What must we remember?
ANTI-Marcos groups who take to the streets screaming “Let us do away with historical revisionism!” are actually ranting against themselves. For, in truth, the history of the Marcos regime that they endorse is itself a product of historical revision, the outcome of their selective reconstruction of events.
The past has no life of its own. It lives in us and becomes present in the act of remembrance. But our recollection of a past event is always partial, for we view it within the perspective available to us. Given that limitation, re-viewing the past means inevitably “revising” it because we remember only what we can recall according to our very narrow perspective.
Observe the dominant anti-Marcos discourse today.The Marcos era has been almost always equated with Martial Law, the billions of money stolen from government coffers, the foreign debts, the poverty, the lavish lifestyle and the thousand shoes of Imelda, the tortures, the killings, and the human rights violations. Those who propagate such a discourse tell us that remembrance would serve as a deterrence to another dictatorial regime, bring a closure to our painful past, and explain why we Filipinos are like this today.
Such a discourse, obviously coming from people who consider themselves victimized by the Marcoses, has become the “official” way of remembering the Marcos era. It has triggered many people’s uprising in the past, for nothing is more empowering that the sense of being a victim. But victimhood is a dangerous sentiment. It can be invoked to legitimize violence. Worse, it can be used to pursue the selfish goals and ambitions of political opportunists who are quick to exploit it for private gain.
Yes, we have to remember the evils of the Martial Law regime, but let us not forget that the corrupt practices spawned by that regime have been reproduced and perpetuated because we have focused our remembrance too exclusively on what Marcos had done. We neglected to remember the evil deeds of theirmany cronies and all those who had benefited largely from the Martial Law regime. Instead of holding them as accountable as Marcos, we have given them more opportunities to abuse us through our selective forgetting and our flawed electoral system.
We also failed to stop the ascent to power of many beneficiaries of the People Power revolution–the once rabid anti-Marcos radicals who have become part of the establishment they once condemned, and who went on to become government leaders who are covert thieves, builders of new dynasties, and power-hungry politicians. It is against these people and the seemingly indestructible Marcos cronies that we have to wage a war. It is futile to oppose an enemy who is already dead and gone.
The catch phrase now is “Remember the past.” Indeed, we must do that. But we must learn to create a certain intellectual and emotional distance between our individual memory and the dominant discourse in society. Otherwise, we become a mere depository or mouthpiece of the latter. We must think our own thoughts rather than simply parrot what various media firms, politicians, and interested groups are saying. More importantly, we must raise serious questions as regards those who are urging us to remember and the motives and agenda those people have for doing so.