User:Alternativity/sandbox/WIRProjectDesk

Wikipedians at the Wall: Invoking National Remembrance against the Return of the Marcoses

At a little after 5 in the morning on February 26, 1986, Ferdinand Marcos was ushered aboard a US Air Force C9/A Nightingale at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, along his family and a select group of their closest cronies. A day before, they fled the Philippine presidential palace in response to Filipinos on the streets shouting "Tama na! Sobra na! Palitan na!" (Enough! It's too much already! Time for change!) After years of protest and struggle culminating in the 1986 EDSA Revolution, the Filipino people had succeeded in ousting a dictator.

The Marcos dictatorship was a dark time in the history of the Philippines. By Amnesty International's conservative estimates, the regime had seen 70,000 Filipinos imprisoned, 34,000 tortured, and 3,240 killed. And when government investigators pored through the records and documents the Marcoses left behind, they were shocked to discover how much the Marcoses had stolen - anywhere from USD 5 to 10 Billion. The Marcos family had enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, evidenced by fabulous mansions, huge caches of jewelry, troves of priceless artwork, and infamously, Imelda Marcos' huge collection of shoes.

On November 18, 2016, Ferdinand Marcos was buried at the Philippines Libingan ng mga Bayani (National Heroes Cemetery)

Short memory not told in textbooks not on wikipedia.

The Bantayog

In the Filipino language, "Bantayog ng mga Bayani" means “Monument to the Heroes.” Concieved just a few months after the end of the Marcos Regime in 1986, the landscaped memorial center aims to honor those individuals who lived and died in defiance of the repressive regime that ruled over the Philippines from 1972 to 1986, and to exercise eternal vigilance to prevent the recurrence of the repressive regime.

The most visible memorial on the grounds of the Bantayog is the 14-meter Inang Bayan (Mother Philippines) Monument designed by the sculptor Eduardo Castrillo, which depicts "the self-sacrifice of a fallen figure of a man, held in one hand by the rising figure of a woman who symbolizes the Motherland, while her other hand reaches for the glorious sun of freedom."

Nearby stands a Wall of Remembrance, upon which the names of martyrs and heroes who stood against the regime. The names of the first sixty-five martyrs were inscribed were enshrined in 1992, and since then, hundreds of heroes and martyrs of the martial law dictatorship have been honored by having their names inscribed on the black granite of the wall.

Just behind the Wall of Rememberance stands the Jovito R. Salonga Building, which contains the Bantayog Museum, the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Library which contains archives and reference materials relating to the period,and the Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco Auditorium where film showings are presented and programs are held.

The Project

The Bantayog ng mga Bayani[1], hired its first Wikipedian in Residence, Red de Leon in April 2018. Bantayog ng mga Bayani (literally "Monument to the Heroes") is a Philippine-based foundation that maintains a memorial, museum, and library dedicated to remembering and honoring the heroes, martyrs, and victims of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. This residency is envisioned to be a 3-month pilot project that will run from April to June 2018.

Red will be working with a small team to help the digitize portions of Bantayog's library as well as to improve coverage of topics related to the Marcos regime, especially the Martial Law era, in Wikipedia and its sister projects. Red will also serve as a liaison between Bantayog and the Wikimedia community by organizing events and workshops, and hopes to help the local Wikimedia community grow by sharing his skills as a Wikipedian to Bantayog's constituency of museum visitors, library researchers, and supporters.

How is the project doing?

Narrative mapping

The mapping and planning phase of the project, which took up most of April 2018, turned out to be full of surprises.

The first big was that very little work about Martial Law had been uploaded to wikipedia. While there were articles about basic topics, such as the Biography of Ferdinand Marcos or important events like the 1973 Constitution, very few articles explained the sociopolitical and economic context of the period, and not a single wikipedia article covered the ill-gotten wealth of the marcoses. In fact, because many of the sources cited by the articles were government sources written during the period, many Wikipedia articles merely rehashed Marcos’ propaganda narratives.

Another surprise was how much the scholarly literature regarding the Martial Law period is still very fragmented. Most of the texts focus only on one particular aspect of the time, or tackle the significance of the events in light of a specific point of view, with only a handful of major texts having made the attempt to weave multiple viewpoints into a comprehensive narrative.

The project’s writing staff thus spent much of the early stages of the project defining and fine-tuning the scope of the project - poring through texts and listening in on the Bantayog’s conversations with museum visitors - whether students and scholars, advocates, or survivors.

In the effort to develop a narrative that is truthful, nuanced and effective while also effectively rebuffing propaganda, the project staff had to develop an expertise in the history and politics of the Martial Law era, as well as the various ways that its chroniclers have introduced their own viewpoints into the narrative.

As the project entered the second month of its Pilot phase, the Bantayog staff helped the project identify ten key project themes:

1. . How the Marcos regime violated the human rights tens of thousands of Filipinos, with at least 3,240 kiled; 34,000 tortured; and 70,000 imprisoned according to the conservative estimates of Amnesty International;
2. . How Marcos took power for himself and destroyed the Philippines’ democratic institutions in the process;
3. . How Marcos turned the Philippine government into a kleptocracy, plundering an estimated USD 5 to 10 Billion during his regime;
4. . How Marcos propped up his regime by putting the Philippines in so much debt that Filipinos will have to keep paying for it until well into the 2020s;
5. . How the Marcos family has spent the Filipino nation's money wantonly, both while in power and after;
6. . How Marcos turned virtually all of the Philippines' industries into Monopolies dominated by his cronies;
7. . How Marcos continuously deceived the Filipino people, lying about the state of the nation to keep himself in power;
8. . How Marcos intentionally polarized the Filipino people and its institutions, creating divisions that still haunt Philippine democracy today; and
9. . How Marcos tried to brainwash the Filipino, creating a cult of authoritarianism and a cult of personality around himself.

Workshops have reached out to Journalists, Martial Law lecturers, Democracy advocates, and economists many of whom were themselves imprisoned during the Marcos dictatorship. A fourth workshop with museum workers and youth volunteers.