The piece with the title The End of the Hanging Bridge merited a comment from Ivan Yuboco who recalled he was a 10-year old kid when the Colgante tragedy happened. Ivan has many questions arising out of the “conflicting accounts” of what happened that day.
A part of his comment reads:
One person told me that the "INA" has already passed through Colgante bridge when it collapsed. Another Bikolano told me that it collapsed when the INA was ABOUT to cross Colgante. Another version said that the INA had to be taken off the barge and carried on a platform and the procession had to proceed through the Dayangdang avenue. Could you shed light on what really happened that day? How deep was the water that day? Did the people who died drowned because of panic? Someone told me that most of them were electrocuted because there were wires underneath the bridge.
Ivan then asks, which one is true? After reading Ivan’s comment, I told him I will do my own research because I also do not remember details now.
Was an investigation ever conducted after the incident? Were there reparations made? Was anyone made to be responsible for the event?
We all have memories of disasters. It is what we do with those memories of that make the recalling matter. I, too, have heard of those versions that Ivan repeated. Those who contributed to my memory of the event have convinced me the barge carrying the Virgin of Peñafrancia had not passed yet under the bridge when the bridge collapsed. Where then did the land procession pass? Common sense, not memory, tells me that it was natural to have the procession on Peñafrancia Street for that path went directly to the old shrine. Dayangdang could not have been the selected street because it assumed the shrine was where the present-day Basilica was found. But, who knows. In the ensuing panic, any dry land could have had the function of bringing the Virgin to safety.
I promised you, Ivan, that for your sake and the article you are writing, and for my sake, and for my remembering that cannot be stilled, that I would check the nearest archive for some answers. Given the limited time, I went to the Rizal Library of the Ateneo de Manila University to look at the extant copies there of magazines and supplements released and published in September 1972.
I scanned through the yellowed pages of the magazines released during the month of September 1972 and stumbled upon one fact, one that is more startling than the trouble we are going through now with our mind. No essay appeared at all in any of the major magazines of that year. Not even in Free Press, not in Philippine Graphics, not in Panorama.
The Peñafrancia festival had been for some generations an index of misery and joy for the region. What was coming then to Bikol? What was about to descend upon us?
The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsi saw that for small worries, a small ritual is needed; for massive anxieties, more complex ceremonials are enjoined.
On that day, a bridge collapsed and killed hundreds. A bigger consequence, and a corresponding bigger cleansing was in order.
The national newspapers must have written about Colgante. Our local papers must have worked to death the issues. The editors must have asked for investigation in aid of legislation. The broadsheet then must have counted the number of unlucky pilgrims. And yet, if the magazines focused on more in-depth articulation of events are to be the gauge, the Manila-based documentors had other things in their mind, other major events worthy of nationwide attention. There was the flood in the Central Plains of Luzon, which was said to have been predicted by the great seer, Jane Dixon. She also saw the misery that was to follow after the Flood. A man named Quintero was all over the pages. He claimed that Malacañang was bribing politicians to approve the constitution that would allow Marcos to stay forever in the palace.
Sept. 16 was the common last day of magazine publication in 1972. Some perhaps with the practice of dating in the issues showed Sept. 22 as their release. Sept. 21 was the harrowing day of Martial Law. It was unthinkable that magazines questioning the ascendancy of Marcos would ever be allowed after that day. You see, Martial Law and the dictators did not just kill press freedom on that day.
They also murdered our memories of disaster.