Seeing Red

A YEAR after, the dictator and puppet Ferdinand Marcos and his equally spiteful family flew to Hawaii—still under the auspices of Uncle Sam—to escape the fury of throngs of people who stormed the Palace. In lieu of the puppet, we had a charismatic leader as president but who only perpetuated a system of oligarchy where the rich robs and kicks the poor in the face and the poor gladly obliges.

We were nonconformist, obnoxious fleas then weakening an enormous, cruel beast. (foto lifted from philrevcouncil.org)

Because of this rotten system and military abuses, the communist ideals lived on. Surprisingly enough, some of us remained anti-establishment even without the revolutionary fugitive and icon Dante to inspire. (Dante resurfaced after the regime change, joined the new government and was given a multi-million farm business to manage). My morale went to greater depths after several of my close friends—among the few of the funniest and brilliant minds—and fellow members of the secret society were jailed, tortured or summarily executed while some who became guerillas died in clashes with government troops.