Bridging memories
How do you create memories for those who never had them? Journalist and communication scholar Maria Diosa Labiste discussed on Sept. 12 the press repression carried out during martial law and the rise of the alternative media that resisted the state attempts to control, intimidate, oppress, and kill journalists.
Recollecting the lack of reaction among an audience composed primarily of undergraduate students of the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, the UP Journalism professor commented that it was a challenge to draw out millennials to contemplate on the lessons concerning press freedom and civil liberties, seared in the consciousness of the generations that lived during the Marcos dictatorship but largely contested among those who are vulnerable to reinterpretations of the past by those whose interests, not verifiable events in history, ground and frame the historical revisionist version of the country gripped in the iron fist of Marcos’s martial law.
Yet Labiste persists in her advocacy to summon up the Marcos years and jolt the memories of those born years later because, as a teacher and a journalist, she realizes the fate of democracy now rests on the tabula rasa that is the largely ahistorical consciousness of today’s youth.
She notes that the youth vote did not go to candidates associated with the Marcoses in the last elections. Ironically, the citizens who voted for populist leaders and favored the War on Drugs’ extremist approaches leading to extrajudicial killings and the violations of human rights were those who, like her, lived through martial law.
Like a blank slate, the consciousness of young people should be regarded as an arena for waging the discourse or counter-discourse to sift through and winnow the facts from fake or alternate views about what transpired during martial law and the Marcos rule, and the parallelisms existing between that period of Philippine history and contemporary times.
Last week, the Cebu press, academe, civil society, and other stakeholders commemorated the Cebu Press Freedom Week (CPFW), which is traditionally observed during the week, which includes Sept. 21, the date in 1972 when martial law was imposed with the signing by President Ferdinand Marcos of Proclamation 1081.
Last Sept. 3, the Senate approved House Bill 5688, which declares Sept. 21 a special working holiday in Cebu to celebrate “Cebu Press Freedom Day.”
How can Sept. 21 be saved from sliding into the morass of ignorance and indifference where many citizens relegate many, if not all, of the country’s public holidays?
Now on its 26th commemoration, the CPFW has evolved over the years from a journalist-initiated campaign to one taken up by other sectors in civil society. Students and faculty members of Cebu universities, particularly those offering programs in Communication and Journalism, once comprised the majority of audiences attending the forums organized by the Cebu press during past commemorations of the CPFW.
Over the years, the academic sector has initiated its own activities to educate citizens on the lessons of martial law. For instance, faculty and students of the College of Communication, Art, and Design (CCAD) of UP Cebu held during this year’s CPFW the “1081: Interactive. Retrospective” exhibit, which tapped social media, poetry reading, performance art, and face-to-face encounters to bring into conversations martial law survivors and millennials in refreshing the hard-earned lessons that can be distilled to “never forget” martial law.
Speaking the language of the young infused with the memories of survivors, the UP Cebu initiative shows that martial law can be a continuing lesson to steer the present.