The ascent of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr to the presidency was historic. With 31 million votes, he secured over 50% of the voters in an election by plurality. Three a long time for the reason that ouster of Ferdinand Marcos, Sr, his son and namesake staged a dramatic comeback prompting efforts by students and observers to make sense of the latest tectonic shift in Philippine politics.
One puzzle that is still to be completely nuanced, nevertheless, pertains to the best way younger folks within the Marcos dwelling area of Ilocos view the Marcos legacy. Their perceptions have vital implications pre- and post-election, particularly with respect to the freedoms that younger individuals are keen to sacrifice beneath the youthful Marcos’ administration.
We’ve got been conducting analysis within the final three months to unpack how Ilocano youth navigate political participation in a polarized society. Our insights are based on 16 in-depth interviews, 4 focus group discussions and ethnography performed in Ilocos Norte in the course of the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Marcos martial regulation.
In our discussions and fieldwork, younger individuals who supported Bongbong Marcos expressed a need to expertise martial regulation. This need is based on the nice tales concerning the Marcos martial regulation that their elder members of the family recount, having an Ilocano incumbent within the presidency, the present financial disaster that plagues the nation, and the general public historical past of the Marcos years that’s constructed and maintained in Ilocos.
Our interviewees recall how regardless of the acknowledgment of human rights violations throughout martial regulation, their grandparents share tales that paint a rosy image of the interval. Recollections of peace and financial prosperity within the Seventies domesticate a nostalgia inside younger folks of the supposed “Golden Age” of the Marcoses. This, regardless of the estimated 70,000 arrests, 34,000 folks tortured, and three,240 folks killed within the Marcos martial regulation period. These tales are additionally used to rationalise that the violations occurred to the “hard-headed folks”. Whereas this view is equally attribute of the unfreedoms that former president Rodrigo Duterte carried out as a way to “self-discipline democracy”, the best way the elder Ilocano appear to acknowledge and settle for the narrative exerts affect on the views of the younger folks relating to martial regulation.
It’s essential to notice that older generations hail the supposed beneficial properties of martial regulation: within the minds of our younger interviewees, elders proceed to carry authority over collective reminiscence and should subsequently be revered. These generational dynamics animate the best way younger folks perceive politics. It’s also extraordinarily necessary that, within the minds of the younger folks we spoke to, martial regulation beneath the administration of a fellow Ilocano won’t damage them.
Ilocanos shield fellow Ilocanos, they are saying. Consequently, the youthful Marcos will favour the Ilocos area simply because the elder Marcos did. That is in keeping with the lived expertise of the older generations and the oral historical past that’s handed down from one era to the subsequent.
We argue that the view that an Ilocano president will once more favour Ilocos is legitimate but incomplete. Marcos Sr initiated programmes that benefited the Ilocos, corresponding to small ticket initiatives on land distribution, irrigation and infrastructure, which our interviewees consult with in our interviews. Alongside this, although, is the document of human rights violations that Marcos inflicted in his fellow Ilocanos in addition to the variety of Ilocano activists that fought the Marcos dictatorship. One such occasion is the killing of Puri Pedro, an Ilocana activist from Laoag Metropolis.
That the plight of Ilocano activists beneath the Marcos martial regulation is unrecognised by our interviewees is unsurprising; the absence cultivates a misguided need to expertise a life constructed solely by half-truths.
We additionally discovered that public historical past in Ilocos binds Ilocano youth to a lifeworld that makes the assist for the Marcoses not solely viable, but additionally crucial. Our go to in Ilocos Norte in September 2022—the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial regulation—revealed simply how totally different Ilocos might be from the remainder of the nation.
In distinction to Manila’s occasional streamers and graffiti exclaiming “By no means Once more, By no means Overlook” and the campaigns to put on black on the day commemorating the declaration of martial regulation, life in Ilocos carried on with nearly no point out of martial regulation. As a substitute, posters and tarpaulins from the earlier weeks’ 105thcommemoration of the senior Ferdinand Marcos’s birthday nonetheless abound. Strolling across the streets of Batac and Laoag, one is confronted by the numerous murals the place Marcos Sr is offered alongside the pantheon of the heroes of the Philippine Revolution.
Inside the numerous museums of the province, there additionally exist narratives concerning the life and legacy of Marcos that current a lifetime of conviction, grit, and love of nation; and spotlight how his presidency heralded a number of landmark insurance policies. All these are woven inside a narrative that’s silent on the financial challenges of the martial regulation interval, the human rights abuses, and the plunder and corruption that earned his regime world infamy. The truth that the nationwide debt elevated fiftyfold beneath the Marcos administration from 1965 to 1986 and that Marcos’ administration was included within the Guinness Guide of World Information as the best ever theft by a authorities are absent in Ilocos public historical past.
Contestation of the Marcos legacy is scarce in Ilocos Norte. There’s a slim, if not singular, story concerning the lifetime of the Marcoses and the legacy of martial regulation. This single story additionally supplies a logic that younger folks use to rationalise pockets of resistance among the many few Ilocanos who criticise the Marcoses. As a lot of our interviewees asserted relating to Ilocanos who proceed to criticise the Marcoses, “They assume like that as a result of they left Ilocos.”
Public historical past, nonetheless, interacts with younger folks’ present and lived experiences. Younger folks lament the present state of the Philippine financial system and need that they might expertise the identical Golden age that their grandparents espouse.
At first look, this will likely appear ironic: the Marcoses ushered in one of many worst recessions in Philippine historical past, but younger folks anticipate to expertise financial mobility beneath the youthful Marcos. This irony has a logic, although. Past info and proof concerning the financial plunder of Marcos shared by critics, elder folks’s lived experiences proceed to feed younger folks’s need for martial regulation. As one among our interviewees stated, “I hope to expertise what they are saying that costs have been down beneath Marcos… costs are excessive in the intervening time.”
Recounted experiences from elder generations in Ilocos conflict with nationwide info, and younger folks seem to have to decide on between the 2. In Ilocos, collective reminiscences of elder generations and public historical past work together with modern realities, piquing younger folks’s curiosity and need to expertise martial regulation. Whereas this image seems to be grim, it additionally supplies alternatives for activists and students to look at methods to maneuver ahead.
First, we propose activists and students may discover extra progressive methods to convey info about Marcos martial regulation whereas on the similar time acknowledging that collective reminiscence and lived experiences of elder generations blur these info. Our respondents inform us they don’t interact in political conversations particularly with folks outdoors Ilocos as a result of non-Ilocanos won’t perceive the place they’re coming from. This alone reveals the necessity to fastidiously and creatively navigate between fact-checking and acknowledging a lifeworld that makes assist for the Marcoses crucial.
A second method may leverage modern public points that kind younger folks’s personal lived experiences and reminiscences. As one other Marcos sits in Malacañan, reiterating the unbroken hyperlink between the previous, the current and the longer term may strike extra significant conversations about how we may utilise the teachings of historical past. Inside 100 days in workplace, Bongbong Marcos’ presidency has confronted a number of challenges together with the on-going pandemic, an excellent storm, sinking worth of the Philippine Peso, and a ongoing squabble on-line and offline about his effectivity as the top of state. The precarity of the current beneath the regime of one other Marcos needs to be made extra salient to the youthful era, who face an unsure future.
We preserve the significance of trying on the views of younger folks in Ilocos, as they dwell on the coronary heart of the Marcos bailiwick. Theirs are the views of those that grew up figuring out a single story and public historical past. Lastly, we assert that figuring out whether or not and why younger folks view Martial Legislation favourably is a central query in Marcos Jr’s Philippines, displaying the outcomes of mythmaking that may have ramifications for the nation’s democracy.
The analysis talked about on this piece is a undertaking funded by the Friedrich Naumann Basis for Freedom within the Philippines.