Who killed EDSA?

There were two crowds almost everywhere where people gathered on February 25, just as there were two reasons why they did. By now you should know who were in either crowd, and which had the greater number. But it is not who had the greater number that is important because, for some time now, the eventuality of things has become increasingly evident.

The EDSA story, sad to say, because it had truly been a most remarkable one, has slowly been eaten away by its own hypocrisy, or at least by the hypocrisy of those who have anointed themselves as the only spinners of the tale. It is the only tale I have ever heard of that has a qualification in the telling, that if you have not suffered under martial law, or at least got set back by some minor inconvenience, you have no right to tell it according to your own experience.

The moment you do, you get accused of historical revisionism, a term made romantic by the above-mentioned pre-set parameters. But the plain truth just simply is — that not everybody suffered under martial law and that it is not their fault that they didn't. A nation of 50 million Filipinos did not end up getting murdered, disappeared, jailed, tortured, robbed, or silenced.

Many were, of course. There is no dispute about that. But not by any stretch of the sickest imagination can an entire nation be swallowed up in its own worst nightmare. The Marcos era, no matter how you size it up, still worked perfectly in accordance with the natural laws of cause and effect. You prick Marcos, you get axed in return. Whether or not there is justice in that, I leave to common sense to determine.

All I am saying is that there were far more people going about their daily lives without being so much as called to explain why they are being so normal. That is because this far greater number of people did not do anything to trigger the activation of the cause and effect law. They did not prick Marcos and so they did not get the axe.

I am not trying to justify how Marcos reacted to provocation. I am not so foolish and so insensitive as to have missed that, which is why I am truly sorry for those who have suffered so much. What I am trying to say is that, justified or not, when you do something, you are bound to get something in return. It just happened that Marcos probably relished giving more than he is dished. But the truth is that Marcos did not just pick up people for standing in a street corner, or eating cheap halo-halo in a market stall. If you minded your own business, no soldiers stole into your home in the dead of night to haul you off to the stockade. Things happened because people did things. The right and wrong part is best told by those who did suffer. But the whole history of it is best recounted by a whole nation under no threat of being ostracized for not suffering.

And that is why there are two crowds now on February 25, and why one crowd is now so pathetically smaller than it used to be. It is not because their truth has been diminished. There is no sweeping the horrors of martial law under the rug. What those horrors cannot do is make people feign fright over something they did not at all experience. Maybe they just cannot live up to a truth they made for themselves. So, who killed EDSA? Not me.

‘The right and wrong part is best told by those who did suffer. But the whole history of it is best recounted

by a whole nation under no threat of being ostracized

for not suffering.’