Lunches with Ninoy

Forty-six years ago yesterday, on  Aug. 21, 1971, I was home, very pregnant and ready to burst, watching on a fuzzy black and white TV, the rally of the Liberal Party in Plaza Miranda.  All of a sudden, there was a blast and much commotion on screen. The LP rally had been bombed, killing several people including a press photographer, and injuring most of the leadership of the party.

The LP and most Filipinos blamed President Marcos for the carnage, but Marcos blamed Jose Maria Sison and his Communist Party of the Philippines for ordering the bombing.  Of course, no one believed Marcos. We all thought it was him who sent the grenade throwers to the stage on Plaza Miranda as the first step toward the imposition of martial law — the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

We now know from many sources in the CPP that Marcos was right. It was, indeed, Sison who ordered the bombing, but Marcos used it to tighten his grip on security and clamp down on the opposition. 

My baby, Monica, was born a week later in the same hospital where Senator Jovito Salonga, who was blinded in one eye and rendered deaf, among other injuries, by the grenade blast, was being treated I sent word to the Senator who was still ailing, that I offered the pain of childbirth for his healing.  

Fast forward 12 years to Aug. 21, 1983. Ninoy Aquino was flying home, supposedly unannounced for security reasons, after living in exile for two years in the United States. At a meeting of activists the day before, it was decided that we would leave the welcoming of Ninoy at the airport to the opposition politicians and hold our own homecoming activities for him at a later date. 

We expected the worst that could happen was, he’d be brought directly to his detention cell in Fort Bonifacio. No one expected that Ninoy would be killed as he was escorted off the plane.  But the volley of bullets that killed him and his supposed killer Rolando Galman at the tarmac reverberated throughout the country and changed the lives of many Filipinos.

I was visiting my brother at Makati Medical Center when the nurse came to the room to tell me I had an urgent phone call at the nurses’ station. It was Arlene Babst telling me that Ninoy had been shot dead.  I called home. My husband was on his way to get me.  I told him to bring the transistor radio, which was the size of a small boom box, and make sure it had fresh batteries.

His first priority was the grocery. He wanted to go panic buying.  Dazed and angry, I went along to Unimart, carrying the radio on my shoulder, listening to the latest developments, and tearfully telling everyone who would listen, what Marcos had done to Ninoy.  There were people who met my eyes and acknowledged my anger.  But many others walked briskly away, wanting to have nothing to do with me, my grief and my ridiculous radio.

That night, I went to the Aquino house on Times Street with other journalists. There was still no line of mourners.  Ninoy lay in an open casket, his face swollen, his eyes blackened, his broken lip in what looked like a tiny smile, his white shirt bloodied.  His face and body were untouched by embalmers, his clothes were those he wore when he was taken by soldiers off the plane.  I saw a martyr and a hero who returned to an uncertain future to lead us in the struggle against the dictatorship.  I wept in anger, pity, frustration, fear – and admiration. 

It was the turning point of our history. I felt it in my bones and in my heart. 

I met Ninoy Aquino twice. The first was a lunch he hosted for the deskmen of The Manila Chronicle where I worked.  My editors were leaving for lunch in a Chinese Restaurant with the Senator and they dragged me along.  I was transfixed by Ninoy’s motor mouth that delivered facts, figures, data, statistics, and political gossip like a machine gun spouting bullets.  

The second time I met Ninoy was in Boston. He took my boss, Agriculture Secretary Bong Tanco, to lunch and Bong brought me and his entire entourage along.  Ninoy took us to a Chinese restaurant where I could hardly eat, so fascinated was I with their conversation, so frank and so deliciously subversive, between old friends and patriots. Later, Ninoy drove us to his home in Newton for coffee. Cory would never forgive him if he didn’t bring Bong over, even just to say hello, Ninoy said. When we left Newton, Ninoy gave me a copy of the Boston Globe magazine that had a feature on him.

I felt like a co-conspirator listening to Ninoy the dissident, and Bong, the government official, talking about providing information to a Fortune Magazine writer who was doing a story on the wealth and greed of certain Marcos cronies.  I learned that when the story was published, Marcos was livid. I was very proud of my boss and his friend Ninoy.

On Aug. 21, 1983, here I was again, with Ninoy and many others.  I doubt that he ever remembered me from those two Chinese lunches, but it didn’t matter.  I knew him.  And his sacrifice of his life would change my life, as he did the lives of many Filipinos, forever.