Module 6:

What Is Martial Law? Martial Law

According to martial law museum, martial law is a power of the President as Commander-in-Chief of all Philippine armed forces
meant for times of crisis and for the security of people and expediting justice.

Pros And Cons Of Martial Law

Pros Cons
Restoration of Order Erosion of Civil Liberties
Enhance Security Abuse of Power
National Unity Censorship and Propaganda
Prevention of escalation Societal Division
Focus on Recovery Instilling Fear and Intimidation

Martial Law And Its Aftermath: A Personal History By Gato Del Bosque
Gato del Bosque likes to hide behind a pen name. It is said that his spirit lives with like-minded cats on Mounts Tangcong Vaca,
Isarog, Iriga and Buhi, Mounts Masaraga, Malinao, Mayon, and the Western Cordilleras that end at Mount Bulusan. He has been
spotted in cities as far as Ho Chi Minh, Taipei, Hongkong, Singapore, Bangkok, Rome, the Vatican, Milan, Parma and many cities in the
US, Canada, and Mexico. But as his life wanes, his spirit now lives in the stomping grounds of the grandchildren of the Cimarrones
and Remontados de Isarog.

The early 70s were years of social foment. The year 1970 was the year of the First Quarter Storm, followed by the Diliman Commune
at the University of the Philippines in 1971. While the First Quarter Storm was raging, I was in my first year at the local college as a
political science and history major, after four years in the seminary made me realize that the priesthood wasn’t for me

In the summer of that year, students and workers who were on summer break from schools and factories in Manila interacted with
the likes of us curious students, who wanted to know what the situation was like in the capital. They talked of street battles
with the police, with the MetroCom (Metropolitan Command of the Philippine Constabulary) up to the governmental seat of power
in Malacañang, and the deaths of students, teachers, and workers.

I have always been a proponent of justice, even staging a small protest at the seminary when my classmates and I were made to eat
cheap fried fish called "bading butete" right after we held a concert that made money for the seminary. As a curious student, I had to
learn more about the reasons for this foment. I needed answers as to why tens of thousands, especially youth, were angry enough to
fight the government in the streets. I joined discussion groups that expanded my perspectives on Philippine history and politics.

Our discussions reviewed the methodology and presentation of history by the writers of the textbooks we studied in school, like
Gregorio Zaide and Teodoro Agoncillo, and the writings of Claro M. Recto, Jovito Salonga, and Jose Diokno. I enjoyed the poetry of
Amado V. Hernandez and Andres Bonifacio. I memorized José Rizal's "Mi Ultimo Adios" and read the Noli Mi Tangere and El
Filibusterismo. José María Sison's Philippine Society and Revolution and the writings of V. L. Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Lin
Biao, and Deng Xiaoping were the more serious studies.

But more entertaining were the stories of the great bush generals Francisco Dagohoy, Gabriela and Diego Silang, the undefeated
Moro and Cordillera peoples, and Antonio Luna. There were the tragicomic narratives of the Filipino Revolutionary Army's race to the
bottom of "who was the last general to surrender to the Americans." And of course, Vo Nguyen Giap, the greatest bush general of
Asia who led the Vietnamese to final victory against the French, Japanese, and the Americans.

Combining Studies And Struggle

I was enjoying those studies and discussions amidst a teachers' strike for higher wages at my university, and student rallies against
tuition fee hikes. The teachers on strike for higher wages talked with us about imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism as
the three basic evils of Philippine society. Restless about issues of academic freedom and high tuition fees, we also talked of the age-
old problem of landlessness of the tillers of the soil.

To better understand feudalism, Ijoined a student investigating-organizing group that went to the nearby countryside to hear
firsthand from the peasants about their conditions. I learned about the "tercio" relations where the peasants had to give two-thirds
of their harvest to the landowners for the use of the land that belonged to the landlord. This practice more deeply indebted the
peasant to the landowner, who was usually absent from the farm, enjoying the fruits of the peasants' labor in the towns and cities.
The readings about feudalism became a more concrete reality for me.

As early as 1971, the rise of fascism became more obvious. And despite resistance from the growing nationalist and democratic
forces and their allies, which included national leaders Jose Diokno, Jovito Salonga, and Ninoy Aquino, the Marcos government
suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
 Module 6:
Martial Law
The suspension of the writ only triggered the youth, students, professionals, and peasants to more quickly organize. I became a full-
time community organizer in 1971. The Marcos government declared martial law in September 1972. A month later, while a friend
and I were enjoying delicacies at another friend's panaderia, the Marcos military came and arrested us.

We were just two of those included in the mass arrests conducted nationwide after the declaration of martial law. We filled
detention centers and military camps. We were classified as CTs, or Communist Terrorists-a designation that just meant anyone who
opposed martial law. Even violators of curfew and jaywalkers were detained as CTs, arrested without warrants and court hearings.
Only a few detainees were arraigned and charged for show. I was neither arraigned nor charged.

I was first detained at Reagan Barracks, the central military headquarters in Legazpi City. I experienced physical and psychological
torture, including solitary confinement. Soon after, i was transferred to the Camp Vicente Lim Detention Center in Calamba, Laguna.
In Calamba, I saw thousands of other citizens detained by the Marcos martial law government.

From Calamba, I was transferred to the maximum-security prison at the Philippine Constabulary central headquarters in Camp Crame
in Quezon City. I met the central committee members of the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), the precursor to the current
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the former Chairman Jesus Lava and Casto Alejandrino. Over ping-pong sessions, I
listened to these storied rebels tell me about their lives.

I listened to the stories of Kumander Tatang, one of the famous leaders of the World War Il-era Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon
(People's Army Against Japan) or Hukbalahap, and Navy Captain-turned-rebel Danilo Vizmanos, a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy and a high-ranking officer of the Philippine Armed Forces.

Kumander Tatang and Captain Vizmanos were apparently on opposite sides of the Hukbalahap Rebellion during the time of President
Ramon Magsaysay. The two regaled us with stories of how Capfain Vizmanos commanded the shelling of Mt. Arayat and Mt. Samat.
Kumander Tatang told of how the Huks could not sleep without hearing the sigh of the wasted shells that flew over their heads and
kept missing them.

Release From Detention

In 1974, there was mounting international pressure to release political prisoners due to reports of torture. I was released from Camp
Crame just in time for classes at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, where I transferred to study journalism and mass
communications. On my birthday in 1975, the notorious group of torturers led by then-Captain Rodolfo Aguinaldo arrested me again
for allegedly trying to join the New People's Army. Tortured at the Military Intelligence Service Group in Camp Crame, I was placed in
solitary confinement until released for classes on cognizance of an uncle who was the teacher of the then-military chaplain whom he
berated for presiding over the military's inhumanity.

I rejoined the underground movement after this, going back to organizing farmers, students, youth, and the middle class against
martial law. By 1979, the underground was strong enough to face fascism openly despite the unabated human rights abuses-killings,
massacres, arrests, tortures, and detention. I made friends and even mobilized the warlords of our region. We fondly and
humorously called their armed formations the Goons for the Restoration of Democracy (GORD) and the Gangsters for the
Restoration of Democracy (GARD).

Then August 21, 1983 happened. Ninoy Aquino, a former senator and outspoken Marcos critic, returned from exile in the United
States and was blatantly assassinated upon arrival at the airport.

The hardships, the deaths, the massacres, and the fun of the fight against the dictatorship started to pay off with almost-daily rallies
all over the country. Formal, informal, underground, and open alliances sprouted like mushrooms against the dictatorship. These
struggles culminated three years later at EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, named after a labor leader-writer-intellectual) in
Manila. Even the oligarchy broke with Marcos due to his electoral cheating. The head of the Department of National Defense, Juan
Ponce Enrile, and Constabulary Chief Fidel Ramos broke with the dictator and hid behind the people. And the people, having had
enough, faced off with the tanks of the fascists. As the people closed in on the walls of Malacañang, Marcos and his family fled with
the help of the U.S. government to Hawaii, with their loot of "diamonds in diapers."

One of the oligarchs I met before EDSA asked me to work for him under the new Aquino government but I declined, trying to opt for a
more normal life (I had three children by then).

In 1986, the then-underground National Democratic Front bureau asked me to head a panel to lead efforts to establish a just and
lasting peace with the new government. But it was a time of multiple coup attempts, and I was arrested again in 1988 by the military
faction of the Aquino government who wanted to brand Cory Aquino as a communist.
 Module 6:
Martial Law
At the Bago Bantay Detention Center of the Armed Forces of the Philippines's Military Intelligence Group 5, a senator and lawyer-
friends visited me, wanting to know what my torturers were asking. The military's questions stemmed from their age-old and
continuing argument that the "opposition is red and therefore communist, and oppositionists (even Cory Aquino and her government)
must be killed or imprisoned."

Edcel Lagman's House Committee on Human Rights also asked me and other detainees to appear before their committee in an
effort to stop the torture and interrogations by the military intelligence. I was released a few weeks after the birth of my fourth child.
Realizing they really had nothing on me, my jailers released me and wished me luck.

The Continuing Plunder Of Our Country And Our Continuing Struggle

So, even while martial law formally went away when the Marcoses went into exile, fascism has not stopped. In 1988, I was one of the
ten thousand plaintiffs awarded a restitution judgment from the Marcos Estate by the District Court of Honolulu in Hawaii. This
judgment triggered the passing of the Republic Act 10368 in the Philippines, which awarded more than seventy thousand victims of
human rights violations with reparations from the Marcos loot confiscated by the Swiss government and returned to the Philippine
government. The Swiss government repatriated that chunk of ill-gotten wealth on the condition that a third of the money be allotted
for compensation to victims of human rights violations during martial law. At the time of this writing, the Marcos estate still owes
each victim at least $200,000 from the Hawaii judgment.

Arrests, tortures, massacres, and intimidation of community organizers and oppositionists continue to this day in one form or
another. Plunder of mind-boggling proportions continues. This year, the son of the dictator wormed his way back into power, using
disinformation, historical distortion, and widespread vote-buying to cheat his way to the presidency.

I thought that ousting Marcos and then Joseph Estrada -both Philippine presidential record holders in the plunder of a country's
coffers- and then assisting in the imprisonment of Estrada's cheating presidential successor, Gloria Arroyo, would be enough to
reverse the plunder and murder of my people. But this still appears to be a dream.

I have no choice but to continue to organize and fight the rotting plunder-and-murder monster oppressing our country and people,
whose heads, like the Hydra, regrow as soon as and even before we can cut one. But it becomes fun as one comes to understand the
joy of the battles-to-the-death of our ancestors Dagohoy, Diego and Gabriela, Andres and Gregoria, Marcelo, Juan and Antonio, and
Macario, our brothers, the Moro people in the South and the Cordillera peoples of the North, and yes, our own Remontados de
Isarog.

I say, go tell the Hydra: we will cut off each head you regrow!!!

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Tercio as “as third”

relations where the peasants had to give two-thirds of their harvest to the landowners

The Writ Of Habeas Corpus

is a court order. It demands that a public official (such as a warden) deliver an imprisoned person to the court and show good cause
for their detention. The writ allows a prisoner to challenge the legality of their confinement.
Habeas corpus has roots in English common law. It translates to "you should have the body" in Latin.

"Diamonds In Diapers"
The phrase "diamonds in diapers" refers to the rumors and reports that, when Ferdinand Marcos and his family fled the Philippines
during the 1986 People Power Revolution, they smuggled valuable assets, including jewels and money, out of the country in unusual
ways. One of the most famous accounts is that they allegedly hid diamonds in their personal belongings, including baby diapers, as a
way to evade detection by authorities.

Marcos signed Proclamation No. 1081 on September 21, 1972, marking the beginning of a fourteen-year period of one-man rule,
which effectively lasted until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986. Proclamation No.