‘…I am instantly irked whenever misinformed folks oversimplify what happened at EDSA then as merely a fight between two families. Such sweeping ignorance delegitimizes the efforts of tens of thousands of Filipinos that led to the dictator’s ouster and favors the revisionists as they seek to pull the wool over our eyes.’
GIVEN the multifarious and persistent attempts by some quarters to try to revise history, I was motivated by the efforts of many social media users to share my own memory of EDSA. I spent last February 25, the 36th anniversary of the first People Power, learning about the stories shared by real people. Much-appreciated as well is the effort of our historians to remind the youth of the events leading up to the 25th of February, complete with photos and commentary.
I was barely 5 years old when the revolution happened. My memory was that of a busy household, with my mother, my uncle and my aunts rushing about in the morning to cook food.
That food was packed and loaded into our red Fiera (which was adorned in yellow ribbons to offset its color) to be handed out by my uncle to protesters along Ayala Avenue and other places.
My uncle used to call it his “small” contribution to taking the country back from the claws of a dictator. Growing up, he made sure to tell us young ones the story over and over, so we would never forget.
Many a night during the long blackouts, my uncle would park all of us on the sidewalk outside his house and kept us from minding the heat by telling these stories. Our neighbors, equally unable to sleep because of the blackout, would join in and tell their own tales. Back then, it was a community effort: the neighborhood knew which families were supportive still of the Marcoses, and thereby were avoided whenever the others would make plans to go to a rally together.
My mother had apparently run into an argument with my father one time after she had brought me to one of the rallies. Apparently, my father had come home earlier than expected (much to my mother’s dismay) and found the house deserted, me included.
According to my mother, there was no hiding the crime as she came home with me in tow, flashing the “Laban” sign, with yellow ribbons on my wrists.
My father argued that it was a dangerous thing to do, knowing that people had been disappearing left and right for the last two decades. There are too many people at the rallies, he said, and you might lose track of her. She simply said: “Tama na ang pananahimik.” Thirty years later, she insisted that we bring her then 11-year-old grandson (my son) to the spontaneous protest on EDSA after the remains of dictator Ferdinand Marcos desecrated the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Their story was by no means unique and is just one of many stories of thousands of people who collectively made the People Power Revolution happen. This, I suppose is why I am instantly irked whenever misinformed folks oversimplify what happened at EDSA then as merely a fight between two families. Such sweeping ignorance delegitimizes the efforts of tens of thousands of Filipinos that led to the dictator’s ouster and favors the revisionists as they seek to pull the wool over our eyes. Let’s not allow that to happen, dear millennials and fillennials. Let’s keep telling our stories.
