ABSTRACT
After dawn on March 20, 1988, nearly 200 New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas aboard several stolen logging trucks sped into the town of Cabarroguis, the backwater capital of northern Luzon's Quirino province. The rebels paid no attention to government offices or local constabulary outpost, instead driving directly to the JPE sawmill complex on the outskirts of town. The incident offered one measure of how far the NPA had progressed since its inauspicious beginnings in a dusty Central Luzon barrio. The mobility of the NPA forced the government to disperse its forces throughout the two mountainous provinces. Mobility had become one of the keys to the NPA's military successes, and the speed and stamina rebel units displayed as they moved through difficult terrain were impressive. Rebel strategists hoped to escalate the war in 1989 and 1990, and toward that end the NPA was consolidating platoons and squads to create companies numbering 60 to 100 guerrillas.
