I had felt humiliated at first, and later I became angry. For days afterward, I refused to say a word to him. He greeted me in the morning and I would look at him like he was an inanimate object. Then I would convey to him a blank face mixed with just a bit of frigid disdain. But inside, I was seething.
Young Filipinas in those days were chaperoned when they went out on dates. My fifteen-year-old mind worried that he had broken the rules of propriety. Although I had no reason to believe he wasn’t anything but a nice man, as he was generally courteous and even spoke softly, I had become angry out of fear. To have acted out this courtly scene in front of all these men was too much for my very Catholic, conservative convent school upbringing. Even worse, I was afraid my parents would find out. I did not want them to know that boys were already interested in me. My parents did not compromise with us about this. Tang, like most fathers of his generation, believed it was his sacred duty to guard his daughter from the attentive eyes of men, no matter how decent these men turn out to be.
I remember the scenarios only too well when my two older sisters came of age. When young men came courting, formally like tradition required, which meant coming to our house, meeting my parents, introducing themselves, and reciting the long lineage of respectable families they descended from, Tang especially would become unsettled. Sometimes they would even serenade my sisters, which embarrassed them to no end, for by that time, serenading had become an outdated tradition.
At these times, my father would shoo them away, even when my oldest sister was almost 20 years old! But such were the times we lived in. Girls were taught to be modest. Parents guarded their daughters like they were precious, delicate pieces of jewelry, handled with care until they were deemed fit to marry.
In the conference room, thinking about the incident, I felt shivers run down my back and a wild thumping of my heart as if I had committed a crime. I did not want to displease my parents again; nor did I want to cause further trouble. Wasn’t I doing that by being here? I couldn’t even imagine the grief they were going through. Remembering the combination of disdain, shame, and fear etched on my mother’s face while sitting in front of the commander’s desk that fateful afternoon, my heart lurched. As for Tang, I was certain he would be disappointed about being unable to protect me as he had done with his older daughters. In my teenaged way of thinking, I figured they were owed the right to be upset when a man began to show interest in their daughter. This was accepted practice with my parents, who had impressed upon us that we should not expect to marry young, for first we needed to finish school, complete a university degree, and then make something of ourselves.
Only years later did I realize that this was the least of their worries. Like every Filipino household that had fallen victim to martial law, my parents were afraid of the serious and risky position I had found myself in. Would they ever see me again? Would I come out alive? These and a million other things worried them, as Timmee told me later. They were worried that horrific things might happen to me inside, just like they had heard stories of countless women who had been raped and tortured. How silly. Indeed, so silly of me.
I have no idea about what happened to Danhill, my suitor at the camp. I called him Danhill because like the rest of those who were there, I have forgotten his name. Or perhaps my mind refused to give up this secret. Every now and again, when I hear that song on the radio, I think of him. I heard later that he was sent to the larger, more horrific camp. I can only guess what happened to him there. But when I hear this song, I now comprehend at last the stroke of humanity he exhibited at that time in my life. The song will forever remind me of him. That was his song and always will be. He also taught me that life had to go on despite where we were. That life’s simple joys, needs, and daily distractions need not stop nor be abandoned just because we were in a place where daily life as we knew it had vanished.
As the days dragged on, I became anxious to find out when I would be released. The soldiers continued their silence about why I was arrested. What they did tell us was that we are “aktibistas” [activists] or sometimes resorted to the more insidious term, “subersibos,” [subversives]. They were either themselves ignorant about our alleged crimes or perhaps they simply reveled in displaying their power now that the country was under military rule. Translation: no explanation was needed to those whose rights they trampled. And me, a convent-school girl, what did I know about asking them the proper questions about my rights, anyway? I suppose I, too, took it for granted that the Marcos dictatorship arrested bodies: any bodies and nobodies. No one questioned that in those days. We all behaved in ways that people living under a repressive regime behaved—maddeningly uncritical, frightened out of our wits, and mercilessly silenced. And by behaving as such, we unwittingly turned ourselves into accomplices.
The waiting, the senseless, anxious waiting kept me on edge like I was about to fall off a cliff. What will happen next? The uncertainty of the next second, the next minute. And then what?
I tried to quiet my mind by reading, but words would jumble on the page, undecipherable and meaningless. My mind was growing fatigued, refusing to function. I looked around the room to see who I could talk to in order to calm my clamoring nerves. I did not find a glimmer of hope on the faces of those around me. Panic only grew when someone was called and he would immediately pack his bag and leave, never to return.
I continued to look for an explanation for my arrest. When I talked about it with Timmee years later, she conjectured that perhaps the military saw me participate at a demonstration, and that the military routinely took pictures of people in anti-government protests in order to arrest them later. She was referring to a demonstration we both attended, which was aimed at protesting recent increases in tuition fees by area schools. “Why then,” I asked her, “didn’t you get arrested yourself if we were at the same demonstration?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
I have my own speculation about my arrest.
The student activism days that had swept Manila earlier had also reached the provinces. I cannot remember who invited me to attend a sit-in, though I imagine these events had become quite commonplace on school campuses. Curious, I agreed to a meeting at someone’s house and joined a group of young people to listen to some lecture on injustice and oppression. The visibly pregnant woman who gave the talk also mentioned some Maoist precepts that as a teenager I found difficult to grasp. At that meeting, she handed out these little red books, the size of novena prayer booklets common to Catholics. It was about a quarter inch thick and was authored by Mao Tse Tung. When I got home and read the book, I found it incomprehensible. I suppose I could have feigned ignorance about being a Maoist because of my inability to unravel its concepts. But that would just have fallen on deaf ears.
As was likely the case with these sit-ins, government intelligence had someone infiltrate this meeting and had reported the names of those present to the military. What I don’t understand to this day is that this occurred more than a year earlier, more than likely even before martial law was declared. Why didn’t the government arrest me as soon as I came out of the house? Also, it did not answer the question as to what law I had violated in attending such a meeting. We still had freedom of speech at that time as I recall. Surely, one meeting, would not constitute a fifteen year old planning to overthrow a government, no?
How did I violate the laws of the land? How did I become an enemy of the state? I did not ask these questions at the camp because I was certain my jailers would not have told me anyway. Besides, asking them would have been an act equal to suicide, because that would have meant questioning their authority. The situation was dire, that much I knew. How could I not know? By then, the all-too-common images of extrajudicial killings, the military taking extreme liberties with the people they forcibly took, and the repressive power Marcos himself displayed on a daily basis, littered every Filipino’s consciousness whether they wanted it to or not.
Repression was increasingl
y becoming state policy. The military kept getting away with arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions. For many of these arrests, no warrants were ever served. Relatives of those detained were all too frequently ignored when they asked where their missing family members were. They would be kept in the dark for days, weeks, months, or even years. Legally, Marcos had by then scrapped the Arrest, Search, and Seizure Order and replaced it conveniently for him and the military with the Presidential Command Order, a martial law instrument which empowered arresting authorities to arrest anyone without judicially guaranteed processes. The decline of democracy had begun, though there have been many times when I seriously doubted if it had ever really taken root in the Philippines.
Despite the gloom invading my physical and internal spaces, one thing has always been very clear to me. It was the unshakeable resolve that I had done nothing wrong. Knowing this did not assuage the fear creeping into my waking life so that lying on a narrow cot every night, sleep frequently eluded me. I would toss and turn until dawn, when I prepared to face yet another uncertain day. But as terrorizing as the fear that gripped me, there was always that tiny voice inside my head whispering equally tiny bits of hope, making me feel a bit stronger in the knowledge that I had done nothing to be ashamed of. It was this voice that energized me when I most needed it. This energy induced me to continue to dislike, even abhor the things Marcos had done to the Philippines and its people. I could not stand his arrogance, his willful disregard for fairness, and his predilection for violence.
At fifteen years old and lacking the sophistication in understanding the complex entanglements of power and politics in my country, I made Marcos into my enemy. He was an enemy I felt strongly about. Not only that, I made it personal—the only way I knew in order to comprehend what was happening. It was personal similar to the way I would behave abominably with a childhood friend when we had a falling out. How we would profess hatred for one another because we were too stubborn to give in to each other’s wishes. I had to put a face to my enemy. That face was Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, the diminutive and cunning man with a booming voice, the president of the republic of the Philippines, once called the Strong Man of Asia, the dictator who imposed martial law on the country and who sent thousands upon thousands of Filipinos to prison or to their deaths because they were opposed to the way he was running, or rather, ruining the country.
This time, as sleep eluded me again, I began to feel hatred. It was palpable hatred that I could have sworn I could feel running physically through every bone in my body. Perhaps it could have made me ill had I let it. The shaking and shivering I frequently experienced I now realized was a mixture of both fear and anger. But this hatred was no longer the juvenile anger, the temporary kind that I displayed towards a playmate. It was more akin to rage. This time, I saw Marcos as the face of the evil that was running amuck in the place I’ve called home. I even knew to think that the men who sent me behind bars were of minor importance. They were simply doing Marcos’ bidding. Marcos, the more I thought about him, was the single manifestation of the villainous road the country had taken.
We could not speak our minds for fear of being labeled as spies. The journalist who had spoken freely was perceived as one of these spies when he encouraged others to do the same. He was charming enough and I did like him. But if I had been friendlier and less cautious, I would have violated the rules I made when I was arrested. It was a shame that I had to keep my distance, but the longer I stayed there the more I saw the need not to trust anyone. Sure, I felt a certain kinship to those in the conference room. I even liked them, though it was important that I did not show it.
When did I begin to think like this? What was becoming of me?
Martial Law Philippine Style
The image that millions of Filipinos saw on television was a grainy, fuzzy portrait of an austere-looking Ferdinand Marcos. Wearing his familiar Barong Tagalog, Marcos faced the camera from behind a desk. Only the top half of his body was visible. It was unusual to see him sitting. We were accustomed to seeing him behind a lectern or standing by his massive wooden desk with the presidential seal above him.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Marcos’ image was lopsidedly framed on the screen, as if he was sitting close to the edge of the chair. The room was dimly lit and it was difficult to tell where he was. The darkened room contributed to the aura of toughness Marcos projected through his facial expression.
Were they intent on scaring us?
Tension was thick as my family gathered in front of the television. We knew an important announcement was going to be made. It had been announced earlier that Marcos was going to appear on national television.
Why was the presidential seal missing? Was Marcos even at Malacañang Palace? Did they not want us to know where he was? I reasoned that perhaps it was hurriedly put together. Then Marcos spoke:
“As of the 21st of this month [September 1972], I signed Proclamation No. 1081 taking the entire Philippines under martial law for one purpose alone, to save the republic and reform our society.”
Then the screen went blank interspersed only with white noise. Martial law: the two dreaded words that instantly became Marcos’ shield against his own people loomed upon us. It was these words that put his enemies in jail. It was these words that silenced the whole nation. The swiftness with which the adults saw the implications of this pronouncement was displayed immediately in the worried looks on my parents’ faces.
Hoping to see if we could find out more, my brother, N., switched to another channel. There was nothing. He tried another. Again, only the incessant white noise was heard, only the same black and white lines waved forlornly across the screen.
“Let’s turn on the radio,” Tang suggested.
“Yeah, let’s put it on Radyo Patrol,” I said. This was the radio station we listened to for updates during the floods we had experienced just two months earlier.
“I have it on now. I’m searching but I’m not getting any reception,” N. said.
We quickly congregated by where the radio was. My brother rotated the radio dial, and the box started emitting static. He continued turning the knob through the AM band and then again through FM. The radio frequencies simply buzzed.
I saw my father’s worried expression as we sat around on our rattan sofas and armchairs in the living room. He furrowed his brows as he looked down at nothing in particular on the floor. This was his usual expression when he was thinking hard. There seemed to be a lot on his mind. My mother was quiet, but she, too, could hardly contain her anxiety. Hands clasped tightly on her lap, her eyes looked sadder, more fearful than usual.
My mother was prone to thinking the worst. I had seen her usual worried face over the years. By the time my siblings and I were old enough, we had all become accustomed to her nervous behavior. She always seemed tense, her breathing almost asthmatic, and was easily panicked. On many nights, when dusk settled, darkness has fallen, and Tang had not come home from work or a trip, her fear only grew. She would pace back and forth, and would then march nervously toward the sliding Capiz-shelled encrusted Yakal-wood windows of our house, scanning the street for signs of father. I learned to do this from her. She must have taught me well because I became nervous or anxious with increasing regularity, as I grew older.
To be fair, I recognized that my mother had experienced the violence and cruelty of the Japanese when they occupied the Philippines during the Second World War. An aunt once told me a story of Ima, a teenager during the war, and her participation in rescuing Filipino and American soldiers during the Bataan Death March, sometimes hiding them under their floor-length skirts called sayas, unceremoniously discarding their sense of modesty in order to save a hungry, fatigued, or dying Filipino or American soldier. I can only imagine how terrifying that might have been for anybody, but particularly for a young, convent-school-bred woman, because had any Japanese caught them, they would have suffered the grim consequences of rape, followed by torture and th
en death. It would not be misplaced to suppose that she now thought martial law meant Filipinos would suffer a similar fate as they had lived through under the Japanese.
My thoughts began to wander again, puzzled as to why Marcos waited two days after signing the declaration to announce it to the country. I never figured this out. Years after enduring that period of my life, I became too memory-scarred to revisit this question. When I left the Philippines, it was one of those things I consigned to the dust and rubble of history because to attempt to answer it would have meant stirring up the pain and reopening old wounds.
Meanwhile, as I sat with my own thoughts, I turned my attention toward my parents who, at that point, were looking at each other with unease. They were probably wondering how much to tell us. Perhaps, they never really knew where to begin, particularly among their younger children. By then, my three older siblings had departed for Manila either for work or for tertiary schooling at the university. The younger ones stayed behind with the oldest being in high school. Finally, Tatang, a man of few words, spoke.
“As far as I know, although I am not an expert on this,” he began, selecting his words carefully, “when the military takes over private communication networks such as radio, television, the newspapers, etc., then it is not business as usual. Our country will be going in a very different direction from now on, and most likely, things will be very different from what we have known. We will just have to pray to God that it will not be as bad as it appears now.”
Tatang was right. For days after the pronouncement, no radio or television station broadcast. The once privately held radio and television networks were the first businesses to be seized. The Lopez family-owned ABS-CBN was the most visible execution of Marcos’ media takeover. I found out years later just how it transpired. An interview with Eugenio Lopez, Jr., the son to the former owner of the same name, for a documentary film on martial law, recounted how it happened. On the day that the document transferring ABS-CBN to the government was signed, the older man refused to even read it, Mr. Lopez, Jr., related. In his words, the conversation between his father and Marcos was brief. It went like this:
A Thousand Little Deaths Page 5