Remembering Ninoy: Pro Patria Mori

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. This is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace’s Odes, which can be roughly translated into English as “It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s own country.”

While martyrdom is normally perceived as a religious act, the heroism of martyrs dying for their country has been recognized even in Ancient Greece and Rome. Surely these Latin words — pro patria mori — are the greatest testament to Ninoy Aquino whose martyrdom we commemorate every August 21, the day he was assassinated.

It is historically important to remember that Ninoy was always a great believer in political democracy. In 1968, his first year in the Senate, he already made his famous speech “A Garrison State in the Make.” This 36-year-old neophyte senator called attention to a “crisis in our political democracy...to a danger which creeps upon us: the insidious development of a Garrison State.”

By1972, there was overwhelming conviction that he would win in the 1973 presidential elections. But in the evening of September 22, 1972, Ninoy was arrested and taken to a military camp.

The story has been retold many times of how he suffered years of solitary confinement when he dared raise his voice against the abuses and injustice of the Marcos dictatorial regime. He was stripped naked and thrown into a cell, and his only human contact was with his jailer.

Corazon Aquino described the motive of the Marcoses: “The purpose was clear as it was diabolical. It was not just to kill him but to break him first – and with him break the compelling proof that men can stand up to a dictatorship, even to one of the most oppressive in the history of the world.”

It is impossible for ordinary men and women to understand how some persons find the courage to be martyrs. Cory Aquino does give us a possible explanation when she said about Ninoy’s suffering: “He came close to giving up, he told me; he slipped in and out of despair. But a power that must have been God held him together. He remembered the words of the epistle, God chose the weak to confound the strong.”

Finally sent in exile to the United States, Ninoy Aquino decided to come home to the Philippines facing the certainty of either death or again years of solitary confinement. The brazen assassination at the airport tarmac ignited a now united people to march in the streets, and finally topple the Marcos dictatorship through a non-violent movement that history now calls the People Power Revolution.

Around this time every year for the past 15years I have written a column — in Business World and now for Philippine STAR —  as my personal acknowledgment that it was this man’s sacrifice that gave us back our freedom. I have tried to use my columns to pay tribute to Ninoy and nourish his memory as an expression of my gratitude. 

But one of the most poignant tributes to Ninoy Aquino that I have heard was a speech given by his widow, Corazon Aquino on August 31, 1998 when she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award. The title of her speech was For Ninoy and the People. Here are some memorable excerpts from that speech:

“It is never too late to advance the cause of democracy by honoring its struggles and celebrating its victories. For somewhere in the world, there are always women and men who see what their jailers cannot, through the bars of their prison: in the distant triumphs of democracy — the hope of freedom.

There is never a wrong time to honor courage, conviction and right because these qualities are always in short supply yet ever in infinite demand, wherever freedom is sought and democracy is threatened.

Every tribute advances these causes, encourages these qualities, and brings so much closer their victory and vindication.

I accept this award on behalf of those great individuals who first glimpsed the potential peace at a time when the conventional wisdom prescribed force for the attainment of justice, and war for the achievement of freedom.

I accept this award on behalf of that man, who having read about this vision of the power of peace, dared to put it into practice in the age of extremes in which he lived — and in the face of the annihilation he read in the eyes of his escorts.

I accept this award on behalf of those people who seeing with their own eyes, on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport, how violence answers peace and force reacts to fortitude, yet dared to repeat the example of the man — first each person by himself, then all together in the millions.”

I accept this award on behalf of the man who perhaps most deserved it, because he idolized President Ramon Magsaysay and paid The Guy the ultimate tribute of imitation by giving his life for his country.

I accept this award on behalf of the Filipino people who followed in Ninoy’s potentially fatal footsteps and proved what Ninoy always believed about them: THE FILIPINO IS WORTH DYING FOR.

I accept this award, finally, for my five children, Ballsy, Pinky, Noy-Noy, Viel and Kris, whose unquestioning support and uncomplaining sacrifice gave me the strength to complete what my husband began and my people continued: the victory of People Power for democracy.”

?Every Filipino who believes in freedom will continue the memory of this martyr. Ninoy hindi ka nagiisa.

Where the Write Things Are’s Classes for Kids and Teens

Young Writers’ Hangout on September 5 (11am-12:30pm) at Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street.  Classes are every first Saturday of the month. 

Write Away! Weekend: Getting started on your comic book on September 26 (1-4pm) with Manix Abrera at the Canadian American School Alphaland Makati Place.

For registration and fee details contact 0917-6240196 / [email protected].

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