By SANNY BOY D. AFABLE

Had it not been for the popular uprising in EDSA thirty years ago, we could still have been living in the golden age—a long period of stability and prosperity despite threats of communist insurgency and Moro secessionism. And so, to avoid bloodshed, the longest-serving president and architect of the New Society Ferdinand E. Marcos had to step down from his office after 21 years of invaluable service to the nation.

This is the version advanced by the present Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, the “official repository of government documents” run under the Office of the President. Apparently, this version of history contradicts the version held by many, who decried the Gazette’s claim and described it as “historical revisionism.”

This revision leaves on the ash heap of history the memory of those who stood up to the dictatorship. As with all conventional accounts dominated by the Aquino-Marcos rivalry, the elite—not the people—is the protagonist of this narrative.

Story-telling

Filipinos already had a concept of “kasaysayan” that is rooted in indigenous culture long before the country was colonized, said Jaime Veneracion of the UP Department of History. “Kasaysayan ang tawag natin sa isang makabuluhang paglalarawan ng nakaraang salinlahi [...] Ang kabuluhan ay nakatuon sa isang tiyak na grupo,” he explained. 

Being a complex chain of narratives with a “writer” and intended readers, history is thus open to discourse. Throughout history, dominating historical interpretations have always been questioned and, in fact, revised to create more accurate accounts of the past. When the friars took it as a matter of historical truth that the Filipinos are indolent and backward, Jose Rizal belied this claim by digging up the history of advanced pre-colonial societies in the Philippines.

In the neutral sense of the word, revisionism is thus a legitimate process of writing history. But it has gained a negative connotation after World War II when holocaust denialists called themselves “holocaust revisionists.” Historical revisionism is now used interchangeably with “historical negationism,” to mean the attempt to negate widely accepted versions of history, or even to deny facts, as in the case of Marcos revisionism.

The underlying issue with historical revisionism is not the attempt to rewrite history per se. It is that forces—often members of the political or economic elite—clash over the power to frame the many narratives in the past in order to serve their own interests.

The Victor’s Narrative

As a subjective understanding of the past, history has many faces. Marcos loyalists choose to focus on the superficial infrastructures built during the “golden age,” while liberals recount how they restored and championed “democracy.” In this sense, history does not simply mirror power relations in the past—it is also shaped by them.

The traditional function of history was to “spear the right of power” or to secure the victor’s dominance, Michael Foucault said in “Society Must Be Defended.” Such was the case with Martial Law, having been explained by Marcos as a ploy to impede the “threat” of communist “insurgents.” However, the spike in recruitment for the New People’s Army came after Martial Law was declared, due largely to Marcos’ abuses.

This version of history, according to Focault, has only served the interests of masters, monarchies, empires, or in the case of martial law history, the rival elite powers. It ignores at large a past of “dark servitude and forfeiture”—the many narratives of oppression and struggle that the nation witnessed under the dictatorship and which continue to exist today.

These grand narratives, to cite, ignore that three decades since the dictator was overthrown, people are still arrested for their political expression; farmers remain landless and starving; and indigenous peoples are evicted from their lands to give way to foreign investments.

These accounts of the people’s struggles challenge the elite’s picture of the past and the present, forming what Foucault called “counterhistory”—a “revisionism” of the victor’s history.

A History of the People

No less than President Rodrigo Duterte leads the open attempt to rewrite Martial Law history from the perspective of the Marcoses—one that runs counter to the story of the people. Despite strong opposition from many groups, the president still expressed his desire to bury the late dictator in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

This shows that history is now deemed an antithesis of nation-building, when before it served as a guide and source of meaning. There are popular calls to “move on” from remembering Martial Law as it supposedly divides the nation and impedes progress. This view dangerously distorts our identity as a nation nourished by a sense of history. 

The lack of critical understanding of the people’s narratives stems from versions of history that are untold from the Filipino people’s point of view. Popular narratives of Martial Law history fall  short to emphasize the long and brutal mile it took before the “peaceful revolution” in EDSA.

The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang (CARMMA), a multi-sectoral network of Martial Law victims and dissenters, explains that many people think the dictatorship years were “the golden years of our country’s history [because they are] unaware of the terrible prices at which they came.” This is due to the lack of discussion in popular history books and syllabi. According to CARMMA, these “have never been changed to include the other side of the Martial Law era.”

Ultimately, attempts to write and rewrite history should always be anchored on the experiences and material reality of the people, and not on the deified icons who are evidently invested in how history is shaped. This history will serve not only to narrate the past but also to fuel the people’s struggles in the present. ●

This piece was first published in the Collegian’s October 18, 2016 issue with the headline “(Re)visioned.” Sanny Boy D. Afable served as the publication’s editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2018. He finished his undergraduate degree in statistics cum laude and holds a master’s in demography.