By Diego Morra
Yes, the Filipino people can enjoy an ocean of truth to swim in, or they may dive into a cesspool of lies and delude themselves forever. That is the harsh truth about EDSA 1986, the culmination of 21 years of the Marcos Sr. falsehoods and 14 years of iron-fisted martial law that led to the pauperization of the Filipino people.
Those who fail to swim in the ocean of truth, as Jane Fonda stressed in her speech before receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), will drown in the sea of infamy, like those who applaud Donald Trump and Elon Musk now. Or like those who pine for the “golden age of Marcos Sr.” and the prosperity founded on the lie about unlimited Marcos treasure.
For the edification of those who have been blinded, made deaf and stripped of common sense by the Marcos troll army, here are the facts about martial law: There were 107,240 primary victims of human rights violations; 70,000 people arrested arbitrarily, without warrants of arrests; 34,000 people tortured; 3,240 killed by the military and the police, with thousands more among Moro and indigenous communities unreported, and; 11,103 victims of rights violations with approved claims for compensation from the Human Rights Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013, per the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission (HRVVMC.) A total of 2,729 activists were also involuntarily exiled rather than face prolonged incarceration.
Hundreds of media outlets were shuttered: 8 major English newspapers; 18 vernacular, Spanish and English language dailies; 60 community newspapers; 66 TV channels; 20 radio stations, and; 292 provincial radio stations. A total of $683 million in Marcos assets in Swiss banks were declared ill-gotten in a July 2003 Supreme Court (SC) decision. The total loot of the Marcoses was estimated to be from a low of $5 billion to a high of $10 billion after 21 years of misrule. As dictator, Marcos crafted and signed 6,281 laws from September 1972 to February 1986.
By the time they fled on Feb. 25, 2025, the Marcos incurred a total debt of $28.26 billion for succeeding generations to pay from a low of $360 million in 1961. The wage of agricultural workers was P30 in 1986, down from P42 in 1962. It went as low as P23 in 1974, right after the declaration of martial law. The wage of skilled workers in 1986 was only P35 and unskilled workers had to make do with P23. In 1986, 60% of Filipino families were poor, compared to only 40% before Marcos Sr. took over in 1965.
The University of the Philippines Institute of Human Rights (UP-IHR) said the Marcos martial law regime resorted to massacres to cow militant resurgent organizations battling the dictatorship. On Sept. 18, 1981, soldiers and paramilitarymen massacred scores of civilians, including a four-month-old baby, in Dag-od, Las Navas, Northern Samar. On June 21, 1982, six volunteers of the Alyansa mg Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL) were arrested by the Philippine Constabulary (PC) and five of them were tortured and killed, their bullet-riddled bodies found the following day.
Two of the worst massacres during the Marcos martial law dictatorship happened in Negros Occidental. Nine young men were brutally murdered in Langoni, Cauayan, Negros Occidental in 1984, with the military claiming they were all killed in an “encounter” between soldiers and the New People’s Army (NPA), a claim belied by witness and the relatives of the victims. The following year, scores of people protesting the 13th anniversary of martial were dispersed and gunned down in New Escalante, Negros Occidental, 19 of them residents and one was a student.
Try as they might, the Marcos Jr. regime cannot erase, paper over or dismiss the ocean of truth from 1965 to 1986. They failed when they tried to create their alternative facts on film, earned opprobrium for attempting to revise history and denounced for manufacturing their truth to delude millions. Their efforts are akin to what George Orwell wrote in 1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.” Now that they are back in power, they will attempt to rehabilitate their patriarch in the autumn of their rule. “Injustice makes the rule and courage breaks them,” said Ursula K. Le Guin. Courage also swims in the ocean of truth, Jane Fonda will remind them. #
