Millennials vs Marcos burial back to mark ‘Edsa’

Student groups and members of the academe who earlier protested the surprise burial of Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani are gathering again today to mark the 31st anniversary of the dictator’s downfall.

The #BlockMarcos youth movement is set to hold a 9 a.m. rally at People Power Monument and from there start a caravan going to Libingan in Taguig City.

Contingents from the University of the Philippines, Cavite State University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, and members Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan are expected to join.

The protest is also expecting marchers from Student League Against Marcos (SLAM), which claims to have about a thousand high school students as members who have found common cause via Facebook.

Students and faculty members of Ateneo de Manila University will start their commemoration with a 1 p.m. Mass at La Salle Greenhills. They will then proceed to the People Power Monument for a program starting at 4 p.m., according to Randy Tuano, an economics professor who helped organize the event online.

Youths from the millennial generation—who were not yet even born when Marcos was ousted through the Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986 and when he died in Hawaii three years later—were among the first to take to the streets on Nov. 18 after news broke out that the strongman’s burial was already under way at the Heroes’ Cemetery.

The burial was earlier approved by a 9-5 vote of the Supreme Court and carried out with the express approval of President Duterte who maintained that Marcos may be interred at Libingan since he was a former soldier and president.

For SLAM cofounder Ignacio Villareal, the Duterte administration, after giving the burial its blessing, continued to engage in historical revisionism when it decided to commemorate the Edsa Revolution with a “simple” program inside Camp Aguinaldo.

“Perhaps simple rites were (preferred) so that the return of authoritarianism would be more politically palatable in the greater scheme of things,” said Villareal, a grade 12 student from Xavier School in San Juan. He is a great grandson of the late House Speaker Cornelio Villareal and captain of his school’s debate team.

On Wednesday, members of the #BlockMarcos movement hoisted a banner that read “Hukayin (Dig it up)” at the People Power Monument, again demanding that Marcos’ remains be exhumed from Libingan.

“We do not give up the fight for democracy and we remind the Marcoses that their patriarch will not rest in peace at the Libingan until justice is served,” said Kat Leuch, a UP law student who serves as the movement’s spokesperson.