During the Martial Law period in the Philippines, literature that was politically engaged or expressed social protest could no longer be openly written. Writers turned to more indirect forms of protest literature, prison literature, and other works that addressed the trauma of the Martial Law experience. Notable works included poems, short stories, novels, and magazines that contained veiled or implicit criticism of the Marcos regime and conveyed experiences of censorship, torture, and human rights abuses during this time.

1. By: Ruth J. Docenos
Philippine Literature under
Martial Law

2. When Martial Law was declared, the writers
found themselves silenced. The literature rooted in
commitment that had flowered earlier could no
longer be written. Only a few could dare incur the
ire of the powerful voice which pronounced that
literature ought to deal with the true, the good, and
the beautiful
B a c k g r o
u n
d o f t h e To p i c

3. Short stories and poems continue
to be written on the martial law
experience, proof that those
fourteen years are destined to be
the most deeply etched trauma in
the collective Filipino psyche well

4. 3 MAIN LITERATURE DURING THE PERIOD
3 main literature during the
period
Protest literature
Prison literature
Other writers, other
works
Benigno Aquino's
assassination and the
Filipino writer

5. ..protest literature ...and the
literature about it comprise a
continuum: full appreciation can
only come with discussing the
origins and rise of social
realism during the last one
hundred years...

6. at other times, in other contexts, referred to as revolutionary
literature, literature of engagement, combat literature,
committed literature, literature of resistance, proletarian
literature, people's literature, socially conscious literature, and
perhaps a Philippine contribution to the taxonomy, the
literature of circumvention (simply defined as "a body of
works that expressed social and political protest in veiled
terms")
P
L
r
o t
e s
t
i t e r a u r et

7.  The Praying Man
 Awaiting Tresspass
 The Propaganda Movement
 Prometheus Unbound
 "Ang Pagkain ng Paksiw na Ayungin" ('How to eat the ayungin
fish')
 "Ang Kagilagilalas na Pakikipagsalaparan ni Juan de la Cruz"
('The incredible adventures of Juan de la Cruz')
 Ulos ('blade strike')
Novels
The First
Years of
Martial Law

8. A novel written by Bienvenido
Santos
was banned outright because it portrayed a corrupt
government official

9. AWAITING TRESSPASS (1985)
re-creates the scenes of state-authorized
torture of detainees and citizens during
martial law
A novel written by
Linda Ty Casper

10. HISTORY BOOKS
The Propaganda Movement
by (the Jesuit scholar) John Schumacher almost failed to
see print.
The major who went over it objected to the title which,
he said, was itself subversive.

11.  the first letters of the lines spelling out the
favorite war-chant and taunting slogan of
demonstrators all over the country: "Marcos
Hitler Diktador Tuta", the last two words
among the most common sobriquets applied to
the strongman: 'dictator' and 'puppet'.
 a novel written by Ruben Cuevas.
 appeared in Focus, a magazine
published and edited by an established
and respected writer who had chosen to
be associated with the Marcos regime
"PROMETHEUS
UNBOUND"

12. By: Pete Lacaban
a pungent, quite tragicomic,
instructional on the proper,
painstaking way of eating the
ayungin fish—a common fare for the
poor—so that the nutrients from its
eyes, bones, and meager flesh could
be optimized to stave off hunger for
at least a few hours
"ANG PAGKAIN NG PAKSIW NA AYUNGIN"
('HOW TO EAT THE AYUNGIN FISH')

13. "ANG KAGILAGILALAS NA PAKIKIPAGSALAPARAN NI JUAN DE
LA CRUZ" ('THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF JUAN DE LA
CRUZ')
By: Pete Lacaban
a brief narrative on the misadventures of
the archetypal Filipino Everyman, Juan
de la Cruz, who is frustrated at every
turn, de-humanized and ridiculed in his
urban-poor existence, until he seeks
salvation in the distant hills

14. the activist writers
contained poems satirizing the regime or expressing revolutionary
optimism, vignettes or sketches about how people were surviving
under the repression, essays on the culture of liberation, news
about victories in the people's war, and other items.
Ulos ('blade
strike')

16. The Temper of the Times
Philippine Literature:
From National to Aesthetic
Liberation
NOTABLE WORKS

17. "THE TEMPER OF
THE TIMES”
Alice Guillermo
Guillermo here conflates the pro-Aquino groundswell of opposition to
the Marcos regime with the tide of protest in the visual arts and
literature, and it might seem that the writers in English—or any of
the other Philippine languages—had found their political voice for
the first time.
What she actually wanted to bring out was the fact that writers who,
theretofore, had not ordinarily found common cause with the radical
movement seemed to have suddenly been conscience-stricken.

18. Cirilo F. Bautista
The constraints to its flowering appear
only as such to those writers and
intellectuals who are trapped in the
network of Western concepts of
aesthetics and liberty. liberation is going
on in the literary and artistic fields.

19. poems written in prison

20. NOTABLE WORKS

21. juxtaposes, in sardonic litany form, the trappings of
infrastructural progress in Third World Philippines with
social realities in the margins and peripheries of national
life, such realities having been culled by the poet from
true-life horror stories which came out almost daily in
the broadsheets, presumably for their "human interest"
value.
Romulo Sandoval, a GAT mainstay

22. ,
Written by Mila Aguilar
Pintig sa Malamig
na Bakal
('life pulse in cold steel')
published in Hong Kong
poems and letters from Philippine prisons.

23. Jose Ma. Sison
speak of the prisoner's faith in
the power of his writings, and
of his certainty that outside his
prison cell, the struggle which
he helped launch continues.

24. Other writers, other
works

25. KUNG ANG TULA AY
ISA LAMANG
Jesus Manuel Santiago
deceptively simple in construction and
elemental in prosody, has been held up
as yet another fine example of protest
writing that does not suffer from the
sloganeering, poster-&-placard style
which proliferated during the First
Quarter .

26. "Pahimakas" ('Farewell').
Federico Licsi Espino Jr.
No reference to martial law here, not in the
least, and one can only extrapolate from the fact
that it was written during the period, that it
appears in the company of poems steeped in
social awareness, the message the poet wants to
convey in a time of crisis.

27. RFERENCES
Mella,C.(1974). Directory of filipino
writers: past or present. Suite 505 Garcia
Bldg., Rizal Ave., Manila.
Maranan E.(2007) Against the Dying of
the Light:
The Filipino Writer and Martial Law.
http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2007b-
1.shtml.