President-elect Rodrigo Duterte tells us that for those who suffered the abuses of martial law regime, “it’s just a matter of distributing the award. So anong problema? Patay na ’yung tao.”
Well, you see, Mr. President-elect, my late granduncle, Dr. Johnny Escandor, died under the dictatorship—the innards from his emptied guts stuffed into his broken skull, along with his briefs; and his skin turned deep blue from physical blows. And you tell me “it’s just a matter of distributing the award”? My grandfather, Judge Ireneo Escandor, was imprisoned, leaving my grandmother, Lola Celing, to raise eight children. They went through deep hardship, and endured separation from their father. And you tell us “it’s just a matter of distributing the award.”
Real people sacrificed life and limb, not to amass cash (how absurd!), but to bring down a tyrant, a plunderer, a murderer. Both grandfather and granduncle now lie in a humble, albeit marked, grave in the small town of Gubat, Sorsogon. They died for country but were honored with no hero’s burial, marching band, or a flag on their caskets. Like thousands of others.
Mr. President-elect, the martial law victims buried in marked and unmarked graves are the fortunate ones—at least, their families had a body to bury. Yolanda Gordula, the person my granduncle-doctor was with before he was “salvaged,” was never found.
There are immense moral and historical consequences to burying Marcos as a hero. The matter is certainly not confined to narrow legalese, nor is it just a matter of “going to court” as the President-elect suggests. If Marcos is buried a hero, what do we make of those who fought his tyranny? Are they now the antihero?
We have always said that there is something deeply wrong with a people who cannot remember their history or identify their real heroes; who are happy with the short-sightedness of a sanitized “peace/healing” rather than with one that is based on justice.
I could go on and on about the woeful tragedy of forgetting. But the greatest tragedy is that those who do not remember are bound to make the same mistakes. No wonder then that too many of us, when confronted with another murderer, plunderer, tyrant and all their configurations, are confounded by the discovery; when confronted with the destructive dismantling of democracy, are at a loss for what to say or do or make of it; and when confronted with the spreading canopy of aggression and dispossession, are happy with the crumbs of spoils falling from the master’s table and are quick to trade their freedom for quietude, humanity for comfort, justice for convenience, motherland for self-gain. They have no insight into the struggles of the past, and no collective narrative on which to moor them to the fate of the larger society.
How many deaths, Mr. President-elect, before we treat a murderer like a murderer? How much of our national wealth siphoned to offshore accounts before we call a plunderer a plunderer? How many years lost, families separated, people detained and disappeared, lives snuffed out before we call a tyrant a tyrant? How many, Mr. President-elect?
I was truly hopeful when, at the presidential debates, you did not mince words about the dispossession of the lumad and Moro people and about the impoverishment of Mindanao and the inequities induced by “imperial Manila.” You, of all people, should know what justice means, what historical wrong is.
So to your question: “Anong gusto niyo? You want the Marcos cadaver to be burned? Will that satisfy your hate?” My answer is, it was never about hate at all; it is about JUSTICE.
—ALLIE ESCANDOR