Memorare

"We had a chance in a million to right what was wrong in our society, in our polity. We blew it. From picture pretty to pretty ugly"

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the culmination of the EDSA “People Power” Revolution. It commemorates the day when Cory Aquino and Doy Laurel took their oaths of office as president and vice president respectively at Club Filipino.  I was present at that historic occasion.

On the same day, from the balcony of Malacañan Palace, Ferdinand Marcos likewise took his oath as president after the controversial “snap” elections held earlier in February where the Commission on Elections certified to his “victory,” which was thereafter affirmed by the Batasang Pambansa.

But on Feb. 22, sections of the military forces under the leadership of Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and AFP Vice Chief of Staff Fidel Valdez Ramos declared a mutiny against Marcos.

Before dark of that fateful day, Marcos, his family and key allies were taken by a US helicopter to Clark Air Base, there to be ferried by another US plane to Hawaii, where he was to spend his last days.

President Duterte is not going to the EDSA Shrine built to commemorate the historic event.  Like many Filipinos, he probably wonders if after 33 years, the mutiny where no blood was shed was worth it in terms of whether we as a nation of 107-million people are better off now than before it.

But if life has not become any better for most Filipinos, blame should not be placed on the EDSA mutiny and the bloodless “revolution” that ushered in democratic space in lieu of authoritarian rule.

It is the fault of leaders we put in power after Marcos, and ours because we chose them.  We had a chance in a million to right what was wrong in our society, in our polity. We blew it.

That is a collective fault that our generation will have to apologize to our successors for.  

We commemorate the return of democratic freedoms, even if we have made a mockery of true democracy, where equal opportunity hardly exists, where the poor, as the trite observation goes, get poorer while a few get richer and richer.

* * *

February in our history is also a month for sad recollection.

At the Plaza de Santa Isabel in Intramuros, midway from the Manila Cathedral to the centuries-old San Agustin Church, is a Pieta-like monument which commemorates the merciless slaughter of thousands of Filipinos during the liberation of Manila waged by American forces and Filipinos against the Imperial Japanese Army.

Defeated, Japanese troops perpetrated gruesome massacres of civilians in Manila, mostly in the Ermita and Malate areas.  This carnage, which happened from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, is immortalized for the memory of succeeding generations born after the Second World War through the efforts of Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation, which built the monument in Intramuros.

It features a hooded woman slumped on the ground cradling a lifeless child in her arms, surrounded by six suffering figures.

The inscription on the monument’s base was written by Nick Joaquin, the National Artist for Literature who I had the privilege of once being interviewed during the struggle against the dictatorship.  For the benefit of our readers and for my grandchildren who should always remember that war makes no victors but only victims, let me quote:

“This memorial is dedicated to all those innocent victims of war, many of whom went nameless and unknown to a common grave, or never even knew a grave at all, their bodies having been consumed by fire or crushed to dust beneath the rubble of ruins.

“Let this monument be a gravestone for each and every one of the over 100,000 men, women, children and infants killed in Manila during its battle of liberation.

“We have never forgotten them.  Nor shall we ever forget.”

Memorare.

* * *

Also in that month of February 1945, retreating Japanese forces went to almost every house in San Pablo City, Laguna whose residents were Chinese-Filipinos. The males among them aged 15 to 50 were “conscripted” to “work”; brought to the patio of the Catholic Church in the center of the town.

From there they were marched to a field far from the poblacion where they were made to dig a trench some ten feet deep.  Thereafter, they were bayoneted and beheaded to their death, and mercilessly pushed to the trench they dug which was to be their grave.

Their families searched in vain, thinking they were brought to nearby Quezon, only to realize later that they were massacred to their untimely death.

Inside the Cementerio de Chinos in San Pablo near the highway which leads to Quezon province is a mausoleum erected by the descendants of the 600 men who were massacred that fateful February.  Their remains are co-mingled and entombed therein.

My grandfather and my uncle were among the 600.

* * *

I write not to condemn any race for inhuman actions perpetrated during a time of war.  Despite the fact that my maternal grandfather and my only uncle were killed by Japanese soldiers at the end of the Second World War, I hold no deep resentment in my heart.  For one, I was born after them, unable to know them personally.

If there is any evil that we must condemn and never excise from our minds, it is the horrors that war brings, wherever and whenever it happens.

* * *

Last Friday, the President administered the oath of office to members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority which would begin the transition process from civil strife to peaceful autonomous governance, after the ratification of the BOL.

Like any other Mindanaoan, Duterte wanted to see an end to the violence where government and rebels were “counting victories not by progress or development but by the dead bodies that were strewn around”.

 “The road to peace may be long and rough, but I am glad that we have finally reached its endpoint,” the President said.

We hope.  We pray.