To Those Who Have Bled So We Could Live
by Julia Emelene Mendoza
Every once in a while, I can hear the echoes of your screams. I take a look back — first comes the blood, the faces, then the stories of your struggles.
Elementary history textbooks of my time would only go on about how the years under the regime constituted stringent rules and the “peaceful end” to the dictatorship. Not a single word or sentence gave justice and honor to the blood you shed in the name of restoring democracy. It was not as apparent to me then, until I heard the whispers of the lingering past — another Marcos is in power, and death still looms over those who dare to resist and unveil the truth.
With Bongbong Marcos seated in the Palace, it seems as though nightmares of his namesake’s atrocities have slipped into oblivion. The last thing that should happen is for the names of martyrs like you, who died for dear life of freedom, to be forgotten. Your deaths have yet to be brought to justice, and the Marcoses have yet to pay for what they stole from you and millions of Filipinos.
During the gruesome Marcos dictatorship, you knew cruelty and brutality could happen to anyone. Dr. Aurora Parong, surviving among the 11,103 victims of martial law abuses, was imprisoned for one and a half years for providing unprejudiced treatment to the sick who were accused of being part of the New People’s Army (NPA). “Pag doktor ka, once pumasok iyan diyan sa clinic mo, hindi ko talaga tatanungin sa pasyente kung siya ay NPA, ano man, pulis,” Dr. Parong explains without the need to defend an oath she was meant to uphold.
Even our Muslim brothers and sisters knelt for mercy before the annihilators disguised as peacekeepers who disgraced their Mosques, burned their homes, and buried their dreams deep into the ground during the Tacbil Mosque Massacre. “Kami po pinapatay, lahat ng Muslim dahil sa Martial Law. Utos ni Marcos,” Abdulsukor Tacbil recalls devastatingly.
Even though you knew none of you were safe during those dark times, you wielded your weapons anyway. For Liliosa Hilao, the pen was her weapon. As a campus journalist, Liliosa held it firm to revive the truth battling state propaganda with essays like “The Vietnamization of the Philippines” and “Democracy is Dead in the Philippines under Martial Law.” She met her demise at Camp Crame, where she was tortured and raped to her death; authorities have falsely determined the cause of her death as suicide by consumption of muriatic acid.
This was a common fate for those who fought against the status quo during the Marcos regime; to this day, meeting such a fate is an awful yet normalized reality for Filipino journalists. Fear is the price that we are made to pay in reporting without a smudge of dishonesty or deceit — death has been the highest expense.
Another voice who dared to speak out against the dictatorship was Archimedes Trajano. At an open forum at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM), Trajano probed Imee Marcos on her credibility as the appointed national chairperson of Kabataang Barangay. Immediately after, Imee Marcos’ escorts took him out of the forum; he was tortured to his death for 12 to 36 hours, while his body was disposed of on the streets of Manila. This was the fate of the courageous — to speak up is to put one foot on the grave.
Amusingly, a former Marcos propagandist — one who had worked closely with the late dictator — turned to a staunch critic of the administration, proving there is no friend nor foe for the dictator. Primitivo “Tibo” Mijares was the propagandist of Marcos Sr., responsible for the press release on the fabricated ambush that justified the declaration of Martial Law. He was among those who knew best what went on behind the curtains that he testified before a United States congressional inquiry and came clean in a tell-all The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, turning down Marcos’ $100,000 offer of hush money. Out of his guilt and conscience for playing a part in the dictatorship, he detailed the fabrications, abuses, and other forms of corruption under the Marcos regime. Mijares was allegedly captured by the military just months after his book was published; his 16-year-old son Boyet was also kidnapped, tortured, and killed. To this day, the truth behind the whistleblower’s death has yet to be unveiled, but the patterns behind the killings are hard to ignore.
A blood-thirsty dictator will always have the need to put his dissenters into a state of eternal silence. The lust for blood proves that there will always be those who are courageous and those who are nothing but cowardly. The deceased dictator has always been afraid of the power in truth that you held when the power he seized was faulty and was built on lies, treachery, and deceit. His power emanates from silencing you, but it is also in your forced silence that he inadvertently admits his crimes. There may have only been a number of you who fought the dictatorship, but your collective passion and audacity have gained you your legacies and honor that will forever be etched in history.
With people always willing to fight, silence never lasts long. The music you started has turned into a symphony — to the guilty, all they hear is noise. Your voices reverberate throughout the streets, in every article written, in every criticism vocalized, and through the lives that every recent martyr has left behind. The passion of the Filipino people would never allow your deaths to be in vain. The Filipinos’ fight for truth and justice will persist; as the Marcoses continue to make noise now, we will be louder. For as long as there are people who struggle and resist, and for as long as lives continue to be stolen at the hands of the state, guilt will always be found within the perpetrators in power.
Although the blood drawn and the scars inflicted by the administration will last for a lifetime, your rage and the echoes of your clamors for justice live on — and it will always be our collective voices that will hold weight against their hollow screeches.
