ENDEAVOR

Thirty-two months after its launch in September 2023, SERVE — a book co-authored by 19 campus journalists who witnessed the First Quarter Storm of 1970 as student activists, and chronicled the Filipino people’s struggle against systemic ills that stymied the country’s progress — is now on its second edition. I join my co-authors in inviting Filipinos interested in understanding the events of that momentous era to read our accounts and join us in reflecting how we could all learn from history.

Jo-Ann Maglipon, our colleague and book editor, has written a comprehensive review and I am pleased to share with you some key excerpts:

“Serve is not a self-congratulatory book. It is purposeful but, we trust, not smug. Its pitch is deliberate and, we also trust, not a decibel higher than is needed to make the point. All told, we go for the unhurried tone and the decorous language, avoiding breathlessness and belligerence. With our combined academic degrees, I suppose we imagine ourselves civilized.

“Seriously, this is who we are.

“We say dark times when we mean murderous times. We say events that profoundly changed our lives when we mean families torn, careers derailed, self-worth shattered. We say robbed of our rights when we mean bodily, mentally debased and defiled. We say moneys squirreled away into confidential funds when we mean taxpayers duped, defrauded, double-crossed. And we say autocrat and strongman when we mean murderer and dictator.  

“What’s more, we want to reach people outside our circles—they who flinch before the harsh details of our past, they who like the distance offered by concepts and contemplations, they who find refuge in intellectual fogginess, they who require space to process the ugliness on their own.

“Sol Juvida interviews children as young as seven orphaned by President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. She is doing the script for a six-minute video for the PCIJ2 Story Project. Titled Paglaki Ko (When I Grow Up): Children of the Drug War Speak Up, the video hides the identities of the children who are all from Bagong Silang, a shantytown in Caloocan spread over 500 hectares.

“Sol allows herself a moment to wipe away tears, her own.

“Senen Glorioso pays tribute to a father he disappointed by not becoming a doctor like him, a father he disappointed again by joining the SDK,3 and then disappointed yet again when he came under house arrest.

“Of course, many of us were resourceful and courageous. We watched our watchers. We wanted to discover weaknesses. Marcos relied on agents who soon became lax and lazy with their babysitting job. While we, seething under the restrictions, made creative use of public pay telephones, codes, pseudonyms, public events, and random opportunities. When we got local residents to provide raw intelligence, we knew we had a chance.”

“Rey Vea, in 2019, accepts his last check payment as claimant in the human-rights class suit against Ferdinand E. Marcos.

The day is vivid for him: “I moved to the last stop where I had to give a final signature. The lady by the table looked up and said, ‘Mabuhay po kayo! Bayani po kayo!’ Something just unexpectedly welled up in me and I struggled to say, ‘Hindi po. Hindi po. ‘Yong mga nagbuwis ng buhay, sila po ‘yon.’” Not only was he emotional for the rest of the day, Rey tells, but in that moment he recognized the depth of emotion he still harbored for that chapter in his life.

As far afield as his professional life has come, Rey says today: “...my student activist years were among the best in my life.”

“Jones Campos sounds almost amusing as he talks about his struggles. Being an ex-political prisoner was not the best credential, he admits, for landing a job during martial law, and he had a wife and child to feed. After two very long years of (trying),  Eastern Telecom, accepted (him).  The job offered ₱900 monthly (basic pay),” Jones writes excitedly, “higher than the ₱500 minimum wage, on top of which came a ₱350 representation allowance and a ₱250 transportation allowance. At 27 years old, the prospects of a higher salary and sales commissions left me giddy. I was moving up!”

“When he retired, Jones was head of PR and Advertising and spokesperson for Globe Telecom of the Ayala Group of Companies. He muses: “I find it remarkable that my drive and tenacity in the present come fully from my past—more particularly in the past that was my activist years, my stay in prison, my pursuit of right, and my rejection of wrong.”      
“At the start of 2023, seven months before we launch Serve, we lose Jones.

“He never got to see his children read his life story. Yet it is for them he writes his chapter, at a time (when) he is already very sick: “They know little of what I went through. They are unaware of the journey I took to get here, coming from my childhood many universes removed from their own... I know I want to tell them my story while I still have the details with me. It was a period so heightened, so intense, so extreme, it marked me for good. With this, I hope they understand their father better.”

“Serve is not about drama. We tell it as it is. If we must be faulted, perhaps it can be for (unconsciously) paring away too much or for (consciously) curating distracting theatrics.  
“Some of us tend to be really spare. Chito Sta. Romana, we lose in the first half of 2022, while he is Philippine ambassador to China under the Duterte presidency.  His close friend, Jaime FlorCruz, is today the country’s ambassador under the Marcos Jr. presidency. Before this, both were already acknowledged as veteran, multi-awarded international journalists, with their last assignment being Beijing bureau chief for American media companies—Chito for ABC News and Jaime for CNN.

“So, what is out there?

“It has been 51 years and running since September 1972. The millions who vote today have little instinct about the martial rule that descended then…

“Butch Dalisay writes this book’s introduction with, in his words, “sadness edging on sorrow.”

“So, why this book?  To fight fantasy, forgetting, flagellation. To rebuke calls to embrace unity and move forward by disremembering. To demand apology, atonement, redress. To remind the powers: We are here, we remember everything, and we write.”

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