Research Abstract
This research speaks of Plaza Miranda as the site of three bloody events: the March 1947 assassination attempt on then president Manuel Roxas, the January 1971 Black Wednesday carnage, and the August 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing. The March 1947 event is hardly known. The January 1971 encounter between protesters and state agents that led to five deaths is seldom mentioned in existing discussions on Plaza Miranda. The August 21, 1971 bombing of the Liberal Party miting de avance that killed nine people and injured more than a hundred is the sole event still being remembered and has found its way in history books and other studies on the Philippine left and Marcos’s authoritarian rule. The proposed study is an attempt to provide an answer to this differing hold of violent political events on the memories and histories of Plaza Miranda and to a greater extent, on the imaginary of the nation. By mapping the narratives of the witnesses, journalistic accounts, audiovisual recordings, scholarly studies, and autobiographical recollections, the proposed study will hopefully be able to show the boundaries where memories and histories, both personal and collective, blur into the hazy terrain of the unremembered and unmarked; where entrenched accusations and unresolved deaths mark the limits of commemorations and hollow memorializations.