Marinelle A.

Castro

BSIT201

In its most basic definition, historical revisionism which is gained basically by the study of the present
traces of the past, needs revising, due to the inherent biases of the people who write history. As history
can never be objective in an absolute sense and the contribution of every historian includes a subjective
element to the context, every generation must rewrite its own history with the new and usually
improved circumstances and opportunities it is surrounded with. Revisionism denotes both legitimate
reassessment of the past and illegitimate manipulation of it. Differentiating between revisionism
(provocative, controversial nonconformist questioning of entrenched beliefs) and “revisionism” (denial
of crimes, distortion of the truth apologetic of extreme policies) is not easy.

The Philippines resoundingly cried ‘never again’ to the horrors of the Marcos dictatorship through the
People Power revolution of 1986. Thirty years later, the Filipino people have come to realise that
success is indeed fleeting. On 18 November 2016, the remains of Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos
were buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani—the Heroes’ Cemetery. In the Resolution of Motions for
Reconsideration, the Supreme Court addressed charges that it had engaged in historical revisionism to
rehabilitate the Marcos name, dismissing the allegations as “pure and simple speculations that are
devoid of any factual moorings.” The Court then addressed allegations of historical revisionism and said
that the President of the Philippines cannot declare anyone a hero adding that it is the National
Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) that makes that call. The NHCP settles controversies
regarding historical personages, places, dates and events, and resolves issues on Philippine history.

In Marcos v. Manglapus, the Supreme Court of the Philippines sanctioned the President’s decision to bar
the return of Ferdinand Marcos from exile. Twenty-seven years later, the Court granted the former
dictator a hero’s burial. The Philippine Supreme Court’s efforts at refurbishing the Marcos myth revised
history. The Court stepped in after Marcos failed to immortalizing himself as a hero, acting as his agent
by sifting through data and declaring Marcos worthy of burial in a cemetery for heroes. The Court,
through Ocampo, created a fictional difference between Marcos as the war hero and the Head of State
and Marcos as the brutal dictator, claiming that the latter task is one left for historians to accomplish.
This is a farce because of the inextricable connection between the law and the creation of memory. The
Court adopted a version of history where Marcos’ sins were expunged. Courts that deal with issues
implicated by massive human rights violations should be alert to its judicial history-writing function—to
turn private memories into public narratives. 206 Ocampo, despite the Supreme Court’s explanations,
denied the victims of Marcos’ rule of the recognition of these experiences. Law has been a tool to make
a record of atrocities elsewhere in the world, but the Philippine Supreme Court decided to use the law
to shield Marcos from criticisms. The only beneficiaries of this decision seem to be the Marcoses whose
political fortunes have been refueled. Since Ocampo, the Marcoses have ironically been leading the
charge against historical revisionism in order to revise history’s verdict on their father’s administration