Posters for the 1965 Philippine presidential elections. From Page 101 of the 2015 Philippine Electoral Almanac Revised And Expanded (Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office)

Movie poster for Iginuhit ng Tadhana: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story, released in time for the 1965 presidential campaign period (Image source: IMDB)

Official correspondence between Marcos and US forces states “The Ang Mga Maharlica Unit under the alleged command of Ferdinand Marcos is fraudulent.”

From Marcos Pa Rin! The Legacy and the Curse of the Marcos Regime (Kasarinlan Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, Vol 27, No 1-2-Vol 28, No 1-2, 2012-2013): “For Every Tear A Victory helped win Marcos the 1965 elections. …According to a public relations specialist hired by the Marcoses, Leonard Saffir, Marcos paid at least USD 15,000.00 (about PHP 58,500.00 in 1963) to the book’s author, Hartzell Spence, and guaranteed McGraw-Hill, the book’s publisher, a sale of the book worth USD 10,000.00.”

As part of its mandate to conduct and disseminate historical research and resolve historical controversies, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines undertook this study in response to President Duterte’s proposal to bury Mr. Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB).

The Jabidah Massacre is considered one of the causes of two decades-long armed rebellions in Mindanao.

From the Official Gazette: That pivotal national march along EDSA is only foremost among a long tradition of political demonstrations. For more than a century, Filipinos have been taking their grievances to the streets. One of the earliest recorded protests was in 1903, staged by the first workers’ union in the country, calling for an eight-hour working day and for the recognition of May 1 as a public holiday. In the decades that followed, in a Philippines under American rule, the streets were the stage to air grievances about unfulfilled promises of upward mobility from the benevolent colonizer.

In 1974, Marcos orders the “Integration of the City/Municipal Police Forces, Jails and Fire Departments within the Greater Manila Area,” creating “a unit to be known as Metropolitan Police Force, which shall be headed by the Commanding General, Philippine Constabulary Metropolitan Command (PC METROCOM).”

At least 23 Muslim trainees were killed on Corregidor Island in what is known as the ‘Jabidah massacre.’ Marcos loyalists consider this event a myth, but the statements of a witness provide an explanation to the disappearance of over two dozen recruits.

The First Quarter Storm was a series of protests that greeted 1970 in the Philippines, after Ferdinand Marcos was reelected for a second term as president in November of the previous year. This issue of UPdate Diliman celebrates the strength of the Philippine student movement.

With police killing activists during protests of the First Quarter Storm, Ferdinand Marcos writes in his diary, “Poor Banjo Raval (Gen. Vicente Raval) the Chief of PC. He is one of the most loyal of the officers in the Armed Forces. I have asked him to seek relief as PC Chief.”

The New York Times: “MANILA, Feb. 7—President Ferdinand E. Marcos today accepted the resignation of Brig. Gen. Vicente Raval, chief of the Philippine Constabulary, who had been accused of permitting police brutality during a riot at the presidential palace here last week at which five students were killed.”

The victims of the “Battle of Mendiola” were recognized in an act requiring compensation “to be appropriated, out of any funds in the National Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of five hundred thousand pesos, to be paid as compensation for the death of, or injuries sustained by, persons in the course or as a result of a public demonstration, rally, protest march, assembly or mass action…”

Photos of the First Quarter Storm from Project Gunita: Dante Ambrosio Collection—”These images are from scans done by Dr. Dante Ambrosio and used in his lectures about the Marcos Sr. dictatorship. These have been shared to us by Prof. Michael Charleston "Xiao" Chua.”

From UG, An Underground Tale: The Journey of Edgar Jopson and the Frist Quarter Storm Generation: “Symbolic coffins mourning the death of the 1970 Constitutional Convention and of students killed in the aftermath of the January 30, 1970 siege of Malacañang and the Battle at Mendiola led by the leftist Kabataang Makabayan.”

Diliman Commune photos from the exhibit Lupang Hinirang which “explores [UP Diliman’s] layered story as a haven for intellectual, creative, and critical thought; as a space of social action and advocacies; and as a community with its own sense of history and hopes for the future”.

From The 1989 UP-DND Accord: Content and Context (Michael T. Tiu Jr. • UP College of Law): “The 1989 UP-DND Accord sets out, as its core element, the prohibition of any member of the AFP, the then-Police Constabulary – Integrated National Police (now the PNP), and the CAFGU (Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit, also a unit of the AFP) from entering any UP campus for reasons outside of the exceptional circumstances enumerated in the accord…”

UPdate Diliman, Volume 4, Number 1 • Jan-Mar 2021: This issue of UPDate Diliman “hopes to give new information to combat what we call historical revisionism which is also a product of fanaticism.” It gives thanks to the “First Quarter Storm and the Diliman Commune because our struggle for human rights lives on.” (translation ours)

Professor Judy M. Taguiwalo writes in 2011, “I was at the Diliman Commune, that historic event on February 1 to 9, 1971; the event showcasing the power of the militant solidarity of the UP community against military incursions into the university. Too many events had happened since then and I have bits and pieces of remembrance of those days, forty years ago.”

The hidden agenda: How a staged ambush, not insurgency, paved the way for Martial Law (John Mark Garcia, DZUP • September 27, 2021)—photos and context of the events that supposedly justified the declaration of Martial Law, the Plaza Miranda bombing and the “ambush” on Juan Ponce Enrile