Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm & Related Events

by Jose F. Lacaba

First published in 1982, this compilation of on-the-spot reports on the protest movement of the Sixties and Seventies has since become the standard reference work on the subject—a road map for street parliamentarians of various political persuasions, as well as a manual for mass media students and practitioners working in the mode variously known as New Journalism, literary journalism, and creative nonfiction.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Jose Maria Flores Lacaba, Jr., better known as Jose F. Lacaba and Pete Lacaba, is a Filipino poet, journalist, and screenwriter. He was conferred the Aruna Vasudev Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Cinema during 10th Osian's Cinefan Festival held in New Delhi, India on 11 July 2008.

He is currently[when?] the executive editor of Summit Media's YES! Magazine.

His screenplay credits include Jaguar, This Is My Country, Fight for Us, Sister Stella L., Eskapo, Segurista, and Rizal in Dapitan.

Reviews

[KCML · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me as a gift from a Filipino comrade on my first visit to the Philippines in the summer of 2012. I read some of it at differing lengths since then but decided to read it in it's entirety and I could not put it down. This book highlights the beginnings of the ongoing Filipino Revolution which began in the mid-1960s against the Filipino involvement in the Vietnam War.

It comprises a collection of articles written by Lacaba in this time period when the youth were just beginning to forge their political line, where they took to the streets marching in the hot sun from morning until night so as to steel their bodies in preparation for the People's War in which many would take up the cause for. At every instance these radical youth were met with the most barbaric acts of violence by the armed wing of the state and vigilantes, more than a handful gave their lives and some became desaparecidos, whose names live on forever as martyrs to the movement.

[Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare compilation of articles written by one of the best writers, Jose Lacaba, for defunct publications, the Asia-Philippines Leader and Philippine Free Press. The writing is as fresh as it was written more than forty years ago describing the tumultuous events leading up to the declaration of Martial Law. It provides a picture often overlooked in history books that really supports Ben Bradlee's assertion that the news is the first page of history. While books tend to examine the past through the lens of hindsight and with better clarity along with being correct, these are raw and full of details that evoke being in the moment. Also, it shows the growing sympathy and entry of the writer into being part of the opposition and later on in the underground. This narrative illustrates the times and provides a complimentary view that enriches information and knowledge garnered from other books about that period and the descent into Martial Law.

I would recommend reading this alongside Nick Joaquin's Reportage of Politics and Reportage of the Marcoses as well as other books about that time in Philippine history.

[renzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

the day this book was overdue from the library was the day a 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit and classes were suspended for a month. still had to pay the overdue fee for two weeks tho

[Veron · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The historical provocations had merely piled up, and now the angry youth with long memories were remembering them all.”

Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rages by Jose ‘Pete’ Lacaba is a compilation of articles he wrote for the Philippine Free Press and the Asia-Philippines Reader detailing the major events of the First Quarter Storm of 1970 - a period of unrest characterized by a widespread political awakening among university students resulting a series of large student-led political mobilizations against the US-Marcos Sr. regime.

Initially titled “The First Quarter Storm Was No Dinner Party”, the events in this book was set a year before the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, two years before the declaration of Martial Law, and 16 years before the dictatorship was toppled. Which paints us the part of a picture of how long and bloody the road was leading up to the eventual toppling of the dictatorship.

DDNR is chronologically arranged per article, each of them detailing a mass mobilization, usually covering the planning, the march and program proper, and often chaotic conclusions. Less about what happened in between these often weekly mobilizations and more about the events themselves. Lacaba doesn’t treat anyone as a main character to follow so it doesn’t feel much like a biography or an organizational history, albeit there are recurring figures: the then leading organizations Kabataang Makabayan, Samahang Demokratiko ng Pilipinas, and the Jopson-led National Union of Students in the Philippines. On the opposite side: the police, constabulary, then Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas, US Embassy, and Ferdinand Marcos Sr. himself. There are also recurring venues like Plaza Miranda, Mendiola, and the US Embassy in which the face-offs between activists and state forces frequently happen.

The protests reported were far more violent and persistent than the ones we’ve come to witness today, and drew more numbers from a wider range of universities across the Metro. Being present on the ground during these events, Lacaba was able to capture the agitation of student-activists against the regime, their development of their political consciousness and views in the early days of the National Democratic movement, their humanity and humor as young college students at the end of the day, and the horror when they are tortured, detained, and killed by state forces out in the open. The narration – reportage leaning a little towards Essay or Creative Non-Fiction – overcomes the natural repetitiveness of the sequence of events.

As he got to spend more time with the students, he grew from a distanced observer to a more active participant of these rallies. This was the Jose Lacaba that would eventually write the seminal screenplays for Bernal’s Sister Stella L. and Brocka’s Oraporonobis in more than a decade later. He talks about topics like the legitimization of violence, the usage of vandalism and noise, and about the varied paths of resistance, making the book more dynamic and relevant.

Since Anvil Publishing has recently republished Edgar Jopson’s biography and might be releasing a book on Lean Alejandro soon, they should consider reprinting this title and refresh it by adding a map of common protest routes and a timeline of the FQS events, aside from the photographs already included.

[Michael David · Rating 5 out of 5]

My dad has strong opinions, but they're usually based on observable facts and research. I had no reason to doubt him when he told me that Marcos was among the worst presidents any nation could have, because it takes a special kind of asshole to pillage one's own countrymen. Recently, he told me that bodies of dissidents would appear on then-empty lots, and these bodies had no clothes on them or any chance of identification: he'd consistently find bodies stripped naked, with plastic bags placed on their heads. Voices of dissent were either silenced or killed, and Marcos's declaration of Martial Law had allowed these injustices to continue.

For years I went by my father's words, and thought they were enough. However, with the rise of pro-Marcos fervor these recent times, I vowed to read about what had happened during those times. It's an expensive promise, because Filipiniana situated in those times are now rare or can only be found in libraries. Luckily, with considerate sellers I was able to find out-of-print copies of books featuring those dark times.

Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage is a first-person narrative of Jose Lacaba who was in the rallies and in the demonstrations. While there were radical elements in those student demonstrations, the police violence was more conspicuous. Worse, the police often inflicted blows on those who peacefully demonstrated. At one point in the narrative, Lacaba wondered regarding the expertise and technique of the rudimentary weapons used by the "protesters:" it may have been a false flag operation by then-President Marcos himself in order to deflect focus from himself. One rally caused the death of a leading student protester, Enrique Sta. Brigida.

Eventually, Marcos, intelligent man that he was, used the demonstrations as his organ to declare Martial Law: Philippines was sinking further into debt because Marcos's cronies had started working, and he had to find a way to solidify his hold on the Presidency, given that the Plaza Miranda bombing had actually strengthened the opposition, which was the Liberal Party.

I'm not saying that the students were innocent: there were indeed a lot of isolated rabble-rousing, especially because a lot of the rallyists came from the lumpenproletariat who were already content with just the upheaval of the established order. However, the increasing violence that could be seen with the rallies coupled with the persistent dissent of the students suggested that there was more than one malady inside the Philippines that Marcos couldn't handle.

Marcos wanted to protect his power, so he declared Martial Law and killed or imprisoned everyone who disagreed with him while he was unabashedly stealing from the Filipinos that he had killed. The First Quarter Storm had fizzled out.

[justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's sinister that i don't own (nor could i really afford it) a personal copy of this book. a required reading by one of the most talented and radical journalists of the philippines during the late 20th century