Chismis Your Way Into Peace

Report by Cenon Pineda | Graphics by Leanna Kaylee Manuel | Layout by Joaquin Umali

Peace is something great, especially when it holds your hands, ties you up, and puts you in an electric chair to die in the face of capital punishment for doing nothing but simply defending your rights.

This is horror at its core and reality peaking till the memories of yesterday cling back to the present generation. A fuzzy blanket of peace, a kind that is enforced by curfews, fear, and a simple magic trick called forgetting. It happens when children are told not to ask, when history is forged, and the truth is rewritten in cursive so loopy not even a doctor can understand it. So now if you managed to reach this part, I'm telling you this is going to be disgustingly brutal so read at your own risk because this is just the start.

Under the Iron fisted and pakitang tao reign of Martial Law during the Marcos regime in the 1970s, his leadership remided people of their toxic ex that demanded loyalty, erased your past, and monitored all your texts and conversations. The arrests were peaceful, torture sessions were orderly, and well the dead were quiet.

A Love letter to the whores of peace that hates to question

When you were raised to the fact that the youth that are engaged in activism is just another example of puberty gone wrong, you'll know that you've got to force your way out of that little bubble of yours and start seeking answers. But it wasn't just the government that enforced the hush-hush rule. Households joined the campaign, some Lolas would mutter, “Huwag mo nalanag pakialaman iha, Tahimik na ang buhay ngayon.” And you being the obedient apo would just continue spooning your sopas, eating some turon, while wondering why no one ever talked about your Tita who mysteriously stopped coming home in 1975.

So just like every intergenerational trauma, it became an heirloom…

“Marcos? Eh di ba umunlad tayo doon?”

Here lies the most persistent ghost in the Filipino dining room: selective amnesia, fueled by nostalgia, old song lyrics, and Facebook videos with questionable fonts. Completely inaccurate yet too precious to challenge, to question that is to challenge your elders, and we know how Filipino guilt works: Faster than Wi-Fi and stronger than your political will. This is the kind of peace that forces you to smile at family reunions while someone yells “Never again? But Martial Law was the best time of my life!” across the lechon. And because you don’t want to ruin dessert, you let it slide, taking another bite of bibingka instead of biting back.

A Guide to Forced Peace

For those wanting to achieve their own version of Martial Law serenity at home or in their organizations, here are some quick tips:

1. Censor Conversation: Shut down conversations with some classic tricks like “Tigilan mo na yan wala kang alam, wag mong awayin ang baby m ko”. This really works wonders when you're arguing with someone younger and with those so-called academics.

2. Romanticize the Dictator: 💅 ✨ 💋 😘 add some fashion and passion into ot share some stories with historical love drama by the greatest love team of their generation, mix in some kilig and the story would easily twist to your favor.

3. Gaslight with Grades: “Kung totoo ang human rights violations, bakit ang taas ng literacy rate?”

4. Preach Unity, Not Justice: “Let’s stop fighting, start forgetting!” The slogan of tyrants and tito politicians alike.

Peace is not the absence of conflict; it's the presence of truth. And truth, as inconvenient as it may be, demands noise. Even when it's tiring to tell the right stories, names, and cry out songs with testimonials that'll surely ring back the people's memories.

So maybe we really do need less forced silence, and more voluntary remembrance. That's why to make it easier for all of you apologists, here's a feature article forged in journalism and truth, but masked with the cheapest chismis and conspiracy theories so that maybe and just maybe you guys would bat an eye.

Because if peace is only possible when no one speaks, then maybe it’s not peace at all. Maybe it’s just fear, disguised in a barong, and humming Bagong Lipunan.