; For more on Bulosan's brief stint as a agricultural laborer in Yakima see Chris Mensalves's interview in, Carlos Bulosan Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Accession number 0581-013.

xviii Bulosan also suffered from a serious kidney infection that resulted in periodic hemorrhaging. FBI FOIA File: 105-WF-2457.

xix M. Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, (1998), 222-223.

xx FBI FOIA File: 105-WF-2457.

xxi B. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines, University of California Press, (1977); A. McCoy, Policing America's Empire, The United States, The Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State, University of Wisconsin Press, (2009); M. Hunt and S. Levine, The Arc of Empire: America's Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam, University of North Carolina Press, (2012).

xxii According to Marjorie's mother (Mary Irene Chubb), Bulosan was her daughter's third Filipino husband, the previous two were, Ben Español and David Patón. There is conflicting evidence about whether the two were formally married, but Marjorie was registered to vote in Los Angeles County under the name, Marjorie Paton Bulosan and listed Bulosan her surname on numerous documents including job applications. Moreover, numerous friends of the couple described them as husband and wife. FBI FOIA file: 105-WF-2457; ibid. 100-LA-32735.

xxiii According the FBI he also used the pseudonyms, Juniper Bulosan and David Paton (the name of one his wife's ex-husbands).

xxiv NUMCS was one of the unions purged from the CIO as part of its effort to eradicate radicals from its ranks during the McCarthy era. FOIA 100-LA-32725-33.

xxv The speech was given at an event sponsored by the American-Soviet Friendship Committee. Front groups such as these were tolerated during the war since U.S. and U.S.S.R. were key allies, so Bulosan's address to this particular audience was not remarkable given the political backdrop of the time. The Soviet Union was often viewed favorably in mainstream opinion organs during this period. Recall, for example, that Joseph Stalin was twice selected as Time Magazine's person of the year. FOIA File, 105-WF-2457.

xxvi FOIA File: 105-WF-2457; 100-HQ-370827.

xxvii FOIA File: 100-SE-20689. Bulosan solicited an essay from Hernandez that was published in the ILWU Yearbook in 1952 that highlighted the repressive policies employed by the Philippine government to stifle dissent and cripple labor rights in the islands.

xxviii FOIA File: 100-SE-20689: ibid. 100-LA-32725. For more on the political persecution of Hernandez see, Laurel, Jose P. People of the Philippines, Plaintiff, Versus Amado V. Hernandez, Accuse, G.R. No. L-6025: Renewal of Petition for Bail. Manila: Social & Commercial Press, 1955 and Hernandez, Amado V, and Jose P. Laurel. People of the Philippines, Plaintiff-Appellee, Versus Amado V. Hernandez, Defendant-Appellant, G.R. No. L-6025: Brief for the Defendant-Appellant Amado V. Hernandez. Manila: Vera Print. Press, 1956.

xxix FOIA File: 105-WF-2457.

xxx FOIA File: 105-SF-1530; B. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines, University of California Press, (1977); O. Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge University Press, (2007).

xxxi N. Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, Princeton University Press, 2003, 115-116, 156-159; H. Kimeldorf, Reds or Rackets: The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront, University of California Press, 1988, 12-13.

xxxii International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union, Local 37 Yearbook-1952, 1-2; See also C. Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: Philadelphia: Temple University Press, (1994), 127-133.

xxxiii FBI FOIA file: 105-882-37; M Ellison, “The Local 7/Local 37 Story: Filipino American Cannery Unionism in Seattle 1940-1959,” Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, 5-8; A. De Vera “Without Parallel: The Local 7 Deportation Cases, 1949-1955” Amerasia Journal, 20-2 (1994), 10-13.

xxxiv A. De Vera “Without Parallel: The Local 7 Deportation Cases, 1949-1955” Amerasia Journal, 20-2 (1994), 12-20; M Ellison, “The Local 7/Local 37 Story: Filipino American Cannery Unionism in Seattle 1940-1959, 6-10.

xxxv FBI FOIA File: 100-SE-20689; M Ellison, “The Local 7/Local 37 Story: Filipino American Cannery Unionism in Seattle 1940-1959.