By: Ruth J. Docenos

Philippine Literature under Martial Law

When Martial Law was declared, the writers found themselves silenced. The literature rooted in commitment that had flowered earlier could no longer be written. Only a few could dare incur the ire of the powerful voice which pronounced that literature ought to deal with the true, the good, and the beautiful

Backgr ou nd of t he Top i c

Short stories and poems continue to be written on the martial law experience, proof that those fourteen years are

destined to be the most deeply etched trauma in the

collective Filipino psyche well into the next millennium

3 MAIN LITERATURE DURING THE PERIOD3 main literature during

the period

Protest literature

Prison literature

Other writers, other works

Benigno Aquino's assassination and the Filipino writer

..protest literature

...and the literature about it comprise a continuum: full appreciation can only come with discussing the origins and rise of social realism during the last one hundred years...

at other times, in other contexts, referred to as revolutionary literature, literature of engagement, combat literature, committed literature, literature of resistance, proletarian literature, people's literature, socially conscious literature, and perhaps a Philippine contribution to the taxonomy, the literature of circumvention (simply defined as "a body of works that expressed social and political protest in veiled terms")

P

L

r o te s

t

i t e r a u r et

The Praying Man Awaiting Tresspass The Propaganda Movement Prometheus Unbound "Ang Pagkain ng Paksiw na Ayungin" ('How to

eat the ayungin fish') "Ang Kagilagilalas na Pakikipagsalaparan ni

Juan de la Cruz" ('The incredible adventures of Juan de la Cruz')

Ulos ('blade strike')

Notable WorksNovels

The First Years of

Martial Law

The Praying Man

A novel written by Bienvenido Santos

was banned outright because it portrayed a corrupt government official

AWAITING TRESSPASS (1985)

re-creates the scenes of state-authorized torture of detainees and citizens during martial law

A novel written by Linda Ty Casper

HISTORY BOOKS

The Propaganda Movement

by (the Jesuit scholar) John Schumacher almost failed to see print.

The major who went over it objected to the title which, he said, was itself subversive.

the first letters of the lines spelling out the favorite war-chant and taunting slogan of demonstrators all over the country: "Marcos Hitler Diktador Tuta", the last two words among the most common sobriquets applied to the strongman: 'dictator' and 'puppet'.

a novel written by Ruben Cuevas.

appeared in Focus, a magazine published and edited by an established and respected writer who had chosen to be associated with the Marcos regime

"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND"

By: Pete Lacabana pungent, quite

tragicomic, instructional on the proper, painstaking way of eating the ayungin

fish—a common fare for the poor—so that the nutrients from its eyes, bones, and

meager flesh could be optimized to stave off

hunger for at least a few hours

"ANG PAGKAIN NG PAKSIW NA AYUNGIN" ('HOW TO EAT THE AYUNGIN FISH')

"ANG KAGILAGILALAS NA PAKIKIPAGSALAPARAN NI JUAN DE LA CRUZ" ('THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES

OF JUAN DE LA CRUZ')

By: Pete Lacaban

a brief narrative on the misadventures of the

archetypal Filipino Everyman, Juan de la Cruz, who is

frustrated at every turn, de-humanized and ridiculed in his urban-poor existence, until he seeks salvation in the distant

hills

the activist writers

contained poems satirizing the regime or expressing revolutionary

optimism, vignettes or sketches about how people were surviving

under the repression, essays on the culture of liberation, news about victories in the people's war, and

other items.

Ulos ('blade strike')

Benigno Aquino's assassination and the

Filipino writer

The Temper of the Times

Philippine Literature: From National to Aesthetic Liberation

NOTABLE WORKS

"THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES”

Alice Guillermo

Guillermo here conflates the pro-Aquino groundswell of opposition to the Marcos

regime with the tide of protest in the visual arts and literature, and it might

seem that the writers in English—or any of the other Philippine languages—had found

their political voice for the first time.

What she actually wanted to bring out was the fact that writers who, theretofore, had

not ordinarily found common cause with the radical movement seemed to have suddenly

been conscience-stricken.

"Philippine Literature: From National to Aesthetic

Liberation"Cirilo F. Bautista

The constraints to its flowering appear only as such to those writers and intellectuals who are trapped in the network of Western concepts of aesthetics and liberty. liberation is going on in the literary and artistic fields.

Prison literature

poems written in prison

NOTABLE WORKS

"Tumatayog, lumalawak, ang mga bilding at resort" ('As the buildings rise and resorts expand')

Pintig sa malamig na bakalPrison and Beyond.Kung Ang tula ay isa lamangPahimakas (farewell)gatilyo

"Tumatayog, lumalawak, ang mga bilding at resort" ('As the

buildings rise and resorts expand'),

juxtaposes, in sardonic litany form, the trappings of infrastructural progress in

Third World Philippines with social realities in the margins and peripheries of

national life, such realities having been culled by the poet from true-life horror

stories which came out almost daily in the broadsheets, presumably for their "human

interest" value.

Romulo Sandoval, a GAT mainstay

,

Pintig sa malamig na bakal

Written by Mila Aguilar

Pintig sa Malamig na

Bakal

('life pulse in cold steel') published in Hong Kong

poems and letters from Philippine prisons.

Prison and Beyond

Jose Ma. Sison

speak of the prisoner's faith in the power of his

writings, and of his certainty that outside

his prison cell, the struggle which he

helped launch continues.

Other writers, other works

KUNG ANG TULA AY ISA LAMANG

Jesus Manuel Santiago

deceptively simple in construction and elemental in prosody, has been held up as yet another fine example of protest writing that does

not suffer from the sloganeering, poster-&-

placard style which proliferated during the First

Quarter .

"Pahimakas" ('Farewell').

Federico Licsi Espino Jr.No reference to martial law here, not in the least, and one can only

extrapolate from the fact that it was written during the period, that it appears in the company of poems steeped in social awareness, the

message the poet wants to convey in a time of crisis.

RFERENCESMella,C.(1974). Directory of filipino writers: past or present. Suite 505 Garcia Bldg., Rizal Ave., Manila.

Maranan E.(2007) Against the Dying of the Light:The Filipino Writer and Martial Law. http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2007b-1.shtml.