[The Slingshot] DepEd erases, world remembers

It began as a basic Google search about properties that the Marcos conjugal dictators bought in the United States. I could not recall the name of the wooded bayside estate and mansion that the Marcoses had bought, but faintly remember it was somewhere in Long Island, New York.

I recall that before the Marcoses were ousted from Malacañang in February 1986, a video documentary was repeatedly shown to college students. The images in that video – which included that posh waterfront estate and mansion – were not only eye-openers but also left a deep impact in the run-up to the Marcos ouster.

True enough, the search engine turned in the exact name of the place – Center Moriches. Quickly googling turned up an astounding amusement of sorts. It listed notable people who had lived or owned properties in Center Moriches. Among them were Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who once owned the stately Lindenmere Estate on the shores of town. This is how they were described:

Ferdinand Marcos – Filipino politician, lawyer, and kleptocrat

Imelda Marcos – Filipina politician and convicted criminal

Sometime in 1996, the new owner who had bought the estate, named Jennie Magaro, shared tidbits to American media that until today can be accessed through the worldwide web. She narrated that each time Imelda would visit Lindenmere in the early 1980s, workers “would rush through some job to make it look finished.” In preparation for the visit of You-Know-Who, as the martial law-detained gossip columnist Amelita Reysio Cruz had nicknamed Imelda, estate workers would hurriedly plant thousands of dollars worth of flowers just to please her.

Notice how I sourced these pieces of information. They were sourced in a very basic manner, from Google, Wikipedia, and the New York Times. The web has archived such information and they will remain that way for decades to come. The web can of course turn out more than the basics – for example, scholarly books published on the Marcos dictatorship, some of which may be accessible online in the near future. Technology has made sure to animate and buttress memory.

But Gina O. Gonong of the Department of Education is on the wrong side of the planet. Gonong is the undersecretary for curriculum and teaching who approved the Bureau of Curriculum Development’s directive to change “Diktadurang Marcos” to “Diktadura” in the new Grade 6 Araling Panlipunan curriculum.

To know who Gonong is even amazes us. She is a doctor of linguistics who was director of Philippine Normal University’s Research Center for Teacher Quality, which does exemplary policy research on teacher quality. In fact, Gonong is an internationally honored expert. Her expertise lies in developing professional teaching standards, not to mention discourse structures in teacher education. And she has earned her keep. The University of New England has awarded her a Doctor of Letters honoris causa, calling her a visionary.

It is correct to say that evil has a name, as the voices of protest had already articulated. Yet it is also correct to say that removing the name Marcos from history textbooks is a foolish and futile attempt. Grade 6 students will eventually have a deft keyboard grasp of the worldwide web. 

Removing the Marcos name will be a vain exercise in futility. If even a source like Wikipedia which is not known for top-notch reliability because it is user-written can turn in truthful data about the Marcoses, what can prevent any one of our students from knowing that our dictatorship was a Marcos one? Dictatorship does not arise from a vacuum. It is a deliberate force that can only be imposed on humanity naturally gifted with being inherently free.

Gonong, whose expertise is also discourse, cannot refute that and stand on an illogic.

So what was the impetus for this irrational directive? The secretary of education Sara Duterte, even if she has no expertise to run this critical bureaucracy, could have vetoed it. But she did not. On Gonong’s level, she certainly had the discretion to veto a bureau directive that was under her branch of the department. But she did not. And so if it defies reason, would politics be far behind? Why has this attempt to distort history come only under a Marcos presidency?

There is nothing hidden in this world. The Marcoses tried to hide – and deny – ownership of the properties they had bought in the US. They used coded cables to their agent Gliceria Rustia Tantoco (of the family who owns Rustan’s) and used secret code words for each of the buildings they had acquired. 

The Crown Building was “Farragamo;” Herald Center was “Midtown Cement;” 40 Wall Street (today the Trump Building) was “Bridgetown;” 200 Madison was “Lafayette.” But why do we know them today? Because we live in an age when truth can be preserved. DepEd doesn’t know that the Marcoses brought with them to Hawaii 2,300 pages of incriminating documents – “a mountain of records in once-secured hideaways?”

In November 1989, a US Federal Court ordered the auction of the 40 Wall Street building in New York. Make that known to DepEd – a US Federal Court. That means there are extant court records that relay the kleptocracy of the Marcos dictatorship.

What cave has DepEd been living in? – Rappler.com

Antonio J. Montalván II is a social anthropologist who advocates that keeping quiet when things go wrong is the mentality of a slave, not a good citizen.