A music video shared by the page BBM SARA – Tigre at Agila page showed a video clip from the infamous Mendiola Massacre. The video claims that it was Cory Aquino’s administration that treated the farmers unjustly, hence, the protest.
The Mendiola Massacre, or Black Thursday as some call it, was a violent dispersal of a farmers’ protest that took place at Mendiola Street, Manila.
Just a year after the ouster of then dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a devastated national economy and conflicts with separatists in Mindanao plagued the newly-installed administration. Land reform programs during the Marcos regime failed miserably due to long-term abuses of cronies to the farmers.
President Aquino issued EO 229 to address the problem but the failure in its implementation disappointed the farmers causing them to protest.
The lyrics of the song published by BBM SARA – Tigre at Agila page is a twisted version of “Di Niyo Ba Naririnig,” which was originally a translation into Filipino by Vincent A. De Jesus from Les Miserables’ “Do You Hear the People Sing?” The earlier Filipino version was accepted as a de facto marching song against the impunity of the Marcos and Duterte regimes.
Read the full text on The Baguio Chronicle.