1081 Memories

“READ YOUR article on martial law in your column. You forgot something brother… the few months after 1081 when Tessie Ladringan called us The Regina staff and how she told us that writing anything about the politics is a big no-no and in case the itch for your being so matapang in writing is unavoidable - then let us attack the church, never the military, never the Marcosian gov’t.”

So posted Millete Caparas in my Facebook account.

Millete is kasama, best friend, sister – everything but lover to me, from our Assumption College days, through our teaching stints at the Angeles University Foundation to her years at the Clark Development Corp. as labor services department head whence she migrated to America, basing in Orange County and then Anaheim, California. We had a grand night with her son Raph-Raph last year in LA.    

Yeah, I remember the caveat to us writers of Assumption’s student publication then but I can’t recall if it was Tessie or her twin Nancy that gave it to us. Nancy was our school paper moderator then.

Anyways, we took the word for gospel truth, and from a “radical paper” that raged and rated on the burning issues of the day, The Regina  was degraded to slum-bookishness.

Just like our Rizal Class where discussions of the national hero’s counter-revolutionary leanings vis-à-vis the “correctness” of the “real national hero” Bonifacio’s proletarian revolution  gave way to debates on who Rizal loved more, Leonor Rivera or Josephine Bracken?

The school-year immediately proceeding from the declaration of Martial Law – sorry, I can’t help but put the phrase in caps, if only for its impact to the nation’s life – saw me taking the editorship of the school paper, to the utter dismay and the greatest sorrow of the college administration.

Our anti-Establishment angst had to be ventilated somewhat. Our morbid fear of the Camp Olivas stockade, precluded even the slightest comment on the established martial order. So we found in the college president, the vice presidents, the registrar, the deans and professors alternative targets.

I cannot recall now which I frequented more, the office of the college president – where I was made to explain every article in the paper deemed critical of the college administration, or the Home Defense Unit of the Philippine Constabulary – where, with our moderator – by that time Ms. June Velez-Belmonte, now California-based Mrs. Whitmer – I had to present the blueprints of the paper before taking it to the printing press for a thorough review by military censors of all the articles, pictures or illustrations, blacking out any that could even be remotely considered “subversive.”

Yeah, we had issues with blacked out sections.      

So Millete’s post opened the floodgates of 1081 memories…

Of KM’s Roy Loredo, ramrod-straight Philippine Military Academy drop-out, hunched and gaunt after months of detention at Camp Olivas.

Of the SDK’s Fer Liwag, already frail and asthmatic, suffering two broken ribs after his stint in that same stockade.

Roy went on to rise in the hierarchy of the underground struggle, operating in the Visayas and in the post-EDSA period managed to win a Palanca Award for an essay titled – if memory still serves right – “Dogged defense of a doggone dogma” which is a  reaction to snotty British horror at our being dog-eaters.

Fer assumed the nom de guerre Ka Dario and led a sandatahang yunit pampropaganda in Pampanga, gaining his martyrdom in an encounter with the military in Sta. Ana town in 1978, if I am not mistaken. He had a P25,000 price on his head. To him I dedicated my book Brigada .45 chronicling the exploits of the Mariano Garcia Brigade, the urban partisan unit of the New People’s Army, in the last years of the ‘80s.

There was too the KM’s Butch Pangilinan of Minalin and Alex Abellanoza of Sto. Nino, San Fernando who were among the first to be arrested the very  night Martial Law was publicly declared.

And of course my seminary elder Bot Portugal, fellow in the SDK, student poet nonpareil and The Regina literary editor, who – for a time – came to class in his white cassock, with breviary or bible in hand, needing no further proof of his conversion from a “godless communist.”

For us who were remanded to the custody of persons of authority or influence, the PC required that we reported to the provincial command weekly for the first three months, fortnightly for another three months and then monthly until they told us we were “cleared.”

The reporting covered our activities – classes in school, church service, movies, visits, etc., and – more important to the military – persons we met. Of course, these comprised mostly of classmates and teachers.

And we were required to memorize – one of the requisites to passing the compulsory ROTC then – the Bagong Lipunan hymn. From memory now:

May bagong silang, may bago nang buhay

Bagong bansa, bagong galaw

Sa Bagong Lipunan…  

Magbabago ang lahat, tungo sa pag-unlad

At ating itanghal, Bagong Lipunan.

Ang gabi'y nagmaliw nang ganap 
At lumipas na ang magdamag 
Madaling araw ay nagdiriwang 
May umagang namasdan
Ngumiti ang pag-asa 
Sa umagang anong ganda! 
May bagong silang…

Which meaning we – silently, but of course – totally bastardized by merely supplanting the letter B with the letter G in the lyrics, thus:

May gagong silang, may gago nang buhay

Gagong bansa, gagong galaw

Sa gagong lipunan…

Mag-gagago ang lahat…

Aye, there was some fun even in those the most terrifying of times. And a time for love too.

In the immediate aftermath of 1081, reports were rife of women activists being systematically abused in the detention centers.

One morning at The Regina office, I found Millete with a stuffed suitcase. Before I could even ask, she told me she was eloping with her beau Noel  who was afraid for her safety, moreso her virginity. Dutifully, I carried her suitcase to the waiting Volks Beetle some distance from Assumption’s second gate.    
“Millete is dearer than a sister to me. Take good care of her, or you’ll be sorry.” I remember telling Noel during the “hand-over.”

Ah, the fondness of memories, even of the times of dread. Thanks. Millete for pulling the plugs.