The forty years between us

He approached me after I gave a talk about cultural heritage law at the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati and asked me where I finished law school.

“UP, sir,” I answered.

“What class?” he asked further.

“1999, sir.”

He smiled for the first time that afternoon. He said that he belonged to the UP College of Law Class of 1959. “I was in the evening class. The campus used to be in Padre Faura back then. We have forty years between us.”

He had looked grim while I talked and I wondered why the topic made him so unhappy. His questions and comments after my talk gave me an idea:

“Who is in charge of putting up monuments and sites in this country? Are you aware that there is a monument to kamikaze pilots in Tarlac? Can you believe that? In the Philippines! In Tarlac where the Death March passed!”

“Do you know that there is a memorial to Filipino soldiers in Bataan? But a Japanese man asked me if that was a memorial to Japanese soldiers because the headgear of the statues are modeled after Japanese caps!”

I said that I wasn’t aware of the monuments that he was talking about. I told him that, in my opinion, the answer would depend on whether or not the monument stood on public or private property. With the myriad statues, sculptures, and monuments being put up in outdoor places, there does not seem to be a standard, aesthetic or otherwise, for how one should look like. Well, maybe the issue of obscenity might arise but that hasn’t seemed to be the case since UP’s “Oblation” was put up.

The next day, I attended an assembly of Luzon-based heritage conservation societies and historical societies at the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. The Commission’s Chairperson, Dr. Maria Serena Diokno, talked about plans to modernize the museums and shrines under its jurisdiction and to address the past neglect in identifying historic figures, sites and centers in Visayas and Mindanao.

At the open forum after her talk, a representative of one of the historical societies asked what the Commission was going to do to make sure that Filipinos know and never forget about Martial Law.  This September 21, it will be forty years since President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law. As far as I know, the only memorial for the victims and martyrs of Martial Law is the Bantayog Memorial Center in Quezon City.

Dr. Diokno answered that she herself was preparing a module for teaching the history of Martial Law to elementary school students. She explained that in the past, the topic was not covered in history classes because it was found at the end of the book. With the K-12 basic education program, Philippine history would be taught for two years instead of just one. This should ensure that Martial Law would be included.

The gentleman from the UP Law Class of 1959 must have lived through the horrors of World War II. Maybe that was where his anger about an alleged memorial to kamikaze pilots and the wrong headgear of Filipino soldiers depicted in a monument came from. I listened to my grandparents’ and my husband’s grandparents’ stories of the war but they omitted or glossed over the violent parts. I understood where the gentleman was coming from but could not feel the anger that he felt about what he considered to be offensive World War II memorials.

What I feel is frustration, and sometimes, anger, when I hear Filipinos say that Martial Law was good. While I was a kid during that period, I do remember the hushed tones that adults used when being critical about President Marcos and the rallies that we attended after Ninoy Aquino was murdered. I get upset when young Filipinos agree with the claims of the dictator’s son that our country would have been better off if the EDSA Revolution had not happened. These kids were born less than forty years after 1972. Maybe time is all it takes to forget. And forty years is more than enough time.

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