My martial law story

When martial law was imposed on Sept. 21, 1972, it was, at first, an inconvenience, then an irritation. Finally, I realized that it was evil and murderous.

Immediately, I lost my job. I was working at The Manila Chronicle when martial law was declared. The paper was shut down along with other media offices, and many journalists found themselves jobless. My publisher and editor were arrested and detained along with senators, congressmen, businessmen, academics and student activists. We could, of course, join the newspapers that were allowed to publish if we were willing to write paeans to the newly-minted New Society.

Then, my youngest brother was expelled from the Ateneo after he was arrested by the military for distributing leaflets urging students to resist a plan to draft ROTC cadets into the military.  Like many other institutions, the school was cowed into submission to the whims of Ferdinand and Imelda, and a number of promising students were expelled for their activism.

Martial law soon took its toll on my equanimity. It was downright boring. With Congress closed and all of media in the tight grip of Kit Tatad, Marcos’ smug Minister of Information, everything in the newspapers, TV, radio and popular culture seemed to be in praise of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda and the New Society.

All our actions were controlled. You could not stay out late at night unless you had a “curfew pass.”  You could not travel overseas due to a travel ban and when you could, you could not take more than $200 out of the country. On my first trip to the US, I rolled $400 of my $600 stash so that they fit into an emptied cigarette stick, and put them in a pack of Marlboros.

Parties were randomly raided by anti-narcotic teams in search of potheads who were lectured to sternly about the evils of marijuana. But for many young people then, pot was the antidote to the ennui of their suddenly regimented lives.

Boys were made to cut their hair short and tuck in their shirts. A few months after martial law was declared, when many of my activist friends had gone underground to evade arrest, I was surprised to see the late Behn Cervantes at my door, barely recognizable with his hair in a crew cut and clad in neat office clothes with his shirt tucked in.

In 1975, I was asked to be co-editor of a magazine that my publisher, co-editor and I decided would break the monotony of martial law publications with intelligent, entertaining and yes, safe, pieces. I managed to interview Imee Marcos who regaled our readers with smart irreverent quotes about martial law and growing up Marcos. The downside was when she asked me to interview her father who, she lamented, was not being appreciated enough since his interviews were conducted mostly by paid palace hacks.

I tried to get out of the assignment but it was martial law and Imee got her way. While my mother was a detainee in Bicutan (more on this in the next paragraph), I interviewed Marcos in his office in Malacañang. The most memorable part of our conversation was when I asked him to describe his children. Imee, he said, was his “intellectual twin.” Irene was everyone’s sweetheart. And Bongbong? The strongman thought long and hard.  Then he said, “He has good muscle coordination.”

And his mother thinks he should be president!

Due to media censorship, I was not fully aware of what was going on underneath the orderly and disciplined facade of martial law. Until one Christmas Eve, my mother’s housekeeper called to say that Mom’s house had been raided and she and her husband were taken away by soldiers. The raiding party also took away the cars, a motorcycle, and stole other valuables, including typewriters, tennis rackets, expensive lighters and watches.

We had no idea what Mom had done. As far as we knew, Mom stayed home most of the time, seated on her rocking chair and knitting as she watched basketball games on television. But I would find out that while I went through the early years of martial law whining about the lack of intellectual, social and cultural stimulation, Mom was quietly doing what she felt she had to against the Marcos regime. I learned that she opened her home to wounded NPA guerrillas who needed a safe place to recover. She even drove them to the Philippine General Hospital when they needed more intensive care. And she knitted ski masks that she sent to the hills for the rebels to use in their operations against the martial law government.

But that was not what she was arrested for. Mom had joined a secret urban guerrilla group that the military called “Light-a-Fire” because they allegedly set fire on establishments whose owners were identified with the hated Marcos regime. When Sulo Hotel, the Floating Casino, the Comelec building and other establishments mysteriously went up in smoke, I had no idea that my mother had anything to do with them.

Mom’s incarceration, trial by a military court and death sentence by hanging fully brought home to me the horrors of martial law. In Bicutan, she shared a high security building with the leaders of the Communist Party such as Fidel Agcaoili, Alan Jazmines, Satur Ocampo, Pepe Luneta and many others, who opened my mind to exciting ideas, including the possibility of a protracted violent struggle against the regime led by the communist rebels.

I prepared myself for the long violent haul, convinced that it was the only way to defeat the evil regime that kidnapped, tortured and murdered its own people to stay in power, and plundered the country’s wealth and resources to feed the greed and vanity of Ferdinand and Imelda. But after the dictatorship murdered Ninoy Aquino, and the Filipino people found the courage to stand up to Marcos in determined but peaceful protests, I began to see other possibilities.

The prayerful millions who drove away an entrenched dictator by staying on a strip of highway for four days, facing the armed might of the dictator with flowers, bread and rosaries, opened the door to a non-violent means of regaining our freedoms and re-establish our democracy.

Martial law finally ended on Feb. 25, 1986, and never ever should we allow it to happen again.