Even before online trolls unleashed fake news as a political tool in recent times, a small office inside the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman has been battling disinformation since 1977.
Five years after military rule was declared, then UP president Francisco Nemenzo established the UP Third World Studies Center (TWSC) so young faculty members—most of them activists from the First Quarter Storm—could pursue radical scholarship without eliciting backlash from President Ferdinand Marcos. This was amidst the widespread crackdown on academics deemed critical of the administration.
Thus, while students and professors pursued research on how citizenship, democracy and economic modernity play out in the “Third World,” TWSC also gathered martial law materials and scholarship that would later prove critical in disputing the grand claims of Marcos supporters.
Impact and contributions
Now led by Dr. Soledad Dalisay, the center’s researchers were the first to reveal the truth about the late dictator’s son and his academic background at Oxford University, where he got a special diploma in social studies but not a degree, as his camp would repeatedly claim.As early as 2016, TWSC researchers discovered the existence of a scam organized by a certain Bullion Buyer LTD., which promised to give P10,000 every month for four years, supposedly as part of the Marcos wealth. The following year, thousands of “claimants” gathered at the University of the Philippines Los Banos, eager to get their share. They were sorely disappointed.Reports on the scam form part of the center’s Marcos Regime Research (MRR) program which was established in 2013 in an effort to counter the lies and historical distortions about the martial law era.
New initiatives
On the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law last Sept. 23, researchers Joel Ariate Jr., Miguel Paolo delos Reyes and Larah Vinah del Mundo launched two compendium or collection of materials on martial law, as part of truth-seeking efforts about the country’s most controversial political period.
Gathered in the website “Diktadura” (diktadura.up.edu.ph), the research on martial law from primary sources is intended to complement the upcoming book, “Marcos Lies,” a compilation of essays on the falsehoods created and promoted to secure the Marcoses’ grip on power.
Delos Reyes said the book sought to correct propaganda found in several government-funded documents and biographies by referencing them against independent news articles, diplomatic cables, transcripts of congressional investigations and other related documents.Urgent needs
The center also concerns itself with truth-telling on other issues outside martial law. In 2021, TWSC launched its “Dahas” database, which tallied drug-related killings under the Duterte dispensation using media reports from the Inquirer, ABS-CBN, and province-based radio stations and newspapers.
The “Dahas” team continues to log drug-related deaths under the Marcos administration despite its promise to uphold a more subtle, rehab-centered approach to the drug war.The heavy burden of correcting historical revisionism rests on the shoulders of the TWSC team, who have acknowledged the difficulties of the job.
In an earlier interview with the Inquirer, Ariate talked about the limited resources that have made debunking disinformation a gargantuan task. Add to this the “unfair expectation from academics” who believe that the center must singlehandedly correct all historical falsehoods with more scholarship.
Their work also needs a broader audience, said Ariate who expressed hope that civil society and the media can be their partners so that factual materials can be disseminated more widely and reach more people. “There must be division of labor,” he added.
Despite such challenges, the center holds on to its origin story to keep going. “Our role is to use our expertise and experience in digging for buried sources and resurface them, and ultimately give them to organizations like the media who can explain it to the public in the best way.” INQ
