Independence is a state of mind.
Take the Philippines, for instance. When Gen. Emilio A. Aguinaldo first hoisted the Philippine flag outside the window of his home in what was then known as Cavite El Viejo, on June 12, 1898, he called it a “proclamation of independence”. By September that same year, the declaration had been ratified by the Malolos Congress but by almost no one else; certainly not by the Americans, for whom an independent Philippines would have been a roadblock in the way of their colonial ambitions; nor by the Spaniards, from whom precisely independence was being declared.
And yet, despite being under the heel of these two world powers as a matter of indisputable fact, the Filipinos believed in their independence enough to declare, in 1899, war on the Americans who had just demolished the 300-year Spanish colonial rule over the islands; and to persist in that armed conflict until long after the 1902 formal end of hostilities. A quarter of a million Filipinos dead—in the name of a state of mind: independence.
Eventually, after two World Wars, the US got around to recognizing Philippine independence—I’d rather not say “granted independence to the Philippines” since we’d already paid for that with the blood of our revolutionary forefathers—on the 4th of July 1946. It was only after 18 years, on the 4th of August 1964, that our government finally gave due recognition to the fact that, throughout decades of subjugation and colonization, the notion of an independent Philippines had never faded from our minds; and that we had, therefore, actually remained free.
Just like under martial law.
When martial law was declared in 1972, a pall descended over the country. Media outlets were shut down, drastically reducing the public’s access to information, and Congress was soon all but extinguished as the dictator got it into his head that ruling by decree was a much better way of doing things (as tyrants are wont to believe).
And yet, because not everyone bought into the dictator’s fiction, enough people continued to believe that they were, in fact, independent despite being subjugated once again, albeit not by some foreigner. And because of this, there was pressure on the dictator that he couldn’t do away entirely with at least one manifestation of the people’s freedom: elections.
Yes, even during martial law, elections were held. While it can be argued that those elections were typically used only as window-dressing, the underlying notion that the electorate had a say in their government remained intact in the minds of the people. And it would stay, barely smoldering but alive, long after the depredations of martial law’s administrators had lost, for far too many of our countrymen, the ability to shock.
It shouldn’t be a surprise then that in the end, while it was an assassination that doused the dictatorship with gasoline, it was the blatant hijacking of an election that sparked the conflagration, and a people who believed themselves to be free matched thought to action and took back their independence.
Independence is a state of mind.