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Meeting in San Francisco to form a new alliance of antimartial law
groups from across North America, we received the news that the
former senator was assassinated at the Manila International
Airport. Talks were suspended for a while to enable everyone to
listen to the media broadcasts. My wife called from Montreal to
say that Canadian reporters were already asking about the
reactions of the Filipino community.
Since
his arrival in the US in 1980 Ninoy had become the leading
traditional opposition leader—overshadowing Raul Manglapus who
was then head of the Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP). Sonny
Alvarez used to act as right hand man of Manglapus; this time he
was accompanying Aquino around in his speaking tours. Ninoy with
his audacity and eloquence readily won the support of the Filipino
expatriates who previously thought only of making a life in the US
and gave if at all cavalier assistance to antimartial law groups.
The
new alliance formed in San Francisco was independent of the MFP
and other groups identified with premartial law political leaders
like Manglapus, Alvarez, Raul Daza, Serge Osmeńa and oligarchs
like the Lopezes—whom pro-Marcos Teodoro Valencia called
“steak commandos.” There was bound to be ideological
differences between antimartial law groups. The tags “libdems,”
“socdems” and “natdems” were not that well defined or
understood at the time. But alliances and coalitions were formed.
Ninoy seemed open to meeting all groups.
We
saw the crucial role of Ninoy in reaching out to the once
apathetic Filipino expats in North America. He really had a
gift—the gift of gab that can move crowds and the mass. His
death roused even those in the community who thought it was an
honor to have as guests Philippine embassy people in their June 12
celebrations. Everyone saw a turning point in the struggle against
the dictatorship, and the beginning of the end of Marcos’s rule.
It
was in a Toronto hotel in 1982 when I was introduced by “brod”
Ruben Cusipag (one of the journalists jailed by Marcos) to a
wan-looking person lounging at the hotel lobby. Ruben didn’t
mention our names, and for a moment Ninoy’s eyes and mine
locked. Just about the same time, we blurted, “brod!” Ninoy
and I belonged to the same batch (’50) of the oldest frat in UP.
I
gave Ninoy a batch of publications including accounts of war in
the countryside. While waiting for his turn during the forum, he
read avidly the “subversive” publications. That was the last
time I saw him.
Back
in the 50s he was a staff member of the Philippine Collegian which
I then edited. When the Korean War broke out, he was sent by The
Manila Times as a war correspondent. He was not quite 18 at the
time, but endeared himself to the soldiers of the 10th BCT
(battalion combat team) by writing about them in a personal way in
his dispatches. In one of his furloughs we asked him to send us
special reports for the Collegian. This he did at least twice, and
the Collegian became the only student paper with a war
correspondent.
I
would see him again a few years later (1954) at The Manila Times
as a fellow staffer, and I couldn’t quite get over seeing him
one evening stride to the city room with a holstered pistol at his
side a la Gary Cooper in High Noon. He had just come from his
meeting with Huk leader Luis Taruc who surrendered to President
Magsaysay’s emissary. Why the side arm? You can never tell, he
said. He later toured and wrote about Southeast Asia and was said
to have met with the CIA during the Sumatran revolt in Indonesia.
His detractors said he was a CIA agent. I remember Ninoy saying he
had dealings with the CIA but did not work for them.
He
became more of a public figure when he entered politics, first as
town mayor, then governor of Tarlac, and later senator of the
republic. As governor, he invited a UP group headed by Dr. Ricardo
Pascual to set up a UP college in his province, and showed us the
old capitol building as possible campus site. The UP branch was
set up in the sixties, functioned for a while, and ultimately gave
way to another state college or university.
In
his public life as senator Ninoy was unstoppable in his quest for
the presidency. In a frat alumni meeting held at Wack Wack with
the Laurels, President Marcos and his nemesis Ninoy Aquino, both
brods, were brought together to smoke the peace pipe as it were.
But this did not stop Ninoy in the Senate from delivering his
scathing speeches about the Marcos administration. Marcos had his
turn during martial law and, after seven years of detaining Ninoy,
banished his brod to the US. The frat was divided into pros and
antis.
His
audacious return to the Philippines under the name of Marcial
Bonifacio (in a passport issued by a brod in Taipeh), we all
thought, was in character—from the time he would ride along in a
US bomber raiding enemy positions near the Yalu on the
Korean-Chinese border, to his adventures in Indonesia affairs or
in Huk-controlled Central Luzon, his relentless attacks on the
Marcos regime, enduring seven years of prison and going on a
hunger strike, to that moment of truth when he left his family in
the US and finally boarded the plane from Taipeh back to the
Philippines.
His
death or his martyrdom is still shrouded with mystery (and so is
the death of his brod, Col. Baltazar Aguirre, killed in his car
rammed by a truck reportedly owned by a military intelligence
chief; the colonel was said to have a line to Ninoy). When will it
all be known?
But
as what Ninoy would have quoted, “There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.” I remember this quote from one of his dispatches on
the Korean War.
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