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measures of controlling the appearance is to deny the existence of
revolution, and to sweep evidence of civil war under the rug by
hiding the bodies of government soldiers killed in combat against
the guerrilla forces. Anna finds the warehouse where Colonel
Amor stores the bodies and sends a message to her husband,
Malono Montreal, who is supposed to work with the guerrilla
force at the time. Soon afterwards, the warehouse was blown up,
creating “an eruption of a lava of dead flesh: limbs, heads, torsos
zooming like torpedoes through the air to and on sidewalks,
rooftops, patios. They had punched through windows to skid along
tables, demolishing the dinners of the unwary; to settle on the
bedsheets, disturbing lovers . . . a necrophiliac visitation that had
driven the neighborhood hysterical” (Rosca, 1988:
113). The
intrusion of the gruesome evidence of the civil war into everyday
life turns inside out the hidden truth of the state of the nation. The
explosion of the warehouse is the people’s declaration of the
existence of civil war, and their means of toppling the Marcos’
despotic rule.
Rosca’s critique of totalitarian regimes not only strives to
reveal the horror of war and torture, but also seeks to highlight
how terrorist control comes to be as a result of the dictatorship’s
affective response to crisis in the environment. In other words, the
terrorist regime is haunted by the fear of not knowing who and
where its enemies are. Colonel Amor is desperate because his
enemy is seemingly without flesh and blood, therefore he resorts to
random arrests and torture as a means of forcing his enemy into
being: “He needed a face (faces), a name (names), a body (bodies)
of flesh and blood. An identity (identities) he could hook his claws
into and dissect into information” (Rosca, 1988:
349). To pinpoint
the enemy he needs information and informants. The military
invents methods of interrogation to torture the family of the
suspects in order to gain access to their whereabouts. Torture,
detention camp, and interrogation become part of the everyday
realities of the ordinary people, as well as Anna’s fate.
Anna’s