As newspapers bannered “Marcos flees” headlines in February 1986, my parents were in two different places.
Ofelia Galinato was out looking for a job, like Edsa Uno didn’t happen. Gil Alviar was at Malacañang Palace, celebrating the overthrow of a dictator.
That reaction—and non-reaction—to the victory of the People Power protesters on Edsa pretty much sums up their bipolar sentiments about the rule of Ferdinand Marcos. My mother was pro-Marcos; my father was against him.
They both come from Ilocano-speaking Sanchez Mira town in Cagayan Valley, in neighboring barangays, but they never met. They would meet post-Edsa, in 1987, but would never find their passions about Marcos at the center of their conversations.
“When we would date, we would talk about what we did, the things you people now text each other. ‘Anong ginawa mo?’” my mother said. My father agreed: “That topic just did not feel important.”
After meeting, dating, breaking up for a year (this came as a shock to me), making up and 25 years of marriage—not at all blissful because of me and my sister—they maintain their stances: My mother applauds the decision for Marcos to be buried at Libingan ng mga Bayani; my father disagrees.
It is not hard to understand where they come from. It is how they interpret the accountability for the atrocities that happened in the years the regime.
My mother thinks the president was far from the “mastermind” of the crimes. She attributes it to a host of other people close to him. She said: “There came a point when he couldn’t keep the people under control.”
For my father, even if Marcos did not do the acts, it fell on him being the leader of the land—no Congress, him as president, prime minister and chief of staff of the military, to whom he gave much power. He believed there were legitimate threats to peace and order when martial law was proclaimed, but that there would have been less violent ways to deal with the issues. In the dark days, that Marcos couldn’t keep things in order was itself a fault.
He’d grown up pro-Marcos; he became a reluctant supporter in Metro Manila, when he entered seminary in 1984. When he was studying (he serves the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, I am not kasalanan), their curriculum gave them the opportunity to interact with the vulnerable, to participate in protests against Marcos.
Hard-core anti
He wasn’t hard-core anti then. Not even when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, what the history books say is the spark plug for the revolution. He decided on his about-face with the revolution nearing, mostly because most of the people close to him were anti-Marcos. He wasn’t a registered voter at the snap elections, but he would have gone with Cory.
My mother, a voter in Manila, went for Marcos.
She still believes Marcos won, that Cory was “assigned.” For her, Marcos was a great president. He is the reason for Patapat Bridge and the National Highway North Luzon now enjoys; many megaprojects that past presidents didn’t give a damn about. Citing narratives from her father, who hails from Paoay, she says the Marcoses have always been rich; that Ferdinand has been brilliant since he was a child. She thinks Imelda deserves her shoes back; and that the government cannot take her belongings, many of which are gifts to her.
Not limited
She didn’t feel limited by the regime. She did not feel the curtailment of the freedom of expression because mass media wasn’t big where she grew up, and because she couldn’t afford the papers when she was in college. Now as then, she thinks the tortures aren’t “by” Marcos.
“What now of the People Power Revolution? People who supported it have turned their backs on that because the expectations and reality don’t match,” my mother said. (Understand that she is straightforward, sometimes Trump-like, in her words. Ilocano mom.)
She keeps thinking “what if.”
Mama and Papa do not plan to resolve this difference in opinion anytime soon.
Until now, they don’t talk about politics at the dining table or in the car. They don’t influence each other’s votes, not even ours. They listen to me and my sister talk about our stands; they indulge us but don’t “convert” us.
In the end, it made their children more discerning. I think.