The corpse or the wax replica?

PER SE, historical revisionism is not bad ethos. History scholars update to upload new data erstwhile unknown, reflecting the dynamism of historical research.

Where history books in the classrooms are short on details, history scholars are able to fill in the gaps to enrich the narratives. There is one such example of a positive historical revisionism template shown to us by the prolific and elegant Cebuano scholar Resil B. Mojares, concerning Sergio Osmeña Sr.

Writing in “Anarchy of Families” (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2010), Resil describes the rise of the son Sergio Jr., popularly known in the Visayas and Mindanao as “Serging.”

“Sergio Osmeña Jr. … was an established businessman … when the Japanese invaded the Philippines and forced the elder Osmeña, then vice president, to evacuate the country with Douglas MacArthur. Left in Manila with other family members, Serging … not only survived but prospered. After an attempt at cashing in on the wartime disruption of transport by organizing a company that used sailboats to ferry passengers from Luzon and the Visayas, he moved into the lucrative buy-and-sell trade, cultivating contacts in the military administration and providing motor vehicles, machinery, construction materials, and scrap metal to the Japanese. When the Americans returned in 1945, Serging was imprisoned and convicted on charges of economic collaboration, although he was later acquitted on the basis of a technicality.”

Resil then writes about an astounding detail heretofore hardly, if at all, mentioned in published books on Serging’s father, President Osmeña, though has been circulating by word of mouth among pundits in the Visayas and Mindanao:

“Sergio Osmeña’s relations with Serging were strained as a result of the collaboration case (the old man refused to use his influence in favor of his son) …”

That distinct disinterest of the elder Osmeña, so glaringly absent in Philippine elite politics especially in this day and age of blatant dynastyism, earns for Sergio Osmeña Sr., in my own opinion, the title “the greatest of our Philippine presidents,” something that the consciously revisionist Manuel L. Quezon would not have liked.

The other form of historical revisionism uses distortion and denial to obscure facts already known. Here is where the case of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his place in history come in.

Creative director Bong Banal (studio arts graduate, University of the Philippines), illustrates for us in his social media account that the following are what it takes to revise history under Marcos:

“I did not shoot my father’s opponent (note to millennials: reference to Julio Nalundasan, slain by a sniper’s bullet in 1935, the day after he defeated Mariano Marcos for the second congressional district of Ilocos Norte; the son Ferdinand was convicted of the crime, later overturned by a Supreme Court decision penned by then Associate Justice Jose P. Laurel).”

Banal further points to historical revisionism and my comments: “I was recommended to receive the US Congressional Medal of Honor, I am a war hero (the recommendation turned out to be fake, as were many of his war medals).”

“I did not have an affair with Dovie Beams.”

“I do not have any Swiss accounts. I am wealthy because I discovered the Yamashita Treasure. I am donating all my wealth to the Filipino people (no further comments needed).”

“I am stepping down as president after my second term finishes in 1973. I confirm that Secretary Enrile was ambushed today (Enrile publicly stated in recent memory that the ambush was faked).”

“I had nothing to do with the thousands of killings and torture.”

“I defeated Cory Aquino for president. I am not a dictator. I am not a thief. I am not a killer.”

Banal’s last point should be addressed to Rodrigo Duterte who now wants to revise history:

“And I am not a wax figure.” An addendum could be fitting, if Banal so thinks: “I lie in a refrigerated crypt,” pun very much intended.

If Duterte wishes to proceed with the Libingan ng mga Bayani honors for Marcos this September, I say: Go ahead. Exhume the corpse already buried underneath the catafalque that bears the wax replica of that corpse in Batac. Bury the real corpse in the Libingan but destroy the wax replica in a publicly witnessed funeral pyre (wax is highly flammable, needless to say).

But on his epitaph, write: “Here lies William Saunders.”