Forgetting martial law.

By: Raul C. Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
April 19, 2012

How soon will it be before we forget the national nightmare that began on Sept. 21, 1972, and ended sometime in February 1986? Not too long, I’m afraid, and that’s truly worrisome. That is why the families of martial law victims have launched a national campaign, called #RememberML@40!, to make us remember the 40th anniversary of the start of the Marcos dictatorship. They will host events on the 21st of each month leading up to September. Tomorrow, they will gather at the UP Diliman campus specifically to call on Congress to enact the law to give compensation to Marcos’ human rights victims.

I wish them well. We have short memories as a people. I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I wonder: How long did it take before our forebears started looking askance at the veterans of the Philippine Revolution of 1898? I imagine that during the early postwar commemorations, the veteranos basked in the oohs and aahs of admiring crowds when they were still sprightly young warriors marching proudly in town plazas in their rayadillo uniforms.

But it certainly didn’t take long before the new top local honchos held sway—the Federalistas, the first Filipinos who collaborated with the American invaders, among them Cayetano Arellano, the first chief justice of the Philippines. And in the 1935 presidential election—that’s still five years short of the martial law survivors’ 40th anniversary—for the brand-new Commonwealth, Manuel Quezon won handily over two bona fide giants of the Philippine Revolution, Emilio Aguinaldo and Gregorio Aglipay. By then the generation of revolucionarios were old men, grandfathers who would dust off their ill-fitting uniforms for memorials and ceremonies, and reminisce on war stories. I can only hope that their apo were patient enough to indulge Lolo and listen.

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