High school kids get a Marcos retelling

Senator Risa Hontiveros INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES

SEN. RISA Hontiveros has donated to Quezon City High School (QCHS) copies of a book chronicling the experiences of those who suffered during martial law, amid government preparations to grant Ferdinand Marcos a hero’s burial.

Hontiveros said her donation of 20 copies of veteran journalist Raissa Robles’ “Marcos Martial Law Never Again” to the school library was a “small gesture to save history.” She said she hoped the students would discover the truth about his Marcos’ nearly two-decade rule and the abuses under martial law.

“The stories [in this book] are important. You may not have experienced martial law, but you would at least know about the blood, sweat and lives sacrificed for our democracy,” Hontiveros told senior high school students during the turnover on Friday.

Among the stories in the book is that of Archimedes Trajano, a 22-year-old student who went missing after he pointedly questioned Marcos’ daughter, now Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos, about her qualifications then to head the Kabataang Barangay. Trajano was later found dead in a Manila street in September 1977.

The QCHS students asked Hontiveros and martial law victim and former Commission on Human Rights Chair Etta Rosales, who attended the turnover, why they opposed giving Marcos a hero’s burial.

Rosales, who was jailed and tortured during martial law, told the students that burying Marcos in Libingan ng mga Bayani would effectively “erase the reality of Edsa.”

“It is an absurdity and an atrocity. Once you bury Marcos at Libingan, you erase the betrayal of the dictatorship against the thousands of people who were illegally arrested, abducted, tortured and killed. Children after you would not have the chance to know the truth,” Rosales said.

She blamed former administrations for failing to properly educate the youth about Marcos. His son and namesake Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s near vice presidential win in the May 9 elections was an attempt to “vindicate (his father’s) name, to revise history and to say that he was a great man, that the martial law era was a great era in our history,” she said.

“It’s a big fat lie and I think we should fight against that,” Rosales said.
Andrea San Andres, a QCHS student and self-confessed Marcos loyalist whose family hails from Batac, Ilocos Norte, said Ilocanos like her grew up knowing only of the good deeds of the dictator.

The 15-year-old said that with the book, she would be able to “expand my knowledge on the bad things the Marcoses did.”