Women writers of martial law
After my mother was arrested and detained for her involvement in the Light-a-Fire movement, I was invited to join a group of women writers who had organized, primarily “to improve our craft.” But of course, the group that included JoAnn Maglipon, Sheila Coronel, Marites Vitug, Ceres Doyo, Gemma Nememzo, Sol Juvida, Arlene Babst, Sylvia Mayuga and the like, was up to more than that.
We met on Saturdays at Odette Alcantara’s Heritage Art Gallery in Cubao, bringing our manuscripts to be critiqued by one another. We also invited resource persons to update us on whatever we wanted to discuss. It did not take long for the exercise to become feminist and political.
We talked about ourselves as women writers and what we had to deal with. Those married to journalists rued the fact that when a child got sick, it was the woman who was expected to stay home, even if both husband and wife had deadlines and commitments to meet. Soon the disussion turned to women’s and men’s roles in journalism, with men as supposedly the primary breadwinners, which allegedly allowed the women to be braver and bolder in their writing. Duh!
But we were not full-blown feminists who shoved the men aside in a power game. We liked the company of the men too much, and perhaps we were secure in what we were capable of. I discovered soon enough that the women in my group were veteran subversives. I learned so much from them about how to survive martial law.
Issues of press freedom constantly surfaced and we were at the forefront holding a long banner that read, “PRESS FREEDOM IS A HUMAN RIGHT!” My baptism of fire was at a small rally in front of one of the gates of Camp Aguinaldo on EDSA after the closure of We Forum, a small and feisty newspaper, and the arrest of its editor and staff. The women writers had a statement and I was chosen to read it. I trembled through it all, frightened at my audacity confronting the dictatorship so publiclly.
In time, the women writers decided on a name — Women Writers in Media Now, WOMEN for short, and acquired a reputation. We went into other advocacies. The political prisoners in Bicutan were a special cause. On Christmas and special days, with permission from then Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile, who somehow showed an openness to journalists, we went to the detention area en masse, bearing food, gifts and entertainment that lasted from noon to the end of visiting hours. For a few precious hours, there was much laughter, music and camaraderie behind the high walls topped with barbed wire. The goodbyes were always painful as the reality of the detainees’ separation from the rest of society set in and we drove back to our homes in silence.
We worked for the freedom of political detainees and helped some of those who managed to get out, go abroad, where they would be free from further harassment. We accompanied some detainees to court when they attended trial and prevailed upon their jail guards to allow us to take them out to lunch at nearby restaurants before going back to Bicutan. We also came out in a movie as grim and determined mourners at the funeral of a labor leader in Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. And the women continued reporting on the evils of the regime, undeterred even by a command from a military commission for many of our members to explain the kind of journalism they chose to pursue.
After the death of Ninoy Aquino, when martial rule was starting to unravel, the WOMEN were befriended by the elite officers of the Reform the AFP Movement or RAM and their boss, Juan Ponce Enrile. We had intimate dinners with Enrile where he shared inside stories about the regime, and had free access to the likes of Gringo Honasan, Red Kapunan, Rex Robles, Vic Batac amd the other senior and junior members of the RAM. They wined and dined us and introduced us to their families, and for a while we thought we were making genuine friendships. Until EDSA happened in 1986 and they mounted coup after coup, and we realized that Enrile and his boys had other things in mind.
Being part of WOMEN lit up the last five years of martial law. From the safe apolitical cocoon I had wrapped around myself in the early days, I found the courage to be at the forefront of rallies, marches, demonstrations and other anti-martial law activities, with my two daughters in tow.
Those were heady days. Life finally had a purpose. On a fellowship in Stanford in 1984 to 85, I carried the cause of freedom for the Filipino people, taking every opportunity to bring the message in forums on campus and in San Francisco. I even went to the State Department in Washington to remind the Philippine Desk about the plight of political detainees.
When my fellowship ended and it was time to come home, the possibility of extending our US stay came up, what with martial law still in full effect in the homeland. But my daughters, then aged 13 and 9, argued against it, reminding me that their grandmother was still in detention (in fact by that time, she had been sentenced to death by a military court, which was mever carried out) and we had a country to liberate.
That, in broad strokes, is my martial law story. There is much more detail to tell, both personal and political, but suffice it to say that the experience shaped my future as a journalist and a peace and human rights activist, and rewarded me with the lasting friendship of a coven of women writers.
