Plaza Miranda

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Word on the Street is Kontra-Kwento’s letter to the editor. Send yours to kontrakwento@gmail.com

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The question of who bears responsibility for the Plaza Miranda bombing remains unresolved to this day. Yet, I choose to believe the accounts of the late Sen. Jovito Salonga, BGen. Victor Corpuz, and others who confessed to knowing the shadows behind that night of fire and blood. The late Mario Miclat, through his novel Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions, offered revelations and insights—an insider’s glimpse into the dark corridors where that tragedy was conceived.

Most of those who truly knew have since carried their secrets into the silence of the grave. Among them, the one long alleged to be the chief architect—who once lived in comfort, orchestrating terror from afar, directing his minions from Barrio Utrecht.

Today, as I remember Plaza Miranda—and alongside it, the scourge of landmine bombings by terrorists, that steal the lives of innocents—I turn to the words Mario Miclat inscribed in dedication within his novel:

"To an unidentified boy, whose life was cut short by a terrorist bomb in Plaza Miranda, August 21, 1971"

Lope Nagusara