Pete Lacaba in the 70s First published in Philippine Graphic, September 1995. Updated in the author’s blog in September 2008.
When word got around a few years ago that a class suit was going to be filed against the Marcoses, I took note of it more as a news item than as a personal issue. I virtually ignored the forms that had come in the mail, asking me to recount the torture I had undergone under martial rule.
One week before the deadline for the submission of the depositions of torture victims, a friend called and asked why I hadn’t submitted mine. My friend said that if not enough depositions were submitted to the Hawaii court, the Marcoses would be proven right in their contention that they were not world-class torturers and executioners, and they would be justified in asking for a dismissal of the case.
What needed to be done, my friend pointed out, was not primarily to get financial reparation for the harm that had been done to us, but to prove to the world that the Marcos regime had indeed been guilty of widespread and systematic torture and extrajudicial executions. If the class suit said there were around 10,000 victims of human-rights violations under Marcos, then it needed to get as close to 10,000 depositions as it could.
My friend’s arguments persuaded me to write the following account, which was submitted along with the requisite forms just a few days before the deadline set by the court for the submission of depositions:
At dawn of April 25, 1974, on the second year of martial law, I was awakened by shouts of: “Open up! We are the authorities!” I looked out and saw that the house was surrounded by armed men taking cover behind jeeps and cars that had their headlights on.
As soon as I opened the door, the first man who came in shoved the barrel of his rifle into my stomach. Then somebody spun me around and forced me to lie face down on the floor. In that position, I was stepped on, kicked in the ribs, hit in the back and on the back of the head with rifle butts.
After the house had been searched and my two house companions were in custody, someone who acted as though he was in command (I would learn later that he was a first lieutenant, but not the head of the raiding party) dragged me into the bathroom and asked if there was a tunnel underneath us. I couldn’t help giving a short laugh, struck by the absurdity of the question. Angered by my response, he gave me a sudden blow in the chest with his closed fist. The lieutenant was an Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping-iron type, and at that time I was a 111-pound weakling. That single punch sent me reeling against the bathroom’s tiled wall.
The sun was up when we were taken in separate cars to Camp Crame in Quezon City, to the headquarters of the 5th Constabulary Security Unit (5CSU). After some routine questioning and filling up of forms in the office, I was taken to the back, the troops’ sleeping quarters. Constabulary officers and enlisted men–including a buck private who was himself under detention, for murder–took turns making me a punching bag.
Mostly I was pummeled with fists in the chest and the stomach. I was seated on the edge of a steel cot. My tormentors and interrogators sat in chairs or stood before me, hitting me each time a question was asked or an answer was unsatisfactory. Troopers passing by, on their way to their lockers or wherever, felt free to hit my nape or the back of my head with open palms or karate chops.
At one point I was made to half-squat with arms outstretched. One of my torturers then took a broom and slowly, methodically beat my shins with the broom’s wooden handle. Although he seemed to be hitting me with very little force, the cumulative effect of the beating caused my shins to swell and made it sore and sensitive for a few days.
At another point I was made to lie down with the back of my head resting on the edge of one steel cot, both my feet resting on the edge of another cot, my arms straight at my sides, and my stiffened body hanging in midair. This was the torture they called higa sa hangin (lying down in air), also known as the San Juanico Bridge, named after the country’s longest bridge, built during martial law and dedicated by Marcos to his wife, Imelda.
“Lying down in air” is difficult enough, since you have to contend with the pull of gravity. But even before gravity could take its toll, somebody standing close by would give me a kick in the stomach and bring my body down to the floor. The steel cot scraped skin off my nape as I slid down.
I was forced to “lie down in air” twice. The third time I simply refused to get up. I stayed crumpled on the floor and said, “You may as well just kill me. Go ahead and kill me.” That was when the torture stopped for the day.
I had been continuously tortured for about eight hours. Incredibly enough, we even had a lunch break. I forced myself to finish up the horrid prison food on the aluminum army tray that they placed before me, hoping that when they resumed hitting me in the stomach I would throw up in their faces. I never did.
I can no longer remember the exact sequence of events, but in the days that followed, during the fortnight when we were incommunicado and our families went desperately from camp to camp looking for us, I experienced various other forms of harassment and torture.
Once, while a deposition was being taken, the sergeant conducting the interrogation suddenly kicked me in the chest. We were both seated in one corner of the 5CSU office, face to face, and I insisted on answering only questions pertaining to myself, refusing to answer those that would implicate other people. After the nth “I prefer not to answer that question,” he raised his booted foot and gave me a kick in the chest that sent the chair on which I was seated skidding clear across the room. When the chair hit the wall, I fell to the floor.
On another occasion, a lieutenant reviewing my deposition made me stand in front of an air conditioner going full blast while he interrogated me. And he smiled when he saw that I was shivering uncontrollably.
“I was forced to “lie down in air” twice. The third time I simply refused to get up. I stayed crumpled on the floor and said, “You may as well just kill me. Go ahead and kill me.” That was when the torture stopped for the day.”
On still another occasion, another lieutenant ordered me to close my eyes in the course of an interrogation. A hand that I assumed to be the lieutenant’s then slapped my closed eyes and my nape repeatedly, almost rhythmically.
Once, the detained soldier who had been one of my torturers on my first day took me out of the cramped prison cell that I shared with about 30 other political prisoners. He gave me a tongue-lashing for having poked fun at his rather unusual name. While he was spewing saliva in my face, his fellow soldiers gave me a few jabs in the ribs.
One day I was led out of the small prison cell, handcuffed, and made to board a jeep with three or four of the men who had tortured me on my first day. I thought for sure this was it, they were going to take me to wherever their killing fields were and blow my brains out. Instead, we went to a military hospital, the V. Luna in Quezon City. I recognized the place because it was there that my father, a war veteran, had died of cancer about a dozen years earlier.
It now seemed to me that my torturers were humane after all, that they would have me treated for the bruises on my nape and shins. But as soon as we were inside a doctor’s clinic in one of the wards, I was blindfolded with my own snot-splattered handkerchief, made to lie down on the examination table, and injected with what I would later surmise to be a “truth serum.” In a couple of minutes I felt like I had downed half a case of beer. My head swam, and my body seemed to float. Once again the third degree began. I can remember talking drunkenly and trying to give misleading answers that would still somehow sound credible to my interrogators.
I don’t know how long the interrogation took before I finally lost consciousness. It was dark when I was roused from sleep, taken to the jeep, and brought back to my prison cell. They had to half-carry me all the way. My legs felt like jelly, and I didn’t seem to have any control over any part of my body, although I kept mumbling my own mantra: “Mind over matter, mind over matter…” The mantra didn’t work.
About two weeks after my arrest, I was taken to the office of the lieutenant who had slapped my closed eyes. He said my wife and my mother were in the other room. They had finally found my place of detention. But the lieutenant said he would only allow me to see them if I would name one name and give one address of a person involved in the underground resistance. “Have pity on your wife and your mother,” he said. “They would very much like to see you.” After a few moments of agonizing, I said I couldn’t do it. He eventually let my wife and my mother come in and talk to me for about ten minutes, but not after subjecting them for a much longer time to the mental torture of knowing I was just in the other room and fearing they would not be allowed to see me.
I was detained without charges for close to two years. In the first six months of detention, I was made to wash cars and clean the enlisted men’s incredibly filthy latrines. Halfway through my detention I experienced a recurrence of the pulmonary tuberculosis of which I had already been cured before martial law. I had to be confined for about a month at the Quezon Institute, a hospital that specializes in tuberculosis cases. Three shifts of prison guards kept me company.
On the basis of close to 10,000 depositions similar, I suppose, to the one above, the Hawaii court declared the Marcoses guilty of human rights violations and ordered them to pay a billion plus, in dollars, as reparation to the claimants in the class suit.
It was, I thought, primarily a moral victory. I joked about what I would do with the loot, but I didn’t really believe there was any way the government or the Marcoses would give a billion plus, in dollars, to victims of human-rights violations, quite a number of whom remain not only nonconformist but also active, militant, even dissident.
Today the papers tell me that a deal is being worked out: if the Marcoses and the government agree to pay 100 million dollars, the claimants will drop all charges against the Marcoses. This is supposed to be a win-win-win solution.
I don’t know what to think. I have friends among both those who defend and those who denounce the deal, and I don’t know what to think. I could be a million dollars richer, but if the Marcoses are absolved of their crimes against humanity, then what I wrote about how I was tortured would turn out to be a lie, a figment of my overheated imagination.
Most people, especially the victims of President Ferdinand Marcos’ so-called constitutional dictatorship, would remember only the evil things about Martial Law. But, if historians would be fair about it, there were also some positive things about it. The bad things, of course, include the warrantless arrests, the indefinite detention without charges, and the alleged torture, rape and other detestable abuses supposedly committed by military officials and personnel who went out of bounds. Power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely.
Since most of the write-ups today would focus on the bad things that Martial Law did to their lives, businesses and careers, I am going to balance the situation by discussing some positive things about Martial Law. I am not going to revise the historical facts that were well-documented. I will not deny the truth because I too, was a victim, having been arrested as a student leader and detained without charges. But since I am a journalist and a Rotarian, I am going to tell the whole truth. And part of the truth which others prefer not to highlight is the positive side of Martial Law.
What I liked most about those Martial Law years was the discipline of both the rich and the poor. The rich, especially the oligarchs who exploited, oppressed and committed all forms of social injustices against the people, were disciplined through massive social changes and development, including agrarian reform, labor decrees including the Labor Code, and the government’s exercise of eminent domain and police power to break the monopolies by landed estates, by the ruling classes who were committing multiple unfair labor practices against their workers. Marcos decreed many social reforms especially in the form of labor laws and social legislation.
The poor were also disciplined. Curfew was imposed. The young ones did not roam around at nights like what they are doing today. The core of the curriculum was work. Pupils and students were trained to work and not to behave as spoiled brats like many are today. The young and the old were ordered to plant trees, and the government employees were required to render rural service in order to help the green revolution. People were asked to clean their surroundings, to be mindful of the community sanitation. No one was allowed to urinate or defecate anywhere. The people were made to respect the environment.
As between absolute freedom and conscientious discipline, I prefer discipline. As between unrestrained freedom to abuse, freedom to plunder the country, freedom to use and sell drugs, and freedom to ravage the environment, which are all happening today, on the one hand, and discipline, on the other hand, I would always choose discipline. Even God would destroy a new Sodom and a new Gomorrah, and would destroy us by massive floods like He did the time of Noah. This is a licentious, abusive and totally reckless and sinful generation. We need Martial Law to bring back sanity to the land. Or God will destroy us all.
The Darkest Chapter of the Philippine History or the Golden Years of the Country’s History?
September 21, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos placed Philippines under martial law, some refer it as “The Darkest Chapter of the Philippine History”. The declaration issued suspended the civil rights and imposed military authority within the country where he abolished Congress, controlled media establishments, and order arrest to those opposition parties and leaders where he defended the declaration for needing the extra power to quench the rising violence caused by the communists to eradicate the roots of rebellion. This brings fear and hopelessness to our brothers and sisters, during these times people knew that the gravity of disorder, social injustice, youth and student activism, many vigilantes and mysterious crimes are happening we don’t about the safety around us anymore.
But during this period, it is hailed also “The Golden Years of the Philippine History” wherein there are positive effects of martial law like in economy that according to World Bank Data (1980), the Philippines’s Gross Domestic Product quadruples. Also with the active of military during this time they are decrease in crime rates such as murder, stealing and other crimes are rarely done because of armies visible everywhere. And the whole country became extremely disciplined due to the curfew observed where those who won’t obey are given disciplinary actions.
Regardless of these, we Filipinos united and learned to fight for our rights to give back our voices, power and freedom. This became one of our famous acts within the history where democracy is used for those who imprison it, where we thirst for the sweetness and positivity of freedom.
There is positivity in every negative. Without this event, we Filipinos are continued to be under their powers unable to speak out but with courage and unity we regained our freedom and forever to be influenced by this event making us where we are now even with the traumatizing events that scars the history but also nurtures it which encourages us.
In September 1972 Marcos declared martial law, claiming that it was the last defense against the rising disorder caused by increasingly violent student demonstrations, the alleged threats of communist insurgency by the new Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the Muslim separatist movement of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). One of his first actions was to arrest opposition politicians in Congress and the Constitutional Convention. Initial public reaction to martial law was mostly favourable except in Muslim areas of the south, where a separatist rebellion, led by the MNLF, broke out in 1973. Despite halfhearted attempts to negotiate a cease-fire, the rebellion continued to claim thousands of military and civilian casualties. Communist insurgency expanded with the creation of the National Democratic Front (NDF), an organization embracing the CPP and other communist groups.
Ferdinand E. Marcos, 1972.Slim Aarons/Getty Images
Under martial law the regime was able to reduce violent urban crime, collect unregistered firearms, and suppress communist insurgency in some areas. At the same time, a series of important new concessions were given to foreign investors, including a prohibition on strikes by organized labour, and a land-reform program was launched. In January 1973 Marcos proclaimed the ratification of a new constitution based on the parliamentary system, with himself as both president and prime minister. He did not, however, convene the interim legislature that was called for in that document.
General disillusionment with martial law and with the consolidation of political and economic control by Marcos, his family, and close associates grew during the 1970s. Despite growth in the country’s gross national product, workers’ real income dropped, few farmers benefited from land reform, and the sugar industry was in confusion. The precipitous drop in sugar prices in the early 1980s coupled with lower prices and less demand for coconuts and coconut products—traditionally the most important export commodity—added to the country’s economic woes; the government was forced to borrow large sums from the international banking community. Also troubling to the regime, reports of widespread corruption began to surface with increasing frequency.
Elections for an interim National Assembly were finally held in 1978. The opposition—of which the primary group was led by the jailed former senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.—produced such a bold and popular campaign that the official results, which gave Marcos’s opposition virtually no seats, were widely believed to have been illegally altered. In 1980 Aquino was allowed to go into exile in the United States, and the following year, after announcing the suspension of martial law, Marcos won a virtually uncontested election for a new six-year term.
Ferdinand Marcos waving, 1983.A1C Virgil C. Zurbruegg//U.S. Department of Defense
Sandiganbayan, the country’s anti-corruption court, has once again junked a case against the Marcoses, this time involving a P200-million forfeiture case against the family. It cited lack of evidence as the reason for the decision, according to a report by Business Mirror.
“Wherefore, premises considered, for failure of the plaintiff to prove its allegations by preponderance of evidence, the subject complaint filed against defendants Estate of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda R. Marcos…is hearby dismissed,” read the anti-graft court’s decision. But it also acknowledged the plunder and corruption during the Marcos regime.
“On a final note, the Court acknowledges the atrocities committed during martial law under the Marcos regime and the ‘plunder’ committed on the country’s resources. However, absent sufficient evidence that may lead to the conclusion that the subject properties were indeed ill-gotten by the Marcoses,” read the decision.
“On a final note, the Court acknowledges the atrocities committed during martial law under the Marcos regime and the ‘plunder’ committed on the country’s resources. However, absent sufficient evidence that may lead to the conclusion that the subject properties were indeed ill-gotten by the Marcoses,” read the decision.
This is the fourth case against the Marcoses that the Sandiganbayan has junked this year alone.
Then, a mere two months later in October, the Sandiganbayan once again dismissed another major case against the Marcoses, involving an alleged P1.052-billion ill-gotten wealth filed in 1989. In the same month, it dismissed another P267-million ill-gotten wealth case against the Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos, citing lack of evidence.
However, in a huge victory for the prosecution, the anti-graft court also forfeited nearly P3 billion of the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth, according to a report by CNN. It ordered former cronies of Ferdinand Marcos to return to the government their shares in Eastern Telecommunications Philippines, Inc., which the Presidential Commission on Good Government valued at around P2.95 billion.
No whiff of historical revisionism or Martial Law denialism here: The Vice President shares the stories of the true heroes of the bloody Marcos regime.
To commemorate the 44th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law, the social media of the Office of the Vice President have been sharing the stories of Filipinos made martyrs by Ferdinand E. Marcos’ bloody rule.
In her official statement released on the 21st, Vice President Leni Robredo—which we like to think of as one of the very few bastions of sanity and decency in the Executive Branch—called on Filipinos “to remember the 70,000 who were imprisoned, the 34,000 who were tortured, the 3,240 who were killed, and the 390 who disappeared during one of the darkest periods of our history. They were fathers and mothers. They were brothers and sisters. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that their stories are neither forgotten nor twisted for political purposes and ambitions.”
Robredo has gone beyond soundbites: Immediately following publication of her statement, her social media released unflinching biographies of the martyrs of Martial Law—those detained under the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, those who disappeared, those who were tortured, those who were raped, those who were murdered, and often following their questioning of Marcos’ totalitarian regime.
It’s a far cry from the florid pro-Marcos historical revisionism that the official page of the government has tried to shove down the Internet’s throat for Marcos’ birth anniversary, or their terse one-liner marking the declaration of Martial Law. (For the eagle-eyed: The Official Gazette shared an article on how September 21 wasn’t the anniversary of the declaration, never mind that their caption said otherwise.)
Some of the stories that the VP’s office has shared:
Liliosa Hilao is considered to be the first female casualty and martyr of Martial Law. On April 6, 1973, she was declared dead after being detained by the authorities, when she demanded to see a warrant from the police who’d come to arrest her brother. The VP’s office shares: “According to the official report, Lilli committed suicide by drinking muriatic acid. Her autopsy said otherwise: Her face was severely swollen, her lips bore cigarette burns. Her arms had numerous injection marks, possibly from ‘truth serum,’ a torture method used on victims. Her torso was mottled with finger marks and gun-barrel marks. It was also possible she was sexually abused.” Read more.
Boyet Mijares’ father Primitivo served as the chief propagandist of the Marcos government—who, during the regime, grew disenchanted with Martial Law, and testified before U.S. courts about Marcos’ human rights abuses. (Primitivo would publish The Conjugal Dictatorship, a tell-all about the Marcos’ high life.) This sealed his and his son’s fate: After a disappearance, “Boyet’s body was riddled with stab wounds, his skull bashed in. His genitals were mangled, and his eyes were protruding. Boyet’s mother, then judge of Manila, was able to obtain information that Primitivo was made to watch while men tortured his son. Primitivo has never been found.” Read more.
One of the more well-known faces of the students rights movement, Edgar Jopson would get to sit down with Ferdinand Marcos for a dialogue in the Palace. “In that meeting, Edjop demanded that Marcos promise—on a piece of paper—that he would not run for a third term. Marcos, offended at the youth’s cheekiness, snapped, ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? You’re only a son of a grocer!’ Edjop responded: ‘Honest grocer naman.'” Read more.
The 21-year-old Archimedes Trajano questioned Imee Marcos during the open forum about her father’s involvement in human rights atrocities. He also asked her: “Must the Kabataang Barangay be headed by the president’s daughter?” As the VP’s office shares: “That was the last time anyone saw Archimedes alive. His bloodied body was found on the streets of Manila. Official reports said he had gotten into a dormitory fight, but witnesses came forward saying they saw Archimedes being dragged out of the venue by Imee’s security escorts. It is believed Archimedes was tortured for 12 to 36 hours before he died.” Read more.
