Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein - A Thousand Little Deaths: Growing Up Under Martial Law in the Philippines

For Chas, whose love anchored me while writing this book and for the next generation Elan and Marc

Copyright 2013 by Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein

Photo of the author as a 15 year old, circa 1973, next page.

Cover Design Hadley Kincade

ISBN: 9781626753242

Dont stiffen your fingers. Relax them, the officer instructed me.

I was sitting on a gray metal chair next to a battered desk with him behind it. We were in a dimly lit room, furnished with worn metal office furniture. Workplaces were laid out along its walls. A strong antiseptic smell of cleaning solution pervaded the room. The odor, mixed with stale cigarette smoke, was stifling.

Men wearing khaki military uniforms sat quietly working at their desks. A few were writing by hand; others were typing on well worn typewriters with the familiar clicking sound the machines make as fingers strike the keyboard. The sound was slow and irregular, like that made by beginning typists. A few soldiers wearing camouflage fatigues sauntered into the room. After they dropped their gear onto the floor, they huddled together, talking in whispers.

I clinched my fingers, released them and clinched them again, repeating this action as if in a trance. Cigarettes smoke drifted over. I looked at the men to take my mind off the one pressing my fingertips against the paper. I heard the shrill, grating sound of opening and closing of metal file cabinets. A few men looked busy, while others seemed bored, chatting quietly while smoking away.

The man in front of me was a soldier of a military detachment unit, one of the few details I noticed as I walked into the building where a sign in big, bold black letters, 1st REGIONAL MILITARY COMMAND, CAMP OLIVAS, SAN FERNANDO, PAMPANGA was emblazoned over its entrance. The main camp, Camp Olivas, was a few miles south from where we were.

The processing area was in a small, squat gray structure that houses the military personnel working there. As the soldier continued fingerprinting me, I observed that he was of average stature for a Filipino man, around five feet five inches. Dressed in camouflaged fatigues, he had a broad face, a flat nose and dark brown Malay eyes.

Be still, he commanded as he held my fingers uncomfortably tight. Do not stiffen your fingers. Let me do it, he snarled. He guided each of my fingers along the blotter, coating each one with the indigo blue ink and then one by one pressing them firmly to the form in front of him. He took his time with the task. My small ink-stained fingers ached from the pressure. He wanted to hurt me. He kept talking all the while, haranguing me with instructions on how to steady my fingers.

We continued in this manner. The more he talked the messier the fingerprinting became. I closed my eyes to distance myself from what was happening. I wanted so desperately to be far away from this place, to forget this was happening. Just take me away from here, I silently wished.

His own hands and fingers were by now heavily stained. He looked at his fingers, repelled at what he saw, and began wiping them vigorously with a sullied brown paper towel. He handed me a few of the towels to clean mine. I wiped the inky mess off to no avail. Then, it dawned on me how fitting this scene wasthis image of the mess we were all inhis mess, the governments, and that of the Philippines. I was in it now too, I suppose. By staining my hands with the ink on the form that registered my fingerprints, I joined the many thousands of political prisoners under Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.

We were barely two hours into classes that morning. Shortly before ten, a school staff member came to the classroom with a message for the teacher. After she left, the teacher instructed me to go to the principals office. Walking down the stairs from the third to the second floor where the office was, I felt the usual trepidation any student might feel when called to report to the principal. I was then a junior in high school at St. Scholasticas Academy, a private school founded in 1925 by German Benedictine nuns in my hometown, San Fernando. It was the same school my mother and her sisters had attended. Having been there since kindergarten, I neither found familiarity nor comfort in the office occupied by the school head, Ms. Luz Arceo, a figure dreaded by Scholasticans, or Kolasas, as we liked to call ourselves. Still, I had no hint of the trouble to come.

When I arrived at Ms. Arceos office, I saw her talking to four men dressed in military fatigues.

Please sit down, she told me in a firm but uncertain voice. I could tell she was not sure how to proceed. I sat, sliding meekly into the seat she offered. The soldiers remained standing. The room felt crowded. She hesitated for some time and then slowly, she spoke.

These men are taking you with them, she announced without looking at me. As she spoke, I noticed her voice has lost the angry tone I knew so well. Her cringing look of disapproval was also gone. When she finally looked at me, she displayed an expression I had never seen before. It was as if a new mask has been painted over her usual scowl. I knew instantly what it was: she communicated with her eyes that she neither knew what to do nor what to say. I felt her fear as it spread across her face, which was marked by a twitching and a pained expression. This was new territory for her. It was different. I immediately understood what she meant by the soldiers taking me with them. I was by then familiar with scenes of soldiers knocking on peoples doors and barging in unannounced. The Philippines had become a troubled placechaotic, violent, militaristic, and dictatorial. For men in uniform, anything went. Men like these soldiers did not care if one was a young girl in a convent school or the leader of the underground movement. Everyone was fair game. Soldiers were ready, able, and only too willing to follow orders to arrest anyone Marcos, his cronies, and aides believed was their enemy. To them, enemies took many forms. Innocent-looking fifteen-year-old convent schoolgirls were no exception.

And then, as if on cue, my mind went blank.

It was a cool but sunny December morning as I was driven south along Highway 54, San Fernandos main thoroughfare. With the army jeeps top down, I felt the sun on my arms and face, encasing me in its warmth, a sensation vividly etched in my memory. Every now and then, a gust of wind chilled my face and then, for a moment or two, a stronger rush of wind would lift the pleated folds of my navy blue jumper uniform. I pressed the skirt against my knees in a modest gesture as I sat surrounded by men in combat fatigues.

The man in charge sat in the front seat next to the driver. He was somewhat taller than the average Filipino man, a little fairer in complexion, and young, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He would have made a perfect poster boy for a recruitment adhis ramrod posture allowed his uniform to fit his body precisely. He exuded cleanliness and polish, a soldiers soldier in every way.

Lieutenant Jose Bandong, Jr.I learned his name laterwas polite and respectful when he spoke with me, even if it was only to tell me to watch my step when we descended the wide concrete stairs of the schools administration building. I would not have expected this behavior from men in the Philippine military; many of them had little education. For a moment there, as we proceeded to the parking lot, I thought I detected a slight hesitation in his intent to arrest me. Yet, at the same time, I perceived an inalterable determination to accomplish the task at hand: orders were orders.