and minds,” a clear reference to the ideological battle between the “free” and communist worlds, is the hermeneutic key for interpreting the emblematic actions of the students and the police in this national allegory. The statement must be seen in relation to what, for many middle-class Filipinos, was an alarming phenomenon: the dramatic upsurge of a radical youth movement in Manila’s college campuses, where more and more of the student population—numbering over half a million—were “discovering” Marxist ideology.17
The Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines was the epicenter of the radical student movement. At the time of the First Quarter Storm, student activism on campus focused on two key issues: the U.S. military bases in the country and the government’s neocolonial relations with the United States. International events like the ongoing Vietnam War and the rise of the Sukarno government in Indonesia radicalized students even more. For many, the leap from nationalism to Marxism was a natural progression.
University of the Philippines instructor Jose Maria Sison founded the KM (Nationalist Youth) in 1964. Under the pen name Amado Guerrero (Beloved Warrior), he wrote “Philippine Society and Revolution,” a comprehensive Marxist analysis of Philippine history and society widely circulated in mimeographed form. Sison’s account argued for the necessity of a revolution along the lines of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. A clandestine meeting of a coterie of his brightest followers in an obscure barrio in Pangasinan Province resulted in the formation of the CPP, on December 26, 1968. The avowed purpose of this secret organization was the “overthrow of U.S. imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism,” and the “seizure of political power and its consolidation.”18 The NPA was created specifically for this purpose on March 29, 1969, when the CPP struck a decisive alliance with a group of peasant guerrillas under the leadership of “Commander Dante” (Bernabe Buscayno). Commander Dante was a Huk—a rebel fighter for the moribund Hukbong Magpalaya ng Bayan (People’s Liberation Army), the peasant-based guerrilla movement that threatened to seize state power in the early 1950s, but that, by the 1960s, had devolved into a gangster and racketeering organization.19
For those in the political mainstream, the recently consolidated CPP-NPA represented the “dark side” of the left. That the students at the January 26 demonstration could be irrevocably drawn to this dark side or, worse, be active agents carrying out its orders, was cause for alarm. The Philippine Collegian had in fact published Sison’s influential essay entitled “Student Power?” just days before the rally. The essay was a call to arms, exhorting student activists to enfold peasants and laborers into their movement.20 The political inclusiveness of the demonstration and the ideological substance of many of the speeches and the slogans chanted that day would seem to indicate that Sison, who had been in hiding since 1969, was present at least in spirit at the demonstration. Rumors quickly spread that for his part, Commander Dante, who had a price of 90,000 pesos on his head, had managed to infiltrate enemy lines to personally attend the rally.21 Suffice it to say that in light of these developments, the January 26 demonstration represented a critical juncture for the radical Left. As clashes between the NPA and the Philippine Constabulary began to multiply in the hills and flatlands of Luzon, radical students had, it seemed, begun to take a new tack: provoking violent confrontation in the streets.22
The students at the January 26 rally used mass action, or the threat of it, as their political weapon against the government. Theirs was a performative mode of politics that pivoted on the affective presentation of a collective identity—one based on their values and lifestyle as youths. Such a form of “identity politics” was colored by the politically calculated performance of nonnormative or abject identities. Consider the students’ slogans and shibboleths: “Their slogan was “Fight! Fear Not!” and they made a powerful incantation of it: Maki-BAKA! Huwag ma-TAKOT! They marched with arms linked together, baiting [the police], taunting them. “Pulis, pulis, titi mong matulis!” (Pigs, pigs, uncircumcised dicks!) . . . Baka magreyp pa kayo, lima-lima na ang asawa ninyo!” (You might be thinking of raping someone, you already have so many wives!), “Mano-mano lang, o!” (Let’s have it out, one on one!).”23
The students, it must be pointed out, chose to stage the rally in Tagalog. It was a way of distancing their public sphere from the official business of Congress (carried out, as per political custom, in English). Their acts of defiance, though reminiscent of child play, aimed to transform the terms of political contestation in the nation. Vicente Rafael’s focus on the linguistic dimensions of the affective style of youth politics is instructive: “Rather than acknowledge authority as the giver of gifts, the language of the demonstrators negated the conventions of [official politics]. Taunts replaced respect, opening a gap between the language of the state and that of the students.”24 As we shall see in a moment, however, the students’ tendentious language and performance of nonnormative conduct came at a price.
The January 30 Revolt
Student agitation resumed with a vengeance on January 30. Of the even more spectacular violence that erupted that day, a police officer would comment, “This is no longer a riot. This is an insurrection.” President Marcos, final arbiter on these matters, would call it a revolt—“a revolt by local Maoist Communists.”25
The January 30 “revolt” began with simultaneous demonstrations held in front of the Congress Building and Malacañang, the presidential palace. By early evening, the two demonstrations merged. Exactly what triggered the battle that spread to other parts of the city and lasted till dawn the next day may never be known. Lacaba gives the following account:
The students who came in from Congress claim that, as they were approaching J. P. Laurel Street, they heard something that sounded like firecrackers going off. When they got to Malacañang, the crowd was getting to be unruly. It was growing dark, and the lamps on the Malacañang gates had not been turned on. There was a shout of Sindihin ang ilaw! Sindihin ang ilaw! (Turn on the lights! Turn on the lights!) Malacañang obliged, the lights went on, and then crash! a rock blasted out one of the lamps. One by one, the lights were put out by stones or sticks.26
Lacaba’s report provides us with a highly symbolic incipit—or narrative opening—for the volatile events that would follow. The insistent demand for light, which, upon provision is immediately put out by persons unknown, paradoxically sets the stage for the most spectacular public drama to emerge out of the First Quarter Storm. It is indeed ironic that the January 30 “revolt” begins under the cover of darkness. It creates a gaping hole—an enigma—around exactly who or what precipitated the ensuing battle between the military and the dissidents. Despite this enigma—or maybe even because of it—the events of January 30 were highly sensationalized by the media, which followed the drama until its denouement the next day.
According to Lacaba’s report, chaos almost instantaneously erupted after the lights went out. Holding aloft CPP banners and crying “Dante for president,” hundreds of demonstrators surged into the palace grounds, lobbing homemade bombs at buildings and vehicles in the vicinity. The Presidential Guards Battalion came out to meet them in full force, firing bullets into the air. When the demonstrators refused to desist, they fired tear gas bombs at the charging crowd.
Reinforcements from the constabulary soon arrived. By 9:00 p.m., the students and the military had secured their own strongholds, each side “capturing” major city streets extending deep into the heart of Manila’s so-called university belt. The battle would reach its climax when constabulary troopers guarding the Mendiola Bridge faced two advancing “armies” of students. They opened fire on the students.
Immortalized by the media soon after as the battle of Mendiola Bridge, the incident performs a mythological function in the public record of the First Quarter Storm. Now designated by military terms (combatants, armies) the students have ceased to be activists, and have crossed the bridge—so to speak—into the war zone of the NPA insurgents. Profusely captured in print, radio,
