2.27.2011

DIARY FROM THE BARRICADES

( As printed in 1985-86 Philippines Yearbook of the Fookien Times )


The deciding factor in the successful February Revolution was undoubtedly the people – the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets and formed the human barricades that stopped the armed might of the dictator.

The author was one of those who made EDSA her home during those four historic days, and this is her story. An AB-Journalism and MA-English graduate of the University of the Philippines, she works for the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture ( ISACC ).



22 Saturday

It has happened. Now, in the gathering darkness, the stray bullet, the outside chance, the quirky twist that jars and turn awry the bestlaid plans of mice and men, has happened. Ramos and Enrile, pillars of the regime’s armed support, have declared insurrection. Butch Aquino on the radio has called for a human buffer to stay the hand of bloodshed between the partisan troops. Meanwhile, the voices of Ramos and Enrile hogged the airwaves, tough and resolute voices steeled by despair, and maybe the sense that somehow somewhere help will come like lightning from the sky.

So be it, said the fast-talking minister of defense on the prospect of fighting to the last man the formidable forces he had helped assemble for many years. The tone of fatalism, of desperate surrender to the all-powerful and inscrutable hand of God, was something new. What is he really like, we thought. Of all the king’s men he was there – at the center of the terror of having soldiers come in the dead of night for a brother or a sister who at crack of dawn would be found hogtied, brutally salvaged. Is he merely frightened, a hare on the run wanting to go down with a bang and not a whimper. Or is he part of an elaborate plot, stage-managed from somewhere, meant to steal the thunder from underground elements waiting in the wings and secure a historical opportunity for some interested friends.

But the voice, surprisingly, had the ring of truth in it, and in places where it faltered because hope was nil it was moving. One senses that something quite out of our usual reckoning had taken place – a man’s fitful struggle with conscience and the Power before whom all are accountable; a coming to grips with the costly demands of principle, without which life is cheap and not worth the air we breathe.

Where does it start, this inner movement towards integrity of being ? What is it that makes us grope for light, for the searing heat that burns the lie and makes us pure and entire ? The two men have made a wild shot at mutiny; the boldness of the bid perhaps could only come from a bracing experience of the singular force of being, for once, on the side of principle. Righteousness makes any man a lion.

I turned off the radio and looked out the window. The stars were few. For many years we have lived in a vast universe of silence. The country was like the land of Kafka: one gets jailed for reasons no one knows, and there is no one to turn to for redress, no one to make an answer for the howl of grief one hears in the dark of night. Here, under the starless sky, we are asked to believe that an unseen hand has come down in mercy and has wrought a transformation only slightly less dramatic than St. Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus, striking him blind and getting him down on his knees.

While in many ways suspect, this military defection to the cause of the people is nevertheless a marvel worth falling off our seats.



23 Sunday

It had been a sleepless night. Morning came by stealth, soft and uncertain. I and a number of friends who have banded together under the name Konfes ( Konsiyensiya ng Febrero Siete ) sat huddled together in the shadows, quiet before the Presence, awed and sobered by what we had done. It must have been like this, I thought. Those old warriors must have felt dull and grim, dumb before the perils that lay ahead as resolutely they grasped a spear cold to the touch in the early morning light. The quiver and the fear was there, but so was something else, the sense that what needed to be done must be done. Lighten our darkness, Lord, we prayed; by the mercies of thy dear Son defend us from the powers and dangers of this night.

Thus we went in faith, our own great weakness feeling. We were ordinary people; we had no massive organization behind us, nor were we the sort who would normally run around in the streets with a placard. There were some among us who have had experience storming the gates of Malacanang or some such things, but we were young then; life was green and we had not known the greying wars of innocence besieged and precariously unsurrendered. We could not tell then the lie from the dream, the dream merchant from the visionary. We chanted and raved under the impulse of feeling that all things were possible. Now, many years after the disillusionment of seeing friends die under the cruel and overbearing strength of monocratic power, we did not know if we were being brave or simply being foolhardy.

But we went, and there we were – a small band of people wanting like the rest to put an end to the monstrous power that had gone haywire. The scene was like the many things we do as a people, bright and chaotic and irrepressibly festive. The air reeked with sweat and broiled squid, streaks of yellow assaulted the eyes pleasantly, and all around were grimy monuments to the Filipino’s entrepreneural spirit, long used to wresting opportunity from the marginal side of things.

It was no way to conduct a revolution, but perhaps it was truer than the stonecold stringency of the usual uprising. Great upheavals of the spirit, like suffering, take place in the most casual of circumstances, as when ‘someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along,’ as Auden puts it. Something big and deep was growing inside us as a people, and how else was it to get born but in the merry and familiar sights and sounds of the marketplace ?

Casual grit. That was what it was the afternoon the tanks came charging. The engines began to roar, but the people refused to move, a defenseless but determined wall of restraint against the tidal lust for bloodshed. It was a war of nerves, but perhaps, more deeply, a trial of faith: faith in the rightness of standing there, quaking yet fortified by an instinctive sense that the doing ofthat which is right will pay off somehow. Like much of the serious business of life, it had its light carabaos that had wandered on the road and someone held up a cross as if to ward off evil – gestures of instinct and ritual that come to our aid when all else fails.

A group of priests and nuns ringed themselves round some troops, sprinkling holy water. It was as if the demons of violence, brutish and palpable, could be exorcised by the steady and relentless application of timeless appurtenances to the sacred.

With the tanks held at bay, there was the problem of maintaining attentive vigil all through the night. We were assigned to guard Gate 2 of Camp Aguinaldo, along with some Muslims, some of whom were former MNLF. It wa a peculiar show of solidarity – Catholics, Protestants and Muslims all ranged together for a war against war. Seated back to back, we barricaded far into the night, fighting off sleep and resting on each other’s shoulders.

Morning would find us aching from the ingenious contortions our bodies had to resort to. But the watchers remained in formation, faithful to the end to the calling to keep watch.



24 Monday

The moon was full though pale and wan when I woke up at three. It shone like a stage prop just above the rooftops. EDSA looked forlorn and deserted except for pockets of vigilantes. Radio Veritas, silenced for hours the previous night, holed up somewhere and once again was beating the drums, this time from another frequency. June Keithley, flurried and distraught, appealed to nearby citizens to spill out of their houses into the streets and reinforce the sorely depleted columns valiantly staying the troops determinedly advancing.

Being neophytes in the art of surviving military violence, we were told to wet handkerchiefs as added protection from tear gas. Somebody distributed calamanci, the juice of which we were to rub on our faces to keep the skin from burning. We closed ranks and once again stood in formation, a frail chain against the impending rush of soldiers approaching EDSA.

Radio pleas for more people sounded more and more shrill and frantic. The troops have broken through the first line of columns. Sikorski gunships could be heard rumbling from the distance. Since the rebel forces were all in Camp Crame we were told to forsake the Aguinaldo gate and fortify the pitiful remnant left at the Crame gate. Once again we stood there, shoulder to shoulder. Then the helicopters came, blotting the sky.

It was but a moment, but the waiting seemed forever. Are these the enemy, we asked. We shall die then, not by sharp and swift bayonet thrusts, but by fire dropped from the sky. Oh, this is the end. This is it. I looked up to the sky and prayed.

I thought of home, of failing to say goodbye. Is it worth it, I asked myself. This is romantic, a gesture of youth. There is more important work to be done than standing here like sheep to the slaughter. Give us guns, said our comrades the ex-MNLF. I could understand. Non-violent resistance is against our very human blood. And yet, really, when all the options are taken into account, there is really no other way to keep blood from flowing. For this belief we stood together, locked in communal defense of whatever it was that brought us there, to serve as proof that there is power in powerlessness.

The helicopters hovered, then landed straight into the Crame compound. News swept us they had defected. We were stunned, then very wide grins broke out in our faces. We felt happy and stupid at the same time. The joy of it was hardly getting in when reports of defections among the advancing troops tingled in our ears. And then the unbelievable circulated: Mrs. Marcos had left the afternoon before, and Mr. Marcos left early this morning. The news was unconfirmed, but soon things broke loose and seemed to make it true: Ramos and Enrile came out of the gate and cheered, we sang and jumped and embraced one another in tears. Bags of pan de sal started going round, then someone took it into his head to playfully throw some to the people up the ledges of the gate. The crowd joined in and all of a sudden the air was full of a jolly traffic of pan de sal being thrown back and forth by the people up and below. The gesture was more than fun; it was an unwitting sign of what we were about. Other struggles had bullets and stones; we had bread, and joy thrown along with it.

It was utter privilege to be part of the occasion. We wept, perhaps for the years of suffering and silence, perhaps for the experience of solidarity in a country whose revolutions have always remained unfinished for failing to get its act together; and maybe even for ourselves, for having been touched by something bigger, humbled by the sense of being caught up in the larger and surer ways of Him whose nature is always to have mercy. We felt part of a great sacrament, the sacrament of the brother, of justice and peace and righteousness that a wonder had been performed, and we are witnessess to its awe and stunning power.

Like all good Filipinos we took pictures of ourselves for posterity’s sake, to show to our children’s children the pride and joy unspeakable of so great a liberation. We walked home along EDSA as in a dream, pleasantly dazed by a sky that had never seemed so glorious and warmed by the faces we met in the streets. We hailed each other with the Laban sign, now fast becoming a more universal symbol of a people’s will to be free.

When we got home the puffed, sleepless face of Mr. Marcos stared at us. He was on TV, proclaiming to all and sundry the inescapable fact of his presence. We blinked and dropped our weary selves on a seat. Is it a last-minute piece of propaganda, or shall we take up arms again ? Telephones rang to confirm that yes, the man is still around. We sat in silence. There is a tenacity, a hardness to evil we would all do well to always take into account. Very well then, we hall go back to the barricades and slug it out for many more nights. But first let me get some sleep, I said. So off I went tracking down dragons in sleep; it was at least a way of keeping the monster at bay.

Afternoon found us regrouping. We prayed and asked for strength, aware of the ache and weariness in our bones, and of the prospect of a protracted struggle of millions teeming along EDSA. Once again we felt our faces changed by an inward glow kindled by His presence.

There was talk of strafing during the night. In spite of this, our ranks swelled. The fiesta atmosphere intensified with the primeval drums of the Ati-Atihan and the periodic noise barrage. There was much singing among us, rosaries and novenas among the brown-clad Nazarene women beside us, a brass band going up and down the length of EDSA, and stars from the movies and other arts on parade. This is not a revolution, shook some heads. Well, perhaps not; it is perhaps more ancient, more inveterate and romantic than the atavistic desire to tear down things and make them altogether new. In the pomp and folksy pageantry, in the ritual call to the gods, we see resurfaced perhaps a people’s collective mechanism for the expelling of a hideous spirit, not quite unlike the banging of pots and pans in the old days to frighten away the whale that was thought to be swallowing the sun.

Refusing to forget the danger, we aked everyone to make a conscious decision whether to stay for the night or not. Most eleced to stay, spreading newspapers on the sidewalk and every space that could be colonized for some stretching and sleeping. The pavement a very hard bed indeed. Packed side by side and lying supine, we looked at the stars together and wondered what a blitz looked like. A blaze of fireworks, perhaps; a pity we may not be there to see it.

Late in the night I shook off sleep and surveyed the hundreds of bodies lying around me. One or two of our men sat glued to the radio; some were out reconnoitering. The silence was strange after the boisterous singing just a few hours before. Just then I felt the weight of having to make an answer for the loss of each life spread out and breathing there before me. But then perhaps no one can be made to answer. Every man must do what he needs to do. There is really no other way to live; some things are of more value than life itself.



25 Tuesday

At half past four almost every one had roused himself from sleep. There was some mist, which made the morning gray and pale. Smoke rose from piles of garbage being burnt, as the enormous litter in the streets threatened sanitation. Unlike the morning before there were lots more people who had camped out.

We gathered to praise and worship God together for the relative safety of the night before. The day was expectd to be tense, as both Mrs. Aquino and Mr. Marcos had indicated their intention to get proclaimed as newly elected president at noon. We braced ourselves and got more organized.

Mrs. Aquino’s swearing-in was a brave, confident vote for a liberated future. Things still hung in the balance; while on her side were the people and a marginal collection of armed defectors, on the side of the incumbent was an immense firepower, a monolith of wayward armipotence. But perhaps power could take alternative shapes. Mr. Marcos’ inauguration was cut off in mid-air, rebel troops having taken over the TV channels. Radio Veritas continued its media siege, a uniquely novel use of information as handmaid to revolution. And of course there were the people, swarms of them – a throbbing, busy, bustling swirl that for many years was thought to be docile and inconsequential in the mathematics of pwer.

The people at the barricades were not the dreamed-of masses rising in arms, sufficiently primed and programmed to wage class conflict. It was a miscellaneous rabble of regal matrons and scruffy riffraff, priests and nuns and bedraggled vendors, middle-class adventurers and quiet dissenters and gristly veterans of the parliament of the streets. There were babies, old women, portly housewives on garden chairs. It was a revolution incredibly supplied with accoutrements to a pleasant survival: a flow of food and drinks, tents, quilted mats, beach umbrellas, even a snap toilet brigade for those who suffer discomfiting calls of nature.

Revolution is not a picnic, someone has said. This one is, and perhaps, rightly so. It is always a joyful act to participate in the toils of freedom. Besides, the Filipino people being what they are, it is only apposite that their rites of passage towards political maturity and power be singularly recalcitrant, irrepressibly happy improvisations that defy the usual iron rules of power struggles.

Towards evening there were rumors that negotiations between Enrile and the beleagurered president were going on, the nature of which we can only infer from the helicopters flying overhead to somewhere. Violent streetfighting was on in Mendiola, we were told; would we like to go and serve as a tempering presence in the conflict ? We discussed the issue together and decided to stay put, feeling a certain inevitability of vehemence in the surfacing of long-repressed feelings of rage. Malacanang was being stormed by an angry mob; we prayed for restraint, for the gift of decency and dignity in an occasion of great though understandable temptation to violence and excess.

The news traveled fast and loose: Mr. Marcos and company have left Malacanang, and are quartered in Clark Air Base for an early morning journey to Hawaii. This time we were wary, and wanted verification; feeling like horses who had the experience of being led to the water without being allowed to drink.

It’s true! shouted some of us in glee. I merely stared, quite stumped by the fact that the wounded tiger who had seemed so dangerous and deadly, threatening a comeback strike, had turned its tail for a run. Quietly, without the flush and flare of triumph, we embraced one another and mulled in our secret places the meaning of the boom that had come to us.

The Ati-Atihan sounded its drums. Cars honked and people began to shout and dance in the streets. We lustily sang hymns of praise, and saluted marching passersby with a final and rousing rendition of Bayan Ko. Once again there were the tears, triggered by memories of abject humiliation, of a nation once cowed and quiescent, conditioned into a self-protective subjection by centuries of colonization. This revolt has surprised us, has made us aware of what we are capable of doing, and of becoming as a people. Pride in ourselves, in our furture as a nation, swelled our hearts and dimmed the eyes that beheld each other in newfound wonder.

Shortly after midnight I was walking along EDSA headed for home, arm-in-arm with friends. Streams of people walked with us, shouting and stomping and making a din and a noise that was pleasant to the ear.

Tonight we had firghtened away the dragon that had long swallowed the sun. Tomorrow, for sure, we hall wake up to a morning with a stream of yellow bursting through the window.

#



Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home