NOTEBOOK: Aborted review of the People Power play

NOTEBOOK: Aborted review of the People Power play

I wanted very much to watch People Power, a play by Carlos Bulosan Theatre that concluded last weekend. I asked for a complimentary ticket since I published its poster in color in this paper and I recall having also published its press release. Unfortunately, my email to its publicist who asked me to do some interviews, did not merit a response, judging by the silence it elicited.

I heard there were discussions after each performance, whenever panelists were invited to discuss the play with the audience. I would have wanted to participate as a panelist to share my views and get a free ticket. Unfortunately again, no panel discussions were scheduled for the last weekend shows.

Because of my strong interest in writing about the play, I called the ticketmaster office. I was told there would be a pay-whatever-you-can show on Sunday, May 11, Mother’s Day. In my excitement, I brought along a party of eight, including wife, son, daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren.

But when we got to the Theatre Passe Muraille after a rushed Mother’s Day lunch, we were told that the show was sold out. So, I didn’t watch it and I couldn’t write a review.

But I thought of this bright idea. I am reprinting here excerpts from my review of a video documentary, Batas Militar (Martial Law), published in October 1997 in this same paper. I think that had I watched the play People Power, I would have written essentially the same thoughts.

And I would have added some more, like 1. The EDSA people power uprising is over-romanticized in cultural shows and in people’s minds and overstated in history to the extent that its real meaning to the Philippines and its people is incorrectly interpreted. 2. The role of the U.S. government in supporting the Marcos martial law regime, politically and militarily, is glossed over. 3. That it is not really a revolution because it didn’t achieve lasting changes that would benefit the overwhelming majority of the people. It is more of a spontaneous city uprising spearheaded by the middle class who couldn’t take it anymore, and elements in the Church and the military and the legal opposition, an upheaval that peaked after more than a decade of struggle and sacrifices that included detention, torture and death, that were mainly inflicted on the organized Left and people’s organizations. 4. The gains of EDSA, primary of which is the overthrow of a fascist dictatorship, have been steadily eroded by the four subsequent regimes, from Cory Aquino to Gloria Arroyo, as eloquently demonstrated by the state of human rights and social justice in the country today; the state of the people’s lives – the grinding poverty, the hunger, the lack of jobs and opportunities; and the state of corruption in the highest levels of government. In fact it’s much worse now, with 8 million OFWS and all.

That said, here is my review of “people power” written 11 years ago.

Batas Militar – A Must See For All

I RECENTLY watched that video, “BATAS MILITAR: a Documentary on Martial Law in the Philippines,” and it brought back memories of that dark period of Philippine history when the whole nation suffered under the unmitigated oppression by the Marcos authoritarian rule.

The two-hour long video was produced by Foundation for Worldwide People Power headed by Eugenia Apostol, the founding publisher of The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The extensive film footage and pictures of actual events that took place from 1972 when Marcos declared martial law, to the EDSA uprising of 1986 that toppled the dictatorship, bring back to life the monumental tyranny and deception, the unprecedented violence and unparalleled greed that no one ever imagined could possibly emanate from one man.

In fact no one on record has come out to say it would turn out that way – I mean the extent to which Marcos had ruled with an iron hand and the extent to which he plundered the nation’s wealth. (No even Nostradamus had predicted this unique historical phenomenon.)

Tens of thousands were arrested and imprisoned without court charges, thousands were tortured and hundreds summarily executed. More than a year ago, ten thousand victims of human rights violations won a class suit in a U.S. court against the Marcos family. The court ruled that they be compensated by the Marcos estate with U.S. $2.25 billion.

The video documents how Marcos brought down the “old oligarchs” who were his enemies only to replace them with his cronies who later formed the new oligarchy. Marcos’s loot was estimated by the CIA at U.S.$10 billion. Recent revelations of the Marcos gold loot alone put it at a mind-boggling U.S.$13 billion.

All this unimaginable greed for material wealth and the unconscionable lust for absolute power were satisfied at the expense of the people and the nation.

Having lived in a foreign land for more than a decade and having been detached from the country’s political and cultural life in many ways, I thought one could go on with life without as much as remembering martial law. After all, this is 1997, and a post-Cory Aquino and hopefully a post-Ramos era in the Philippines. But no, Marcos martial law will always haunt us.

Whether one is this far from the country or generations removed decades later, martial law remains a permanent scar in our collective consciousness as a people. The video documentary, 25 years later from martial law’s imposition in 1972, is only one reminder. And it is a chilling grim reminder.

If only for that single accomplishment, the documentary has excellently served its purpose. But it is certainly more than that. It is solidly researched, done with more than 150 important personalities interviewed including President Ramos, Cory Aquino, some generals, Imelda Marcos. Other key players and opposition leaders.

Particularly interesting was the focus on the personality and political savvy of Marcos’s arch enemy Ninoy Aquino. He was clearly presented as the leader and icon of the anti-Marcos opposition, the martyr whose assassination triggered the demise of the dictatorship.

Maybe the flaw of this attempt at documenting martial law is in its portrayal of the opposing political forces of the time. The political struggle was almost reduced to that between Marcos representing the dark forces of evil and Ninoy Aquino, the knight in shining armor, the valiant hero whose execution emboldened a nation. Aquino assassinated at the airport igniting the EDSA uprising of 1986.
Reminiscent of Rizal shot by firing squad at the Luneta, incensing the Filipino people to rise up in arms in 1896 to topple the despotic Spanish colonial regime.

Aquino’s tussles with Marcos were well chronicled: his privilege speeches in the Senate exposing the Jabidah massacre and the Oplan Saggitarius; his imprisonment and 40-day hunger strike; his valiant candidacy, while in prison, to the Batasang Pambansa; and his continued anti-Marcos activities in the U.S. All these were important in encouraging open opposition to the regime and hastening its downfall. All these lent color and drama to the unfolding historical events. And they were very effective in politicising the heretofore-apolitical middle class and that segment of the elite who until then, could live with Marcos in power.

But martial law was certainly more than that. It was more than the life and death struggle between Marcos and his opponents in the traditional political opposition.

It’s true, martial law, designed by Marcos and administered by defense chief Juan Ponce Enrile and their cabal of generals, was a power grab to perpetuate their rule and exclude political opponents from the ruling elite. But it was also used to serve and protect U.S. business and military interests in the country and to silence the growing mass movements in the ranks of the youth and students, the intelligentsia, the workers and the peasants whose people’s organizations and armed contingents were spreading in the rural areas.

When the privilege the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in 1971, the Marcos government came up with a political wanted list of 63 names who were mostly student and youth leaders, labor union leaders and peasant organizers. Some of them the military suspected as the leaders of the newly reestablished Communist Party of the Philippines. That was the first target list of Marcos and his military.

The fire that Marcos wanted to extinguish was the mounting opposition to his regime that was spreading in various sectors of the population – the armed peasant movement that was being organized and led by the Communist Party and the New People’s Army; the new labor movement that was being nourished by a working class ideology and supported by the student youth and the intelligentsia; the middle class who could no longer stomach the corruption of the regime and its intolerance to dissent.

The video documentary certainly captured the drama of the era. But it is mostly the drama in stifling the elite opposition, like the Aquinos and the Lopezes. It’s true they were jailed and they lost their properties and their chances to assume a dominant role in the ruling elite. And a number of other elite and middle class personalities were also imprisoned and tortured, some of them summarily killed. But those who suffered the most in terms of prolonged detention, severe torture and “salvaging” or summary execution, were the leaders and activists of the Left, the armed rebels, the organized workers in the cities and the peasant leaders and the masses in the rural areas.

This is not to belittle the suffering and the sacrifices of the elite and the middle class under martial law. But if we look at the Amnesty International’s 1974 report on torture and detention under Marcos’s martial law and the subsequent reports of the Task Force Detainees of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, the most barbaric forms of torture inflicted and the longest detention imposed by the Marcos military involved the Left rebels and leaders of the grassroots organizations.
The most number of victims of killings, rape, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of property and other depredations came from the masses and their leaders. Not the elite opposition, not the comfortable middle class, not the “critically” collaborating Church hierarchy led by Cardinal Sin, nor the “military rebels” led by Enrile and Ramos, et al, whose officers and men abducted, tortured and executed countless victims of human rights abuses.

Ninoy Aquino’s hunger strike was the most famous during martial law. But there were prolonged hunger strikes by political detainees in Camp Bicutan, in Camp Crame, in Camp Aguinaldo, in Camp Olivas, in Cebu and Davao. While Aquino lost weight in his hunger strike, he had the attention of doctors who saw to it that he would not die and cause a terrible embarassment for Marcos. Many of the other political detainees on hunger strike then were left to suffer on their own by their military jailers. In some areas like the Constabulary Security Unit (CSU) in Camp Crame, the hunger strikers were padlocked in their cells and their visiting rights suspended. Some were even physically beaten up and mentally tortured while on hunger strike.

The workers’ right to strike was practically permanently abolished and labor union leaders were arrested at the slight suspicion of being involved in organizing. Peasants were rounded up and tortured in areas where NPA groups were known to be active. In the cities, middle class personalities were summoned to military camps for “rumor mongering” or for supporting or attending anti-Marcos actions.

The video production is a major step in documenting the abuses and the depredations of the Marcos martial law regime and in revealing its unparalleled violence and corruption.

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Postscript 2008 — We have actually only scratched the surface of what happened during those 14 years. Our scholars, researchers, journalists, writers and cultural workers have a lot of work to do to unearth an historical era.