Remembering
February 1986
Newsbreak
February
2003
On
Feb. 24, 1986 I heard my father call the American ambassador to Manila,
Stephen Bosworth, urging an explanation of alternate dispatches from the
US State Department and other official sources requiring him to give up
the presidency and establish "an interim government."
I remember listening to my father insist over the telephone one "a peaceful transition" and the necessity for "Filipinos to decide their own future."
I think the ambassador must have answered it was too late, for I then heard to my father declare, "I an not leaving, I would rather die here than abandon the Presidency."
The ambassador warned him that this would be tragic, that already thousands of troops were marching towards the Palace. My brother and some aides later discovered this was untrue. But my family did leave Malacañang Palace, and for my father this was indeed tragic.
For many years I have blamed myself for my family's departure from Malacañang in 1986, and many times I felt that my father blamed me too.
Philippine Air Force helicopters, apparently armed and fuelled at Clark Air Base, had for four days been firing at the Palace with rockets, artillery that was not part of Philippine military Philippine inventory. And on Feb. 26, the palace was again strafed.
That day I ran, together with the rest of the family, to the basement, crouching with my two infant sons inside a linen closet. After the attack, I informed my mother that I had decided, "I am sending the children away with Gen. Allen."
My mother understood and simply said, "There will be no one to take care of them, the baby is just 5 months old. You go with them."
I protested that we must all remain with my father now, he was sick and under siege.
"Your father will never leave. I will stay with him," my mother decided.
Later on, after the request to be flown to Ilocos Norte had been ignored and we found ourselves in Hickam Air Base, Hawaii, Gen. Allen acknowledged this when he said, "Mr. Marcos refused to leave…But I told him that I have orders from higher authorities to fly him out…And I am going to do it even if I need to take him bodily into the plane."
Perhaps they would have taken him into the American helicopter, and then the American C-130 and the United States anyway, but because I couldn't bear my sons' lives' threatened, I feel that it has still somehow been my fault that we finally left the palace.
On occasion my father would later comment that women and children should not be present in battleground, and I felt chided for my weakness. Yet perhaps our mistake had been to forget that Malacañang, the palace of our childhood, was not really a home but a battleground.
My mother has frequently said, "EDSA was the best thing that ever
happened to my family. We became more cohesive, and my children, who were
protected and weak, are now strong."
I like to argue with my mother, but while such a sanguine view is not altogether mine, I doubt that she is too far wrong. On the basis that that which does not kill you shall make you stronger, she is certainly the authority.
I remember little of the flights from Malacañang to Clark Air Base, Clark to Anderson Air Base in Guam, Guam to Hickam in Honolulu.
Or maybe I have simply chosen to forget over time, determining to remember only what has remained important to me.
There is a blur of helicopters and milk, as I struggled to nurse my second son Michael.
Borgy, the first Marcos grandchild, was all of 2 1/2 years old.
Campaigning hard in Tondo and elsewhere in Metro Manila during the 'snap elections" of 1985-86, I was often exhausted and dehydrated, barely able to keep up with a hungry baby.
By the time we reached Guam I had no milk at all. It was the kindness of strangers, and of Ilocano immigrants I shall always remember working on these American bases, that brought my children their milk at every stop.
Unlike the rest of my family, I did not remain in the United States for long, leaving upon my father's instructions.
"I just don't know what they think you know," he worried.
I left for Morocco where the late King Hassan II had been my mother's great friend. It was for us a strange and beautiful country, barbaric and mystical by turns. But I shall forever remain grateful for the Moroccans' generosity and friendship.
We lived first in a palace guesthouse, and then in a bungalow in the diplomatic quarter of Rabat, the king's golf course providing the sole source of entertainment.
In time, language ceased to be a problem, and the boys played loudly in French and Arabic.
Over the years my family had repeatedly been refused Filipino passports, making proper identification and any sort of stable residence difficult.
I recall once traveling to France as one of the eldest princess' ladies-in-waiting, replete with facial tattoos and a traditional veil.
At some point or other, I came to have a Panamanian passport, Saudi and Tongan papers, and even remaining in the Bolivian jungle for several weeks on one occasion to finalize other documentation.
From Morocco, we moved constantly through Europe, afraid of burdening our friends with our myriad security and legal problems.
"We're playing a game," I would announce to the boys each time we set off, usually because I had been recognized by potentially hostile Filipinos.
But after a few years, they had grown knowing and resentful. We finally settled in Portugal 1988, living in a farm in the village of San Pedro de Sintra until my mother's persistence that Filipinos have a right to return to their country won for us a Supreme Court ruling to return to the Philippine at the end of 1991.
It is an easy mistake to make that you love your country less because it seemed to have betrayed your family. It is an even easier mistake to assume that returning to your country is easier than leaving it.
The Christmas of 1991 was the first time I saw my mother in over 6 years, and my third son Matthew was introduced to the rest of the Marcos clan.
It had been such a long time, for I had not seen my father from March 1986 until he died in 1989.
I believe that exile in my case at least has been merciful because, unlike my mother, my brother and my sister who bore witness to much illness, I shall remember my father well, strong, playful and brilliant.
There are still many stories to tell, including an equally long self-imposed exile in Singapore.
Many questions linger perhaps never to be answered.
I was never at EDSA, but on Feb. 1986 life as I had known it changed forever.
For me EDSA is not a direct and continuous highway; it is a tangle of interconnected alleys and dead-ends that exists better in memory than in fact.
Byzantine
and dark, it has mysteriously taken me back to politics and to Congress,
never the directions I myself would have chosen.