Origins edit
The Sakdalista movement was borne out of peasant discontent in the Philippines during the 1920s and the 1930s. Sturtevant regards the movement as a continuation of a millenarian-populist tradition of mass movements such as the Tangulan and the Colorum. The events which immediately precipitated the movement's birth, however, happened in 1930 - when the head of the Senate Clipping Division, Benigno Ramos, supported an anti-American students' strike at the Manila High School. Senate President Manuel Quezon, not wanting to displease the Americans, dismissed Ramos from his post. Ramos' dismissal from the government further arose his ultranationalist and anti-government sentiments, to the point that he decided to devote his journalistic efforts to a new fortnightly named Sakdal.