A dark era in the Philippines has been forgotten

THE May 9 elections in the Philippines put that country into the international spotlight once again ... but, not in a good way.

Much of the attention was given to the victory of Davao City Mayor Ricardo Duterte, who is the new president of the Philippines. He campaigned as a strongman who promised to kill five criminals a week. He's often described as the Trump of the Philippines for the outlandish statements he makes.

RELATED: Comedian John Oliver on Ricardo Duterte

The other headline grabber was the candidacy of Senator Bongbong Marcos, the son of Ferdinand Marcos, the late dictator. He was running for the country's Vice Presidency. In the Philippines, the president and vice president run separately and often are of the opposing political parties.

Congresswoman Leni Robredo will likely beat Bongbong although it hasn't been made official as of this writing. (Marcos is challenging the results because of alleged anomalies in the vote count.)

However, the fact that a Marcos - even if it is Marcos Jr. -  could make a strong run to political prominence brought attention to the lack of knowledge about the horrors of the dictatorship, which ended 30 years ago. Apparently, the country's school system isn't teaching anything about that dark era.

It was the first time that Filipino/Americans, who hold dual citizenships, were allowed to vote in the presidential election. The weekend of the elections, Filipinos flocked to consulates, community centers or supermarkets to cast their ballot. It would be interesting to know how long those Fil/Am voters had been in the U.S. but preliminary findings showed that Fil/Ams voted similarly as their counterparts in the Philippines.

A social experiment was conducted by CARMMA, the Campaign Against the Return of Marcoses to Malacanang (the Philippines' White House), to demonstrate the black hole in the country's schools which are failing to teach the truth about the despotic rule of the Marcoses. The experiment begins with an interviewer asking Millennials what they knew about the martial law years.

That’s when the young voters start to rationalize its implementation in various ways, remembering all the lessons they learned in school. They talked about there being law and order and one participant compared the dictator to a strict loving parent. And these were college students, supposedly the best educated young people in the country.

And then when the interviewers revealed that they were victims of the Marcos dictatorship and described their experiences which included torture and rape, the young people got teary eyed and embarrassed at their ignorance. They confessed, they were not taught any of the horrors in school.

As advocates of ethnic studies and the teaching of the true history of the United States - the bad, as well as the good - we can sympathize with the Philippines' young people.Those who control history, control the future. 

A petition was launched in Change.org by CARMMA that will be given to the Philippines Department of Education asking that this dark era of the Philippines be taught in their schools. That knowledge is critical so that voters can see through the posturing, phony promises and outrageous claims of the politicians who seek to be their leaders.

The wounds from the Marcos years are still too raw. It is too soon to forget what happens when so-called strong men rule the county and power goes to their head. Remember the words of caution from philosopher Jorge Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." With the resurgence of the Marcos family and the apparent election victory of Ricardo Duterte, it looks as though that's what is happening in the Philippines.

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Feb. 25, 1986: Anniversary of People Power & the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship

Millions of ordinary Filipinos found the courage to gather on EDSA demanding the end of the Marcos dictatorship during the Philippines  People's Power Revolution of 1986.

THIRTY YEARS AGO, the world watched the news on television to witness a bloodless revolution taking place in the Philippines. Filipinos in America watched in awe as Filipino nuns knelt before tanks as millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila and a dictator fled the Philippines. 

Thirty years ago, tears came to my eyes.

I was managing editor of the Philippine News based in South San Francisco, California. The PhilNews was one of the few American publications that looked behind the screen of U.S. ally Ferdinand Marcos and saw him as he truly was - a brutal dictator. It was known as the establishment voice piece of the anti-Marcos movement.

For decades, PhilNews publisher Alex Esclamado was relentless in his attacks against the iron-fisted rule of the Filipino strongman. Transcripts smuggled out of the Philippines, hours-long international phone calls and a countless array of tourists, businesspeople, friends and journalists were the newspaper's source of what was really happening in the Philippines under the reign of the Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, also known as the Iron Butterfly.

Because the PhilNews was unapologetically one-sided in its coverage of the Philippine dictatorship, the newspaper had lost some credibility among journalistic circles. "Obviously biased" was the common description. Other Filipino American and mainstream publications would always take what was bannered in the PhilNews with a grain of salt.

It was not until mainstream media like the New York Times and the San Francisco Examiner began covering the Philippines did the world recognize that what the PhilNews was writing about was true, including the arrests and disappearances of Marcos critics, the Marcos takeover of prominent institutions, the corruption of the regime, the abject fear Filipinos were living under, and the growing enrichment of the Marcos family and his coterie of friends. (As we later learned, the evil promulgated by the dictatorship was even worse than what was described by the PhilNews.)

The tentacles of fear reached into the Filipino American community through strong-arm tactics employed by the Marcos regime. Two union and anti-Marcos activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, were murdered in Seattle by assassins under orders of the Marcos surrogates. New publications were created to compete with the Philippine News. PhilNews' big advertisers, mostly travel agencies and airlines, were ordered to withdraw their advertising as the price of doing business in the Philippines. Marcos issued arrest warrants for PhilNews writers and editors.

We should provide a shout-out to the critical role played by S.F. Examiner reporter Phil Bronstein and photographer Kim Kominich. They were in Manila at the time the protests began and somehow found their way into Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo, the headquarters of the military units that broke ranks and sided with the Filipino people. Their stories and pictures were broadcast throughout the world alerting the rest of the globe what was happening in the Philippines. Because of Bronstein's relationship with Esclamado, Bronstein was able to gain access to people and stories that might otherwise elude American journalists. In kind, the S.F. Examiner allowed PhilNews to reprint Bronstein's reports and use Kominich's photographs.

So on Feb. 22, 1986, American networks began covering the mass protest in Manila that grew into the People Power bloodless revolution.

I remembered being glued to the TV news reports. All of us dreading the moment when the dictatorship would strike back against the rebel military units or crush the peaceful protesters on Epiifanio de los Santos Avenue, the nickname EDSA became a name for the protests that led to the eventual Marcos departure. 

Filipino nuns stopped soldiers sent to break up the protests.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines, led by Cardinal Jaime Sin, called on all Filipinos to join the protests. Hundreds of thousands of the faithful joined the students and union activists. Priests and nuns in their collars and habits came carrying rosary beads as weapons.

Pro-Marcos troops, many of them drawn from Marcos' home province, came to Manila to confront the protestors. We held our breath waiting for the bloodletting to begin.

The nuns knelt in front of the tanks to pray the rosary as the throngs of protestors surrounded the armored vehicles. To our utter amazement, the tanks stopped. They refused to break through the ranks of religious. More military units joined the rebel forces.

Behind the scenes in the early morning hours of Feb. 25, the Reagan administration, always a supporter of Marcos, saw the writing on the wall and changed its position. Back-and-forth phone calls between Reagan officials and the Marcoses made it clear that the time had come for Marcos to give up his power. A desperate Imelda even tried her hand at negotiations with Reagan's wife Nancy. First Lady Nancy Reagan assured Imelda that the decision was out of her hands.

In the morning of Feb. 25, 1986, the Philippines had two presidents. Marcos called his supporters to the palace to witness a lackluster oath-taking. Meanwhile, at a large hall in Manila, Cory Aquino, widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno Aquino was sworn into office by the Philippines' Supreme Court Chief Justice. Two weeks earlier, in a sham election hastily called by Marcos, Mrs. Aquino "lost" to Marcos in a highly questionable vote count. That phony election was the last straw for Filipinos.

By the evening of Feb. 25, Marcos and his retinue were flying to Clark Air Force Base, a U.S. air base, from which they were flown to exile in Hawaii. In a history-making event, the dictatorship was toppled without a drop of blood. 

Back in the United States, the Filipino/American community was divided into pro and anti-Marcos camps and with much of their energy devoted to ousting or defending the dictator,  Filipino Americans in 1986 were lagging compared to other ethnic communities and needed to strengthen their social, economic and political presence in America. Most Americans were hard put to find the Philippines on the map. 

Thirty years ago before social media, television allowed those images to reach across the Pacific and pull Filipino Americans out of the shadows and thrust into the limelight.

Those brave people in Manila raised the self-esteem of Filipino Americans and brought a pride in being Filipino that went beyond the ability to speak a Filipino dialect or whether one was born in the Philippines or the U.S. 

The small role that I played - though insignificant compared to Philippine News publisher Esclamado - in convincing America's mainstream media and politicians on the true nature of Ferdinand Marcos and his despotic regime, convinced me of the power of the written word and free press and the potential of journalism to right wrongs. EDSA and Esclamado also taught me that even though as journalists we are taught to be objective, sometimes, we have to take a stand and fight for what we know in our hearts to be right.

I designed the Philippine News' front page the next day with a huge picture taking up two-thirds of the page of millions of Filipinos massing on Manila's streets. Superimposed over the photo was the one-word headline, all-caps, "FREEDOM!"

Tanks were stopped by unarmed protesters at the Philippines' bloodless revolution in 1986.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. 

Long live the "King;" 2 "kings" take over Broadway role

Filipino American Jose Llana will star in The King and I Broadway musical.

ONE KING exits, two will take his place.

As Ken Watanabe leaves the Broadway productionl of "The King and I"  to fulfill a motion picture commitment, two more Asian/American actors will take over the role, originally  made famous by Yul Brynner.

Last night, Broadway vet Jose Llana joined Tony winners Kelli O’Hara and Ruthie Ann Miles (his Imelda from Here Lies Love) to play the role of the King of Siam for a limited 11-week engagement through Sept. 27, in Lincoln Center Theater’s Tony Award-winning revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I, based on the book "Anna and the King of Siam."

After Llana's summer stint, Hoon Lee from the television series Banshee will star as the king of Siam.

Jose Llana starred as Philippines' President Marcos in the musical Here Lies Love at the Public Theater, for which he received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination. This production is currently on world tour after closing in New York last January.

Jose Llana, left, reunites with Ruthie Ann Miles and Conrad Ricamora,
all three of whom were in the Here Lies Love musical.

Joining the King production  he will be reunited with Here Lies Love castmates Ruthie Ann Miles, who played Imelda Marcos and Conrad Ricamora, who played Ninoy Aquino, Marcos' rival in love and politics.

Llana's other notable Broadway credits include Wonderland, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Flower Drum Song, Rent, Streetcorner Symphony, and the 1996 production of The King and I, in which he made his Broadway debut in the role of Lun Tha at the age of 19. 

His film and television credits include Hitch and “Sex and the City.” He is an advocate for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Broadway Impact for Marriage Equality, and several other charities.

RELATED: Imelda's story is made for theater

Llana's parents immigrated to the U.S. to flee the Philippines dictatorship of strongman Ferdinand Marcos.

"Playing Marcos has been nothing short of life-changing and life-affirming as a Filipino-American," Llana told an interviewer. "I never realized how much I took for granted how my parents educated my sister and me about martial law in the Philippines. The truth is not all Filipino-American kids grow up with any knowledge of it, let alone any Americans do. I’m most proud that our show inspires people to go home and Google or Wikipedia the Philippines or martial law and that they learn a little something more about our history and culture than those damn shoes Imelda hoarded with stolen money."

Hoon Lee will join the cast after he finishes up taping the latest season of the television hit series Banshee, in which he plays the bad-ass Job, a cross-dressing computer hacker. His previous Broadway credits include Urinetown The Musical, Flower Drum Song and Pacific Overtures.

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