Redemption in Remembrance and Reflection, Part 1

"Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real."
- Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Forty three years ago, Martial Law was devised and declared; days later, it was announced on National television, with promises of order and prosperity, threats of capture for those who would dare go against the decree, the voice of one man claiming power over one nation. Forty three years to the day, we are a people divided on the era that Marcos, in his quest for absolute power, seized and grasped by the palm of his hand, squeezing an economy of its promise, stealing from a nation's coffers and piling up billions to its debts, strangling a democracy and stripping its people of its right to speak. Forty three years to the day, and most of us have forgotten.

The shortness and selectiveness of our memory, coupled with the stealthy maneuvering of certain bodies whose goal is to rise to power once more and revise history and further erase the bloody footprints they have left on our land and streets, have all combined to create the cultural, historical amnesia so prevalent today.

Forty three years to the day and those from whom loved ones and friends were torn through abduction, incarceration, torture, and murder are still grieving their loss, and whom we are depriving of justice because we choose to be deaf and blind to their truths. The people who witnessed the horrors of Martial Law are still fighting to be heard, to educate, to inform, to make us see the light, because the opportunists and the people whose minds they have corrupted are creating a clangor meant to blind our youth to what truly transpired.

But there are those who refuse to believe that the crimes against humanity committed during Ferdinand E. Marcos' regime will go down in history as hearsay, as knowledge shared by few, as dust swept under the rug, as a mere whisper that fades and will continue
to fade as the winds of time blow by and away. We refuse to believe that decades down the line, our children will echo what they hear nowadays: that Marcos was a great president, that his regime was peaceful, that this country knew abundance during his time. We refuse to believe that Marcos will be remembered for everything that he was not; for seeing him otherwise would mean a great disservice, would mean dismissing the sacrifice of all those who paid the price of opening this nation's eyes and ears to the cruelty of that era. They have paid for it--and dearly--with their lives, and those lives could have been ours, they could have been us.