I had an errand to do in Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan last week. As we drove into the compound, I had a feeling of déjà vu. The mid-morning sun was beating down and it felt very familiar being there. Then I saw the old gate and down the road were two buildings and a social hall where in the early Eighties I would go to visit my mother, who was a martial law political detainee.
Suddenly back in the bad old years, I was overcome by a wave of painful memories of my mother’s arrest, her incarceration with other alleged subversives in Camp Crame and Bicutan, her trial by a kangaroo military court, my weekly treks to Bicutan where I met other detainees, many of who were high-ranking officers of the Communist Party, and their families.
Every week, I would take a bus from Quezon City to the South Expressway, getting off at the Bicutan exit to catch a tricycle to the gate of Camp Bagong Diwa where I signed in to visit my mom and have whatever I was bringing, inspected. It was not pleasant at that outpost where the guards would pretend not to remember me, and insisted on checking to see if I was on the list of accredited visitors every single time I came. Then, it was back on the tricycle to the detention area — the detention area behind high walls topped with several layers of barbed wire. Here, there was another inspection, another show-and-tell about the gifts of food, supplies and letters I would bring inside.
Christmas was particularly aggravating. The family once brought noche buena for lunch, complete with good tableware. When the guards would not allow us to bring in spoons and forks saying they were potential deadly weapons, I lost my cool and demanded to talk to their commander who took his time coming over. Lunch was late but we prevailed. We ate properly with the right utensils.
There were times when we could not visit because Mom and her cohorts were on hunger strike for some reason or other and the place was on lockdown, and the alleged “masterminds” were put in isolation.
Visits were anticipated and appreciated by the detainees. Vistiors brought news of the outside world, much-needed supplies, and more important, camaraderie and good cheer. While everyone made an effort to make such visits pleasant and joyful, leaving was always painful. It was heart-breaking to leave my mom and my new friends behind the concrete walls and barbed wire. It brought home the reality that happy as we were in the company of the detainees, Bicutan was still a harsh and lonely prison.
Political detention was a staple of martial law, along with torture, murder and mayhem, corruption and plunder, and other gave sins of the Marcos dictatorship against the Filipino people. When Cory Aquino assumed the presidency in 1986, she released all political prisoners and tried her darndest to end the evils of martial law. She didn’t quite succeed, no president has. Repairing the damage to our national culture, politics, traditions and psyche wrought by the Marcos dictatorship is a task of generations. But EDSA was a good start, and no matter the mood of the nation, every year on the week of February 25, I celebrate in my heart the liberation of the Filipino people from Marcos’ martial law.
It’s been 29 years since we sat on the pavement of the country’s main highway for four days in February and forced Marcos and his ilk to leave Malacañang and the country. He, whom we thought was all-powerful, who decided who lived and who died, who had thousands of Filipinos jailed for simply disagreeing with him, who robbed the country’s coffers dry and hid the billions he amassed in secret bank accounts and shell companies abroad, who corrupted the bureaucracy, the military and the police with power and money, who destroyed our democracy and set back our growth as a free nation and people, was gone. We banished him, his family and his cronies who fled in fear of unarmed people power with their tails between their legs, and scandalous amounts of money and jewelry stuffed in Pampers boxes.
While EDSA remains a defining moment for many Filipinos, there are those who were in EDSA but who would rather forget that it ever happened, saying nothing much has changed since we regained our freedom. All I can say is, they must have been there for a different reason. For most of us who were in EDSA in February 1986, a return to personal wealth and power was the farthest from our minds. We were there, not to restore the old guard of politicians who were sidelined by martial law, but to regain our freedom and usher in the new democracy that Marcos had deprived us of.
And so, this week, I’ve had EDSA on my mind — how easily we triumphed over an entrenched dictatorial regime and how much more we still have to do to fulfill EDSA’s promise of democracy, justice, equality, prosperity and peace. And how badly we need unity of purpose, mind and heart, as well as the spirit of selfless service to country and neighbor, to get there.