The days of living dangerously

By: Rhona Canoy

INSTEAD of my thoughts, here’s something written by my friend, Ricardo Jorge S. Caluen, which I think is worth sharing with you.

The Silence of the Radio

It has been 44 years this month since President Marcos declared martial law. Apparently, historians continue to quibble over the exact date when P.D. 1081 – the instrument that placed the country under martial rule from 1972 till 1981 (or 1986, if you believe Edsa was the definitive end of martial law in the country) – was actually signed. Regardless, Sept. 21-23, 1972 was a weekend many of us who were students in Manila at the time would not easily forget. It was our three days of living dangerously.

I Had just enrolled for the first semester at what was then called De la Salle College, a skinny 16-year old high school gradual from Iligan in Mindanao, a city fast-becoming the industrialized city outside Manila at the time. With 26 other aspirants, I had also joined the 1972 batch of freshmen Scholastics, those undergoing formation to become members of a fraternity –Fratres Scholarum Christianarum, more popularly the La Salle Brothers.

The atmosphere on campus that summer was heavy with dissent and revolutionary rhetoric: anti-Marcos graffiti on the walls and anti-bourgeoisie and establishment slogans on streamers. Ub betweeb tgese were pamphlets enjoining thye youth to “serve the masses”. It was the 1970s, after all. As if red scribbling on walls were not enough, the campis also got unsightly with silt and debris that settled on the corridors and the grounds.

In July and August that year, two successive tropical storms, locally code named “Edeng” and “Gloring” – the most devastating since 1876 – brought great havoc not only in the Greater Manila area but also in Central Luzon. Torrential downpour inundated the city for 16 consecutive days from July 8 to July 23, flooding the “Leveriza” community of informal settlers which is just outside the wallsof the Scholasticate. The Brothers provided haven to the residents of Leveriza, welcoming them to the safety and warmth of the Brother Athanasius gymnasium. The Scholastics aided a number of St. Scholastica’s College students who were herding children inside the gym or helping women and the elderly negotiate the crossing of Taft Avenue, by now a veritable river. I have finally served the masses.

Hardly had the floods receded when classes were disrupted once more when September arrived. Many students had already left Manila to serve in the countryside. Hundreds had joined the youth brigade working in the rehabilitation of Central Luzon in the aftermath of the typhoons. Those who stayed behind braced for more rallies that often caused disruption in classes at the time. Then on that fateful Thursday,  Sept. 21, the grapevine announced a mammoth rally was expected to take place at Plaza Miranda that afternoon. It would be the last major protest rally on the eve of martial law in the Philippines.

It was from hindsight that I learned it was Edicio de la Torre, possible the most controversial priest-activist of the period, who had organized the multi-sectoral rally that drew thousands. His name would figure once more in my universe when I wrote my undergraduate thesis on “The Politicization of the Catholic Church in the Philippines during Martial Law.” The feeling of exhalation of finally being able to join a student rally and be counted was tempered by the realization that I could be arrested by the police any time. It had only been a year since the infamous bombing of Plaza Miranda had taken placed. In its aftermath, President Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. We were warned against spies within our ranks. We were to avoid getting photographed at all cost. We could be picked up by the military any time and never be seen again. Paranoia crept in.

For weeks Manila was rife with talk of President Marcos declaring Martial Law at any moment. Bombing in the metropolis had intensified, the Marcos were up in arms in Mindanao, and the NPAs reportedly gaining more foothold and ready to surround the capital –just the very backdrop for the President to use as justification to invoke a constitutional power. Marcos’ impending martial rule had been the running motif of Sen. Ninoy Aquino’s privilege speeches, culminating in his last address to the Senate in the evening of Sept. 21 itself. I had left the rally just as Manila’s famous sunset started to turn amber, paranoia unabated and images of the bloody First Quarter Storm flashing in my mind.

There was an eerie quiet on campus the following day, Friday, Sept. 22. It was as if only the stragglers from previous day’s rally showed up if only to swap stories of their experience from day before. The Scholastics looked forward to an evening of socials because it was only on Fridays when house rules were relaxed like allowing us to stay up beyond the usual 10pm lights out. But the flashing news on TV about an assassination attempt on the life of Defense Secretary Enrile dampened our fleeting Friday evening fun. Conversation turned serious, divining the repercussions of the shooting. Sleep didn’t come easy to me that evening so I tuned on to my radio just past midnight, only to find out not a single station was on the air. Thinking I was just having a bad reception, I knocked on the door at the bedroom to see if my neighbor was listening to his radio, only to find out it was also silent. In my mind, I knew something serious was afoot.

Following the conclusion of our early morning mass the following day, Saturday , our Formation Director announced in a quiet almost nervous tone that martial law had been declared. I don’t recall anyone asking how he came about the information. It was notuntil later in the day that Secretary Tatad would go on the air to announce that martial law had been declared; that the president was going to address the nation that evening of Sept. 23.

Our first directive for the day was not to leave the premises until more information was available from the provincialate – the headquarters of the La Salle Brother located in La Salle Greenhills –as to what we will do as a community of Brothers. Secondly and probably more importantly, we were to burn any material our closets that may be considered subversive. With this order we bade goodbye to our Mao and Che Guevarra posters and any printed material that even remotely suggested anti-government sentiments or promoted Socialist ideas.

There must have been quite a volume of these materials because someone started a bonfire just outside the Scholasticate building, now called the Brother William Hall. Inside, our ears were glued to a government controlled radio station awaiting updates. But the radio played only classical mus. (One of my professors, Dr. Wilfrido Villacorta – a future member of the commission struck by Cory Aquino to draft the 1987 constitution – later told us that playing classical music right after a coup or placing a country under martial rule was a technique learned by a group of military officers Marcos had earlier fanned out to other countries to study “good practices” when imposing martial rule. It was meant to calm the frayed nerves of the population.

Probably, any subversive material lying about would have been leftover from the campus days of Chito Sta Romana, La Sallite student activist emeritus. Chito was La Salle’s answer to Atenaeo’s Edjop (Edgay Jopson). I never met the man who had carved his niche in the pantheon of student leaders of the 1960s – 1970s not only for being a majoy voice in the Movement for Democratic Philippines, an umbrella organization of progressive groups, but also by acting as leader of a small delegation of student leaders who composed the Philippine Youth delegation to China that left the country in 1971 on invitation of Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

The suspension of the writ in Augus 1971 sealed the fat of Sto. Romana and a few others in the delegation. Fearing arrest if they returned, many decided to remain China, not coming back to the Philippines until after Marcos had left the country courtesy of People Power. I would later learn firsthand from Kaime Flor Cruz –who I mt in Toronto a few years ago –the difficult life these youthful exiles experience in China, as I dud from Eric Baculinao, who represented UP in the group. At the time, Jaime was a student leader in the Philippine College of Commerce –hotbed of student activism and president of the League of Editors for a Democratic Society (Lcads).

Meanwhile, La Salle was spic-an-span by Monday, Sept. 25. The school’s famous neoclassical buildings had been scrubbed clean and its off white paint restored. No graffiti… no placards… no streamers. But then there were no students either. Martial Law had padlocked Manila’s schools… and would remain so pretty much the balance of the year or until after Marcos had conveniently had the new constitution ratified in January 1973 and legitimized his authority. I joined my first act of civil disobedience when I did not register for the barangay level referendum that ratified the new constitution.

Life during Martial Law was not easy for those in the religious sector. There was much expectation for it to be the last recourse for people victimized by the abuses of martial rule. The radiostations may have been silenced (there were a reported 52 radio stations and seven TV stations before martial law but after Sept. 23 only 33 radio and five TV stations were allowed to operate) but not the men and women in white.