José Baltazar Lava, also known as Peping or Harry, was the general secretary of the

Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 The Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 (PKP-1930), also known as the Philippine Communist Party, is a communist party in the Philippines that was established on November 7, 1930. It uses the aforementioned appellation in order to distinguish i ...

(PKP), from 1948 until his arrest in 1950. He spent the following two decades in prison and another two decades in exile in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

Early life and political career

Lava was born in 1912 to a moderately affluent landowning family of six brothers and three sisters in Bulacan. He obtained a degree in accounting at the

University of the Philippines The University of the Philippines (UP; ) is a Higher education in the Philippines#State universities and colleges, state university system in the Philippines. It is the country's national university, as mandated by List of Philippine laws, Re ...

School of Business after graduating high school in 1929. He then went to the

University of the Philippines College of Law The University of the Philippines College of Law (often referred to as UP Law) is the law school of the University of the Philippines Diliman. Formally established in 1911 in UP Manila, it is the third oldest continually-operating law school ...

in 1933 and graduated in 1937. He became a Communist Party member right after passing the bar late in 1937. Lava became general secretary of the Central Committee of the PKP in May 1948, shortly after his brother Vicente Lava died in 1947. Lava was previously a politburo member and the chief of the party's finance committee. The PKP began a violent insurrection against the government in 1948 and was banned by the government the same year. In early 1950, the PKP established the People's Liberation Army (), which was made up of about 10,000 soldiers. The entire secretariat of the Central Committee of the PKP, including Lava, was arrested on October 18, 1950, following the earlier capture of the politburo in Manila. Lava was succeeded by his other brother

Jesus Lava Jesus Baltazar Lava (May 15, 1914 – January 21, 2003) was the Secretary General of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930, first Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP) from 1950. Career Jesus Lava became the Secretary General of the pro- ...

in February 1951. Lava was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1951. He was released from prison on 4 January 1970 and fled to

. While living in self-imposed exile, he authored several books on the communist movement in the Philippines. After the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Lava returned to the Philippines in 1990 and died there in 2000.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lava, José 1912 births 2000 deaths 20th-century Filipino lawyers Filipino communists Filipino exiles Filipino revolutionaries Filipino prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Communist Party of the Philippines politicians Filipino political party founders Expatriates in Czechoslovakia Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the Philippines