That was February 23, circa 1986. With a handful of kasama (comrades) from the transport sector, which I joined in organizing lately, I strove to satisfy curiosity by meeting the crowd at EDSA.
We saw the burgeoning affair there as just a military putsch by adventurist junior officers of the Armed Forces. When the preempted coup was starting to boomerang on the plotters, they would be saved from the deadly wrath of their former boss by a religious call from Cardinal Sin, and offered warm bodies for shield by numbers from the burgisya or middle class which would be romanticized to find also names from the wealthy elite coming to link arms. It was not trying to overthrow the dictator, much more change the prevailing social order. It was just trying to save the asses of the military mutineers from being incinerated by the howitzers of General Fabian Ver, and referee the emerging fight so that blood will not flow.
But as it did, the Edsa mass-up delivered a death blow to the savage reign of Marcos, paralyzed his capacity to repress (his soldiers could not have it in their conscience to shoot at the crowds and kill thousands), and sent his monolithic military machine unraveling. The guns of the major commands instead of firing fizzled, and the officers and rank-and-file personnel left their battle positions. The historical twist was totally unexpected and unplanned. Even the gathering of millions in an instant demonstration of resolve to defy the strongman was spontaneous. It was unimaginable.
Brought in as usual paraphernalia at first blush, our red banners and streamers were met with unwelcoming stares. So we got there stripped of any political-ideological allusion. We lost our hard-core thoughts and hard-line revolutionary theory in the crowd. For once, we were just citizens of the country, and part of that magical amalgam called the Filipino people out in their full moral force to topple with a mix of courageous involvement, prayers, flowers and festivity a very dangerous dictator. We shed off our being political forces with deep red color, and joined in as moral forces. But it felt good to be just a Filipino.
That was my brief engagement at EDSA. After spending hours at the highway where history was being made on February 23, 1986 we separated to rally our own ranks. We quickly mimeographed bundles of leaflets, and by morning of February 24 we were already distributing them along Aurora Avenue, Magsaysay Blvd., Espana, Quezon Avenue and other major thoroughfares, calling for Welgang Bayan (People's Strike).
I could sense what Lenin called "profound revolutionary crisis": the people no longer able to still live under the same political order. Where before, they won't even touch such same material that we leave on jeepneys, now out of the windows of running jeepneys their hands would reach out for it. In a brief moment, the Weba leaflets were gone, lopped up by an enthused Metro Manila citizenry. Drivers would intentionally stop to say: "Bakit hinde na ngayon?" (Why not now?) A strike was one that they would at the very least frown at, at the most vehemently resist. Now. they even did go on holiday, barricaded Aurora, and parked their jeepneys in the afternoon, two days ahead of the called Welgang Bayan.
In the evening of the 24th, in an observation post at Aurora Avenue in San Juan, I saw an armored personnel carrier being chased by a car down to Malacanang. Besides the laughable incident, the road was quiet. Our group slept at Cubao that night for a long day on the 25th. The whole of the next day, we massed up at an assembly point in Cubao and V. Mapa, gathered a few buses courtesy of trade union members, and by afternoon we proceeded to Espana. At the intersection of Gov. Forbes, we set up barricade with a cirle of commandeered buses and did some sorties to JP Laurel Street to reconnoiter.
When dark fell, we marched to the Mendiola Bridge with a 700-man tightly-knit contingent and hundreds more of folks tailing behind. We wound down Morayta, Lepanto, back of San Sebastian College and run smack into the phalanges of barbed wires coiling at the foot of the bridge. We folded banners and streamers and got ready for brawl. Others began cutting the wires. On balconies or windows of surrounding buildings, people were shouting: "Pasok! Pasok!" (Enter! Enter!) The crowds behind us, down the length of Recto were waving and heaving. We didn't mind losing our lives anymore. This was it!
I couldn't remember exactly what time it was, on the bright moonlit night of February 25, when we observed and heard helicopters hovering above the trees. During those days, we always remember to carry transistor radios in rallies. From one of them, carried by a comrade beside me, a station airing news feed guerilla-style shortly announced that Marcos, a sick man, has left Malacanang. I smiled, my thought was at once: too late for the gays who also joined the march shouting: "Pakurot ha! Pakurot!" (Let us pinch, referring to the moment we are able to reach Marcos.)
By that time, we had cut the barbed wires, giving way to a wide gaping breach. Before that, some of us had already slipped inside and planted our streamers across the bridge. When the breach materialized, the crowd could no longer be prevented from rushing in.
As the floodgates were finally thrown open, a deluge of thousands of people rolled all the way to the gates and up the gates of the presidential compound, to the Malacanang Palace. We shouted to stop the onrush, because there could yet be Marcos loyalist snipers around. But the flood could no longer be stemmed. The onrushing folks threw our caution to the wind.
Before midnight, the seat of power where the dictator had reigned for 20 years, was taken over by the common people. The ramparts of the brutal and rapacious regime fell into shreds. The strongman has fled. We retreated to our place at Espana, and got some needed breath. The tense atmosphere would be suddenly broken by dancing and singing in the streets as truckloads of civilian merrymakers swooped in.
I and a few straggling comrades managed to walk to a place at V. Mapa by past 1:00 AM already on the 26th, were we cramped ourselves in a room to try to get some sleep. But in an hour of trying to lapse into forgetfulness, what happened could not just let us sleep. I decided to stand up and go.
I walked at four in the morning to go back to my house at the nearby locality of San Juan for the first time in five days, after I left with a banner and two cans of sardines as food pack for some hectic political action. In the cold and dark of the wee hours of the morning, the still hard-to-believe reality was dawning. Yes, indeed, the dictator is gone, and I am once again a free man!
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