July 13, 2025
Dearest daughter,
Felicitations! How are your studies faring? I do hope all things are going your way- I mean from your grades, clubs and to your social life. As promised, I'll send you your allowance as soon as the cane harvest starts.
Anyway, you asked me last week the history of the recent Philippine Civil War and how it transformed modern Philippines. Is this really your topic for report or just another diversion to stimulate my dull brain here in Negros? This is what I can share:
It all started about 20 years ago when then President Arroyo was deposed by a group of disgruntled soldiers one fateful night. The atmosphere then was electrified. By then civil groups and leftists transferred their mammoth rallies from Makati to Mendiola. Most of the influential people were there- Cory, Ramos, Legarda and perhaps a million or so civilians. They were practically demanding for her resignation at the doorsteps of the palace. President Arroyo in haste announced on TV that martial law has been declared and that any civil disobedience will not be tolerated. That made the rallyists went amok shooting and hitting the police officers who were cordoning the area. They pressed against the lines further more using their bare bodies as steamrollers, and in minutes they were at the gates. Rembember the French Revolution when the women of Paris stormed the gates of Versailles with pitchforks demanding the head of Marie Antoinette? It was that and more.
Little did the president know then that in that tumultuous tempest, her palace guards were already springing a trap to assassinate her. The junior officers grabbed her and like Julius Caesar, they stabbed her many times in the torso and in the back. Even her patent mole was cut off. Not satisfied, they did what the friars did to Governor-general Bustamante during the early 18th century, they lynched her from the balustrade and with their service pistols, they made her into a target practice.
The rallyists were soon held back with bullets and tear gas. The late Mrs. Aquino was shot in the stomach wetting her yellow blouse with blood. She died minutes later after muttering to her daughter Kris, "This country is not worth fighting for!" As for Fidel Ramos, he was shot in the neck by a young officer who was then bludgeoned to death by the enraged mob. It was mayhem at its finest. There were at least a thousand dead bodies scattered around the palace reminicent of the Amritsar Massacre in India. As for ex-president Estrada, he too was assassinated in his cell. Even those who were thought to be presidentiables like Drilon, Villar and De Venecia were suddenly killed one by one by suspected army-backed militias. The police were nowhere in sight to stop this.
When the dust finally settled, the TV crackled with the sounds of General Abu, Bataoil and Cimatu calling those politicians who were killed traitors to the constitution and that this was how God intented to clean up the whole country- with blood and terror. Of course, the Catholic Church and every other religious authority were shocked by this horrible spectacle that they immediately denounced and excommunicated these military malcontents. What the AFP did to them was just like how Robespierre & Marat abolished the Church in Revolutionary France. They confiscated their assets and assassinated their top clerics just to make an example- Archbishop Cruz was bludgeoned to death by rifle butts, Archbishop Rosales was mauled to death by dogs from the K-9 unit, Eraño Manalo was knifed in the neck by soldiers posing as church members and Eli Soriano was shot at the mouth.
Their denouncements did not go unheeded. In just two days after Arroyo died, the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Cebu, Negros, Iloilo, Davao and Sulu announced that they will secede from the republic and any outside military interference will be met with equal ferocity. They each grouped according to their own ethnolinguistic background: the Ilocanos for a Federal Ilocandia, the Cebuanos for a Republic of Cebu, Mindanao for a Morolandia and so on. The military installations and soldiers who were trapped in those areas were given an ultimatum: to either fight for them or face the wrath of the people. Most defected easily but in Davao, the military tried to take hostage the Mayor and his family, but they found out late enough that Mayor Duterte has more firepower and private soldiers than they. Those who participated were killed, their genitals slashed and their corpses paraded in the public plaza in which the public took great pleasure in stoning the dead bodies.
With the separate republics hastily being put up, other provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao quickly joined them. Pampanga, Isabela, Bulacan and Batangas tried to declare independent but were quickly and brutally quashed by the military. In San Fernando, Pampanga, then Gov. Lapid was shot in the chest, his feet bound together and was hanged upsidedown at the provincial capitol. In Lipa, Batangas, Mayor Vilma Santos was gangraped by unknown soldiers and was shot several times through her private parts. In Isabela, the entire Dy family was locked inside a cellar and soldiers threw in Molotov bombs thus, roasting the entire clan. My dear daughter, what happened in Manila was worse- it was short of being called a genocide.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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