"You Have Me Now"

To Filipinos last week, it looked like Appomattox. Lean young Luis Taruc (34), canebrake Marxist and supreme commander of the outlawed Hukbalahaps (TIME, May 31), had come out of hiding to accept the government's unconditional amnesty for himself and some 50,000 followers.

Under the watching eyes of Manila police, Taruc strode to the office of President Elpidio Quirino in Malacanan Palace, thrust out his hand to Constabulary General Mariano Castaneda, whose main job for two years has been to hunt Taruc. Castaneda ignored the hand, frisked the man. Taruc carried no weapons (though the seven-man bodyguard he brought along yielded, among other items, nine pistols, two submachine guns and two crowbars). Later, having pledged his loyalty and cooperation to the government and watched President Quirino sign the amnesty, Taruc seized the constabulary chief's hand and pumped it vigorously. "You have me now," he said, grinning.

What General Castaneda still did not have were the weapons of the rest of Luis Taruc's men (to be registered, not surrendered), nor the men themselves. They were standing by in the swamps of Central Luzon to see whether the government would go ahead with the land redistribution the Huks demanded. In his maiden speech before Congress (where he at last assumed the seat that he had won in 1946), Taruc revealed that Appomattox was not exactly what he had in mind. Said he: "I did not come to surrender, but to cooperate . . . The word 'surrender' is poison to the crystal cup of better relations."

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