Scalice's Drama of Dictatorship: A Must-Read for Anyone Interested in Philippine Politics and the Marcos Era (Part 1)

This is the first in the three-part series of my reflections on Joseph Scalice's controversial book, Drama of Dictatorship (Note: A shorter version of this will appear as a book review in a journal)

The 2022 elections in the Philippines saw the stunning return to the apex of power of a scion of the Marcos family. What used to be subdued, decades-long, smoldering “wars” over the history and memory of the Marcos era exploded in stunning displays of acrimony on both sides of the political divides, tearing apart friendships, family and romantic relations, as well as professional ties. The clashing narratives of the Golden vs Dark Ages, which supposedly characterize the Marcos period, reflect the unprecedented polarization of the Filipino nation along simultaneously political and historical fault lines.  

 

Joseph Scalice's book Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines is a stunningly decisive and timely intervention in the ongoing, fiery debates. It is, in my view, an exemplar of a nuanced and meticulous approach to the history of the Marcos period. Rather than the one-dimensional, black-or-white teleology of good and evil that is common in the Marcos era historiography, each chapter in this book pulsates with the complexity and dynamism of a compelling historical account. It does not mean that the book will have the last say, as several of its claims and conclusions will remain debatable for years to come. This book, however, forces proponents of either the Golden or Dark Age narratives to rethink what they believe in. In addition, they may find it difficult to uphold the simplistic, selective, and moralistic character of such narratives. The book clearly shows the power of a rigorous scholarship in the face of massive political and moral pressures both from the pro- and anti-Marcos camps to wrest control of historical narratives. It offers a forceful assertion of historical scholarship’s adjudicatory authority on this subject. While it is likely to be dismissed by both pro- and anti-Marcos die-hard supporters as flawed, it will be appreciated by many others who are aware and have grown tired of the highly partisan character of scholarship and public discourses about the Marcos era. 

 

The book consists of five chapters that narrate and analyze in very fine detail what happened in the years leading to the declaration of martial law in September 1972 up to its peak in 1975-1976. The well-written introduction clearly spells out the book’s startling arguments: (1) that it was not only Marcos but also other Filipino leaders across ideological divides who were desirous of dictatorship; (2) that they all threw the common people whose welfare they invariably claim to fight for, under the bus of political expediency and hypocrisy; and, finally, (3) that the two communist parties (PKP and CPP), whose rationale for existence is to protect and fight for the interests of the working classes, betrayed them instead and this betrayal owed to their adherence to Stalinism. While it is common knowledge among many Filipinos how dirty elite politics is, they are likely to be astonished still by the book’s revelations about how much filthier it in fact was. The guilty ones were not just the traditional elites and Marcos, but also the progressive liberals and leftists who poised morally ascendant as their critics.

Framed as a drama, the book prepares the audience by providing in Chapter 1 an overview of the political situation in the post-war decades and by introducing the key players as well as their ‘understudies’. The story of the ‘gathering storm’ in the mid-late 1960s also begins to unfold in this chapter in a prose that is eloquent and engaging. The decisive victory of Marcos in the 1969 elections and his enemies’  ballistic responses conclude the first act of the drama. The metaphorical use of drama to refer to the build-up to a dictatorship seems astute. For one, drama connotes intense emotion, characterized by conflict, tensions, and unexpected turns, which in fact the book successfully captures. For another, the dramatic frame through which the narratives were woven gives off the scent of being staged or conspiratorial, downplaying the open-endedness of the unfolding historical process. While one may decry the diminishing of the contingency of history, perhaps it is the point: that in a country like the Philippines, power relations are so skewed in favor of the few that history and politics can hardly be open-ended.  Much of what transpired was staged and carried out through the theatrical machinations by elites who fought for directorial supremacy. Personally, I like the metaphor for its honesty about the representational character and narrative roots of historical reconstruction. As the author of the book, Scalice is the scriptwriter and director of the drama. He has the power to stage it in ways he deemed right and defensible; he is also accountable for whatever consequences it may bring.

 

Chapter 2 focuses on the First Quarter Storm of January-March 1970 that saw a series of violent confrontations between the mostly student activists and the state operatives. A key point noted here, which was a crucial feature of the CPP’s strategy as the book shows, was its deliberate provocation to elicit state violence to radicalize and brutalize the youth, in the process hasten the revolutionary process. Another is the Stalinist injunction to cooperate strategically with relevant groups, including the “class enemies” such as oligarchs and capitalists, to advance the cause of the national democratic revolution, often at the expense of the interests of the working class. This factor explains the two communist parties’ (the CPP and KMP) rather irregular partnership, so the book claims, with figures like Ferdinand Marcos and Ninoy Aquino, as well as traditional politicians, oligarchs and other capitalists. It is explicit in the introduction the author's preference for Trotskyism over Stalinism to which he attributes the alleged opportunism, hypocrisy, and lies of the two communist parties. One of the key motivations that underpins the whole book, so it seems, is to save Marxism from those that gave it a very bad name, including Stalinism.    

The structure of the book’s argument is well established in the first two chapters and the subsequent ones provide more fascinating details and cases to reinforce the points. The lengthy Chapters 3 and 4, respectively entitled Barricades and The Writ Suspended, cover the eventful year of 1971. They narrate and analyze in characteristically detailed fashion key events such as the attempted coup in January, the establishment of the Diliman Commune in February, the CPP’s attempt to control the labor unions, the rivalry between the CPP and PKP, the massacre in May, the Plaza Miranda Bombimg and supension of writ of habeas corpus in August, and the  elections in November. Together they amply demonstrate the manipulative hands of the elites and the communists and their betrayal of the working classes, as well as the collusion among groups that were supposedly ideologically incompatible. The author can hardly conceal his disgust over the opportunism of the key actors in this drama, particularly those from the two communist parties.

Chapter 5 focuses on the events leading to the declaration of the Martial Law in September 1972,  as well as its aftermath up to 1975-1976.  Just like in other chapters, several claims here can be endlessly debated, some would even reject them offhand, but the evidentiary justifications it offers may not be easily dismissed. For those who genuinely believed in the integrity of Ninoy Aquino and Joma Sison, reading through this chapter will be excruciating. The respective poster boy of liberal and leftist politics in the country, Ninoy is depicted here as Marcos’s alter ego, as calculating, manipulative, prone to violence and authoritarian as his nemesis. Sison, on the other hand, is the betrayer of the working classes, subordinating their interests to those of the capitalists while feeding them to the machines of state repression to brutalize and awaken their revolutionary spirit. The implication is dire: ordinary people cannot trust leaders regardless of ideological orientation. Amid the rising tides of populism in various parts of the world including the Philippines in the past two decades, a book like this offers more than a glimpse at possible reasons. 

The book closes with an epilogue that, in my view, is less than satisfactory. I am unsure as to whether it was hastily written when mental fatigue had set in, or it was carefully thought through but the author was simply blindsided by his own predispositions. I feel the conclusion missed the opportunity to pin down and articulate the findings’ far-reaching implications. The supposed re-staging of the drama of dictatorship in the contemporary Philippines with Duterte and another Marcos at the helm, and the reference to the rather tired liberal tirade against populism, invoke the well-rehearsed trope of history being replicated or continued. It painfully missed the hugely changed situations on the ground, as indicated, for instance, in Filipinos’ overwhelming support for Duterte’s authoritarianism till the end of his regime, as well as in the spectacular return to power of a Marcos. Clinging to the liberal fantasy that Filipino voters who elected them were “unthinking” and merely being manipulated by Marcos's fake news and propaganda, the book’s epilogue ignored precisely the question that needs to be confronted head-on: what was the pattern of behaviors among the elite liberal, conservative, and leftist political actors in the Marcos era that continued in the post-EDSA decades that may have pushed many to grow distrustful and tired of the traditional representative politics, to the point they were more than willing to throw their lot with the likes of Duterte and Marcos Jr? The book is rich in details that could have cast a spotlight on the serious problem with the logic of progressive politics that for decades tied the liberals and leftist groups in their hips. That is, rather than being responsive to people’s needs, it was anchored mainly on the hatred of Marcos and the fear of authoritarianism. By resurrecting the old and trite bogeyman of the return of dictatorship, the author appeared tone-deaf, oblivious to the big elephant in the room: that the huge majority Filipinos do not care about the issues of human rights, authoritarianism, and anti-Marcoism, as much as the liberal-leftist intellectuals believe or would like them to. Thus, liberals and leftists, well-meaning they may be, cannot claim to represent them.  In addition, by blaming the CPP for the “noxious political atmosphere that hangs over the Philippines today” (p. 263), the book gives them too much credit, overshadowing the role of the liberal intellectuals, among other actors, for the sad state of contemporary Philippine politics. Personally, I find it sad that the 260 pages of pure grit, beautifully written prose, and vigorously argued historical analysis could end in such a whimper. Be that as it may, it is a book of indisputable importance, as I shall discuss further in Part II. 

To be continued

Thoughts on the Challenges of Nuancing the History of the Marcos Era (Part 1)

(This is the first in the series of my reflections on the issues raised in the conference on nuancing the history of the Marcos era)

The online conference, which I co-organized with Karl Patrick Mendoza, Toward a Nuanced History of the Marcos Era, was successfully carried out on February 28-March 1, 2023. We had DLSU-SEARCH (Southeast Asia Research Center and Hub) and UST’s Tala: An Online Journal as partners, and the Philippine Historical Association (PHA), Philippine National Historical Society (PNHS) and Adhika ng Pilipinas as supporters. Karl and I appreciate deeply their support, without which the conference would have not made it. Over 400 registered, but actual attendance via Zoom varied from session to session, peaking at around 140-150. There were others who participated via FB live stream. Participants’ evaluations indicate very high approval of practically all the sessions, with “thought-provoking”, “eye-opening”, “well-organized” and “more conferences like this, please” among comments they gave. 

Seeking to take an unflinching look at the Marcos era, the conference served as a free and safe space for views or questions that are deterred, if not suppressed, by political correctness driven by the long-standing hegemony of the liberal and leftist groups in the Philippine academia. The recent surge of popular support for Marcos—cutting across all ages, genders, geographic and educational backgrounds— unsettled, if not upended, power dynamics as an alternative center of power now competes with the liberals-conservative-leftists triumvirate in defining and gatekeeping what is politically and morally correct in the Philippine public sphere.

The main task the conference sets for itself is to help chart a pathway to render obsolete the need for a nuanced history of the Marcos era. By its very nature, history is nuanced: it is inclusive of all sectors and attentive to both the good and the nasty, as well as anything in between and beyond. Left on their own, historians capture the complexity, ambiguities, and contextual dynamics of what happened in the past. In a normal situation, there is no need for nuancing. Against the backdrop of the highly polarized political atmosphere in the Philippines, however, history is held captive to the interests of two warring factions, the pro- and anti-Marcos groups. This sharp divide is reflected in the two dominant narratives as captured by opposing slogans, Dark Age and Golden Age. One can say anything contrarian to them only at the risk of being severely castigated or canceled by either, or both, sides. 

It is no wonder why the questions and challenges of moral judgment take a center stage, as very well-articulated in the thought-provoking keynote address by Filomeno Aguilar Jr.. Entitled “Moral Judgement and the History of the Marcos Era, 1965-1986”, the paper reflects over the inevitability, necessity and difficulties posed by moral judgment. Among other hard-hitting questions, I find these particularly spot on: “Can professional historians claim that their version is superior to the version of the nonprofessionals, who have crafted their own ‘public memory’ of the Marcos past? Can professional historians who critique Marcos claim to have a better ground for judging the past than the nonprofessionals who praise Marcos?” Putting a spotlight on the assumed analytic and moral ascendancy commonly attributed to academic history, such questions are refreshing. They transcend the narrow politics and facile moralizing that hold hostage the historical discourses in the country for so long (If interested, you may watch  the recorded video of the session here)

Many, including hardcore anti-Marcos scholars, might easily brush off such questions as nonsense. “Of course, they can, or did already, and rightfully so!” In my view, anyone who seriously wishes to be  self-reflexive and analytically rigorous would find these questions confronting and painful to ponder. Can they, indeed, given the limited number of empirically comprehensive and analytically balanced studies on the era? Do they really have the guts to claim so, knowing too well the politically and morally charged atmosphere that heavily censures scholars, or anyone for that matter, who say anything neutral or positive about authoritarianism, in general, and the Marcos era, in particular? 

Anthony Borja’s paper, “Neutrality, Impartiality and Political History,” provides a philosophically adept  reinforcement to the key points raised in the keynote address. Teasing out the distinction between being politically neutral and being politically impartial, he makes a case for the untenability of neutrality and the preferability of impartiality. Being impartial here does not mean the absence of politics, as power relations or the political may be ultimately inescapable, but being able to go beyond the false dichotomies forced upon the public by the purveyors of the clashing narratives of Dark Age vs Golden Age. 

Against the backdrop of the long-reared tradition of partisan scholarship promoted by well-meaning and vociferous liberal-left intellectuals in the country and beyond, I can sense young scholars are being conditioned, even pressured, to believe that taking an anti-state and pro-liberal/left-leaning politico-moral stance is a must. Not only are analytic rigor and impartiality considered deficient, but they are also deemed cowardly. This was clear in a spirited discussion during one of the session. Such positionality ignores, so I opine, the possibility that given the paralyzing political stalemate that traps the country, impartiality and analytic rigor, rather than fidelity to either the pro- or anti-Marcos groups, constitutes today’s moral obligation among Filipino intellectuals. It is arguably what the Filipino people and the country as a whole need to make sense of the problems and address them, move forward, and coexist civilly, if not peacefully. Lest we forget, there is so much more to Philippine history, both during the Marcos era and today, than the politico-moral squabbles between the pro- and anti-Marcos groups. The victims and critics of the Marcos regime have all the right to castigate the Marcoses and hold them accountable, but they have no right to invalidate what others, the whopping 60% of voters, think and feel about the Marcoses. We liberals (yes I am a liberal. For my autobio as a liberal, see) ought to stop making a big joke out of ourselves, defending ardently personal freedom and free expression while denying the same to those who do not agree with us. Long overdue is for us--liberals, conservatives, apolitical, and leftists--to learn how to live and let live. 

We better pay heed to the likelihood that for most Filipinos, what matter is a better life, regardless of how one defines it. Whether it is a democratic or authoritarian regime that delivers, or the pro- or anti-Marcos or the don’t-care-about-Marcos groups, it may not really matter to most people. That Duterte enjoyed an overwhelmingly favorable approval rating till the end attests to this possibility. How are certain groups able to hold the nation captive for long to the liberal, anti-state, and left-leaning talking points (anti-Marcos, anti-authoritarianism, pro-democracy and human rights), for what and whose purposes, with what effects on them and the rest of the country, seem to be interesting objects of serious sociological-political analysis. 

To be continued

Can Tsismis be Truer than History? (Part 1)

 

by Rommel A. Curaming

The spirited reactions to Ella Cruz's offhand comment that "history is like tsismis" are fascinating. Some went as far as saying that she and her comment are signs that we're really in trouble and that there is a "crisis of history". That history is in crisis of some sort has long been experienced in other countries such as the US, Germany, and Australia. It took the return of a Marcos to the pinnacle of power for the idea to start gaining a foothold in the Philippines. Important in itself, it deserves a fuller treatment in a separate post.

Whether “history is like tsismis” is not an irrelevant question, for it forces us to clarify what history is and is not. In my view, however, it is neither the most interesting nor the most productive point to shed light on. Why some people think so, and why others vehemently insist otherwise, may generate more productive discussions. Perhaps, of greater consequence is to push the issue further by asking whether tsismis can ever be truer than history.

Many are quick to draw a sharp divide between the two. If it is tsismis, it cannot be history; if history, it cannot be tsismis. One is deemed factual or truthful, while the other is falsehood. On the ground, things are far from straightforward. Anyone who follows the history of the politically and academically contentious “history wars” over, say, the Holocaust, Enola Gay exhibition in the 1990s, the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965-6, race riots in Malaysia in 1969, the Stolen Generation and aboriginal history in Australia, just to mention a few, will think twice about the certainty of such dichotomy and the presumed hierarchy between the two. One might be surprised claims that are branded and rejected by certain groups as tsismis (or propaganda, historical revisionist, fake news, conspiracy theory, hearsay, urban legend, folklore, old wives’ tale) may contain more truth than what professional historians and society at large are willing to contemplate or concede. Conversely, what is regarded as legitimate history (both official and academic) by dominant groups, is rejected or doubted by others as propaganda, fake news, or conspiracy theory, and not without bases. For those interested, there exist a small but expanding body of work on the 9/11 truth movement bannered by scholars, architects, and engineers who seriously doubt the common understanding of 9/11, as well as well-publicized efforts to debunk their views. 

Why scholars and others dismiss certain positions offhand via rhetorical murder, assigning loaded and pejorative labels like tsismis or conspiracy theory, may be linked to the anxiety and efforts of concerned groups to protect the moral and political certainties which are favorable for their own self-interests. Such self-interests may or may not coincide with those of the majority of the people. They are often concealed by or couched in vocabularies fit for promoting public good like democracy, human rights, and academic freedom. 

In societies where information flow is highly regulated, free-thinking individuals do rely more on gossip, what is talked about hush-hush, than legitimate channels, such as media and scholarship. The contents of such gossip could or likely to be truer than what society widely accepts as history. We can draw from Indonesia during the New Order and Malaysia up to now, if it is about the 1969 race riots for illustrative examples. One can include as well the Philippines under Marcos, particularly in relation to the Jabidah massacre, among other instances. 

However, even in liberal democracies such as the US and EU, where freedom is supposed to be the first principle, there are historical taboos or doxas that reflect the regulated character of knowledge production and distribution. Due to a heavy cost of transgression, only a few scholars, if any at all,  dare raise inconvenient questions about the widely accepted interpretations of, say, the Holocaust, the 9/11, Pearl Harbor bombing, atomic bombing of Japan, Church history and sex abuse, and the fate of aboriginal population in the Americas and elsewhere, to cite just a few. Those who crossed the line were ignored, canceled, vilified, fined, lost job, or even jailed, for those who doubted key aspects of the Holocaust. With the distribution channels for alternative interpretations curtailed in academia and the mainstream media, people resort to other outlets such the social media. It is weapons of the weak that are at work here.

Rather than veracity or truth-content, as commonly supposed, the uneven power relations in a particular discursive context may be more decisive in determining what qualifies as history and what would be dismissed as tsismis. A tsismis that is agreeable to widely held views and/or favorable to the interests of the dominant groups may circulate freely, even included in textbook, as history, whereas a verifiable historical claim that is unsavory to the interests or self-image of hegemonic groups or the nation may be suppressed or ignored, and branded as conspiracy theory or tsismis.  One is authorized, while the other is subjugated, and either could be true or false or mixed of both. The labels, in other words, do not coincide with truthfulness or falsity. They are separate issues, which I will discuss further in Part II, and fusing them together is a rhetorical sleight of hand that everyone must be aware of. It is a clever way of hiding political interests. It is politics by other means. 

At the heart of the issue lies the question of who has got the right to define what history is, for whom, and for what purpose. For so long, professional historians had the monopoly of this right. Since the past few decades, however, the twin processes of rising anti-intellectualism and populism in various parts of the world increasingly chipped off this privilege. Ordinary people, who were alienated by the authorized history (both official and academic), are claiming their right to their own usable past. This is disconcerting for many scholars and other liberals, but this is democracy warts and all. The painful defeat of expert historians and curators in their struggle against public opinion, veterans, politicians, and media outlets over the Enola Gay exhibition in the mid-1990s stunningly showed this. As more Filipinos now seem to believe that history is too important to be left alone to historians, it raises concerns among academic historians, whose traditional source of power or authority is in jeopardy. Their knee-jerk reactions are telling: they tend to disparage popular expressions of historical consciousness that oppose their preferred interpretations, calling them with derogatory labels such as tsismis, but they are fine with those that support their views, even if they may qualify as tsismis.

Liberal and left-leaning scholars are quick to denounce relativism and misinformation. They insist on the objective nature of history and invest enormous efforts in fact-checking. Claim to factuality or truthfulness will remain foundational in any history writing efforts, be it official, mainstream, leftist, rightist, or alternative. Thus, any history that favors any political standpoint will claim that their version is objective, and dismiss contrarian versions as relativistic or subjective. They (liberal-leftist scholars) seem to think that they still have the monopoly of authority to define what is objective or impartial history, and what is merely a tsismis. Whatever it is that they have written or fact-checked may be the only valid history. Perhaps it is about time they shed of the emperor's new clothes mindset, as many Filipinos have already seen through it.  Rather than pretending that their position--being liberal, left-leaning, pro-people--is a non-political, objective, or impartial stance, they should own it up as their own politics, one among possible relativist or subjective political standpoints. It is not relativizing history; history simply is. It cannot be otherwise, and it is not any less useful or valid because of it. The revitalization of history as a progressive, pro-people profession will have to start from that. Honesty is the first step to gain credibility and people's trust. 

With partisanship of fact-checkers already exposed as "dilawan" or "pinklawan", fact-checking may not address the problems. It will be tantamount to preaching to the choir. Rather than chastising them for their supposed stupidity or gullibility, liberal-left scholars should endeavor to understand people on their own, rather than on liberal-leftists', terms. It is convenient to blame misinformation, but candid self-examination or self-reflection is needed to grasp why increasing hordes of people have grown skeptical of them and their scholarship.

 One way is to fact-check all sides, not just pro-Marcos claims. It is imperative to be critical of what needs to be critiqued about the Marcoses and the Aquinos, among other political families, and about the government/military, CPP/NPA, other rebel groups, religious organizations, NGOs, media, and all other progressive and conservative groups that have an impact on the welfare of the people. 

For so long, progressive scholarship in the Philippines has been mainly anti-state. It has largely spared the sins of the liberal and leftist organizations, which may also have been detrimental to the welfare of Filipinos. It must, in other words, be aware of its liberal/pro-left biases, so they could do something about it. If the Filipino scholarly community wishes to regain people's trust, it must gain and demonstrate its autonomy. Rather than be held captive either by the state or the anti-state forces, by pro- or anti-Marcos groups,  it should serve as an effective analyst and assessor of all sides. 

I believe that a truly pro-people progressive scholarship needs to be re-oriented or reinvented away from merely being critical. Critical stance remains essential but it needs to be reinforced. The starting point is to assume that people's interests may not be the same as what the intellectual-political elites from the liberal-left, right, and center think they are. A truly progressive scholarship must enable or empower people to arrive at an informed decision as to which side would be most beneficial for their own interests. Elsewhere, I argue that in addition to critique, which is the preferred preoccupation among scholars of all ideological orientations, cartography of power/knowledge may prove more useful for common people. Rather than debating conceptual or theoretical salience and empirical accuracy of knowledge, mapping out who makes, distributes, and consumes knowledge, when, in what context, for what purpose, and with what effects to whom, and through time, may be more relevant and empowering for common people This requires a lengthy explanation, which I cannot do here as it is already too long. To anyone interested you may read my article and the conclusion of my book for relevant ideas. 

History and tsismis share common as well as contrasting attributes. In Part II, I shall discuss their convergent and divergent features to show why history may indeed be in certain respect like tsismis, why tsismis could be truer, and more effective, than history, and why the push-back against talking about them in the same breath. I shall also discuss what progressive historians and other scholars can do to more effectively address the quickly changing historical landscape in the Philippines. Fact-checking is not enough, as it is a liberal solution to an illiberal problem. 

Who’s afraid of a nuanced history of the Marcos Era? And why?

 

by Rommel A. Curaming

A nuanced history is, as I noted in my earlier essay, multi-faceted. It goes beyond the viewpoint and experience of certain groups, capturing instead the wide spectrum of people’s experiences from various parts of the country, from different classes, as well as ethnic and ideological backgrounds. It paints a composite picture from multiple standpoints of both the good and the bad and anything in between.

It is also dynamic. A nuanced history captures the processes and shifts in the long twenty years of Marcos in power. The valuable or despicable things that occurred in certain years, but not in previous or subsequent ones, cannot solely define the whole era, just as the slogans Dark Age or Golden Age exemplify. Ignoring dynamism deprives anyone of the right to claim their version is history. History can hardly be reduced to slogans, for by nature it is complex. If it is, it ceases to be history. It becomes myth or, worse, propaganda.

In an ideal world, no one should be afraid of a nuanced history of any period. It is the closest to the real past that we can have. Closer to reality, it has all the potential to allow ‘truth to set us free.’ But we’re not in an ideal world. People in real life have their own interests to promote; their own egos to protect and boost. Here, people uphold truths that will make them feel good about themselves. They create truths that are useful for their own purposes, either ill- or well-intentioned. This applies not just to common people. Often enough politico-economic and intellectual elites, including historians with Ph.D., do this as well, despite their claims to the contrary.

So, who is afraid of a nuanced history of the Marcos era?

The hardcore anti-Marcos collectives constitute the first group. Their legitimacy and continuing relevance rest significantly on the mythological power of the Never Again/Dark Age narratives. Included in this group are the radical leftist groups who got less than 1% of the votes in the recent elections. Devoid of a significant grass root support, their leadership position in the fight against Marcos lends a semblance of legitimacy for them to speak on behalf of the Filipino people. A nuanced history of the Marcos era, one that includes people's fearful memories of the NPAs and which points to a possibly significant people’s support for the Marcos regime till the end and even beyond, could badly undermine their claim to continuing relevance and legitimacy. 

Closely allied with the leftists in this category are liberal and conservative intellectuals and other members of the intelligentsia. They form a sizeable part of 28% who voted for Leni Robredo in the recent elections. Many of them are well-placed in academia, media, NGOs, the Catholic and other churches, and other institutions. Having sincerely believed for decades in the Never Again/Dark Age narratives, and built upon this platform a moral, not just political, crusade, the very idea of a nuanced history goes smack into their moral and intellectual certainties. Convinced of their moral ascendancy, it is ego-bursting to entertain the possibility that there was anything less than evil or total darkness in the Marcos era. Inured to their sense of intellectual superiority, it embarrasses to admit that there may be something wrong, lacking, or inaccurate in the Dark Age version of the history that they believe and propagate for so long. 

The other group consists of the Marcoses and their staunch supporters, often called Marcos loyalists. The Marcoses have a lot to account for, as we, and they, know, and a nuanced history will bear this out. For their avid supporters who are long convinced of the idea of a Golden Age, a nuanced portrayal of the Marcos era that includes large-scale corruption, human rights violations, cronyism, and economic crisis, would not sit well with their comforting memories and fantasies of the period. Just like the anti-Marcos liberals and leftist radicals, they built glasshouses and sandcastles that may easily break or crumble under the weight of a nuanced history of the Marcos era. Also like their counterparts on the opposing side, their sense of moral, political, and academic righteousness won't make it easy for them to admit to propagating a mythical history.

I hazard a guess that taken together the hardcore anti- and pro- Marcos groups form a minority, perhaps a third(?), a quarter (?), or even less, of the voting population. Despite limits in number, they dominate public discourses being well-placed in the mass media and other dominant establishments on both sides of the political divide. They think they are the vanguards that lead the rest of us to a better future; they feel they have the moral authority and obligation to speak on behalf of the Filipino nation. This point is crucial because it highlights the intra-elite character of this clash for historical interpretations. It also raises the question of who has the right to tell and write history. Is it reserved for historians? The dominant elites of competing political groups? Or, the people who lived through it? The last may sound absurd, but no less than the former president of the American Historical Association, Carl Becker, declared in 1931, of course to the consternation of fellow historians, that "(e)veryman is his own historian." 

The silent majority on both sides of the great political divide (not so silent anymore with social media) are outliers in their respective camps. There are those among them who don’t care about history at all, for one reason or another. For those who care,  the idea of a nuanced history could also bring discomfort. Hard to miss is the insinuation that the history we have known all along may be one-sided, incomplete, or inaccurate, and that may not be easy to take. The initial impulse is to doubt and deny. Have we been lied to? How could I have not noticed earlier? Am I stupid to have myself believe for so long? These are questions that strike at the core of our sense of self, precisely why it could be painful to deal with. Seldom it is easy to acknowledge complicity in our own deception. I know this feeling. As cliche goes, I've been there and had done that (as detailed in a 4-part series on my political re-awakening).

Let us not be too hard on ourselves. If historians with a Ph.D. can believe either in the Dark Age or Golden Age narratives, it only means there are things compelling in them, and there are things in our values and aspirations as individuals, as well as in our physical and digital environment, that work in tandem to make them seem believable. 

So, for whom is a nuanced history of the Marcos era? It is not for the fanatic and closed-minded. It is not for those afraid of reality, warts and all. It is not for those who have skeletons in their political and academic closets. It is for anyone who is brave enough to confront inconvenient truths about the nature of history, politics, and ourselves. This calls for a lengthy explanation and thus another blog post cries out to be written.

-o0o- 

Coming to Terms with Liberalism, Warts and all (Part III)

This is THIRD in a series of stories about how I have been trying to come to terms with the promises and follies of liberalism. If you haven't read the previous parts, Part I is here and Part II is here

Grappling with Doubts

Rommel A. Curaming

While in Singapore and Indonesia, I applied for a Ph.D. scholarship and was lucky to receive offers from the Australian National University (ANU) and the East-West Center, University of  Hawaii. I opted for the ANU mainly due to a better funding package, which included airfare for my family and an additional monthly stipend for child support. Always struggling financially then, I tended to go where money would be less of an issue. It didn't take long for me to realize that ANU was an excellent place to pursue a Ph.D., particularly in Southeast Asian Studies. The wealth of its intellectual resources, its generous provisions for students, and its nurturing and collegial environment made ANU a standout.  The combined collections of the ANU libraries and the National Library of Australia (NLA) on Indonesia and other Asian countries were very impressive. For my purpose, they were much better than what I had found in repositories in Indonesia.  

I was supervised by three top-notched historians who, despite their uneasiness with my topic and/or preferred analytic approaches, allowed me full freedom to explore. Of equal importance, my fellow Ph.D. students were engaging and supportive, and passionate about pushing the boundaries of knowledge in our respective areas of interest. The time I spent doing a Ph.D. at the ANU was easily the most intellectually exhilarating years to which I look back with gratitude and nostalgia.

Reading intently about the nature of the power-knowledge relations and the Marcos and Suharto eras, the initial unease about liberal democracy which I felt earlier in Singapore and Indonesia (see Part II) gave way to serious questioning of many of the long-standing liberal ideas. Having taken for granted since my UP days the rightfulness of liberal stances and assumptions, I regarded many problems in the Philippines and the world as owing to the failure to effectively employ liberal solutions. These included upholding the primacy of rational thinking, human rights, justice, and personal freedom. 

Foundational here is the assumption, basic to the Enlightenment, that to know is a fundamental good; nothing is blissful in ignorance. This allocates to critical and rational thinking and, by extension, education, a central position in the scheme of things. For instance, Filipinos’ penchants for electing trapos or traditional politicians, or allowing vote-buying to flourish, are all attributed to their ignorance, gullibility, and lack of proper education (more on education in my other post). If only people knew, say, that the Marcoses were corrupt, unscrupulous, and violent, they would not vote for, let alone be loyal, to them. That they did/do vote or are loyal, means they are misled or are plain ignorant. That's what I thought then, same as what many Kakampinks passionately believe now. Fact-checking and voter education programs that are often peddled with noble intents are the practical consequences of this idea. 

Subscribing to this belief or approach, my teaching was precisely geared towards making my students aware and critical of the trapos, the Marcoses, the elites, the US and the West, etc. Looking back, a notable but gradual shift in my attitude and perceptions took place since my NUS days. Whereas before, I took my liberal stances as a purely virtuous service to empower common people and strengthen democracy, I have become aware of their ambivalent impact, depending on the context of actual use. On the one hand, it could be empowering, but on the other, it could also be emasculating and condescending. For instance, common people are looked down as incapable of thinking properly and deciding what is good for themselves, thus scholars and other educated people should decide and speak on their behalf. Before, I did not see the illiberal and totalitarian impulses that drove this common tendency. I did not consider the possibility that given their own situations, they may view the world differently, via an alternative form of rationality; that they may have different needs; and that being different does not necessarily mean being wrong.  What I readily saw, which trumped other considerations, was the good intentions that drove our (liberal) thoughts, aspirations, and actions. If only they would think and act like us, so I've thought, things would be much better for everyone.

In due course, the contradictions between liberals’ aspiration for freedom and rights for everyone, on one side, and their denial of the same to those who don’t agree with them, on another, became clear to me.  As elsewhere, the Philippines is replete with this kind of well-meaning liberal intellectuals. Their passion for pro-marginalized causes (often called "wokeness" in American political parlance) is sometimes directly proportional to their inability or refusal to understand on their own terms the views of the marginalized, who they claim to represent and fight for. It was rather ironic that given their self-assured sense of intellectual superiority, they cannot understand what they regard as ‘simpler’ minds. I know this attitude very well because for decades I had fully imbibed it, and up to now it requires constant efforts on my part to shake it off. 

Looking back, there were two crises of representations I had to overcome to come to terms with my hitherto abiding faith in liberalism. Only recently did I connect the two and found, to my surprise, that they were closely entwined as pillars of the liberal tradition. Earlier, I had missed that the unraveling of one of these crises reinforced that of another, paving for the crumbling of liberal assumptions I held sacred for so long.

The first crisis of representation was one I encountered via a course on Postcolonial theory, which I took at the NUS, as I already mentioned in Part II (here and here for  more details about my engagement with Postcolonial theory). The crisis of representation refers to the questioning of the ability of human-made tools like language and logic to represent reality as it is. I took it for granted for so long, just like almost everyone else did, that knowledge corresponds to reality out there; that language is a transparent or neutral tool that captures the real. The so-called “linguistic turn” in the humanities and social sciences cast doubts on this long-standing idea, foregrounding instead the contextual and constructed nature of language, knowledge, and even rationality. Among other things, it implies that knowing may not be a fundamental good; that it is the contexts that decide whether it is or not. It also suggests that representation is a function of various human and social factors, possibly the most important of which is the prevailing power relations. In Foucault's and Nietzsche’s pithy framing, power/knowledge. This approach—propagated by proponents of critical approaches like poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies—rattled and infuriated many conservative, liberal and radical intellectuals. The nihilistic or anarchist implications were simply too much for them to tolerate; its anti-foundationalism is viewed to undermine the basis for any political vision, as everything is reduced to a standpoint, thus, dependent on shifting power relations. For a story of how I engaged with these complex issues, you may wish to check this out.

That knowledge is a function more fundamentally of unequal power relations, and only secondarily of accurate representation, resonated deeply in me. It coincided with my long-standing fascination with some key concepts in Asian philosophies, such as the Hindu-Buddhist idea that the world is an illusion or maya. This illusion ensues from humans’ mistaking the ceiling for the lower limit of their ability to capture the real. Confusing what we see in the world as incontrovertible reality may be a form of hubris, an overestimation of one’s capability and misrecognition of humans’ place in the scheme of things. This breeds worldly attachments or desire, which is the well-spring of human frustrations or sufferings. I leave out the part on human suffering here as it entails a lengthy philosophical digression. The ideas of misrecognition and desire, however, are crucial. 

When my conservative, provincial outlook gave way to cosmopolitan, liberal, radical, or progressive ones while I was in UP Diliman, I took the shift as a welcome corrective to what I deemed was wrong. I understood it as progress, a step towards an indisputable rational political stance. Only years later did I realize that my desire for an “indisputable rational political stance” was a product of the misrecognition of the nature of knowledge and human ability. Rather than the Kuhnian epistemic stance, which rooted knowledge in social contexts and is premised on the limits of human cognition, I was clinging to the Newtonian naturalistic, or God's eye (omniscient) perspective of knowledge. From this viewpoint, power relations had nothing to do with knowledge; they, in fact, stand oppositional to one another. It was just a matter of time and proper techniques to attain absolutely accurate representation. After all, modern humanity was born out of the presumed human capability and desire to know reality as it is, in an objective or absolute sense. This capability used to be reserved for God. But daring to play God, liberal forebears allocated humans a central place in the scheme of things. This gave rise, among others, to the logic of power that enabled and concealed at the same time the tendency to view things from a God’s eye standpoint. It is, in hindsight, a fantasy that I took to be self-evidently true for so long. It required time and deliberate effort before I could extricate myself from it, as detailed in my other article.

The second crisis refers to the representation via plebiscites or electoral exercises, which goes at the heart of liberal democracy. Direct democracy via self-representation, which to an extent was practiced in ancient Greece, had long become impossible. Public voting or elections served as a substitute. Whoever receives the majority or plurality of votes assumes the right to represent the people (demos). In theory, each voter exercises, and at the same surrenders, one’s sovereign right or freedom to whoever s/he votes for, in exchange for the promise to represent, protect and promote the interests of the voters. But due to various factors, instances were rife when this covenant is repeatedly broken every time elected leaders did not actually promote, protect and represent the interests of the people. For a long time, ordinary people in the Philippines and beyond endured the situation, but apparently, their patience is running out, or has already run out. Various oppositional social and revolutionary movements emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s and the anti-globalization movements in the 1980s-2000s. More recently, the Occupy movement in 2011-2012, as well as the election of Trump, Duterte, Modi and other populist leaders manifested people’s disgust over gross inequality, hypocrisy and other failures of elite democracy. 

These instances form part of the rise of populism in various parts of the world, including the Philippines. Often derided as irrational and anti-democratic, populism manifests peoples’ frustration with and distrust of conventional politics and politicians, as well as scholars and other experts. Viewed as colluding with each other, they promoted and benefited from the cosmopolitan, globally-oriented economic, political and intellectual ideas and practices of the post-2^nd World War and post-Cold War liberal and neo-liberal world order, at the expense of the welfare of common people (Porter, 2020). Anti-expert or anti-intellectual sentiments that used to be confined at the margin since time immemorial have flourished, even gone mainstream. 

The advent of various social media platforms enabled self-representation and direct communication in scales and forms, as well as impact unprecedented in history. The long-standing monopolies by political, economic, religious, and intellectual elites of various power-wielding and knowledge-generating mechanisms were broken, effectively undercutting many conventional practices and ideas that underpin liberal democracy. This poses a lot of risks and challenges, but it offers a myriad of opportunities as well to reinvent and reinvigorate liberalism. This I shall try to address in the concluding part of this series.

-To be concluded- 

Coming to Terms with Liberalism, Warts and All (Part II)

 As this is the SECOND in the series, if you haven't read the first you may read it here

Cracks in My Liberal Certainties

Rommel A. Curaming

In 2000, out of curiosity about life beyond the usual, I applied for and had the fortune of clinching the ASEAN Graduate Scholarship at the National University of Singapore (NUS) to pursue another Master’s degree, this time in Southeast Asian Studies. It was a spur of the moment decision upon seeing a newspaper advertisement one lazy Sunday afternoon. NUS then held a stature far from what it holds today. It was almost unheard of within Philippine academic community. It did not matter to me as I just felt I needed a new experience to reenergize myself. It turned out to be a major turning point not just for my intellectual pursuit but also for the life of my young family. It ushered us into two decades of itinerant life in the ‘diaspora’. I had no plan to stay long overseas, but one opportunity came after another and I just grabbed them as they came. I brought my young family wherever I went, so long as finances allowed it—Yogyakarta, Canberra, Manila, Melbourne, Singapore, Brunei. 

Studying overseas for the first time opened up possibilities that were hitherto unthinkable for me. My early exposure to Southeast Asian history at UP did not spark my interest, perhaps largely due to the dispiriting attitude of the professor who taught the subject. The history of Islam and the Middle East, as well as of East Asia fascinated me. When I decided to pursue graduate studies in Asian Studies, I opted to major in East Asia, specifically Japan. In hindsight, my interest in Europe, Middle East and East Asia—anything but the Philippines—reflected my attempts to escape from what seemed to me a depressing trajectory of Philippine history. That of Japan and the rising tiger economies of China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore appeared in stark contrast: they offered narratives of triumph, overcoming the odds and attained stunning successes. Seeing for the first time how far the quality of life of ordinary Singaporeans and Malaysians compared to Filipinos, I was seduced to rethink the supposed inherent evils of authoritarianism that I came to learn as a UP student in the post-EDSA years. I particularly remember the first time I went to Malaysia, taking a bus from Singapore. Upon seeing the remarkable infrastructures, robust economy, clean, safe and well-appointed towns and cities, I felt deeply sad. I was struck by the thought that the Philippines could have been the same, if not ahead in comparison. I was long prepared for how impressive Singapore was, but I was jolted to my senses upon seeing how far Malaysia had gone. What went wrong in the Philippines, I wondered. I was deeply disturbed. As authoritarianism worked in Singapore and Malaysia, able to provide a better life for most of their citizens under Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir, why it did not in the Philippines during the Marcos years? If indeed democracy was better, how come the post-Marcos years proved disappointing as well? Observing big but poor democracies such as India and Indonesia, I began to wonder if poverty and instability were a necessary price to pay for democracy.

 It was in NUS where my interest in Southeast Asia was nurtured. It was also there where I underwent a political re-awakening after being exposed to ideas that re-set the trajectory of my intellectual development. The module I took on Postcolonial Perspectives on Southeast Asia was an eye-opening experience. The ideas of Foucault, Said, Spivak, Chakrabarty, Bhabha, among others, that were critical of the Enlightenment Project and the European rationality that underpinned it affirmed, so it seemed to me, the validity of the alternative rationalities espoused by Asian philosophies like Taoism and Buddhism. These are philosophies which I had long been fascinated with, as enthusiast and a teacher of the history of Asian civilizations. I had begun to realize that they were not truly anti-rational or irrational, but they offered a different basis for rationality. Looking back, it was a major crack in my hitherto monolithic and monochromatic conception of humanity based on liberal tradition. I’ll come back to this point later, but for anyone interested in juicier details, I refer you to a reflective paper, "At Home in the World: Reflections on Home Scholarship, Theory and Area Studies",  which I wrote and published last year (downloadable here)

It was also in Singapore where I re-discovered that Philippine history and politics could be immensely exciting once viewed from the comparative standpoint of neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. Taking a country studies module on Indonesia, I saw striking parallels and contrast between its experience and those of the Philippines (more details on this are found in the piece I referred to earlier). My interest in Indonesia was boosted by the fellowship grant I received from the Ford Foundation to further learn Bahasa Indonesia while undertaking a research on Indonesian historiography soon after my stint at NUS.

Living in Indonesia for almost a year afforded me a chance to immerse in its culture and daily life. I was struck by how similar in many fundamental ways Filipinos and Indonesians were. The differences were also aplenty, but they clustered mainly around religious and nationalist orientations, as well as the deeply traumatic impact of the 1965-66 killings which had no parallel in the Philippines. Remove religion, nationalism and hysterical anti-communism out of the equation and one can see more clearly the basic and enduring similarities. The idea that foreign influences in the region were no more than a “thin glaze” at the surface, an idea that I had learned from Zeus Salazar and J.C. van Leur, among others, began to make sense to me.

Staying in Indonesia three or four years after the demise of the Suharto regime, I heard frequently to my great surprise ordinary Indonesians complaining how unsettled and tougher life had become. They longed for stability, cheaper goods, and security, the ‘good old days,’ of Suharto’s New Order. As an outsider fed mostly by the mainstream, liberal Western and Indonesian media with anti-authoritarian triumphalist narratives of democracy and Reformasi and which were suffused with a fierce anti-Suharto rhetoric, it made me wonder how things could be starkly different on the ground. I was hit by the realization that perhaps what was happening in Indonesia then had a parallel in the Philippines: sizable groups of Filipinos who persistently voted for the Marcoses and they regarded the Marcos years with what seemed to me as perverse nostalgia. How could they have thought of Martial Law years with longing, was beyond me! Since the late 1980s during my UP days, I was among those who quickly dismissed those groups as “Marcos loyalists”or “tuta ni Macoy.” These were labels that, in hindsight,  imputed questionable moral or intellectual attributes upon them—blindly loyal, manipulated, ignorant, uncritical, irrational. How stupid that they allowed themselves to be misled by Marcos propaganda, so I had thought. Looking back, what I observed in Indonesia made me think if there were material basis for the nostalgia of the Marcos era among Marcos supporters. It also reinforced my earlier questioning about liberal democracy wrought by my prior exposure to Singapore and Malaysia. 

In learning about Indonesia, I had found a psychological refuge, one that I could not in knowing more about Singapore and Malaysia. If Singapore’s and Malaysia’s impressive progress made me feel sorry and angry for the plight of Filipinos who, I had soon realized, were derided and bullied overseas, Indonesia’s miserable state in the early post-Suharto years provided a wicked but comforting assurance that Philippines was not alone. Misery loves company, as cliché goes. This feeling would not last very long, however, as by mid-late 2000s I had noticed that post-Suharto Indonesia’s political system seemed more capable of reforming itself than the post-Marcos Philippines. The gains of the Reformasi indeed fell short of the expectations, but they seemed more impactful and lasting than the post-EDSA reforms. The constitutional amendments that curtailed the power of the military, altered the electoral politics, strengthened anti-corruption body had far-reaching impact that Filipinos could only hope for in their country. The regimes of SBY and Jokowi succeeded to a significant extent in economic recovery and restored the sense of national pride in a period much shorter than it was the case for the Philippines. My familiarity with the challenges of democratic transition and consolidation in the Philippines served as a template for pondering the trajectory of Indonesia’s political and economic development in the past two decades. While foreign scholars of Indonesia and Indonesian scholars themselves habitually harped on the "failures" of the Habibie, Gus Dur, Megawati and SBY administrations, it seemed to me that the shortcomings of the post-Marcos regimes to provide a better life for Filipinos made those failures looked pale in comparison. 

-To be continued-

You may proceed to Part III  here

Coming to Terms with Liberalism, Warts and All (Part 1)

This is FIRST in a series of stories that trace the trajectory of my encounter, fascination, doubts, frustration with, and renewed faith in liberalism-progressivism. This installment narrates how the liberal me was born out of my experience at UP Diliman.

                     The Making of a Liberal 

                             by Rommel A. Curaming

‘Martial law baby.’ That was what I was called long before I knew I was. I didn’t know what that meant until one day I heard a student leader at the University of the Philippines in Diliman (UP-Diliman) complaining about how apathetic UP students had become. That was sometime in 1987. In a tone I would understand only much later as sarcastic, he said the lack of parking lot had become UP’s major problem and that the current generations of UP students being “martial law babies” were blissfully oblivious to the many problems that beset the country. 

I remember a heavy air hanged over the campus. Students were being mobilized to protest the killing of someone called Lean Alejandro. The student leader seemed flustered by the disinterest among students, including me. A promdi who just entered UP, I had no idea who Lean Alejandro was, and why he seemed important. It intrigued why his death was deeply angered and mourned by groups of students while ignored by many others. I also wondered why the student leader said UP students were apathetic while most fellow students I encountered seemed brimming with life, passionate about something. Why parking was a problem also made me ponder “how come?” From hindsight, I was too naïve and consumed by efforts to make sense of my new life in a new environment to care about what was going on in Diliman.

In this post, I wish to look back and trace the trajectory of my encounter and engagement with liberalism. I wish to make it clear to me, and to others who may be interested, how I ended being an ardent liberal, then evolved into a questioning one, and how I emerged from the experience with a renewed faith in liberalism, provided it is reformed. I have started writing this since last year as a chapter in an anthology on the Marcos era, but I've realized in due course that the shape it was taking might not fit within the overall theme of that book. Writing dragged on as I find it challenging to articulate my own thoughts and feelings with the complex facets of liberalism. 

-o0o-

I was born in 1970 in a remote seaside town of Catanauan, in the district called Bondoc Peninsula in southern Quezon. The whole area of 13 towns was impoverished, with national roads began to be paved only when I already had my own kids. Simple life in this isolated community was disturbed only occasionally, such as when gossips of possible NPA attacks spread, which did not actually happen in our town, but it did in others. The chilling presence of the New People’s Army (NPA), their intermittent encounters with the government troops, the kangaroo and their revolutionary taxes figured prominently in my memories of those years. Another was the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in 1983 and the news of frequent anti-Marcos rallies in Manila since then. Private conversations were infused with the movie-like dramas, intrigues, and gossips about the Marcoses, Aquinos, Laurels and others. I have recollections of the snap elections in 1986 and the subsequent EDSA uprising. Our town had a long tradition of anti-Marcos voting behavior. He never won there in the 1960s up to 1986, and BBM also lost there recently. I was among those excited and hopeful to see what was to happen after EDSA. But all these were fleeting; they quickly receded as a distant backdrop to my struggles as a high school and later college student, besides the challenges that beset our family.

The memories of my primary school years in the late 1970s and early 1980s were laced with fondness for nutribun, bulgur, powdered milk, and corn flour that from time to time we pupils received in public schools. Routines included occasional field demonstrations of folk or modern dances, daily flag-raising ceremonies and calisthenics, singing national anthem and other songs, and reciting slogans that later I was told were propaganda by the Marcos regime. I recall in particular the song with these lines “May bagong silang, May bagong buhay…”. Its distinctive marching rhythm stuck in me. When I heard it again months ago as briefly captured in the news of BBM’s motorcades, I was jolted by floods of warm memories of my primary school years. Yes, my memories of those years were warm and comforting overall. 

My father worked as a municipal agriculturist. I remember him busy visiting barrios, talking to farmers, giving seminars about new programs and techniques in farming and aqua-culture. Faint memories about Masagana 99, irrigations, land reform, the different varieties of 'miracle rice',  parades and agricultural fairs I still carry to this day. Clearer are my memories of rural banks and cooperatives of various types, as my parents and us kids took part as borrowers and depositors. I particularly had fond memories of buying cheaper goods and accumulating rebates from cooperative stores, particularly the credit cooperative and Kadiwa Center in our hometown. Up to now, I still remember how deeply sad I felt seeing their shelves increasingly un-replenished, until they closed altogether, never to be revived, as the post-Marcos era wore on.  

In 1987, I was surprised and overjoyed to have passed the UPCAT,  UP's entrance examination. Hearing the news, our parish priest warned my mother against studying at UP. I served as a sacristan, an altar boy, for ten years, growing up at the center of our town’s Catholic world. Our parish priest might have feared what seemed to be a hard-core Catholic like me would go wayward and become a communist or an aktibista. With all derogatory and scary connotations they carry among town folks, a mere mention of those words brought chills to the spine. It was a typical small-town mindset, which I understood well. But I was too excited by the thought of studying at UP-Diliman to be bothered by our priest's concerns. That said, I entered UP rather wary about the leftist ideologies whose negative impressions I carried over from my conservative, provincial background. I grew up, for instance, reading what turned out to be Cold War propaganda-laden books, newspapers and magazines like Reader’s Digests and the Asiaweek. I’ve realized the subtle but deeply propagandistic nature of these and other media only much later, sometime in 2000s, when I wrote a paper on the rhetoric of Ramon Magsaysay Awards as part of the repertoire of the Cold War propaganda (downloadable here). 

The four years I spent as an Education student at UP majoring in Social Studies proved exhilarating. It was there where my liberal self was born. The very interdisciplinary nature of this major allowed me to bask in the freedom to think freely, take the courses I truly liked across the vast social sciences and humanities, and read whatever I fancied. It was a veritable liberal education, transformative in process and empowering in aspiration. For a while I was a trainee at the culture section of the Philippine Collegian, UP’s official student organ and the mouthpiece of the radical-leftist ideologues at UP. In high school, I dreamed of becoming a journalist so when I was filling in the UPCAT form, I looked for the code for Journalism. Rather strangely the form that reached my school did not include Journalism on the list! So I put the code for Secondary Education as my first choice thinking that UP did not offer a major in Journalism. It hardly bothered me then, thinking that passing the UPCAT was like a punch on the moon for me anyway. But I did pass the UPCAT and when I went to UP for the first time, I was startled while riding Ikot jeep seeing Plaridel Building, the Institute for Mass Communication, where Journalism was one of the majors. The Catholic in me took it as a providential intervention, steering me to one direction rather than another. But anyway, awe-struck as I was by the Philippine Collegian and thinking I could still take a shot at my dream of being a journalist, I decided to heed one of their recruitment calls. I took the test and I was notified to my delight that I passed for a provisional training.

In due time, I realized how much time press work required, entailing not just extended night-time work but also skipping classes. I opted out when academic pressures forced me to choose which to prioritize. In hindsight, that moment was an ideological crossroads for me. Had I stayed and become a full-fledged staff of the Collegian, I would have been at the center of radical politics not just in UP but in the country. I would have been clearly aktibista in action, not just in thoughts. My departure from Collegian allowed me a more free-flowing political education, at my own pace and ways. I was thrilled by the shedding of my conservative outlook, imbibing the anti-colonial nationalist and radical standpoint that UP liberal and Marxist activists have propounded. Before I knew it, I became a self-appointed critic of colonial education and colonial historiography, as well as of the roles of the World Bank, IMF, and US imperialism in forcing third world countries to do “structural adjustment” and to “mortgage their future”. I remember being inspired by the works of Alejandro Licauco (Nationalist Economics) Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Michael Apple, Henry Giroux,  Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato and Leticia Constatino (“Miseducation of the Filipinos,” “World Bank Textbooks”, Past Revisited and Continuing Past), and Luisa Doronilla among many others. I did not become a communist, as our parish priest feared, but I was deeply fascinated by their beliefs; I admired their conviction and courage and I understood why they pushed for a revolutionary transformation. Participating only twice or thrice in campus mobilizations (against the US bases and for socialized tuition at UP), I was among those otherized pejoratively as armchair activist by the hegemonic, Diliman-centric culture of activism in the country.

The years I was at UP coincided with the post-EDSA years of turmoil and the unrelenting tirade against the previous regime and the US. The “Never Again!” and anti-US narratives were pervasive, and I absorbed them as every budding Filipino intellectual was expected. Being critical entailed being anti-US, anti-colonial, anti-Marcos and pro-Cory, among other things.  

Graduating from UP in 1991, I started teaching Asian History in high school in an elite Catholic high school in the posh Dasmarinas village in Makati. Not long after, I returned to UP to pursue a graduate degree in Asian Studies. The deepening of my interest in Asian philosophies, history and culture proved to be a turning point in my intellectual development, and my understanding of the political, and life in general. My intellectual pursuit, however, had to take a backseat to the harsh realities of daily life. For the remainder of the 1990s, I was consumed by the need to survive, establish a career, keep a gainful employment in Manila, and prepare for marriage and raise own family. It was frenetic. Looking back, I wonder how I managed to endure those years. I woke up early and came home late, braved traffic jams and pollution every day, not to mention floods during rainy season, shuttling between two teaching jobs in distant parts of Metro Manila. Simultaneously, I pursued graduate studies and did odd jobs in textbook writing and conference organizing. Political and economic developments like expulsion of the US bases, the disintegration of the left in the Philippines, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of Asian economic dragons and the Asian financial crisis were momentous, but they we mere transitory backdrop to my toils as one among millions of struggling ordinary Filipinos.

It was inside the classrooms that my liberal-radical intellectual stances flourished during this time. I taught part-time courses on Philippine History and Rizal in an elite Catholic university, in addition to Asian History in a privileged Catholic school and a highly selective, public science high school. My teaching style was imbued with the spirit of critical pedagogy expounded by the likes of Paulo Freire and Michael Apple, as interpreted and modelled by Maria Luisa Doronila. Despite teaching only 1-unit Education course (courses in UP normally carry 3 credit units) called Senior Seminar,  she managed to provide what to me, looking back, was a brilliant synthesis of educational processes and why critical approach to education must be employed. I consider her one of the most competent and admirable teachers I ever had, not just in UP Diliman, but in my entire life. Through their ideas and illustrative examples, I came to realize for the first time the truly radical potentials and transformative power of teaching. The world out there, its past and present, is not simply to be understood, but more importantly to change for the betterment of humanity, the marginalized groups in particular. Both incremental and fundamental changes were (still are) needed because the status quo was configured in favor of numerically small but powerful political, cultural and economic elites. True to the liberal aspirations to locate humans at the center of the schemes of things and to empower them to serve as engine of historical transformation, I took teaching as a foundational training for thinking right, enabling students to be the agent of change the liberal tradition envisioned them to be. Rational thinking, in short, is at the forefront as well as baseline of efforts to address practically every problem. Looking back this was among the earliest liberal fantasies that I imbibed. Why I now call it a “liberal fantasy” while before I took it as a calling or a mission, will become clear as my story further unfolds.

-To be continued-

Part II is here

A tale of two historical revisionisms: Why is a nuanced history of the Marcos years necessary?

 

by Rommel A. Curaming

Many people think we know what happened exactly during the Marcos years from 1966 to 1986. The long-dominant narrative tells us it was not just a dark age, but the darkest one in Philippine history. This narrative took shape under the euphoria of the 1986 EDSA ‘revolution’. It was propagated by various anti-Marcos and progressive groups. These groups suffered under the regime and many of them were well-placed in the media, academia, NGOs, religious communities and basic education. Through the years, it has become the standard and hegemonic account of the period. It became a doxa, treated as a self-evident truth. One can question it only at risk of being severely castigated.

The other, increasingly assertive and bourgeoning lately, is the narrative that paints Marcos years as a/the 'golden age'. Upheld initially by hard core Marcos loyalists, this version long existed, confined at the margins in the post-EDSA era. In recent years, it gained traction beyond the circles of Marcos loyalists enabled by the astute use of the social and other media by the BBM camp. We may also consider the positive memories of the Marcos years among segments of the population who lived through it, passing stories on to their children and grandchildren. Circulating against the backdrop of the failure of liberals-led post-EDSA regimes to meet people’s expectations, these memories fuel nostalgia for the Marcos era. As a counter-narrative to the long-established view, it is often branded as fake news or historical revisionism.

The transcendental truth contains a mix of these polar claims. Each of them has grains of truth, to what extent only God knows, but they overemphasized certain aspects and ignored others. The ‘dark age’ version projects onto the national screen the viewpoint mainly of victims of the Marcos regime. Borrowing the idea from Talitha Espiritu (2017), they allegorize what happened to them as a national tragedy, excluding the contrasting experience and views of people who appreciated what the Marcos regime did and what he stood for. That almost half of the voters voted for Marcos in 1986 snap elections suggests this segment is sizeable. This point is important to help us understand why a Marcos kept on being voted to office not just in Ilocos but nationally as well despite their family being unceremoniously removed from power in 1986. The ‘golden age’ view, on the other hand, overstates the achievements of the Marcos government while ignoring or downplaying the human rights violation, economic crisis, extravagance, corruption, cronyism and violence it committed. Both views are selective and they lack nuances expected of a good history.

Plenty of books were written about the period, but a balanced and comprehensive historical accounts have yet to be written. The rabid and tenacious anti-Marcos sentiment in the post-1986 years prevented this possibility. Impartiality could be costly for any scholar who dare to do it. Talitha Espiritu’s book Passionate Revolution, which I reviewed here, is a rare gem. It exemplifies the nuanced approach that we badly need. For some years, I have encouraged young Filipino historians to do oral history projects to examine what ordinary people in various places in the country actually remember about the Marcos years, and why. These generations are dying out and it is good to record their memories of the time. But no takers. Some said it is already obvious, so what is the point? Others think there are other more interesting and important topics to pursue. My hunch is that if well-designed oral history projects are done in various places, we shall see a more complex and nuanced picture of the era. Testimonies of activists, left-leaning leaders and other victims of the Marcos regime dominate accounts of the period. There are also memoirs and other accounts by pro-Marcos supporters. Both are no doubt valuable as records, but taken together, they offer partial accounts of the period, either skewed to one side or another. They are also viewed from the elite perspectives of the two camps. What must be included are accounts of daily life among ordinary people in different parts of the country. Ideally, such oral history projects should have been conducted years or decades earlier. In the wake of the stunning victory of BBM, the prevailing sentiment is likely to influence respondents’ memories of the Marcos years. Nevertheless, it still needs to be done and impartial professional historians must do it to ensure methodological rigor. They also have to do it soon before the surge of blatantly pro-Marcos efforts engulf the whole historical landscape.

Kakampinks and the mainstream media, both domestic and international, appear so sure about the sin of historical revisionism that the BBM camp is guilty of. Strictly speaking, revising history is an inherent part of writing history. We write history on the basis of available evidences. Once we find additional evidences or create a new interpretation of existing ones, it is natural to revise history. The so-called sin of historical revisionism ensues when a new version or interpretation goes against, even totally revises, the hegemonic understanding of history, such as when questions were raised about the Holocaust. Some of those who did it ended up being called historical revisionists or 'Holocaust deniers'  and got jailed or fined.  When the widely and long-entrenched 'dark age' interpretation of Marcos years began to be challenged by the emergent 'golden era' narrative, the proponents and supporters of the 'dark age' view were indignant, charging them of revising the past. This allegation is based on the assumption that an authoritative or truthful history has already been written and no one may challenge or change it. This illiberal assumption is untenable, as a nuanced and balanced history of the period has arguably yet to be written. And even if we grant it has already been written, it is still subject to possible revisions. Nothing is cast in stone in history writing, provided there are new evidence or valid reasons for new interpretation.

More interestingly, they also missed that their camp was (and still is) guilty of historical revisionism themselves, and they were and remain oblivious of it. They did it earlier, since 1986 when they promoted the Never Again and EDSA narratives[1]. This was a revisionist history, erasing the dynamics and complexity of the period by reducing it into several purely negative characteristics. Specifically, from the standpoint of almost 50% who voted for Marcos in 1986 snap election, the Never Again narrative revised their favorable memories and assessment of what happened then. That hardly anyone recognizes it as historical revisionism is a testament to the power of the victors not just to write history but to erase this power in the equation, making it seem that history is objective, that it spontaneously writes itself. Howls of protest may be raised about tons of evidence that attest to the cruelty of the Marcos regime, but evidence also exist to support the more favorable views. The point is, these opposing pieces of evidence need not cancel each other to determine "the truth" about the period. The contrasting pictures they offered form parts of a comprehensive, textured, and more realistic representation of the past. 

Imputing moral equivalence is not the purpose of drawing parallelism between the two revisionisms. I leave judgement to the readers. My purpose is analytic parity and to find viable ways how to move forward. It is necessary for us to understand the unrecognized political nature of ANY historical claims, regardless of accuracy or lack thereof. Both liberals and conservatives tend to deny the political underpinning of their preferred history. For them it is an objective history. The political character of history can only be concealed and denied, but it cannot be expunged. It is inherent in historical knowledge, among other branches of knowledge. The liberal view of the supposedly oppositional relationship between good scholarship and politics is a myth; it fantasizes the good or accurate scholarship neutralizing the political. It is a fantasy  because regardless of quality, a scholarship can be, and has actually been, used to serve any compatible political interests, good or bad, right or left or center. Knowledge assumes a life of its own as it circulates in social spaces. Hitler and the Nazi, for example, used the most advanced science and scholarship of the time to serve his interests, even if the scholars did not envision their work for such purposes. US, Chinese and Russian governments also do that.  The liberal view easily forgets that given the inevitable social context of knowledge production and consumption, whatever conclusion reached, accurate or not, will always favor one side or another. It cannot be neutral. More fundamentally, the very act of writing history—using historical methodology—is enabled by the collective power of the community of scholars. Impartial scholarship is the well-spring of power of scholars. It is their politics, to put it candidly. It is a kind of power whose potency and legitimacy rests on not being recognized as such. For anyone curious to know more about this line of analysis, you can read my book Power and Knowedge in Southeast Asia: Scholars and State in Indonesia and the Philippines where I analyse comparatively Marcos’s Tadhana project with Suharto’s similar project.

On part of the public, they also cannot consume history outside of the existing power relations; historical interpretation cannot exist in a socio-political vacuum. Either one agrees with the ideological left, right, or center, or with the supposedly impartial scholars. Regardless, one favors one political stance over another. This should not put us in despair. It simply is its nature. We will be in better position to do something if we know this sooner rather than later.  

If ultimately all history, regardless of quality or accuracy, is political, what is the point of aspiring for a multi-faceted and nuanced history of the Marcos period? This kind of history will allow ample space for the competing narratives. Rather than bickering endlessly on which version is 'the truth' and which one is 'fake,' we can profit more by decoding the political interests and human needs that drive competing historical claims. With multiplicity as our starting point, there is a greater chance we learn to tolerate our political and other differences and we can move forward with less historical baggage. With the sharp polarization ensuing from the 2022 elections, it is imperative various sides have to learn to co-exist civilly, if not truly peacefully.

References Cited:

Curaming, Rommel. Power and Knowledge in Southeast Asia: Scholars and State in Indonesia and the Philippines. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Curaming, Rommel and  Lisandro Claudio. “(Re)Assessing EDSA ‘People Power’ as a Critical Conjuncture.” In Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asia, edited by Narayanan Ganesan, Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 25-52.            

Espiritu, Talitha. Passionate Revolutions : The Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017.

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[1] Leloy Claudio and I wrote an article that re-assesses the 1986 EDSA People Power, https://www.academia.edu/2147171/_Re_Assessing_EDSA_People_Power_as_a_Critical_Conjuncture