Back of the March
By Denis Murphy

I remember one May Day we paused briefly in Plaza Miranda and shouted "Welga, Welga, Welga," for a minute and hurried away. We were proud of that.

During the Martial Law years we met every month or so at the back of anti-Marcos marches. It was the only place we met till I saw him in his coffin. It was the right place for me, a priest and a foreigner. He was there to keep an eye on things. "Trouble starts in the back," he always said.

We began in the very early days of Martial Law when there might be only 200 or so marchers, when people were scared and we crept from church to church. I remember one May Day we paused briefly in Plaza Miranda and shouted "Welga, Welga, Welga," for a minute and hurried away. We were proud of that.

We became friends; we were both in our late sixties when it's easier for men to make friends with one another. We talked of many things at the back of the march, especially when a march stopped up ahead and the leaders argued with the Metrocom, but when the march was over we went our separate ways.

There was never trouble in the rear if we were there. "Don Louie," people called him, which gives some idea of the respect they had for him. He was barely five-feet tall and nearly bald with a bushy gray mustache and sad hooded eyes. He was a quiet, polite man you'd expect to see walking a dog in the evening, not protecting marchers. He never married. He had intended to marry, he told me, but his newspaper took up all his life till Marcos closed it down at the start of Martial Law.

"You're lucky you have the Church," he told me. "At least you have that." He looked pensively toward the sky. "The years go by faster than you think, then they wallop you, 'Surprise, you're old,' they yell. I have this dream, Father, I'm trying to cross a highway at night. I think I can get across but I misjudge the speed and ." He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. "Like that Father, that's how old age gets you."

I didn't correct him about the Church. Yes, I had the Church, but she can be a remote mother busy about many things with little time to care for her old people. We're not her priority.

We were a good pair. My white soutana kept cars off the heels of the marchers. Sometimes they blew their horns, usually the drivers of rich people, but I learned how to deal with them. I went to the car window and in a low key, non-threatening way explained what the march was about as best I could. I found if you're friendly, most Filipinos will agree with what you say, even if it isn't convincing. If you raise your voice, you could be God's prophet and they'll stone you as the Jews did Jeremiah.

Sometimes we took care of the young people who dropped out of the march and we found sitting on the curbstone, worn out one way or another. We gave them water and talked softly to them till they smiled.

The police knew Don Louie. "Are you all right?" they kept asking him. They looked out for him. Sometimes we picked up the leaflets the marchers dropped and put them in a waste basket. Sometimes we took care of the young people who dropped out of the march and we found sitting on the curbstone, worn out one way or another. We gave them water and talked softly to them till they smiled. Neither Louie nor I had our own children.

After we had known each other a few years he said to me out of the blue one day, "I think I know you well enough, Father, to ask something personal."

"Go ahead."

"Do you watch the girls?"

He pointed at a row of girls ahead of us. Some wore mini skirts, some had jeans so tight you had to wonder how they got into them.

"Of course I watch," I answered without hesitation and we laughed at that.

"I do, too. I was afraid I was becoming a dirty old man." His eyes crinkled and his lower lip covered the upper one and part of the mustache so he looked like a happy seal.

Marching didn't encourage good humor, however. As I said people on the sidewalks paid little attention to us, which discouraged the young people. The young saw good and bad so clearly, but for people on the sidewalks we could have been troublemakers. They had had enough marches, political sloganeering, violence. Our marches were supposed to conscienticize "the masses", but all they did was annoy them I sometimes think.

"Why are you here, Father?" a young mother asked me. Her little girl was trying to pull her away from us. We scared people. Anyone walking in the street scares people. I talked to the woman as I did to the car drivers, trying to explain that we did not want to be troublemakers, but to help make a better country for everyone.

I think the young people in the marches appreciated us. One girl told me they must be doing good if old men were willing to spend the last years of life at it.

She listened moving her head slowly from side to side as if she wasn't wholly convinced.

"You will get yourselves killed," she said. There were few mothers in our marches.

Looking back we were like the two old gentlemen in the Muppets Show, if you can remember The Muppets. The old guys sat in box seats looking down on the performers. Two white-haired, kindly characters who liked the young Muppets, Ernie the Frog and Miss Piggy, but never quite understood what was going on. They were named Addison and Steele if I'm not mistaken.

I think the young people in the marches appreciated us. One girl told me they must be doing good if old men were willing to spend the last years of life at it. She had a point; you have to ration out the last years: there's just so much water left in the old canteens.

But nothing has the futility of marching with 200 people when the dictator has the same number of police keeping an eye on you. What earthly good were we doing? It wasn't clear at all, but as long as Filipinos marched I'd go with them. People on the sidewalks watched us pass, but gave no sign they were for or against us. Maybe they thought we were Hari Krishna groups who went down the same streets in costumes, dancing and ringing bells.

One Good Friday we followed the Kalbaryo of the Urban Poor, which was a re-enactment in dance of Jesus' passion and death. The poor said, "We, too, are reviled by the authorities. We, too, are stigmatized, abandoned, driven from our homes, punished unjustly, but as we die with Christ, so will we rise with him. Life will be better." We watched the urban poor boys and girls in their Christ masks dance barefoot in the streets. There was absolute silence. Even the police were moved, I think I saw them remove their hats and riot gear helmets and move in closer so they could see better.

There was one good thing about those early marches, we knew each other and appreciated each other's being there. We were brothers and sisters, fathers, sons and daughters and ideology didn't matter very much. Later when there were more people, we didn't know each other and ideological and political groupings became important. Once we were friends. Later we were blocs. There was more to admire in the early marches, when there was little hope of a solution, just a stubborn faith that it was the right thing to do and the worst thing was to do nothing. We were all privates in the early marches. Later the generals joined.

"We're a few hundred here in a city of six million," he went on. "They can stop us anytime and no one will mind. If we walked into a big hole in the ground, who would give a damn?"

The Masses we said together were very moving. We should never separate the Mass from sacrifice, struggle and danger. That's how the Mass started and that's where it makes most sense. It belongs on those streets in the hot, airless stand-offs between the young people and police, where people struggle to be rid of hunger and fear and to be free of people abusing them.

Don Louie said one day we were no more important than the blackened gum stains in the streets. "Who cares about gum stains?" he asked me. He was looking down at the street near Blessed Sacrament Church in Santa Cruz. Gum spots covered the streets like a disease. I told him that was a pagan way of looking at life.

"Pagan?" he asked. He seemed interested in the idea he might be a pagan.

"Seriously, Father, do we do any good?"

I told him he was scaring the young people. He didn't hear me. "We're a few hundred here in a city of six million," he went on. "They can stop us anytime and no one will mind. If we walked into a big hole in the ground, who would give a damn?"

"I don't know the answer, Louie." For a small man he could get very angry.

I let him alone to work it out. I was afraid he might not come back anymore, but the next march he was there in the rear waiting for me. We were always tired, thirsty and in need of a toilet. Old guys always need a toilet. Sometimes our cause appeared far less important than a drink of water and a toilet and a chance to sit in the shade.

I prayed there would be some small victories for Louie's sake, but I'm Irish and we are not used to things getting better.

"God pities us, Father. We have so many hopes and beautiful children and yet we've made such a mess."

"As long as the young want to march, I'll be here." I told him.

"Me, too."

Then one night in 1975 US President Gerald Ford was in Malacañang with Marcos. The U.S. had just approved the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. We massed up outside the Franciscan church near Legarda. We rarely marched at night, so this was an exception. Ford was arriving at Malacañang at night coming straight from Clark Field.

We linked arms, the two of us old guys in the middle and young people all around stretching from one curb to the other. I swear I heard triumphant music just as in the movies.

Don Louie and I were at the back of a thousand marchers. Far ahead over the heads of the young people we saw the bright glow of the TV lights centered on the march leaders and the rows of police. At seven the march began, but after a minute it stopped. Word came back the police had blocked the road, but they were talking, the leaders and the police. People in their apartments looked down on us. I remember thinking they knew what was going to happen and it would be bad. Remember how we used to explain free will and God's fore-knowledge? How God was looking down and could see two cars speeding toward each other on a one-way mountain road. He knew what would happen, but the drivers could stop whenever they wanted.

A siren wailed, probably an ambulance. We waited 30 minutes or so and then a woman on the sidewalk put out two white plastic chairs and asked us to sit down and join her friends. They gave us water and we talked. They wanted to know what the march was about. If I had to judge I'd say they were sympathetic to us, but Ford and East Timor and all our causes didn't touch them in a real way. Anyway while we were talking, we heard a stirring in the crowd of marchers. The young people were laughing. Someone called from the street for us to come back. "We're going to leave them," a girl shouted. Her eyes bulged with excitement. "Come with us, hurry." A circle formed around us. We were the leaders now, Don Louie and myself. I hadn't seen happy young people in a long, long time. The crowd turned around and started in the opposite direction. I looked at Don Louie. He was laughing out loud. "Let's go," he said. We linked arms, the two of us old guys in the middle and young people all around stretching from one curb to the other. I swear I heard triumphant music just as in the movies.

There were no police in front of us, no traffic. We were free. People on the sidewalk cheered. This they could understand. It was lusot. We had outfoxed the powerful. Life for the poor was lusot. The young people were singing. "A little faster, Father," a girl said close to my ear. We tried, but we couldn't really do better and we were holding things up. A jeepney parked on the side of the street pulled out and the young people bundled the two of us in. Now we could move. The whole line of marchers followed us jogging behind, thousands of them. I could imagine our own leaders, and the police looking after us. Thousands of people bobbed up and down like we used to see in the South African marches. Our people were singing. Drivers along the way blew their horns, but not impatiently. They were celebrating.

We reached España and turned left. By the time we reached Sto. Tomas the crowd behind was twice as big as the one that had lined up outside the Franciscan church. Our march pulled in people from the sidewalks. Filipino flags appeared. Firecrackers went off and then bells began ringing, church bells, I don't know from where. It was a huge, happy crowd like the ones that burst out of a stadium at the end of a big game. We turned left into the Quiapo underpass and once again the crowds were running down the hill, shouting so the echo in the tunnel was deafening, and then up the other side. We were free. The police were nowhere to be seen. They probably decided to let us go wherever we wanted as long as it wasn't Malacañang. When we came abreast of Quiapo Church our jeepney turned into Plaza Miranda and the crowd followed. A crowd hadn't gathered there since the bombing in August 1971 that nearly destroyed the opposition to Marcos. Everyone sat on the ground, the Plaza filled up and the crowd spilled out into Quezon Avenue.

A place was cleared in the middle of the Plaza and people began the dance of the Cordillera people, a circle of 30 or 40 girls and outside another circle of young men, some with real gongs and others with pots and ashcan covers doing the slow, exciting dances; the whole crowd clapped rhythmically. They pulled Louie and me into the circle and we stumbled through a turn of the dance, then we went back to the jeepney and climbed up on the hood of the jeepney and sat on the roof. A foreigner with red hair and beard wearing a black wool cap came up to us. "Up the Republic," he shouted, and whipped off the hat, false hair and beard. It was a Columban priest who thought Marcos was after him.

"How are you, Donald?" I called back.

"Great tonight. Take care." He survived everything despite that awful disguise that made him stand out like a bomb throwing anarchist. He died years later in Ireland

People shared the food they had which was mostly candy and water, but whenever there's a crowd in Manila, you're sure to have vendors in a few minutes with boiled corn, peanuts, softdrinks and dirty ice cream. Don Louie gave money so everyone around could get something. Everything was shared. We listened to speeches and even the speeches were happy. We had come a long way from the day a few hundred of us had shouted, "Welga, Welga" and hurried off.

"This is what it will be like, Father," Don Louie said.

"I hope so. Let's hope it won't be too long."

It took another ten years. The marches became more violent. Police used water cannons and twice shot into the crowd killing people. We took care of the dead. What a waste of life, young people lying on the gum-stained concrete with their bright, red blood spreading out. And still the number of marchers grew.

One night as I was going to bed around 11:00PM the phone rang. It's always bad news at that hour. Don Louie was dead of a heart attack.

He never saw the huge crowds that gathered after Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and he never saw EDSA of course.

I walked through the EDSA crowds looking for the rear of it, somehow expecting Louie's ghost to be waiting for me there. There was no rear to it if you remember. It was a kilometer long mass of people, all in place, demanding change. We were no longer marchers. We had arrived.

The trouble is nothing has changed since. At EDSA, where we finally found ourselves as a people, we should have turned around and walked away from all the old ways of doing things. Maybe Don Louie would have suggested that. We could have found our own way of doing things. The two of us would have fallen in once again behind the marchers. Maybe things would be different.

(Reprinted with author's permission from A Woman Pope, Neanderthals & Other Stories, New Day Publishers, 2006)

Also by author, "Give the Gun to Father"

© Denis Murphy

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