In a not-so-distant past, I worked as a teacher of Literature, and during this period in my life, I consumed with obsession all the works of Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist and essayist who exiled himself in France in 1975 to escape an authoritarian regime in his native country of then Czechoslovakia; he stayed in France (and considered himself a French writer and his works classified as such) until his passing in 2023.
Even though I had difficulty coping financially as a twenty-something teacher, I managed to purchase and read in their English translation all the novels and books of essays Kundera had written. My interest in Kundera began when, as a student in Hanoi, a reader of my blog recommended that I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was enamored by his rather unhurried writing style—this style I thought was perfect for slow and easy-going afternoons I spent reading in quaint cafés located on the bank of Hoan Kiem Lake found in the center of the Vietnamese capital after my Vietnamese classes. Reading his books was also my attempt at understanding the life of the Vietnamese people and making meaning out of the existence I was then having living in an authoritarian state.
Kundera’s novels are varied, moving, and strange. But what made me gravitate towards him further was the fact that all the stories he told were hinged on his grand treatises about how the human mind works, our relationships, history, government, and the vagueness of life in general. It is as if these stories and characters exist to prove his theses on how it is to be human.
All his stories are set, to a varying degree, within the backdrop of an authoritarian regime—this reality subtly envelopes the lives of all his characters, though some are wrapped within it less obviously than others. His characters experience fear, suspicion toward people around them (their lover or friends, even family members, can be a government spy!), paranoia, and they stage forms of opposition against the state that are both veiled and pointed, but their lives carry on—they fall in love, philander, sing, eat, laugh, wail, remember, and struggle to recollect the past amid the creeping power of the state over their lives and other characters’ that enrich their development within the universe of the novel.
But what truly can a people do when confronted with a state that seeks to take control of their existence and fashion them into moldable shells whose labor the state extracts with impunity and unashamedly to further perpetuate itself and the powerful people that wield political power and capital?
On 25 February, I had to report to work. But unlike in the previous years, I was not paid 30% more for my attendance because the celebration of the 39th anniversary of the EDSA People Power was relegated by President Marcos, Jr. to a mere “special working holiday,” a bitter bureaucratese that means that despite its being a national holiday, people would still have to go to work, minus a holiday premium if they work on a supposedly non-working holiday. Following this declaration by the Marcos administration, and showing their refusal to accept this glaring act of historical revisionism, private schools run by Catholic congregations all over the country daringly announced that they would not be heeding the government’s declaration and would not hold classes as practiced in the years preceding—their teachers and employees paid for their day’s work even if they did not come to work.
Unlike the characters in Kundera’s novels who silently (but sometimes less so) contend and struggle with authoritarian regimes, pressing on with their lives like normal humans are wont to do amid actions by the state that little by little their shared history, and their liberties fettered incrementally tightly, Filipinos in general seem unbothered by this steady and cumulative attack on their collective history as a nation and, ultimately, their freedom.
From my work in New Manila, I took LRT2 to Cubao and from there transferred to MRT3 line to catch a train that would take me to Ortigas Station. I invited my French friend who teaches French in the school that I manage to join me in attending the rally.
In Araneta Center Cubao Station, I was greeted by a Kadiwa store that sells rice for 35 pesos a kilogram, way cheaper than the 60- to 70-pesos a kilogram rice sold in most talipapa in Metro Manila. There is a limit of 2 kilograms of rice for each person to purchase. Kadiwa is a program of the Department of Agriculture that started in 2023 whose goal is to “ensure the availability and affordability of food in areas with high demand and in communities with low-income families (Kadiwa, No Date).”
This is a facsimile of the program with the same name implemented by Marcos, Sr, in 1973 as his government’s temporary measure to control hyperinflation that resulted from a global oil crisis and his mismanagement of the domestic economy (Ariate & Reyes, 2020). I am aware that this kind of store is present in every train station in Manila, but I never really paid attention to any of these Kadiwa stores until that day. Some customers were excited, even smiling, as they await their turn to pay for the 2-kilo bag of rice they’re buying. A few looked resigned, hoping to get their bag of rice promptly and head home before the rush-hour crowd of train riders thicken and make the commute more punishing.
“Alam ko na EDSA ngayon, pero pinapasok pa rin kami. Okay na rin kaysa nakatunganga ako sa loob ng bahay. No work, no pay kami (I am completely aware that today is the anniversary of EDSA People Power, but I had to go to work. This is better than doing nothing. I do not get paid if I do not go to work),” said Ato (not his real name), 46, a part-time painter and carpenter and a father of three, who was on his way home in Krus-na-Ligas in Quezon City. He passed by the Kadiwa store in Cubao to buy two kilos of rice on the way from his work painting a newly-renovated condominium unit in Mandaluyong that day.
When I arrived in Ortigas, I had to walk for about ten minutes from the station to EDSA Shrine. I did not want to get there late and confirm the stereotype Europeans have of Filipinos—that we’re always late. I got there at 5:30.
The sun was not yet setting, and the traffic on the intersection of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue did not show any sign of abating. My French friend, Beatrice, messaged me that she was coming from Robinsons Galleria. A minute after I got to the shrine, I received a WhatsApp message that she already saw me from behind. I was not too late, but late, nonetheless.
I was relieved to see her, but I was disappointed to see the almost empty space in front of the statue of National Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace, or more popularly known as Our Lady of EDSA.
I was embarrassed to admit to myself and to Beatrice that that was all the crowd the organizers could assemble to commemorate an event that has vast significance in the history of the Philippines. I told her that we would wait for thirty more minutes and see if more people would still arrive.
At about 5:45, a line of seminarians donned in black cassocks and a priest in white approached the shrine through the Ortigas intersection footbridge, presumably from EDSA People Power Monument, which is about 15 minutes away on foot.
The young seminarians were talking to each other in a hushed tone; these conversations were punctuated by controlled laughter, perhaps, because of the presence of the older priest behind them. One of the seminarians was carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary. By the looks of it, the young men had been required by their seminary to attend the gathering of people on EDSA.
There were some middle-aged women who wore yellow. They took turns taking photos of each other while making the “Laban” sign for the camera, with the shrine as their background. They scrambled with excitement when somebody was heard shouting that Kiko Pangilinan was in the area. I, however, did not see the former senator who is seeking reelection in May.
The mass in the chapel ended at around 6:00pm. People started to leave the venue. It was getting dark, so I invited my friend to have dinner inside the mall. I went home that evening feeling underwhelmed by the turnout of people who celebrated the anniversary of EDSA People Power, and I also felt a very deep sense of anxiety and unease about the direction the Philippines is heading to.
If one were to use the size of the crowd of people assembled in the shrine that day as barometer for how much Filipinos care about their history, then the previous and the current regimes have been thoroughly successful in making most of the Filipino people forget their past—this version of the past.
The following day, I got to work at 7:00am. Usually, I am the first person at work, but on that day, I was met by Ate who was mopping the floor of the hallway at the entrance. She is the school’s part time janitress whom the admin officer contacts to take over the work when the janitor provided by the agency cannot come to work due to sickness or a family emergency. I had not asked for her name before because I only saw her very infrequently. Her name is Delia; she is in her mid-50s.
She had never joined any of the EDSA protest rallies in the past, but she recalled that when she was still working as a saleslady in a small grocery store in Olongapo City many years back, there was a bomb scare on the day of the anniversary of EDSA that led to their being be sent home by their employer. She never got the extra holiday pay, but they were paid, nonetheless, for a day’s worth of work. She shared that she feared for her life when it was announced that somebody had left an improvised explosive device in front of their store where a rally to commemorate the events in 1986 was being held. She thought that attending political rallies like the EDSA People Power anniversary can be dangerous.
I asked if she’d join one if her safety can be guaranteed. She replied, “Wala naman akong mapapala. Parang di naman kami imbitado sa EDSA. (I get no benefit from joining the activities. I do not feel that we’re welcome, anyway.)”
This I think is how EDSA failed.
It succeeded in 1986 to topple the Marcos regime because it was mainly a revolution by the Filipino middle class (Santos, 2021) and, dare I say, for the Filipino middle class.
For members of the subaltern like Ato and Delia, they never felt they were a part of it. They believe (were made to believe and continue to believe) that they were not a participant in this part of our national history and so they have nothing to remember because they never lived and experienced EDSA; neither do they think EDSA played a role in their personal history and that it changed their individual life or that of their family’s for the better.
In the absence of this personal, (much less) collective memory, an authoritarian regime can, if it wills, fill in this vacuum with fabricated narratives that are made concrete and real, and through years of unchecked repetition and propaganda (aided by the speed and breadth of unregulated modern social media) coupled with the subaltern’s (real or imagined) experience of disenfranchisement, discontent, and being ignored, we are were we find ourselves today.
Kundera wrote in the novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “[t]he struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” suggesting that this resistance against oppressive forces is essentially entangled with the act of remembering, resisting attempts to efface and erase history and personal experiences through forgetting. Fundamentally, preserving one’s memory is a form of resistance against powerful entities seeking to control these narratives that ultimately determine our thoughts and actions as a people.
However, this shared forgetting needs to be carefully interrogated, and the members of the so-called middle class reflect with honesty and sincerity on the causes of this national amnesia and the reasons for this seeming indifference shown by the subaltern toward this “shared” history where they (the subaltern) feel excluded from.
Unless we find this common point, this gaping disunity in our appreciation of the events of the past will be continually exploited by the state and the powers that benefit from this division. These entities will continue to divide the people and shove down our throats their manufactured version of history.
References:
Ariate, Jr. J and Reyes, M.P. (22 April 2020). “Marcos Propaganda in the Time of Plague.”
Marcos Regime Research. < https://diktadura.upd.edu.ph/2022/09/18/marcos-propaganda-in-a-time-of-plague/>. Accessed on 3 March 2025.
Kadiwa. (No Date). “Madate.” Kadiwa. <https://kadiwa.da.gov.ph/index.php/mandate/>. Accessed on 3 March 2025.
Kundera, M. (1979). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Michael Henry Heim, trans). Toronto: Penguin.
Santos, G. (23 November 2021). “Rising Filipino middle class: Allies for national democracy?” London School of Economics Blog.
<https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/seac/2021/11/23/rising-filipino-middle-class-allies-for-national-democracy/>. Accessed on 3 March 2025.
