When thousands of demonstrators set out in Manila last week to march on Malacanang Palace, the office of President Corazon Aquino, the police took standard precautions. To contain the roisterous crowd, which chanted demands for immediate land reform, 500 riot policemen equipped with truncheons and metal shields lined up in eight-deep rows at the foot of the Mendiola Bridge, the main approach to the palace. Two water cannons and eight fire trucks pulled up as well, and a contingent of Philippine marines, on temporary security duty at Malacanang, deployed behind the police phalanx.
By late afternoon the 10,000 protesters, some armed with iron rods and wooden clubs with nails protruding, began advancing on the bridge. As Jaime Tadeo, a leftist peasant leader, shouted, "Charge Malacanang! Break down the barricades!" and his followers returned a chant of "Revolution! Revolution!," the protesters closed with the security forces. At first the policemen held their ground, but as the crowd pushed forward amid a hail of stones, the police lines began wavering. Frantic police officers shouted, "You can't go through." Tadeo, struggling in the front lines, yelled back, "We're going to Malacanang, and you can't stop us."
Then the confrontation turned murderous. No one would say later who had given the order, or whether any was issued, but suddenly the marines put their M-16 rifles to their shoulders and began firing into the crowd. A few demonstrators drew guns of their own and fired back; thousands of others dashed for cover, some dragging dead and wounded comrades behind them. For more than a minute the rattle of automatic-weapons fire echoed across the bridge. When the marines finally stopped firing, four jeeps raced after the protesters, the soldiers aboard loosing tear-gas canisters to disperse what remained of the crowd.
In the street at least twelve protesters lay dead and dozens wounded; the final count of injured would reach 94. Not only were the deaths the first to have occurred in a demonstration against the Aquino government, but the toll surpassed that of a similar tragedy in Manila in September 1983, when Ferdinand Marcos was still in power. At that time eleven people were killed at the very same spot during an antiregime rally. Surveying the scene after last week's carnage, a policeman shook his head and muttered, "They fired too soon."
For Aquino, the incident triggered the worst crisis her eleven-month-old government has faced since a military coup attempt last November that fizzled before it got off the ground. Two hours after the marines opened fire at the bridge, word reached Malacanang of a further setback: talks had broken off between the government and the National Democratic Front, the political wing of the Communist New People's Army (N.P.A.) in the effort to end the Philippines' 18-year-old insurgency. Leftists as well as rightists quickly seized on the setbacks to launch attacks on the President.