Name Crisanto Evangelista | Role Politician | |
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Died January 25, 1942, Manila, Philippines Organizations founded | ||
Crisanto Evangelista (November 1, 1888 – June 2, 1943) was a Filipino Communist politician of the first half of the 20th century.
Biography
On May Day 1913, together with Herminigildo Cruz, he had attempted to guarantee basic workers' rights and unify the trade unions in the country.
After defecting from the Nacionalista Party with its left wing allies, he became one of the founders (1922) and early leaders of the increasingly Marxist Partido Obrero, which became the Progressive Workers Party. Around it, he formed a new trade union federation, one that was more radical in its goals.
Evangelista was one of five members of the inaugural executive committee of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, established in 1927 as a Pacific regional subdivision of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU, commonly known as the Profintern). He was instrumental in affiliating the Philippine labor federation, the Congreso Obrero de Filipinas (COF) with that organization on June 30 of that same year.
On November 7, 1930, the 13th anniversary of the October Revolution, Evangelista reformed his group as the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas and subsequently led it briefly until it was banned on October 26, 1932 by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. Jailed towards the end of the decade, Evangelista was involved in informal talks with President Manuel L. Quezon, negotiating a social peace.
He was arrested by invading Japanese troops along with Pedro Abad Santos, and Guillermo Capadocia, and executed on June 2, 1943 after an attempt to use him as a bargaining tool in contacts with the Hukbalahap.