SMALL farmers of a certain age still remember some of the high-profile foreign trips Marcos Senior took to demonstrate to the world that he had coopted the rebellious peasantry. And to show that the peasant leaders had been enlisted to the cause of reforms. Mr. Marcos had live presentations before the foreign audiences. Exhibit A would be Ka Luis Taruc, who by that time had junked the Marxist doctrine for Mr. Marcos “ Filipino Ideology.” The lesser lights of the peasant movement, the late former Ateneo law dean Jerry Montemayor of the FFF, or Federation of Free Farmers, was part of that entourage.

For all the cynical ploys that Mr. Marcos employed to convince the world, Washington specifically, that he had coopted the rebellious peasantry, there was one part of his circus act that was essentially true. He treated the small farmers well and he pampered the peasant leaders who were in the mainstream movement. It was the last time in our history that peasant leaders were treated like rock stars at the Palace.

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