Nine letters and my own story on Ninoy and Cory

MANILA, Philippines - When Ninoy Aquino was murdered 28 years ago, I was aimlessly browsing around Rustan’s Cubao with our six-year-old. My mind was actually some distance away, at the Manila International Airport, where I knew the hero was scheduled to arrive that afternoon. I felt guilty that I couldn’t be there because my parents had cautioned my husband Gerry and myself from going. It was, after all, the 18th year of the notorious Marcos regime that was already well known all over the world for its blatant human rights violations.

So one can imagine my shock — no, it was more guilt — when curt and streaming words below a TV broadcast from one of the regime-controlled stations announced that Ninoy had been shot dead on the airport tarmac. We immediately listened to Radio Veritas that had the only live coverage of Ninoy’s arrival. But even that was sketchy because Radio Veritas had limited access to information due to government — and worse — military suppression.

After a restless night filled with rumors about the returning exile’s death, we thought to visit the late Senator Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo who was my mother-in-law’s neighbor in New Manila. Still dazed at what had happened, he thought it best that we wait for Ninoy’s body at Times Street where it was scheduled to arrive that afternoon. Without telling my parents and in-laws, Gerry and I proceeded to the empty Aquino home. 

There were a handful of people there, mostly brave, open supporters of the opposition that up to the day before had been headed by Ninoy. People were talking in whispers and we were afraid to approach anyone because, after all, we were anonymous citizens who had followed Aquino’s story from the time he was incarcerated on that day Martial Law was declared.

Luckily I saw Tony Laurel, the nephew of Salvador “Doy” Laurel, who was to become vice president of Ninoy’s widow barely three years later. Tony, who had been my officemate at the Bank of the Philippine Islands, was surprised to see us there. He asked if we were related to the Aquinos and I told him my in-laws were from Concepcion, Tarlac where the Aquino family was from. I didn’t think they were related.

Tony said Ninoy’s body was at the Camp Crame morgue where the military had released the corpse to Doña Aurora Aquino, Ninoy’s mother. Cory and the children had stayed behind in Boston where Ninoy had a fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Ninoy had somehow known that his arrival would make the Marcos regime react violently to his unwelcomed arrival and he didn’t want his family to witness whatever the government had in store for him. He had traveled with a false passport under the name Martial Bonifacio, given to him by sympathetic Filipino diplomats in the US. He chose to honor Andres Bonifacio, the Filipino hero who led the country’s revolution of 1896 against Spain.

Tita Aurora, as we called her (it turned out she was a good friend of my mother-in-law), despite her grief, was a woman of steely courage. She refused to have Ninoy’s body autopsied or embalmed. She adamantly added that his bloodied face and body wearing the white outfit with bullet holes was to remain intact during the viewing. Tita Aurora said she wanted the world to see what Marcos and his cohorts had done to her courageous son.

The waiting group of 20 or so grew slightly more by the time Doy Laurel and Soc Rodrigo had arrived. We had been there for at least five hours when the bloodied corpse arrived at two in the morning. Unlike the time Ninoy lay in state at Sto. Domingo church a few days later (when millions of mourners paid their respects), very few Filipinos came for fear that there were government agents surreptitiously taking note of those who were there. We were about the 20th and 21st persons to file by Ninoy’s body in his messy living room filled with fading but happy family pictures on the wall.

Our martyr’s body caused everyone who saw it to cry quiet tears. Tita Aurora was probably too exhausted that first night, and so were Ninoy’s brothers and sisters, so we don’t remember seeing them that early morning. I could be wrong, though. I guess everyone was too overwhelmed at the moment. And because there were so few of us, we got a chance to queue again and pray in front of the coffin three times more before we left for home. The day after, we accompanied my parents and sisters who now joined a larger stream of people that filed past Ninoy’s body 24/7, as they say nowadays. His body was still at the family bungalow.

The impact of that early morning has stayed with my husband and me forever. Since I belonged to a socio-politically aware family and had been a hack writer since grade school, I eagerly wrote down what I saw, read and heard during those turbulent years from 1972 when Marcos first declared Martial Law. 

Since media had been suppressed, we would eagerly receive foreign news about the Philippines, and the small but fearless opposition headed by the late Senator Jose “Pepe” Diokno. He was captured and doomed, with Ninoy, to solitary confinement in Laur, Nueva Ecija, an obscure military camp in the middle of nowhere.

Locally we relied heavily on Radio Veritas, the Catholic Church’s mouthpiece, headed by the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, a staunch critic of the government. We also counted on The Communicator, a Jesuit newsletter published by Fr. James Reuter, SJ, who was eventually put under house arrest and whose equipment was ruined and confiscated by the military.

So when the four days of People Power happened, Melba Morales Suazo, my best friend and colleague at Bank of the Philippine Islands, and I were determined to document this important era of Philippine history of which we partook. Ambitiously (because we had no money) we conceived of Nine Letters: The Story of the 1986 Filipino Revolution, a compilation of pictures and short letters from people who had also witnessed the unfolding of Filipino courage and freedom after over 20 years of Marcos dictatorship. We wrote it primarily for our children.

We had pieces about each of the four days of February; had a letter about Cory and her role; and reprinted Ninoy’s letter to the Filipino people just before his death. The culminating piece was a letter that praised us as a heroic race brave enough to oust a well-funded dictatorship backed — of course — by a ruthless military. At the end of the regime, it was documented that more than 3,200 were killed, 35,000 were tortured, and 70,000 were jailed.

We were called “mere housewives” by the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek who put us on the best-seller list for selling more than 10,000 copies all over Asia. The allusion to being housewives was because Marcos had called Cory this to prove his allegation that she knew nothing about running a country.

After 25 years, Melba and I decided to put out a revised edition. This was for the sake of the current and future generations of Filipinos who hardly remember, and will no longer know about what happened between 1972 and 1986, except for a few paragraphs in their history book perhaps. Our five children are all grown now, and Melba still has a 10-year-old who has read Nine Letters. But other generations will not be as lucky. They hear of the demand of the Marcos’ family trying desperately to have his remains transferred to the Libingan ng mga Bayani; they witness the pathetic “friends” and colleagues of the Aquinos, who have changed their principles and sides since 1986.

So Remembering EDSA 1986 was conceived, published and launched at the EDSA memorial celebrations last February. Melba now lives in Vancouver, so it was Gerry and I all over again, peddling the book as guerrilla publishers. We had no money, of course, so we approached Ned and Santi Echanis of Raintree Publishing who had printed the original book. Friends and neighbors since our college years, they have graciously printed, on credit, the beautiful hardcover book stamped in gold. We pay them bit by bit as the money comes in from the book sales even if we have printed only a thousand copies.

We were supposed to have another launching the week after Easter, but I got hospitalized for asthma. Some of our classmates from St. Theresa’s, Maryknoll, UP, La Salle and the Ateneo did not get the message that the launch had been cancelled so some went to UP’s Balay Kalinaw on that date. Incidentally, the launch for the original book at my in-laws’ home was also cancelled because my father-in-law had tragically died in a motor accident a few days earlier. Former Senator Agapito “Butch” Aquino did not get the cancellation message, so to his shock he arrived at a wake instead.

So the limited-edition Remembering EDSA 1986 is available at Sionil Jose’s Solidaridad, Silahis (Tradewind Books) in Intramurous , the Ayala Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the Cultural Center gift shop. Fully Booked carries it only at The Fort and SM Mall of Asia branches because they changed their policy and we have to deliver the books to each branch.

Melba and I are scheduled to attend a Filipino book fair at the San Francisco public library on Oct. 1 and 2 as Linda Nietes of Philippine Expressions graciously invited us. We will try to visit friends and relatives in Vancouver, Toronto, New York and Washington DC if my asthma holds up. We are hoping to sell at least 100 copies in North America. There are only 40 copies over there, sitting at our cousin’s Connecticut home. One kind cousin spared us half of her baggage allowance. The 60 books will be brought over as my baggage, paying $200 for an extra box full of books. 

I think the trip will be a lot of fun and worth my trouble. After all, Melba and I are self-appointed historians — a bit biased, maybe — but still chroniclers of part of our glorious past.