‘The North remembers’

My adopted hometown, Alcala in the province Cagayan, is a third-class municipality with a small voting population of 24,000. My wife is on her first term as our town mayor. In the 2016 elections, Vice President Leni Robredo got a measly 6.5 percent of our town’s votes, while Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had a tsunami of a win. It’s no surprise because our population is 100 percent ethnic Ilocano and Alcala is in the so-called Solid North.

By all measures, it would be foolhardy for any non-Ilocano politician — especially for the archrival of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — to still come and attempt to cultivate patronage. For any shrewd politician, it would be a waste of energy and resources. But Robredo is not your usual politician.

In November 2020, Typhoon “Ulysses” submerged 24 of our 25 barangays in floodwaters as high as 15 meters. Our town turned into a vast sea of floodwaters. We were desperate for help for our thousands of evacuees, at a time when the whole country was in the midst of the pandemic.

The first public official, whether national or provincial, who sent help to Alcala was Vice President Robredo. Our town officials didn’t seek her out, but she sent a thousand sacks of rice with the help of military vehicles, and her team came to assess and address our other needs. Alcala remembers those very desperate days because the impassable highway rendered us isolated, and we had little access to supplies.

When Robredo decided to run for the presidency, our local Leni volunteers group offered to host a rally in our tiny town. They thought we had little chance of hosting a sortie because the short campaign period is not even enough for the candidates to visit all the big and vote-rich towns and cities. They held little hope that Robredo would come to a small town like Alcala. But Robredo is not your usual politician.

Last March 12, Robredo came and attended a rally in our municipality. The expectation was that our town will only be able to muster a crowd of 2,000, but 4,500 came, almost 20 percent of our voting population. It was the biggest rally in our town’s history, 50 percent of the attendees were young people, and many of them raised their hands when Robredo asked who are first-time voters. When Robredo recalled how she fared poorly in Cagayan in the 2016 elections, the crowd chanted “Babawi kami!” It was a very festive rally, reflecting the sentiments of a grateful people who received help, not because of political expediency, but simply because we were in our direst time of need.

One of the rally speakers was former Cagayan governor Alvaro Antonio, my wife’s father. He spoke of how, during his term (2007-2016), Cagayan delivered a landslide win for Marcos Jr. when the latter ran for senator. When Cagayan was devastated by a very strong typhoon in 2011 or 2012, Antonio went to Senator Marcos to plead for help. Antonio revealed that Marcos Jr. never gave “ni singkong duling” (even a cross-eyed centavo) for the devastated province that handed him a massive win. Marcos Jr. did not even give the Cagayan governor the courtesy of a meeting in two attempts that the latter tried to reach out to him. Marcos Jr. is your usual politician.

Antonio also spoke about the Marcos martial law period: of relatives and townmates who were killed or who disappeared; of widespread hunger in Cagayan because men went to the cities to find work and because of fear of military atrocities in the province, leaving farms unattended and resulting in food shortages, and; of an abusive military that acted supreme over civilians, perpetrating cruelties against ordinary citizens.

After the rally, several residents came out with their martial law stories. Among them, a barangay captain talked about how his father was picked up and dragged by burly men aboard two Toyota Land Cruisers, during busy market day, and that he has never been found until now. At four years old, he was deprived of a father’s love, and he has been living with the lingering torment of not knowing what happened to his father.

During the rally, there were many placards with witty or soulful messages. Robredo read each one aloud, to the crowd’s delight. One placard held a message meant for both Robredo and the Marcoses: “The North remembers.”

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