REVOLUTION LANDMARK Workers of the Department of Public Works and Highways spruce up the People Power Monument, the 1986 revolution landmark on Edsa in Quezon City, for today’s 36th anniversary celebration of the ouster of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
DAVAO CITY—Former activists who saw the ruthlessness of martial law in Mindanao believe that what has been known as the 1986 People Power Revolution did not happen only at Edsa but also in other parts of the country, and it started long before those four heady days that ended with the ouster of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Two lawyers who were incarcerated in Cebu for fighting against the dictatorship called on the youth to remember the lessons of history and never allow tyranny to return. A youth leader in Naga City and a bishop in Palawan said Filipinos should not let “thieves” get back to Malacañang.
“Perhaps historical revisionists and enablers of the Marcoses would have a more difficult time eroding support for the Marcos ouster if more people had understood that the revolution happened not just in February 1986 and not just at Edsa,” said Maria Victoria “Mags” Maglana, a former student activist from Davao City.
The 54-year-old former nongovernment development worker now running for the congressional seat of Davao City’s first district, told the Inquirer on Wednesday that the revolution started before 1986 and played out in different ways in various places.
“My childhood memories included being hypervigilant as we went to bed, fearful of strafing attacks that at one point had become rampant in Davao Oriental,” she said. “Waking up to a dawn fire and grenade attack at the Bangkerohan market in Davao City in 1978, it was only much later that I understood that those were years under Marcosian martial law.”
Marcos imposed martial law nationwide in 1972, a year before he was to step down under the 1935 Constitution, and began ruling by decree.
Passion awakened
Mindanews editor Marcos Mordeno, another former activist, said it was during that period that he developed a passion for writing “after witnessing so much suffering, abuse of power, and the courage of people, both prominent and ordinary, to resist tyranny.”
“Torture, summary killing (salvaging), forced evacuation, massacre. These are sordid things, but somebody had to write/record them,” he wrote on his social media page.
He said that talking to victims and documenting their ordeal “required more courage than going to battle.”
Mordeno, now 59 and a father of four, said people were so sick of the regime’s corruption and cheating that even children had coined a popular expression to warn playmates trying to cheat at games: “Walay Marcosay (no Marcosian tricks).”
Mordeno spent four sleepless nights on Feb. 22 to Feb. 25, 1986, while he and a colleague at the defunct Media Mindanao News Service covered protests in Cagayan de Oro City as the world watched events unfold at Edsa.
Fraud, violence
Hundreds of thousands massed up on Metro Manila’s busiest thoroughfare between Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, two weeks after the Feb. 7, 1986, snap presidential election called by Marcos.
Foreign observers witnessed the fraud and violence that marred the balloting in which Marcos claimed victory over “housewife” Corazon Aquino.
“I thought there would be a civil war so I entrusted most of my savings to a priest,” Mordeno said in a post on his Facebook page. “I told him, ‘It’s up to you, Father, to use that in case something happens to me.’”
Filipinos in other places also mobilized support for the “people power” at Edsa.
Fervor outside capital
On the last day of the Marcoses in Malacañang on Feb. 25, 1986, more than 20,000 people blocked the Bamban bridge in Pampanga to stop a large armored column from Tarlac that was headed to Manila.
In Cebu where Aquino and her running mate, former Sen. Salvador Laurel were stranded on Feb. 22, thousands had massed up at Fuente Osmeña Circle to show support.
The Baguio Cathedral became the rallying point for thousands of activists, professionals, artists and even retired soldiers who showed support for the uprising and the military mutineers who broke away from Marcos.
Many in Davao celebrated the fall of the Marcoses but Maglana said her group did not join them, uncertain of what to expect.
“Not long after, domestic and international media began to refer to that political storm as the February 1986 Edsa Revolution, unwittingly, or by design, limiting the timeline and locus of the actions and its actors, and cutting the mobilizations off from the overall historical movements that were diverse but united in the shared struggle against authoritarianism,” she said.
Chance for revisionism
Lawyer Democrito Barcenas, 84, a member Free Legal Assistance Group in Cebu, said the son and namesake of the dictator who is running for president in the May 9 polls “should not be given the chance to revise history by saying that Marcos’ years were the golden years of history, otherwise there would not have been People Power.”
Meinrado Paredes, a 75-year-old retired judge, acknowledged that “plenty” of social and political problems were not solved by the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.
“The rich are still getting richer, and the poor, poorer,” he said. “Although we have a free press, the legitimate press is still overwhelmed by purveyors of lies and deceit. There are many trolls while misinformation and disinformation are rampant.”
But the youth should not forget history because the freedom they enjoy today is the fruit of the struggles of those who fought the dictatorship, Paredes said.
Millennials must not forget
Both men were detained by the martial law authorities for their opposition to Marcos—Barcenas for three months and Paredes for a year before he could take the bar exams.
“The millennials must continue the fight because the Edsa Revolution is a continuing crusade and struggle which millennials must never forget,” Barcenas said.
In Naga, Khryss Arañas, chair of Jovenes Anakbayan Bicol called on Filipinos not to allow those ousted by the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution to return to power.
“Return what was stolen, not the thieves,” Arañas said.
Palawan Bishop Broderick Pabillo, Vicar Apostolic of Taytay in northern Palawan, said in a pastoral letter earlier this week that Filipinos should also remember the atrocities during martial law.
“We cannot say that the children are different from their father because they continue to benefit from the fruits of their stolen wealth and deny the thievery,” he said. —WITH REPORTS FROM ADOR VINCENT MAYOL, ROMAR MIRANDA, PAOLO GABRIEL JAMER AND INQUIRER RESEARCH