THIRD WORLD STUDIES CENTER F ORUM ON
THE MARCOS BURIAL IN THE LIBINGAN NG MGA BAYANI
Palma Hall Lobby, UP Diliman, July 1, 2016

A STAB IN THE HEART OF A GENERATION OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS

A stab in the heart - that is what the announced honored burial of Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayan [National Heroes’ Cemetery] is for us, a whole generation who fought the dictatorship. For our nation, it is doing one more damage to the collective memory already battered by the cultural machinations of our former colonial masters and the betrayal of our elites.

To beat off our indignant opposition and justify an openly admitted payback for favors from the Marcoses, our new President has come out with two arguments. First, that the dictator will be buried as a soldier, not as a hero. And second, that it will appease the lingering resentments of a section of the population loyal to Marcos and that will help unify the nation. Both will not hold water. Marcos was not only a soldier, he was a fascist dictator. To give in to his loyalists will only fuel the fires of division, so how can that unite the nation.

The issue of the dictator’s burial in the Libingan has taken on a life of its own beyond the questions about Marcos’ wartime record as a soldier or the bigger questions about the heroism of the persons buried in that cemetery. The issue is unquestionably one of cultural symbolism that is essential to the formation of society’s consciousness – in our case, the national memory, the national consciousness that should be the home of the values that we treasure best and what we consider as right or wrong as a people.

The dictatorship and its legacy of massive human rights violations, the plunder of the public treasury, heavy indebtedness and the surrender of our sovereignty to US imperial dictates and global finance, and its violent suppression of the people’s movements to regain our nationhood, establish democracy, attain social justice and fulfill the self-determination of minority nationalities and ethnic communities – all this should have no place of respect in our national heritage.

I anticipate that some of you will ask me where the Left or more precisely, the various formations of the Left stand on this issue. I do not see any reason why the Left should be divided on this. As a matter of course, the Left is and should be strongly opposed to the Libingan burial. The unfortunate and bitter exchange between Etta Rosales and Jose Ma. Sison, two Left veterans who contributed much to the anti-dictatorship struggle in their own particular statuses and ways reflect their personal positions, and not necessarily the organizations to which they belong or identify. To Etta’s stinging rebuke of Sison’s “ Marcos burial in a reactionary cemetery is no big deal “, the latter has clarified that at the outset his advise was to let the Marcos remains stay in Ilocos for a number of reasons.

I believe that this matter should be allowed to rest. Unity is needed to face the far bigger challenges, far bigger in importance than nuances that might be dictated by particular objectives and circumstances. The issue here is about rewriting our history to restore the dictator, his dictatorship and its legacy to a place of honor in our history.

Unnoticed by many, this process of restoration has long been underway and has achieved much. The Libingan event will just be a high point. A survey done by SWS in 2011 shows that half of the population favored the burial and a good 30 percent were positive about an official burial. A slight majority in the Visayas and Mindanao were against but across classes, a clear majority was in favor. Connect this to the almost electoral win by Marcos Jr. in the last vice-presidential election and we have a Marcos restoration just waiting for a formal crowning ceremony which the Libingan rites might just provide.

Many things have been said about why this is so. Our institutions are blamed.

Many blamed ourselves for failing to tell the story of our nation during those times. Partly true, but these are obfuscations unless we pointedly and concretely name who are at fault.

The national elites, especially those at the helm of the yellow EDSA Republic, from Aquino to Aquino and those who share their powers, fortunes and privileges are the most responsible for this coming restoration. They are in command of or they exercise tremendous influence over the powerful institutions of society, including their myth making mechanisms. Name most of the monstrous legacies of the Marcos dictatorship – poverty and inequality, business monopolies, political dynasties and warlords, corruption, inordinate power of the military in government, indebtedness, landlord power, hindrances to Moro and indigenous peoples self-determination, US military bases, servility to imperial powers and global finance and so on and so forth– they are all still very much present, and many even thriving on a larger scale.

I will cite two examples. The coconut levy which was stolen by Marcos and Danding Cojuangco from the small coconut farmers who paid the levy for 9 years to buy into and take over San Miguel Corporation. It took the whole of almost 30 years under the EDSA regime to recover 24 percent of those funds after a long and arduous fight by coco farmers organizations and advocates. The funds are now with government but farmers are still waiting to benefit from them. The remaining 20 percent still with Danding has yet to be recovered.

The other one is the case of the 5, 200 hectare part of the Davao Penal Colony which Marcos leased to his crony, banana mogul Antonio Floirendo for a pittance of P 1, 000 per hectare per year at a time when the going rental for same property was P 30, 000 per hectare per year. Floirendo fronted for the Marcos’ hidden ownership of millions worth properties here and abroad. Instead of confiscating it for land redistribution on grounds of making contracts disadvantageous to the government, the Cory Aquino government merely put it under sequestration only to withdraw it soon after Floirendo returned to the government some of the Marcos properties under his name. The Floirendo banana plantations which also include his privately titled 3, 500 hectares remain undistributed.

“ Hell if I Care “ many people will say if a dictator would be honored at the Libingan. Anyway, we honor with every election the same elites, the same dynasties or their minions that cannot solve the country’s problems. Post- EDSA plunderers can go scot free after a brief period of trial and detention and so on and so forth. What is worth remembering if the redemption from the Marcos years is reduced to the 4-day EDSA revolt and the heroism of Ninoy and Cory Aquino with the rest cast only in supporting roles. Relegated to dusty corners are the heroism of thousands of families who gave their best sons and daughters to the struggle? Also the hundreds of thousands of communities who can take pride of at least one among them who gave their all to this struggle.

The yellow EDSA elites pride themselves about their role in having written into the 1987 Constitution a whole gamut of human rights from the civil and the political to the economic, social and cultural. But like the Marcos constitution of 1973, the yellow constitution gave precedence to the right to private property which enables the big landowners to undercut agrarian reform, big real estate capitalists to prevail in demolition of working class communities, big capitalists to dictate the terms of industrial and service labor and commercial fishers to limit the access to fishing grounds of small fishers. It has taken enormous physical and moral efforts and sacrifice of the working people to assert their rights and gained whatever they gained under the law.

Ironically, by their failure to make a difference in the lives of most people and by repeated accommodations with the Marcoses and their cronies, the yellow EDSA elites from Aquino to Aquino laid the grounds for this Marcos restoration. What remains to be done is the crowning which is what Duterte is about to do.

The academe is complicit in all this. Teaching history and teaching it truthfully was severely neglected. After EDSA, the universities, including UP, turned mainly its discourse to issues of democratization and identity issues and away from the unfinished Philippine revolution which cries for structural changes and resolutions of post-colonial problems. The NGO community is also a party to this social malignancy by neglecting the teaching of history and compartmentalizing analysis and action in its varied advocacies.

The new opening to the peace processes between the CPP-NPA and the GRP and between the Moro liberation forces and the GRP is relevant to this issue. On the agenda are the issues and problems that trace back to the period of the dictatorship and even before and their resolutions are relevant to overcoming the social damage symbolized by this Libingan issue. These are welcome developments that must be nurtured by all. These are talks between highly unequal parties and so we need to help those demanding radical changes. Every advance gained in the peace process, particularly the steps leading to a just resolution of the fundamental political, economic and social problems of the country and thus, to a more enduring peace will be good for our country and our people.

I believe that we can raise a strong and effective opposition. Let us join the Bawat Bato initiative and create and inspire more. But I also sense that with the determined push from the new president, the Marcos burial has more chances than before to happen. This means ours will be a long fight. This will entail widespread education drives in our schools and communities, lobbying the government to correct the textbooks and tell history truthfully, and making the Marcos issue a living part of our daily struggles for change.

I hope that the University of the Philippines which is the intellectual home to many of the freedom fighters of our generation will spearhead this fight to defend and promote the truth in our history.

Thank you.

Ricardo B. Reyes