HISTORICAL COMMENTARY

One Hundred Years of Denial

Filipinos waited 300 years before they wielded their bolos in 1896, then waited another 90 years to revolt against a dictatorship in 1986, and are still waiting now, 111 years later.

By Rosalinda N. Olsen
Contributed to Bulatlat

After more than 300 years of oppression from the Spanish colonial masters, the Filipinos launched the “Philippine Revolution”.  That was in 1896.  Ten years short of a hundred years later, in February 1986, the Filipinos again rose in revolt, not against foreign oppression but against 20 years of the dictatorial Marcos regime. In 1896, their cry was for freedom. In 1986, their cry was for democracy.  In both instances, their cry was denied.

What did these two attempts at revolution have in common?  These two shining moments in Philippine history show two things:  1) Filipinos have a very long and slow-burning fuse;  2) When Filipinos can no longer say “Puwede na; puwede pa,” they will confront a superior military power by sheer numbers and courage born out of will power and desperation; and, 3) both were aborted revolutions. 

Let’s take a quick look at those two historical spectacles.

Against all objections that revolution is untimely, Andres Bonifacio and his Katipunan decided that it is infinitely better to die fighting than be killed like a chicken destined for the soup pot.  Not only were they being closely watched by the Spanish authorities, their family and relatives were being arrested and even killed on the barest suspicion of having a connection to filibusteros. All they had were bolos (machetes), spears, daggers, and pana (native bow and arrow) in addition to a pitifully small store of rifles and handguns.

Santiago Alvarez wrote in this memoirs (published under the title The Katipunan and the Revolution) about how Bonifacio thought of acquiring firearms. When asked by the leader of a volunteer group about where they can get the firearms needed, Bonifacio smiled and said, “Kung nasaan ang lusong, naroon ang halô” (where the mortar is, there lies the pestle), using a Tagalog proverb to say that their weapons shall be those captured from the enemy. And, indeed, that was how the Katipunan increased their store of firearms.  How this was done is described in the memoirs of Artemio Ricarte in his book Himagsikan ng mga Pilipino Laban sa Kastila where he narrated an encounter between the guardia civil and the Katipunan “Apoy” (Santiago Alvarez) at Noveleta, Cavite:

“ ... ang mga katipunan namang nagkukubli sa silong, ay nagsilabas at dinaluhong ang mga sibil na natatalatag sa harap ng tribunal, at sa pamamagitan ng yapos at pagsunggab sa mga paa, ay naagawan sila ng mga sandata nang di man nagtagal.” (The Katipuneros rushed from their hiding below the building and charged the civil guards lined up in front of the municipal hall, and by means of an embrace that pinned the arms and by grabbing at the feet, disarmed them within a short time.)

EDSA revolution

Ninety years later, Filipinos faced fellow Filipinos in a battle of nerves as the whole world watched what would later be dubbed “the EDSA revolution”.  People who came to EDSA brought no weapon of any kind, unless one could call the rosary a weapon.  Nobody brought food or drinks for what could very well be a long siege; but, typically, some people brought flowers in a garland that they offered to the soldiers who stood by the APCs and tanks.  The call for the return of democracy was so strong that people came by all means of transportation - by boat, kayak or canoe - or they simply walked to EDSA.  Truckloads of people congregated at EDSA, among them my teenage daughter whom I taught was safely doing schoolwork in her dormitory at UP Los Baños.  It was only when she came home, bright-eyed with joyful hope at about 5 in the morning when I found out she was at EDSA.  She was bubbling with excitement as she described “EDSA” and then dumped into my hands a small packet of home-baked cookies that were distributed by housewives who did exactly what Katipunan wives did - make food for the warriors.  Her joyful hope lasted only several hours.  When she woke up that same afternoon, she watched in disbelief as the trapos, who were disenfranchised by the Marcos regime, came crawling out of the woodwork and into the television stations. In tones of ineffable sadness, she said, “They were using us only as cannon fodder.”

Now let us fast-forward to the present.  Who have been smitten by the election campaign fever?  The candidates, naturally; but not the ordinary Pinoy and many of the not-so-ordinary-Pinoys like a friend who wrote me a week ago that the trapos are again flashing their “mala-colgate smile”. Recently, Antonio Abaya wrote of an “idiot nation” and reactions to his article spoke of “idiot voters”.  During the last presidential election campaign, a journalist, who occasionally posted his views in a Filipino e-group, wrote that Filipinos are forced to choose between the lesser evil, that time, between Gloria Arroyo and Da King (the late Fernando Poe, jr). In other words, Filipino voters must choose the least rotten among the candidates. There is something so terribly wrong somewhere when the terms “idiot nation” and “idiot voters” are used within the same context of choosing the lesser evil from among candidates for the top government post.  So, let us go back to 1896 and then to 1986 to see how this idiocy came about.

When Emilio Aguinaldo and his Magdalo supporters won political ascendancy through the meeting at Tejeros in April 1897, they demolished the groundwork laid by the anak pawis for an independent nation ruled through the three Katipunan principles of liberty, equality, and brotherhood.  Aguinaldo’s victory in Tejeros signaled the future transfer of power from the colonial master to the local oligarchy.  Instead of liberty, Aguinaldo as president of his “republic” gave the people a new set of masters under the same socio-economic structure.  In place of equality, the Filipinos were given a dubious equity in the share of the country’s resources and in the exercise of governance that was limited only to electing their new masters.  The concept of brotherhood was made redundant under a patriarchal rule where the majority of the population became merely the poor relations of their “brothers” who held all the wealth and power in their jealous hands. 

Not one

A quick look at all the presidents from Aguinaldo to Arroyo will show that not a single one of them belonged to a class lower than middle class, even if they claimed humble beginnings (only during election campaigns).  One of Ramon Magsaysay’s campain leaflets showed him working as a mechanic and, not to be outdone, one of Arroyo’s campaign slogans was “Gloria Labandera”, as if anybody could believe that she had washed at least one clothing apparel with her own hands.

That the Philippines has an oligarchic republic (admittedly a contradiction in terms) was described in the article “RP Politics: Family Affair” published in the June 2003 issue of the Cebu Daily News.  There was one curious statement in the article: “A century plus three years later, his (Aguinaldo’s) cousin, Gloria M. Arroyo, rose to the same position “ and  that Gloria Arroyo is also a relative of “Erap”(President Joseph Estrada) according to their genealogies, showing affinity by blood and/or by marriage.  No wonder, then, that the 1986 “revolution” was a repeat performance of Aguinaldo’s coup.

Two paragraphs stand out in “Dynasty”, an unpublished commentary  by Luis Teodoro, posted in his website September 12, 2005.  Two paragraphs in Mr. Teodoro’s commentary clearly show the continuation of the system first established by Aguinaldo in 1897:

The persistence of political dynasties reveals how seriously flawed Philippine democracy is, and validates the view that the state is no more than the executive committee of the ruling class. It is also testimony to a damaged electoral system run by money and patronage, which prevents the middle classes and even more certainly the poor from breaking the monopoly on power of the landlords and big businessmen who also control the economy.

Though they do not say so, and may not even be conscious of it, the dynasties are united by certain common goals and interests, the most basic being their commitment to the preservation of the political, economic and social systems that have assured their dominance, wealth and power in this country. 

Uncanny

What the two articles did not mention is the uncanny similarity of the method by which Aguinaldo and Arroyo seized power; uncanny because of the space of just a little more than 100 years between the two.  Aguinaldo toppled Bonifacio from the position of chief honcho by allegations that led to the murder of the Bonifacio brothers, Andres and Procopio; and later, the same method was used on Antonio Luna . Gloria Arroyo stole Malacañan in much the same way; through charges—real and imagined—against President Joseph Estrada.  As soon as President Estrada wrote the letter stating that he needed to take a leave of absence for reasons of health, it was announced that President Estrada had resigned.  Arroyo was sworn in as President of the Republic of the Philippines with such unholy haste by then Chief Justice Hilario Davide.   Aguinaldo used sycophants among the Magdalo; Arroyo used the group called “Omerta”.  In an exclusive article in the October 30, 2000 issue of  Daily Tribune, Ninez Cacho-Olivares wrote

“A group which calls itself ’Omerta,’ composed of representatives of business groups and Catholic Church leaders as well as representatives of celebrated personalities, came together and met formally early this month to fine tune the plan to ’constitutionally’ oust President Estrada under ’Oplan Excelsis.’"

Nothing has changed since 1896; nothing, except the dramatis personae in the governance of a nation through what Mr. Teodoro calls “a flawed democracy”.  The question is: Is there democracy in the Philippines, and, is it even a republic?  That question has long been answered by the ordinary Pinoy who are most unfairly described as “idiot voters”.  Their answer to both questions is “No”.  Yet, everybody above the group classed as living below poverty level, gleefully encouraged by mass media, insist that there is democracy in the Philippines.  In a country ruled by family dynasties, democracy is an impossibility.  In an election where the voters can choose only the lesser evil from among the candidates, there cannot be a republic which, by definition, is a government based on popular representation and control.

Two journalists of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Neal Cruz and Cielito Habito, wrote two articles this month, analyzing the state of the Philippine economy while presenting economic statistics.  While the articles were very good and well written, as is usual with those two writers, they are read by people who might as well be deaf and blind.  But the poor, as Neal Cruz said, do not need statistics to know that their life is a sorry mess and that there is no hope in the near future.  If the poor vote movie celebrities to the Senate and if the poor sell their votes, does it matter much in a country where elections are a sham?  Whatever remnants of democracy remain in that hapless country cannot describe as merely flawed.  The democracy that “EDSA 1986” demanded was an illusion maintained by the ruling elite through their representatives in Congress and in Malacañan.  

There must be magic in numbers. Filipinos waited 300 years before they wielded their bolos in 1896, then waited another 90 years to revolt against a dictatorship in 1986, and are still waiting now, 111 years later. The gap is narrowing. Perhaps, the next spontaneous combustion will come after 50 years, or maybe sooner, when the Filipinos can no longer say “Puwede pa; puwede na.” Meanwhile, the cry for freedom and democracy that has been denied twice awaits the answer from a nation that is in a perpetual state of denial. Bulatlat

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