THE Metrocom police patrol the streets, scouring every dark alley and street corner for violators of the national curfew. Loud knocks on your gate at two-in-the-morning could mean you’ve been targeted for arrest, persecution, or worse… ‘disappearance.’
Behind closed doors, radicals gather in dimly-lit rooms,
muted voices discussing the struggle against tyranny. Television networks and
newspaper offices are barricaded, the airwaves and print media censored.
Journalists fear for their lives, the outspoken receive death threats,
activists disappear into the night.
Our Version of Events
The very little this generation knows about the EDSA
Revolution and Martial Law, they got from the footnote in Philippine History
class they slept through in high school, or the gossip they’ve overheard from
adults who lived through that time, or the white lies they’ve seen shared on
social media.
Our generation has had to rely on secondhand accounts to
imagine our own images of Martial Law. That’s why our version of events may not
always be the most reliable.
It’s astonishing just how unaware most Millennials are of the
ills of the Marcos regime. I’ve seen and talked to peers of mine who think that
the time of Martial Law (and I’m directly quoting here) “was not that bad.” Bordering
on blasphemy, these individuals rattle about the “peace and order” of the 70s,
about the stable value of the peso, how the dictatorship was instrumental to
the creeping progress we now enjoy.
They air similar views on Facebook, sharing the long list of
supposed infrastructure projects completed under Marcos, fawning over the
glamour of Imelda and how she influenced dignitaries the world over,
christening a time of oppression as a “Golden Age of the Philippines.”
And with the countless Pro-Marcos and whitewashed Martial Law
lies circulating around the internet, the misled crowd grows, wandering further
away from reality.
Millennials know about the 12’oclock curfews, Imelda’s lavish
collection of shoes, and Marcos’ iron gauntlet. Swept under the rug are the
Filipinos tortured and martyred, the trampling of freedom, the large-scale
corruption, the thousands of desaparecidos who have yet to surface to this day.
Inheritors of the Past
The first line of Carlos P. Romulo’s most memorized piece,
probably still ringing in the ears of most of the Filipino youth obligated to
recite it, goes – “I am a Filipino - inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to
the uncertain future.”
What the line falls short of capturing is that we’ve also had
to heirs to the darker facets of our history. But “hostage to the uncertain
future” sums up our situation spot on. The secondhand stories of Martial law
atrocities, the worn promises of a brighter tomorrow, the hand-me-down records
of a fraught democracy.
It’s been 30 years since the end of the Marcos regime, yet we
still suffer its repercussions today. Extrajudicial killings have become a
staple of all administrations since 1986, the fight of minorities to be heard
continues, and the burden of the debt left by the dictatorship still hangs over
our heads.
Some may say oppression never actually left the Philippines,
it just took on a different form. Most of today’s youth choose to ignore this.
There’s a need better the education about Martial Law, the
Marcos reign and the EDSA revolution. The succeeding generations of young
Filipinos need to see that no good can come of a repressive state, that there
is no such thing as a “malevolent dictator,” that excessive power can only lead
to greed and corruption.
There’s also a need to honor and remember those who fell in
the night, those who fought for a freedom that they themselves did not get to
feel.
The Marcos regime and Martial Law was an ordeal suffered
through collectively by the Filipino people for 21 long years, young Filipinos
need to be exposed to its raw facts– the casualties, the fraud and
malversation, the stifling of free expression, the inhumane treatment ¬– to better cement into their minds Never
Again.
It’s the year 2016, thirty long years after the end of
Martial Law. Yet, journalists still fear for their lives, the outspoken receive
death threats, activists disappear into the night.
Photo by Chalcedon Sanor
