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MANILA — Books concerning the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his brutal period of martial regulation are flying off the cabinets, spurred by “panic shopping for” after his son and namesake received a Might 9 presidential election.
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s presidency, set to start on June 30, has many individuals nervous about dropping entry to books and different accounts of his father’s rule, given his household’s decades-long effort to rehabilitate its identify by way of what critics describe as a marketing campaign of historic revisionism.
“They’re panic shopping for,” Alexine Parreno stated of her prospects, many them dad and mom shopping for books about martial regulation geared toward kids.
“They’re actually nervous and scared that the books will likely be pulled out and that every thing will likely be revised.”
One shopper was Religion Alcazaren, a mom of two, who picked up further bundles of books to ship to associates abroad.
“I felt just like the smallest factor I can do and have management over is to guard the reality,” she stated.
1000’s of opponents of the senior Marcos have been jailed, killed or disappeared throughout martial regulation, from 1972 to 1981, when the household identify grew to become synonymous with cronyism and extravagance as billions of {dollars} of state wealth disappeared.
The youthful Marcos has known as for a revision of textbooks that cowl his father’s rule, saying they’re educating kids lies.
His alternative of schooling minister, vice president-elect Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of outgoing strongman chief Rodrigo Duterte, has raised fears the Marcos household will lastly succeed at entrenching its sanitized model of historical past.
“We already thought that textbooks and the educating of historical past in primary schooling was woefully insufficient when it comes to explaining to our youth and kids what the martial regulation interval meant,” stated Ramon Guillermo, a professor on the College of the Philippines.
“If the Marcoses come again to energy and Dutertes are supporting them, we may also have a tougher state of affairs in educating what actually occurred,” stated Guillermo.
Years of investigation
Guillermo, with a bunch of fellow students, launched a manifesto final week pledging to fight makes an attempt to falsify historical past to swimsuit the Marcos narrative, and to oppose all censorship and book-banning.
The manifesto, signed by 1,700 individuals, got here after a authorities job pressure labeled as communist a kids’s e book publishing agency promoting 5 titles on martial regulation and dictatorship it known as “#NeverAgain Ebook Bundle”.
“By no means Once more!” was the battlecry of hundreds of thousands of protesters who joined the historic “individuals energy” revolution that toppled the 20-year dictatorship in 1986, when the senior Marcos and his notoriously extravagant spouse, Imelda, fled with their kids into exile in Hawaii.
“Historical past can’t be purchased, however books about historical past might be bought,” one e book purchaser stated on Instagram.
“We are going to proceed to struggle historic revisionism.”
Marcos and Duterte-Carpio didn’t reply to requests for remark. In a 2020 media discussion board, Marcos dismissed accusations his household was trying to rewrite historical past.
“Who’s doing revisionism? They put it within the books, the kids’s textbooks that the Marcoses stole this, we did this … what they’ve been saying about what we stole, what we did, not all of them are true.”
Years of investigation and authorized proceedings adopted the rule of the senior Marcos. The Presidential Fee on Good Authorities arrange in 1986 has retrieved about $5 billion of the Marcos fortune, its chairman, John A. Agbayani stated. One other $2.4 billion remains to be caught up in litigation, he stated.
‘Tsunami of disinformation’
The youthful Marcos fought the election with the slogan “Collectively, we will rise once more”, invoking nostalgia for his father’s rule, which his household and supporters have portrayed as a golden age.
His marketing campaign rode what lecturers known as a “tsunami of disinformation” with social media flooded with narratives enjoying down rights abuses and corruption underneath his father.
On the day it grew to become clear that Marcos had received, a e book revealed in 1976 that particulars corruption and abuses in the course of the Marcos regime offered 300 copies, its writer stated.
Greater than per week later, 500 copies of the e book, “The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos”, have been offered inside an hour of being posted on-line.
“I wished to ensure that inside our house, I can preserve a model of the martial regulation period that has not been tampered with by their palms,” stated faculty pupil Jose Anonat, who obtained the e book.
In a sign of the form of historical past re-writing that Marcos supporters need, Juan Ponce Enrile, the late dictator’s protection minister, stated in a dialog with the youthful Marcos that appeared on YouTube in 2018, that not one particular person was arrested for political and spiritual views, or for criticizing the elder Marcos.
The clip has been seen greater than 1.5 million instances.
There have been additionally makes an attempt to take away the phrases “dictator” and “kleptocrat” describing the elder Marcos on Wikipedia, stated Carlos Nazareno, of the Wiki Society of the Philippines, a part of a motion towards disinformation.
Carmelo Crisanto, who heads an company memorializing martial regulation victims, is digitizing paperwork regarding 11,103 survivors who have been awarded reparations from seized Marcos household wealth. He hopes the database will likely be on-line by September, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of martial regulation.
“These archives will likely be alive,” stated Crisanto. “They may by no means be suppressed.”
—Reporting by Karen Lema;Modifying by Robert Birsel
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