I was on a break from my job at a refugee camp when the so-called Edsa Revolution broke. I was set to return to Morong, at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center when I heard the call over the radio from Cardinal Sin to occupy the area fronting the two camps—Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo. In the camps, as the news filtered out, were Gen. Fidel V. Ramos and Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, two of the most feared personas in the history of martial law.
I could not believe the call from the good cardinal. And I would not believe that Ramos and Enrile were withdrawing their support from Marcos.
After Cardinal Sin made the urgent request, Marcos also made his call. It was an order for people to desist from converging at any place. The dictator was reminding everyone of the many strange laws still in effect under his administration. That was a rumor. Rumor mongering was a crime under the dictatorship. No one knew really what a rumor was. The dictator was cunning’ he knew where he could hurt most the body of Filipinos. It was in the orality of the nation’s tradition. We were in the mid 80s already the illiterate, non-literate and innumerate public that we are now. Very few people read. Very few people wrote down their experiences. Very, very few people could cound and deal with numbers.
Morong in Bataan was too far a place to go back now that the country was on a brink of change. The Edsa thing was not referred to as a revolution. The label “People Power” had not been clarified yet. The world press had not sacralised that Filipino invention—the notion that People massed and gathered became a power. People was a modifier.
As there was no mobile phone technology then yet, I called the landline of my parents’ home to relate to them what was happening in Manila. Are you joining it, my brother asked me. I said, No. I would rather listen over the radio and television.
Before I made the call I knew in my heart I would join the rally, the demonstration, the gathering. I felt a bit of a hero in me. There was also a strong sense of foreboding in me that many of us would die at Edsa. For some reason, I was not scared. Excited and a bit euphoric, but not fearing for anything.
Maybe then we had reached a boiling point. Maybe, the society then had become so mundane that we needed wild experiences. Marcos was so into politics he forgot the personal psychology of the citizens of the land. Well, not the entire nation, but Metro Manila and those from the nearby towns and cities that were able to join the “revolution.”
I believe I was one of the first casualties of the “revolution.” The streets near Cubao were closed to traffic already. Buses had barricaded the areas near Kamias and, we would find out later, near where the Robinson’s Galleria now stands. In 1986, that was a grassy area.
I was rushing to cross the part of Edsa crossing to Cubao when my other leg hit a shallow hole. I walked the rest of the “revolution” with a sprained ankle.
There was a bloody revolution and all I got was sprained ankle. That thought was fit for a T-shirt design.
If I am to look also for a sophisticated metaphor for the Edsa thing, then a sprained ankle is a good bet. For, if you remove the complications, the three-day thing is a small narrative in the history of our nation. In the three years during World War II, we lost fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers. We lost a nation in a war that was not even ours but for another country that was enjoying its cinemas while our families cowered in fear of the guerillas and the Japanese.
Here was this Edsa revolution that was part-picnic and part-political agenda. The US intervention came first as a joke. Remember the “Hawaii-not-Paoay” story? In our land, everything is a joke, including the banishment of a dictator.
Was there a miracle at Edsa? Walang himala! Ang himala ay nasa puso ng mga tao. There is no miracle. Miracle is in the heart of peole. Elsa could have been at Edsa. The Marian images that were utilized by the anti-Marcos were a winner. What images would the conjugal dictatorship use? If it was a battle of symbols, the Good was nearly de-facto on the side of Cory and the generals who went trooping her side. If Cory heard voices, no one questioned that. She was Joan of Arc to the fullest.
When the tanks rumbled, women and nuns ran to stop them. The tanks did not budge. Something was stopping them. Who it was we would never know. Call it miracle instead. That was the easiest answer.
When the revolution was over, there was no social upheaval. An elite replaced another elite and the undistinguished masses remained poor.
Thus, I can understand this government declaring the commemoration of those days in 1986 a half-holiday. We are neither here nor there about this revolution as our leaders are.
The Structuralists have a word for our situation: anomalous.
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Image credits: jimbo Albano