It has been 30 years, yet Arturo Lumbre could still vividly remember the soldier he came face-to-face with: Akle.
“‘Brad,’” he recalled what he told Akle, “’Wag ka na sumama diyan kako dito ka nalang samin. Dito kako magkakaroon ng totoong gobyerno,” he told the soldier who kept his head bowed — contrary to what was taught in the military.
The soldiers had already arrived to intercept the growing mass of people. Arturo was one of the millions who flocked EDSA in 1986 after Cardinal Jaime Sin called for collective action against the Marcos regime.
In textbooks, EDSA I is a picture of nuns offering flowers and rosaries to stoic soldiers. But protesters offered hope amongst themselves, too.
Arturo was at the Channel 4 station with his wife in the morning with protesters and only went home at night. Two days passed by with not much development.
“We stayed there, people brought food. I was wondering why everybody was sharing,” he says.
By February 26, there came the better news.
“It’s all over, Marcos flees,” the headlines read, and Arturo proudly waved the newspaper in the air, amid the sea of “Laban” signs and glorious cries.
This is the first of UP Journalism Club’s three-part feature on the events that led to and transpired during and after the 1986 People Power Revolution.
The contents of this post were retrieved from a Wayback Machine archive of UPJC’s old website dated July 15, 2024, 11:48:44 GMT.
