The images and memories of EDSA I continue to astonish and amaze me some thirty-three years later after the fact.
The largely peaceful rebellion that ended the reign of Ferdinand Marcos took place in 1986. I was 20 years old at the time so I was still a very impressionable lad. The phenomenon of EDSA I helped transform me from a young man lacking intellectual structure and a social consciousness into an adult who was ready to embark upon a quest for knowledge of the world. EDSA I not only taught me that the impossible was possible but that good, in the broadest philosophical sense, could still prevail over evil. It is a lesson I will remember for the rest of my life.
That is why it is distressing for me to hear about how swaths of the so-called Millennial and Generation Z Filipinos find themselves mentally- and emotionally-detached from the memory of EDSA I. Obviously this has been partly due to the fact that millennial and post-millennial Filipinos were either very young children or unborn when EDSA I occurred. So it’s not entirely their fault for being naïfs when it comes to comprehending the full import of that episode in Philippine history. But this is not an excuse for their psychological distance from something every Filipino should acknowledge and cherish.
Age doesn’t have to be a prerequisite, but had you been old enough in 1986 you would have fully appreciated what was going on during those tumultuous days in the Philippines. If you weren’t actually in the Philippines then, the next best thing was to be following the drama either through the long-distance telephone accounts of friends and relatives in the islands or live on television. That's what I was doing in California at the time, watching every dramatic moment on CNN in total disbelief of what I was seeing and hearing.
I was no different from many other Filipinos who believed there was no way on earth for the dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos to fall. It was too entrenched and too powerful. It strained credulity to think otherwise. To suggest that there was the slimmest ray of hope to topple Marcos in the foreseeable future was deemed rose-colored and delusional by the most optimistic of the oppositionists.
During one summer vacation to the Philippines in 1984, I can recall my bank executive uncle smugly informing me that Filipinos did not have the brains or the audacity to rise up against the dictator. He said that Filipinos were too passive, too contented to “live in the soothing warmth of their own shit” to do anything about their plight. My uncle had the temerity to make these comments after the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino some two years earlier, an event that sparked the outrage of millions of Filipinos.
Something inside me told me there was something wrong with what my uncle claimed. I wondered how could he be right if millions of Filipinos were enraged by Aquino’s murder and also mired in endemic poverty. How long could their collective silence and apathy be expected to continue in the face of such adversity?
What my uncle in all his arrogance failed to grasp was that there was change in the air, a widespread feeling that there was the beginning of something transformational, something enduring, something essential, essential that is to the restoration of democracy in the Philippines. That something would become what would be known as People Power.
Just the sight of thousands of Filipinos coming out onto EDSA to show their support for and solidarity with the rebellious soldiers had a moral wholeness to it, which is indispensable to any doing like this in terms of scale and purpose. This unity was not only moral but political too.
Indeed, EDSA possessed at once a spiritual and secular grace—the spiritual aspect drew upon the good-versus-evil theme thereby galvanizing the people, while the secular brought Philippine democracy back from the dead.
Filipinos were venturing into a decisive stage in their nation’s history, a stage in which they were both the actors and the composers. This is as important to remember as anything else about EDSA I: for Filipinos it had a value and beauty that was all their own. In a word, EDSA I and People Power was all Filipino in the making. Outsiders could only watch as a people far too accustomed to foreign influence took matters into their own hands.
Plausibly not since the revolutionary period against Spanish colonial domination in the late 1890’s had Filipinos taken such a resolute step towards exclusively reasserting their right to self-determination.
Reminiscing about EDSA I here makes it all the more disheartening to me that so many Millennial and Generation Z Filipinos have isolated People Power into the faraway past. Truth be told, for them what was accomplished in those heady days in 1986 has become outmoded, dated, even redundant.
With some of these younger Filipinos, the restorative memory of EDSA I as it has been imparted to them by their seniors has not been adequately fulfilling. The passage of time, the clockwork corruption and dereliction of much of the post-EDSA I era, the challenges of navigating the headwinds of the 21st century, and the revival of the Marcoses political fortunes along with the ascendancy of Rodrigo Duterte’s, have formed a dangerous wedge between the unambiguous meaning of EDSA I and its reception among the youths who will carry the future burden of administering the Philippines.
The danger lies in the consigning of EDSA I and People Power to the dustbin of history by both young skeptics and the populist, authoritarian forces that revolve around Rodrigo Duterte. The Philippines I must say, is potentially approaching an inflection point at which its democracy will be teetering on the edge.
The avoidance of that pressing possibility will depend on doing a better job of enlightening Filipino youths on the virtue and righteousness of EDSA I and People Power—for they will eventually be freedom’s salvation.
ALLEN GABORRO
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