More thoughts on EDSA

On the first anniversary of People Power in 1987, I had pledged that I would come each year to remember; that I would light a candle somewhere on the site to signify that what happened there must not be allowed failure of memory or conscious dismissal of its reality.

In that first year, crowds re-enacted the march for the “salubong” of troops and people in front of Camp Crame. After the Mass and short program, people stayed to dance on the streets as music blared from a PA system. The date gathered the numbers who had massed to make a stand for four days in February the year before. It also gathered those who were not there; it was a people’s thankful celebration of their freedom.

The euphoria had not waned despite coup threats from disgruntled RAM soldiers. Defense Chief Juan Ponce Enrile and AFP Chief of Staff Fidel V. Ramos took their place on stage along with politicians who made up the new government’s “rainbow” coalition. A process of drafting a constitution was ongoing. The new president was pre-occupied with the divisions in her feuding Cabinet, even as she tried to address conflicting demands from sectors representing the Right and Left.

It was a fragile time. But on EDSA the crowds exuded a shared spirit, responding to the power of remembrance. There was prayer in the churches and enough lighted candles to signify the belief and the hope stirring in more hearts than mine that somehow we would all find the strength to persist in the struggle for political reform and freedom.

Sadly, I have not kept that promise. Years later, I began to feel alienated by official and orchestrated ceremony, with passes given out to those who could have seats in a cordoned area. Vince Rafael, a political scientist and scholar, points out in a column, that the physical location has changed so much from what EDSA was in 1986 to make remembering difficult even for the people who lived through those days.

Actually, I was not present when Filipinos gathered to stand up to the regime in 1986. In 1985, I took leave of my duties as associate editor and columnist of Veritas NewsWeekly to be with my family in the US. My husband was taking a sabbatical year as a Fulbright exchange professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was invited to spend the same year as a Journalist in Residence in the same university. It was my commitment to family that wrenched me away from work. I had this feeling I would miss something big. But I could not imagine what this would be. We were monitoring news about Marcos’ state of health as it was known he was seriously ill. When I left for the US in August 1985, I thought perhaps I would not be around when he died. It was that story that I thought I would miss reporting.

We spent the time in the US giving talks, accepting invitations that took us around the state of Michigan and the East Coast, speaking to students and scholars, and to civic groups who wanted to know about Corazon Aquino, the Philippine’s options after Marcos, updates on the insurgency especially the Communist NPA, and the prospects for the country should Marcos be defeated in the much talked about election after he announced it on the David Brinkley show.

It was CNN’s first year for round-the-clock global news. We watched the unfolding action on television and feared the possibility of defeat on EDSA, of surrender to the military or the massacre of the people on the streets. I choked with tears at the thought that we would not be able to return.

After February, we were invited to various meetings and conferences that asked us to provide insights to the meaning of People Power. We were cheered and congratulated everywhere. Taxi drivers would say, “You’re Filipino? Wow, what a great thing you people have done.”

The pledge I made to be faithful in my observance of EDSA was understandable. Despite my absence from the scene, I was a participant in the process that made it possible.

Those of us who lived through those times are struggling these days to articulate its meaning and its significance. I found it interesting that one week after the 28th anniversary, a number of columnists were still writing on EDSA.

It is as though the passing years had unraveled our connection to the power of its spirit. Or perhaps, it is because we are having trouble believing that the period of history mattered and can still make a difference, that it holds lessons that only history can teach.

Unlike the people of South Africa post-Apartheid, Filipinos did not undertake a collective effort to establish a record of what happened during Martial Law nor to establish from the testimonies and documents evidence with which to judge the actions and the turn of events which led to the toppling of a dictatorship.

Without this disciplined exercise, we are left at a loss, betrayed by popular elections which have re-installed members of the Marcos family to government positions, by textbooks which have not corrected the obligatory propaganda about Martial Law, our recollections so boldly upstaged by Enrile’s revisionist memoire. The younger generation, captured by so much new media, can’t focus on this line of discussion.

I think it necessary to write this history. Or we shall find ourselves continuing to be at odds with another about the story itself. This divided vision would be our undoing, depriving ourselves and generations to come of that faith in the power of a people determined to be free.