The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave

Author:Sterling Seagrave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2017-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

Twelve — Salvaging Democracy

THE MAIN CONCERN of a bad government, as everyone knows, is to protect itself from its own subjects. Under martial law, the Philippines entered a grim period of human rights abuses. A new term, “salvaging,” came into use to cover the torture, disappearance, and death of ordinary citizens. The army and Constabulary set out to discipline the population by creating an atmosphere of terror. Here and there a few good officers tried to win the support of the local population, and punished troops who abused civilians. But they were rare exceptions.

Many of the horror stories were independently corroborated by diplomats, journalists, priests, scholars, and international organizations such as Amnesty International. They are a litany of sadism, of dead rats being stuffed in mouths, of electric cattle prods jammed into vaginas, of mashed testicles, and prisoners being forced to eat their own ears. These atrocities were often performed by, or supervised by, men trained and employed in various ways by the U.S. military and intelligence services. These were the people produced by the Colonel Lansdale and Frank Walton programs, and trained at various police and security academies in America and Taiwan. They were the new combined military-police establishment provided to Ferdinand Marcos as part of his deal with Lyndon Johnson. With their help, Ferdinand was able first to force his own re-election, then to declare martial law and make it stick. Now they were the instrument by which he would suppress all dissent and retain power for himself and his family as long as he wished. The U.S. Embassy was not ignorant of these practices. Official protests were not made under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan — only during the presidency of Jimmy Carter — but the Carter administration did not follow through by halting over $500 million in military aid from going to the Philippines.

Under the Marcoses, the army, Constabulary, Civilian Home Defense Corps, and intelligence agencies employed such methods as “submarine,” where your head was submerged in a toilet or bucket of water; “zap-zap,” where electric shocks were applied to your genitals or nipples; “water-cure,” where gallons of water were poured up your nose till you almost drowned; “baggy,” where a plastic bag was placed over your head till you nearly suffocated; “buttstroking,” where you were beaten on the back with a rifle; “telephone,” where your eardrums were popped from behind with the flats of the hand; “Saigon roulette,” where the torturer loaded all but one round in a revolver and fired at your legs. And, of course, “San Juanico Bridge,” where you were forced to lie with your feet on one bed and your head on a second, and were beaten and kicked whenever you let your body sag — named after the new bridge connecting Samar to Leyte, built as a wedding anniversary present to Imelda from Ferdinand. The Marcoses called it the “bridge of love.”

These human rights abuses came from both ends of the military ladder: provincial bullies, and high-ranking sadists at headquarters in Manila.

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