society and, consequently, a purer social contract. But for this social experiment to be legitimate, at least on paper, the onus lay on Marcos to prove that the nation was in fact in a state of war, so much so that martial law had become a necessary and exigent measure.
The spectacular nature of the First Quarter Storm, aided in large part by sensational media coverage of the demonstrations, ironically worked to strengthen Marcos’s position regarding martial law. This was indeed significant because the president and the oligarchy-controlled media had been at loggerheads, at least since Marcos’s much-disputed reelection in 1969. In the months following his reelection, the media launched a de facto anti-Marcos campaign, feeding the public with a daily diet of anti-Marcos announcements from both the political right and left. Both ends of the political spectrum had charged the newly incumbent president with “seeking to perpetuate his power” and failing to “curb corruption, the private armies of warlord-politicians, and an obstructive Congress.”11 During the fateful First Quarter Storm, oligarchs hostile to Marcos (most notably the Lopez family, who owned and controlled the powerful ABS-CBN television network and the national daily Manila Chronicle) used their vast media holdings to publicize the demonstrations, thus inadvertently aiding the leftist dissidents in their efforts to bring down the government through violent confrontation.
Marcos was quick to transform what would ordinarily amount to a political deficit into a golden opportunity. The First Quarter Storm, which had taken him by surprise in 1970, had taught him the invaluable lesson that the revolution was fundamentally governed by the dynamics of spectacle. But while his opponents labored to spectacularize national discontent in the hopes of discrediting his administration, Marcos, in an act of classic one-upmanship, would translate these spectacles of social disorder into a public drama justifying authoritarian social control. To fully understand this critical shift in the revolutionary momentum of the nation on the eve of martial law, we need to revisit the public drama that was the First Quarter Storm.
The January 26 Riot
The First Quarter Storm began on January 26, 1970, when fifty thousand students, workers, and peasants convened outside the Congress Building in downtown Manila. Carefully timed to coincide with the opening of Congress, the rally was a provocative parody of the official proceedings simultaneously taking place. Fiery speeches delivered by dissident leaders excoriated the government for the country’s social ills, which were traced back to three essential sources: imperialism, feudalism, and fascism. Blatantly referencing critical concepts in the ideology of the CPP, the speakers flouted the country’s 1950 Anti-Subversion Law (Republic Act no. 1700), which had declared communism illegal in the Philippines. And, as if to deliver communism from its shadowy existence underground, the streets were aflame with red banners bearing the taboo slogans Revolt Is Necessary and Welcome to the NPA.
The demonstrators and the public officials secreted in the building behind locked doors constituted two parallel congresses—one illicit, the other official. A one-way public address system allowed the demonstrators to hear the official proceedings, though their attention was riveted to the speakers among their ranks whom they could see.12 Four hours into the demonstration, the president, unseen by the demonstrators, took to the microphone to deliver his state of the nation address. It was at this point that the two parallel congresses may be said to intersect. While Marcos delivered his speech, “National Discipline: The Key to Our Future,” the demonstrators became increasingly rowdy, as if to mock the president’s calls for sobriety and self-restraint. When the First Couple emerged from the Congress Building, the protestors burned three effigies in full view of the president: a coffin, to represent the death of democracy (an allusion to the violence of the last election); a crocodile, to represent the corrupt Congress; and a cardboard likeness of the president himself.13 The demonstrators hurled the flaming effigies at the visibly shaken couple, and then proceeded to pelt them with rocks and soda bottles. Within seconds, military police charged at the crowd, scattering the demonstrators with truncheons.
The majority of the demonstrators were forced to flee the rally grounds along Burgos Drive, but two thousand protestors stood their ground. As they proceeded to sing the communist anthem “Internationale,” the stragglers became marked men. Linking arms, the exposed communists openly defied the police and the riot squad, chanting a new slogan: “Makibaka! Huwag Matakot!” (Fight and fear not). A full battle then ensued between the police and the radical dissidents, who could no longer claim to belong to the more moderate political organizations present at the rally.
It must be remembered that all this time, news cameras were capturing the events for the television audience. The presence of the media seemed to invite dramatic acts of defiance from the dissidents, as when three lone students, facing an advancing contingent of police, silently held aloft a banner bearing the name Kabataang Makabayan, or Nationalist Youth (KM). The youth organization, by far the most radical in the country, was anathema to the police, who held back nothing in their frontal attack of the three students. Philippines Free Press reporter Jose Lacaba describes the alarming violence of the scene:
In full view of the horrified crowd, [the police] flailed away at the three. . . . The two kids holding the side poles [of the banner] either managed to flee or were hauled off to the legislative building to join everybody else who had the misfortune of being caught. The boy in the center crumpled to the ground and stayed there cringing, bundled up like a foetus. . . . The cops made a small tight circle around him, and then all that could be seen were the rattan sticks moving up and down and from side to side in seeming rhythm. When they were through, the cops walked away nonchalantly, leaving the boy on the ground. One cop, before leaving, gave one last aimless swing of his stick as a parting shot, hitting his target in the knees.14
The three students had raised the KM banner for the rest of the nation to see. The symbolic gesture created a spectacle with a veritable allegorical register. The ensuing actions of the police dramatized the failure of the rule of law in the country, and the presence of the media worked to make this and other spectacles of student dissidence and police brutality indelible in the public mind.
The battle of Burgos Drive, as the January 26 riot later came to be known, ended at eight o’clock that evening, a full seven hours after the demonstration had started. Rumors circulated that the dissidents, who had retreated or were chased into the walled city of Intramuros, were regrouping for an armed reprisal. The next day, the authorities and some concerned citizens made several public statements to account for the shocking turn of events.
In the words of Deputy Chief James Barbers of the Metropolitan Police Department, “the police acted swiftly at a particular time when the life of the President of the Republic—and that of the First Lady—was being endangered by the vicious and unscrupulous elements among student demonstrators.” Manila Mayor Antonio J. Villegas corroborated the statement, commending the police for their “exemplary behavior and courage.” For their part, the faculty of the University of the Philippines issued a joint statement denouncing “the use of brutal force by state authorities against the student demonstrators,” and supporting “unqualifiedly the students’ exercise of democratic rights in their struggle for revolutionary change.”15
Despite their political differences, all those commenting on the explosive events of January 26 shared the view that the resulting spectacle bore grave portent for the future of the nation. As the faculty of the Lyceum put it in their position statement:
Above the sadism and the inhumanity of the action of the police, we fear that the brutal treatment of the idealistic students has done irreparable harm to our society. For it is true that the skirmish was won by the policemen and riot soldiers. But if we view the battle in the correct perspective of the struggle for the hearts and minds of our youth, we cannot help but realize that the senseless, brutal, and uncalled-for acts of the police have forever alienated many of our young people from society. The police will have to realize that in winning the battles, they are losing the war for our society.16
The
