Martial Law Stories: Raid!
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One of the Quimpo brothers, Ryan, affixed an old car rear-view mirror on their apartment building fire escape as an early warning device if military agents were to approach. Obviously it didn't work the night their apartment was raided.
“We’re with the PC! Open the door!” Soldiers of the Philippine Constabulary! It was a raid!
I jumped out of bed. Popet and Lulu, who were sleeping at the other end of the room woke up too. We peered from our second-floor window. About 20 men, some in fatigues but most of them in civilian clothes, with automatic rifles and handguns, were are the front door. One of them hoisted a very bright electric lamp.
“Open the door!” Clack! Clack! Clack!
I switched on the light in the stairwell and rushed down. No point in delaying. They would surely break the door down if nobody opened it.
This wasn’t the first time that the house had been raided. Just a month after martial law was declared, the military had raided the house as part of a zona – a “zoning” operation of the entire neighborhood. Only Dad, Caren, Lillian, and Susan were at home. All the men were ordered to line up on the street while the houses were searched for firearms. Living in the vicinity of Malacanang Palace posed the risk of being included in the zona.
This time, however, it seemed that our house was the only one being targeted. The raiding party appeared to be all milled in front of our door, and not spread out.
Whom were they after? I assumed that the military wasn’t after me, as I had just been released after 10 and a half months of detention in Lahug, then Camp Crame, then Bicutan. Ryan? Jun? Although both had joined the underground full-time, they were still officially registered as living in Concepcion Aguila. Jan or Lillian? Not likely. Since Jan’s release from detention in 1973 and Lillian’s in 1976, they had not resumed ties with the Party or any National Democratic group, although they continued to solicit donations for our brothers and friends in the movement. Whom else could the military be after? I remembered that Popet was in the house. Could they be after her?
The author at a recruitment seminar for high school students at the Ateneo de Manila University, 1969. (From Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years)
The banging on the door continued. With my heart racing, I muttered to myself, “stay calm, stay calm.”
I turned on the light in the living room and opened the door. The men stormed in, pushing me aside. Several of the men went through to the kitchen and opened the back door to check if anyone was attempting to escape. As I stood with my mouth agape in the living room, one of the agents asked brusquely, “Where’s Jun? Jun Quimpo?”
“He’s not here,” I replied. “He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Is that so?” he said sarcastically.
Several men bounded up the stairs. “Wait!” I cried out. “Jun’s not there. Only my sisters. They’re still asleep.” I ran up the stairs after them to warn Caren and Susan, who appeared to be still asleep in the back room. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, the men had pushed their door open and switched on the light.
“Ano ba!” Caren, in her nightgown shouted indignantly from her bed, sitting up and quickly pulling up the blanket to cover herself. Somewhat taken aback, the men closed the door and waited for Caren and Susan to get dressed before going back in. Caren demanded to see a warrant. They pulled out a list and thrust it before her, covering the top sheet except for a line that read “Ishmael ‘Jun Quimpo – student agitator.”
The men searched the whole house, looking into the bathroom, inside the closets and under the beds and tables, even inspecting the shelves above the closets where suitcases and boxes of seldom used clothes were stored. We looked on helplessly. Susan appeared to be in shock. At least they were not ransacking the place. They seemed to be looking only for hiding places, not for papers and documents. Nevertheless, to my horror, I suddenly recalled that there were UG [underground] reading materials in my bedroom. A paper bag full of issue of the newsletters Ang Bayan and Liberation lay on the study table near the window. Several UG (underground) documents were in the upper right-hand drawer of a chest of drawers next to the table and in cartons under my bed.
Before they reached the front bedroom, I strode in. It was still dark, the only light streaming in from the incandescent bulb in the stairwell and the fluorescent lamp in the other bedroom. If the men switched on the overhead fluorescent lamp, which lighted the entire room, their attention would surely be drawn to the incongruous paper bag. I walked to the narrow study table and switched on the small desk lamp. Most of the study table remained relatively dark, and the paper bag was indistinguishable. Just as I had hoped, the men did not switch on the overhead fluorescent lamp.
One of the men approached the chest of drawers. I quickly opened the large bottom drawer and then the upper-left-hand drawer for him. “There’s nothing there,” I assured him. He looked in cursorily and then turned around. Closing the drawers, I silently heaved a sigh of relief. Whew! Close call. The men did not bother to open the cartons under the beds.
I joined the men downstairs. Espying a bulging abaca sack under the daybed in the living room, one of the men asked, “What’s in there?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” I said. “Just a moment, I’ll have a look.” I knew perfectly well what was in it: used clothes that Jan had collected to send to Jun and Tina for the kasama (comrades) in the hills of Bicol. As I nervously untied the knot, I tried to think of what I was going to say. I brought out an old t-shirt from the sack and held it up. “Old clothes to sell to Eloy’s,” I announced, using the name of a well-known buyer of secondhand clothes.
Fortunately the men left it at that. After instructing Caren and me to advise Jun to turn himself in, the men left. Although we had kept up a brave front, we were all shaken, in disbelief that nothing worse than the search had taken place.
I scrambled upstairs. I gathered all the subversive materials and tucked them in a carton, which I pushed under the bed. Caren, wide-eyed, scolded me for bringing all the documents into the house. I promised to get them out of the house in the morning.
We all went back to bed and tried to sleep. I kept tossing in bed. What would have happened if the soldiers had discovered the subversive materials? All of us could have been hauled off to Camp Crame – Caren, Susan, Popet, myself and even Lulu! And the soldiers would have waited for Jan and Lillian to come back the next day and apprehend them too. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself. It had been crazy of me to have brought these reading materials home.
The next morning, I decided to empty the bulging abaca sack under the daybed and put away the clothes in a less conspicuous place, just in case the constabulary returned. As I dug through the used clothing, I felt something hard. Out came several fatigue uniforms solicited by Susan from her schoolmates, who wore them in compulsory military drills. I asked. The fatigues were wrapped around two reams of mimeograph paper.
Telltale materials! The PC would have immediately guessed for whom they were intended. NPA fighters preferred fatigues to other clothing because they were sturdier and were good camouflage, ideal as battle gear. I could have made up a plausible story about the fatigues bring in the sack, but not when they were all bundled up together with mimeograph paper used not only by schools and offices, but also by kasama for their newsletters.
Excerpted from Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years by Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo (Anvil Publishing, 2012).
To buy a copy: Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years