By JULIANNE JUDILLA
I’ve wondered why there are always mosquitoes flying around, irritatingly buzzing on top of my head, especially after sunset when it’s already dark. How they’re more agile during the night when one’s asleep, biting, craving the taste of blood. They leave a mark, a harsh, itchy and sore red spot that does not go away easily.
It was also night of September 21, 1972 when the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. announced Proclamation No. 1081 imposing Martial Law. For most, it may have been just another night. For many, it was the beginning of a long nightmare. It could have also been a windy night, making it difficult for mosquitoes to buzz about. A week after the declaration, Marcos Sr. issued Letter of Instruction No. 1, authorizing the military to take over the assets of major media outlets, including ABS-CBN, Channel 5, and various radio stations across the country. Among the journalists who were arrested on the first week of Martial Law were Teodoro Locsin, Sr., publisher of the Philippines Free Press, Manila Times publisher Chino Roces, and several well-known journalists including Amando Doronila, Luis Beltran, Maximo Soliven, Juan Mercado, and Luis Mauricio. Reporters, editors and columnists from The Manila Times, the Daily Mirror, the Philippines Herald, the Manila Chronicle, the Philippine News Service, the Evening News and Taliba were included in the “national list of targets” by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Approximately 8,000 journalists were left jobless.
Only the likes of The Times Journal, Times Mirror, and the People’s Journal, owned by Imelda’s brother Benjamin Romualdez, Bulletin Today, Tempo, Balita, Panorama, Daily Express, Weekend Magazine, TV channels 9 and 13, all of which are owned by Marcos’ cronies Hanz Menzi and Roberto Benedicto, remained. They served as Marcos’ mouthpieces and were collectively named the “crony press,” spreading propaganda and falsehoods, helping create an illusion of prosperity based on infrastructure and temporary projects.
If not jailed, journalists were killed. The National Press Club reported that 19 journalists were killed and one had been missing since 1976. In 1985, when Martial Law was supposed to have been lifted, US-based media watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) tallied a total of 12 journalists killed in just one year from 1984.
It had been thus throughout the 1970s, air sucked out of what was thought to be the freest mass media in the whole of Asia. But on those seemingly windless nights and in the darkest of days, some mosquitoes flew around, like in the days when the alternative, underground and revolutionary press of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles against Spanish, American and Japanese occupation. During martial law, these brave journalists and publications were called the Mosquito Press. They were bred by what the late revolutionary Jose Maria Sison once described as crisis generating resistance. In the case of the mosquito press, it was the repressive, despotic and brutal regime that led many journalists and writers to hold on to their pens and wield them as weapons.
Jose Burgos Jr. started WE Forum in 1977 and Malaya in 1981. Other aboveground publications included Signs of the Times by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and Mr. & Ms. Magazine pioneered by Eugenia Apostol. Underground publications such as Ang Bayan, Liberation, Balita ng Malayang Pilipinas, Taliba ng Bayan, and the literary magazine Ulos were also publishing critical stories and had counterparts in different provinces.
Younger journalists were not to be outdone. Forced to close down when martial law was declared, many student publications gradually returned to publishing stories beyond the usual ken of their campuses or their youth. They have firmly decided to be part of the mosquito press and higher forms of struggle for genuine social change.
Antonio Tagamolila, a native of Iloilo City, was the editor of the Philippine Collegian, official student publication of the University of the Philippines- Diliman, in 1971 and the president of College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines in 1970. When martial law was declared, Tony took the revolutionary path and traded his pen for a gun. He died in an armed encounter with state forces in the hills of Aklan in 1974. Liliosa Hilao was the associate editor of Ang Hasik, the official student publication of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Manila, when she wrote an essay titled, “Democracy is Dead in the Philippines under Martial Law.” She was arrested in April 1973 and was brought to Camp Crame, headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary (now the Philippine National Police). Her dead body was found the following day bearing marks of torture and sexual abuse. Liliosa was the first political prisoner who died in detention during martial law. Abraham “Ditto” Sarmiento Jr., then editor in chief of the Philippine Collegian published a statement signed by 500 opposition leaders assessing the three years of Martial Law, and an editorial entitled “Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa?” Sarmiento was interrogated and imprisoned for three months until his health deteriorated and died at the young age of 27.
These three may have died in the midst of the struggle, but there were hundreds like them that irked the dictatorship no end. They were a swarm, a movement, that were most bothersome to the powers that be.
Many people believe that mosquitoes die instantly after they bite. I am no genius but I read somewhere that this is untrue. Truth is, they live up to a maximum of 100 days if it bites enough animals and manages not to get killed. They can live approximately one to three months. Their lives are not ended after their first bite, not unlike the movement and the struggle against the dictatorship. It goes on and stays alive for as long as it needs to be.
The revolutionary and the mosquito presses live in what we now call the alternative press that is proud to cite their predecessors as their inspiration. There are now about 35 alternative media outfits under the People’s Alternative Media Network or Altermidya. They operate in different regions and provinces all over the country amplifying the voices of the masses against all forms of injustice. Relentlessly pushing boundaries, resisting attacks and advancing pro-people journalism, it is a worthy historical successor to our people’s first propagandists.
It is Altermidya’s 10th anniversary this week. Like mosquitoes, today’s alternative journalists hope to lay thousands more eggs to pester the people’s enemies, the real bloodsuckers in our rotten society.
Happy anniversary, Altermidya! PADAYON!
Ref:
-https://www.bulatlat.com/2020/09/23/how-the-mosquito-press-fought-the-disinformation-under-marcos/?tztc=1
-https://cmfr-phil.org/media-ethics-responsibility/ethics/back-to-the-past-a-timeline-of-press-freedom/
-https://www.altermidya.net/media-literacy-101-the-alternative-press-and-media/
-https://www.altermidya.net/journalism-is-such-a-radical-thing/
-https://pcij.org/2024/05/12/keep-watch-in-the-night-while-the-battle-rages-between-darkness-and-light-ceres-doyo/
-https://medium.com/pacesetter/faded-photographs-the-campus-press-martyrs-of-martial-law-era-74c2dc0e37ec
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Juliane Judilla is a community journalist working as anchor and writer for Dampig Katarungan, the local radio program of Altermidya-Panay. She also works for Daily Guardian as a reporter and is currently serving as the secretary-general of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines – Panay Chapter.
