HALF A CENTURY AFTER MARTIAL LAW: RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
The Center for Philippine Studies will host a year-long webinar series on Martial Law in the Philippines based on the above theme. Come and join us!
This webinar series will feature presentations by invited scholars to reflect on the Martial Law, Philippine style, declared by then President Ferdinand Marcos on September 23, 1972 (Proclamation No. 1081). Holding office beyond what the law allowed, Marcos continued governing the Philippines by an iron hand. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, dissolved Congress and installed a puppet legislative body, incarcerated thousands of militants and oppositionists without due process while hundreds of desaparecidos left no trace, and militarized the country especially Mindanao, where about three-fourths of the army ran after the Moro secessionists led by Nur Misuari. The military also clamped down on the rising communist threat propagated by Jose Maria Sison.
Under this extended regime of twenty years, many events went by under the watchful eyes of critics until Marcos was deposed in a bloodless people’s revolt at EDSA in 1986. Marcos fled to Hawai’i until his death. Then, his corpse was allowed to return back home, and later buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani despite widespread opposition. This year, his son and namesake, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, or BBM in short (for Bongbong Marcos) is gunning for presidency to restore the family glory. He promised to fix problems the Philippines supposedly incurred for the past 50 years. In the process, there have been attempts of revisionism to put asunder the “evils of Martial Law” – the plundering of the Philippine economy, crony capitalism, and making the country the “Sick man of Asia,” as analysts have argued.
The webinar series will revisit some of these now forgotten episodes, and feature what the country has become, or is becoming, and where it will lead to in the years to come.
The presentations are arranged by our academic calendar. In Spring, we shall have three speakers starting on March 9, 2022. The first salvo begins with Dr. Belinda A. Aquino, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii at Manoa, who will present extracts, with updates, from her well-known book, Politics of Plunder: The Philippines under Marcos. They will be followed by four more in Fall 2022.
Here are the speakers at a glance. Please click CPS Colloquium Series to view.
The list below chronologically shows a summary of the presentations. Details will be provided in separate flyers to be posted in our website, and distributed to the public.
Spring 2022 –
- Belinda A. Aquino, PhD – The Philippines Under the Marcos Regime: A Broad Overview and the ‘Plunder of the Ages’, March 9, 2022, Wednesday, 4:00 pm, HST (Hawaii time). Please click this link for details – Aquino
- Dexter Cayanes, PhD – Specific time-continuum in the “Signification” of Bienvenido Lumbera: The Nation, the Writer and the Sagisag Magazine in the Imaginative Period of Martial Law 1975-1979, April 13, 2022, Wednesday, 4:00 pm, HST. Please click this link for details – Cayanes
- Rufa C. Guiam, PhD – Impact of Martial Law on the Bangsamoro and their Struggles, April 27, Wednesday, 4:00 pm, 2022 (HST). Please click this link for details – Guiam
Fall 2022 –
- Patricio N. Abinales, PhD – Philippine Democracy at Death’s Door: 1986 and the Marcos Resurrection,“ September 8, 2022, Thursday, 4:00 pm, HST (Hawaii time). Please click for details – Abinales
- Josen M. Diaz, PhD – The Crisis of Martial Law, October 5, 2022, Wednesday, 4:00 pm, HST. Please click this link for details – Diaz
- Mark J. Sanchez, PhD – From Barefoot Lawyers to International Tribunals, November 4, 2022, Friday, 4:00 pm, HST. Please click for details – Sanchez
