A Thousand Little Deaths Read online

  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

  Table of Contents

  DECEMBER 1973

  THE ROAD TO CAMP

  REMEMBERING

  IN THE SHADOWS

  MARTIAL LAW PHILIPPINE STYLE

  FACES OF THE ENEMY

  THE OTHER

  RETURNING HOME

  INCARCERATION TRAILS

  LEAVING

  THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL

  GRACE NOTES

  December 1973

  “Don’t 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 was—this image of the mess we were all in—his mess, the government’s, 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 principal’s 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. Scholastica’s 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. Arceo’s 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 people’s doors and barging in unannounced. The Philippines had become a troubled place—chaotic, 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.

  The Road to Camp

  It was a cool but sunny December morning as I was driven south along Highway 54, San Fernando’s main thoroughfare. With the army jeep’s 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 ad—his ramrod posture allowed his uniform to fit his body precisely. He exuded cleanliness and polish, a soldier’s soldier in every way.

  Lieutenant Jose Bandong, Jr.—I learned his name later—was 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 school’s 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.

  The sec
ond-in-command was a sergeant named Jose Magno; I remember his name from the badge in his uniform. I noted that both of them had the same first name. Like Lt. Bandong, Sgt. Magno was a bit taller than the two soldiers he outranked. He was also lighter in skin color. The two other soldiers were short and dark. I made a mental note of how lighter skin always increased a person’s prestige in the Philippines. I was not surprised to see that the taller, lighter-skinned men also had the higher rank.

  The men bowed their heads slightly when Lt. Bandong addressed them. They looked at him obediently. Their complexions and other physical features made me think they must come from another part of the country. Though they had not spoken much during the trip, my guess was confirmed when I heard them talk in Ilocano, the language spoken in the northern Luzon provinces of Cagayan, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, and Isabela.

  Kapampangans, as the natives of Pampanga are called, did not always hold a positive opinion of Ilocanos when I was growing up. It did not help that the country’s president before Ferdinand Marcos, Diosdado Macapagal, the father of former President Gloria Arroyo, was from Pampanga. Many Kapampangans, at the time, believed that Marcos stole the presidency from Macapagal in what would have been the latter’s second term.

  I, too, held prejudicial beliefs regarding Ilocanos when I was young. I grew up in a status-conscious community where economic standing and social class indicated how one was treated. Coming from the “right” family name and wealth was a matter taken seriously. Going to the right school—St. Scholastica’s Academy, if you are a girl, and Don Bosco Academy, if you are a boy—established your place on the status totem pole. Before my arrest, I understood little about these prejudices, and thought not to question them.

  San Fernando, like many towns in the 1970s, was extremely parochial, decidedly conservative, and piously Catholic. Locals lived, worked, and had fun within the boundaries of their own community. Like many tight-knit cultures, they had an aversion to outsiders. As a young girl, I was just as class conscious as anyone around me. I was guilty in regarding dark skinned Filipinos as simply not in the same league as the Chinese/Spanish mestizo class from which my family descended. It was an unfortunate belief, considering it was now these men who had power over me. And worse, Marcos was a member of the Ilocano clan. What effect would my misguided arrogance have, when my young life was now in their hands?

  Despite my terror, I shot furtive glances at the men, wanting to satisfy my last remaining bits of curiosity. What do my captors look like? While Lt. Bandong sat calmly in front of the jeep with one of the soldiers as his driver next to him, the two men who sat with me in the back seemed unsettled and tense. They gazed intently at the road ahead. They inhaled deeply from the cigarettes stuck between their lips; drawing on them as if these gave badly needed oxygen. They held the machine guns at their sides. No one spoke. It was as if everybody expected something bad to happen at any moment. They seemed like tigers in the wild, eager, even thrilled with the impending kill. Their vigilance was not misplaced. Ambushes were common between the military and insurgents. Pampanga has always been a hotbed of insurgency, a cozy place for Huks in the 1950s and the NPA in the 1960s and 70s.

  Everyone in the back seat remained on edge. My jaw, clenched tight, began to ache. As we rode along the highway towards the military base, I saw the men finger their guns and it quickly struck terror into my pounding chest. Other than this last image, I could remember little else.

  I did not know it at the time but there was another person who sat there in the back seat: my sister, Timmee, was also riding in the jeep. She filled in some of the missing details of that fateful day. This was how she related it to me some twenty years after it happened.

  Ms. Arceo, though shaken by the soldiers’ presence at San Fernando’s most prestigious private school for girls, had had enough sense to inform my sister that there were soldiers who were about to take me away. As soon as she was told, she left quickly to go to the principal’s office. The soldiers were already getting ready to leave. She saw me stand up and joined the men who were heading for the door. She followed us. Soon we were all out of the building and walked towards where the army jeep was parked.

  You were all getting into the jeep and I tried to get in too, she told me. This, she said, was what happened next.

  One of the soldiers stopped her and said,

  “No, no, do not get in. We only came for your sister.”

  Timmee replied, “I have to go with her. Vicky is my younger sister. I am responsible for her.”

  “No, you can’t go with us,” the soldier insisted. As he said this, he made a threatening motion, like he was going to use the butt of his machine gun against Timmee.

  It was at that point that my seventeen year old sister boldly declared, “Well, if you don’t want me to go with my sister, you can just shoot me right here, but you are not going to take my sister without me.”

  With that, Lt. Bandong put his arms up and then rested them on the soldier’s machine gun. He then commanded his men to calm down. He spoke to Timmee and told her she could come with us and wait until our parents arrived. Then we took off for the military base.

  As we rode along Highway 54, I felt my innocent school-life recede farther into the distance. We must have reached the place because the next scene that I remember distinctly was the soldier taking my fingerprints. I was now at the end of the process of becoming a political prisoner. It was now mid-to-late afternoon. Timmee said she stayed at the camp for hours waiting for our parents to arrive. She called them as soon as we reached the base; she had not known before hand where the soldiers would be taking us.

  My sister, Timmee, and I have always been close. She was only two years older, and there was a brother between us. Even though I love my brother, Timmee and I were closer. Yet despite our intimacy, it took us more than twenty years to finally find the courage to talk about that day. We shied away from the experience for a long time. Like me, Timmee admitted she was traumatized. But as traumatized as she must have been, she still managed to be a great sister to me. It simply never occurred to her to turn her back and walk away. I asked myself, would I have done the same thing for her?

  Honestly, I don’t know.

  We were both teenagers at the time. I was the seventh among twelve children. My older siblings always took care of me, not the other way around. I was also the youngest in the family for a long time until my mother gave birth to my sister, D., when I was six years old.

  Timmee suffered from poor health when we were growing up. She had almost died twice by the time she was thirteen. She was about ten years old when, one morning, as the family sat around the table for breakfast, she collapsed and was barely caught by my father who sat next to her. She was unconscious when my parents rushed her to the hospital. Timmee related to me years later that father in his haste left the house without his shoes. She barely had a pulse and was close to dying by the time my parents reached the hospital. The doctors told them that she has a congenital heart disease, which remained undiagnosed until then. The priest was summoned to give her the final sacrament for the dying. Despite everyone’s belief that she would not make it, she rallied and recovered. She had also been close to death two years prior due to a ruptured appendix. What seemed like a normal surgical procedure went terribly wrong when the anesthesiologist administered too much anesthesia, which almost killed her.

  These experiences transformed her. She became more devoutly Catholic than anyone else in the family. She was determined to live and to win against the odds. Perhaps it was these experiences that taught her that she could not give up. Not even when soldiers’ guns were trained upon her.

  In the processing area, I was asked to complete and sign my name on forms I didn’t understand nor cared to read. I felt robotic: without a body, without a soul. I could neither think nor feel anything. If I had signed my own death warrant, I would not have known it. At some point, a soldier took me inside a room to be interrogated, according to Timmee. She waited anxio
usly outside since they would not let her inside the room with me. She wondered when Tatang and Ima would arrive.

  After the processing as a political prisoner was completed, the next thing I remember was of me sitting in front of the provincial commander’s desk inside his office. My parents were sitting across from me. I could not hear the conversation going on. I saw my parents’ lips move but I could not understand the words. I glanced at my mother who looked like she had just seen death himself. She was pale, but by turns, flustered and then angry. The more she moved her lips, the more agitated she seemed. She had difficulty keeping her composure though she sat gracefully with her legs crossed one over the other to remind me perhaps that manners were to be maintained despite the circumstances. At times she glared at me, perhaps to mask her fear. It was her way of coping, I am sure. Her eyes accused me of betrayal: how could you do such a thing, how could you betray the family’s trust, how could you drag the good family name into this?

  I turned my attention to father. He looked composed, managerial, wearing the kind of expression he must use when directing his staff at the office. There was also a tenderness that I perceived, something I rarely experienced in him. If he was fearful of what would happen to me, he did not show it. I could see him talking to the commander as if he was talking as one boss to another. He looked at me calmly as if his eyes told me he understood. I was confused. Why was Ima so angry? And how could Tatang be so calm? It was usually the other way around. This was the father I feared, the one I never wanted to disappoint or displease. He was also the one who had much to lose professionally. My father held a relatively senior position in the government at the time, as regional director of an agency responsible for regulating small-to medium-scale industries. If this situation was not handled “properly,” he could lose his job, or worse, Ferdinand Marcos would want his head. My mother was the gentle one, the one who would never pick up a fight. I expected Tatang’s anger and Ima’s love and understanding. Yet this, I didn’t get.