A Manila-born and bred programmer colleague once remarked that times were better during the Marcos years.  It was the signal for most everyone to give their take on the hardships of today and the contrast when we were children or teenagers.  With most of us growing up under the Marcos regime, hardly anyone had a recollection of any unpleasant experience of that time.  Even cartoons were not spared.  Then, cartoons were dubbed in English or shown in their original language with English subtitles.  Now most are dubbed in Tagalog.  Ergo, we were better in English then.

With pump prices going up almost daily and with everyone just focused on financial survival, this could well be true.  Add to this the worsening state of criminality with cell phone snatching and hold-ups a daily occurrence in FX taxis and jeepneys, people do tend to see the Marcos era as relatively peaceful.

It was time for me, the contrarian.  Risking my colleagues’ ire, I shared my story.

I was born in Davao City in Mindanao and grew up in Mandug, a hilly area about an hour away from the city center and a known New People’s Army lair during Martial Law.  I had neighbors and 15-year old playmates that joined the NPA not because they believed in the communist cause but because they were anti-Marcos.  They believed that the NPA was the only force capable of overthrowing Marcos and his cronies.  One of my best friends underwent and passed the rigid training to be part of the NPA’s elite Sparrow unit, the NPA’s urban hit squad.  When I asked him what happened to those who failed the training, he told me that you either passed or died.  He risked his life at such a tender age because he knew people who were tortured by the military for no reason at all.  He knew people who disappeared just because they were suspected of engaging in anti-Marcos activities.  And he could not just stand idly by.

As a child I slept with the sound of gunfire from the nearby hills as the Scout Rangers and NPAs engaged in their almost nightly skirmishes.  As grade schoolers, my playmates and I could distinguish the .45, .38, M-1 Garand, AK-47, and M-14 from each other just by the sound they made.  Weekends and holidays would see us waving to Sikorsky helicopter gunships as they passed over our town on the way to straffing another hill suspected of harboring NPAs.

In our town, the NPA kept the peace by cutting off the hands of those caught or suspected of stealing.  Military informers or suspected deep penetration agents were executed and their chopped up body parts scattered on the town’s stream that led to the city’s Bankerohan river.  The military did their share by “salvaging” those they suspected of having NPA ties.  On the way home from school, I’d sometimes pass by a body covered in newspapers or cement sacks.

A playmate’s father was shot and killed while out riding his bicycle one afternoon.  He was a labor organizer and they lived on the house just across the street from us.  Until now we do not know whether it was the NPA or the military that did him in.

In 1983, Ninoy’s death escalated the violence and by 1984 my mother decided on uprooting the family and moving to a safer place.  We rented an apartment in the city center and moved out of Mandug on a rented dump truck.  We were lucky.  Just a few days after we moved out, one of the military’s bomber planes released a bomb earlier than intended.  The bomb fell on the town’s main road, created a crater large enough to contain a truck, and practically cut off the town from the city.

That triggered a mass evacuation.  We had relatives who walked all day with whatever belongings they could carry to stay with us in the city.  Our town mates who had no relatives to stay with had to camp on the open ground in front of the Davao City Hall.

It was a no-brainer for my barkada and I to join Cory’s yellow brigade.  While not neglecting high school, we joined indignation rallies every chance we got.  We were among the youngest NAMFREL volunteers during the 1986 snap election.  We continued our involvement till the referendum for the 1987 constitution.

So while my programmer colleagues were leading a relatively comfortable childhood during the Marcos years, my friends and I were lucky to have survived those years.

But maybe my colleagues were right after all.  Maybe things were better then.  Then there was only 1 leader and the choice was limited to pro or anti.  Now we have so many leaders and so many choices that we are lost and confused.  Then, power emanated from only 1 man.  Now, we have people power and we are so overwhelmed by it that we have turned it into a trilogy and a verb.  We have perfected people power to such a degree that we use it even in crossing the street.  To successfully reach the other side, wait for the number to reach a critical mass then surge forward without regard to the traffic lights or the speed of oncoming vehicles.

Now, even our choice of heroes is suspect.  Many raise hell to get Marcos buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.  To the thousands who sporadically block traffic in Ayala, Erap is a living saint and FPJ near beatification.  While I have nothing against these heroes of the masa, what has become of Jose Rizal and Ninoy Aquino?  What of the OFWs who daily suffer the pain of separation from loved ones so these same loved ones can lead better lives back home?  What of the ordinary salaried worker who daily brave the increasingly difficult commute to the office, put in an honest day’s work, and without even knowing it keep our economy float?

Forgive me for rambling on about matters which may not even be relevant to anyone at all.  I meant to write about the unknown and often forgotten heroes in IT.  Those who do production support and are on call 24 x 7, the guys in operations who have to go on shifting schedules, and the countless programmers who check and double check their work so that everything goes as planned.

Maybe August does this to me.  Ninoy, my personal hero, died for us this month 22 years ago.  Marcelo H. del Pilar and Manuel L. Quezon celebrate their birth anniversaries during this month.  National Heroes Day is celebrated every last Sunday of August.  And the only Pinoy hero my 5-year old son can name is Captain Barbel.

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Paul Vergel is a mainframe programmer who dabbles in politics every full moon.  He is lucky to have 3 kids aged 5, 2, and 1 who continue to love him despite the occasional monologues on his version of Philippine history.  Comments are welcome at itdinosaur@gmail.com.