Thanks for the memories

Right after our wedding reception at the Wack-Wack Golf and Country Club on December 8, 1962, Peping flew me straight to Tarlac in a Baron. As a young 18-year-old bride, I was suddenly immersed in the country life of Luisita in San Miguel, Tarlac, and a terribly lonely one at that. I had no friends, didn’t play any table games or golf. It was like being a school girl who would wake up at 6 a.m. to go to school at 7 a.m. I would eventually sleep at 7:30 p.m. I was the new occupant of an old house named Casa Grande where every sister and brother of Peping had one room each. Their families were smaller then. Luisita was bought in 1958 through the Tarlac Development Corporation (TADECO) so many adjustments were still being considered. The other houses all around Casa Grande – old Spanish wooden houses with heavy stone foundations – were for the Central’s supervisors.

Beautiful huge acacia trees surrounded the shady estate. Spanish-speaking personnel helped Peping, Ninoy and Esting Teopaco in running the hacienda. Oftentimes we would go by jeep in between the sugarcane fields and return to Casa Grande filled with an unimaginable thick red dust in our hair, nose, clothes. The three of them would go out constantly examining the fertilizer, and the growth of the canes as they were of different varieties and how green or sick-looking they were. I felt at home with the Spanish-speaking Spaniard residents and loved their menus. These Spaniards were the last batch left from the former who ran the Tabacalera’s Hacienda Luisita and Central Azucarera de Tarlac. I ate in the homes of the Raymonds, parents of Anabel Santiago and Lucille Villanueva and the Goitiaz of Nenita the golfer whose houses were a few paces away.

It was called Luisita in honor of the wife of the owner, Don Antonio Lopez of Barcelona, Spain, who was the first Marques de Comillas. Peping was so enamored with the estate that he called our eldest child Luisita. How hard his father worked supervising the hacienda and the Central so the Kapampangans living in the nearby villages would have work. He would glance up at the sky and say, "Why is the smoke so dark? Why are they using bunker oil?" I learned whiter smoke meant bagasse was being used as fuel. It would cost less to run the Central.

Soon enough Casa Grande became smaller. By the way, that was the house where MacArthur lived on his return to the Philippines. It had a radio system where I would carry a conversation every where with Lyn Ilusorio and Chingbee Kalaw. Little did I know that the conversation was heard by every member of the family in a now antiquated radio system where one kept on saying "over" at the end of every sentence to signal it was the other party’s turn to speak.

A plot of land was chosen about seven minutes away by car from that white stone home across the golf course where Papa built homes for Peping and his sisters Cory, Terry, Passy, Josephine and his brother Pete. Koyang Pete selected Lindy Locsin to build the houses. It was in that compound that all the grandchildren gathered to run around, to swim, to eat in the pavilion. It was the starting point of a ride in that little miniature vehicle with a lawnmower engine where all the children jumped into and were driven around Barrio Alto by little John-John Cojuangco. Down the slope beside this compound I would ride Ninoy’s three white Arabian horses and proceed to canter all the way to the highway of Tarlac, Tarlac. It was in that compound that I remember Ninoy briskly walking over the lawn from his house to the pavilion with numerous guests having just landed behind the house arriving in the Baron or the Queen Air for provincial meetings, campaigns and Hacienda Luisita inspections. There is a joke about Ninoy who was always in a hurry. Jumping into his jeep one day he said to his driver, "When I say let’s go, go." So on his next visit he told his driver, "Let’s go." And the driver sped away and Ninoy clung on to the jeep otherwise he would have fallen off. In a loud voice, he reprimanded his driver, "Pinapatay mo ba ako?" I can see Ninoy today hurriedly walking from his house to my house in his silk blue bathrobe and slippers, the wind blowing and exposing his fair legs. Entering the house, he’d go straight to the master’s bedroom and say, "Peping gising ka na. Kailangan na tayong magkampanya." It was in the swimming pool in this manicured lawn designed by a Japanese that Ninoy played a joke on me and photographed my stomach underwater with his new camera. I was wearing my bathing suit but I was a bulging six-month pregnant woman with my daughter Josephine. I met so many guests of Ninoy from different countries and somehow his visits were always entertaining even for those brisk mornings or lunches or early afternoons that covered perhaps just two hours of the day. He would often fly back to Manila before sundown.

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On the days Peping and I got restless in Tarlac, we would go to Manila to see a movie. One evening, shortly before midnight, we were about to go home by car to Tarlac when we learned that martial law had been declared. The door to the dining room swung open in the residence of Peping’s parents in Forbes Park. Cory arrived with her children, her father having called her to spend the night at his home.

I recall Cory being so composed in spite of being understandably distressed about where her husband was, having been unable to see him for almost two months. I later heard that she had gone to Laur, Nueva Ecija, to look for Ninoy and found he had been incarcerated in a tiny cell and his eyeglasses crushed that he could not see. His cell was so tiny that he could hardly move. Later in Fort Bonifacio, his windows were nailed shut to block his view from the inside so he actually didn’t see any light. Only immediate members of his family and close relatives were allowed to see him. And these visits were limited to Christmas, New Year, as well as Ninoy and Cory’s birthdays. We sat on the tiny stadium with cemented stairs while a TV crew with cameras and sound system recorded our every move and conversation.

His military trial was the most sorrowful and emotional experience that I remember. Thin and wearing black, he defended himself before a commission where he was doomed from the very start.

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Finally being able to leave for America, Ninoy was able to travel to Saudi Arabia with Sultan Rashid Lucman of Lanao del Sur to deliver a speech in Jeddah. Here’s a portion of the speech delivered on May 13, 1981 at the King Abdul Aziz University Auditorium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which concerned the Moros and maybe offered a solution in our quest for peace and self-determination. This he would have done had he been elected President.

"The Philippine Government under President Marcos calls the Muslim fighters rebels, outlaws, insurrectionists, secessionists or far worst, traitors to the Philippines. The Muslims, on the other hand, see themselves as patriots, as holy warriors, defending their homeland and their Islamic faith and sacred birthright of self-determination from infidel attacks. It is most unfortunate that Filipinos are fighting against Filipinos today.

This has gone for almost four centuries. It is true that this conflict has many ingredients and has many causes....ethnic hostilities, economic rivalry, and political antagonism...but all these reasons have radically a different understanding from each side. My point is, the Muslims look at this problem from one angle and the non-Muslims look at it from another angle.

I would like to say that the events in the world of humans are not mutual nor are they fixed in some universal meaning. Human observation of events is always socially interpretive. They may find themselves at war because they differently interpret each other’s behavior.

We will note that in 1977, under the aegis of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an agreement was signed in Tripoli known as the Tripoli Agreement. Under this agreement, our Muslim brothers have given up the quest for independence and they will remain the Republic provided they are given the Autonomy in the 13 provinces of Mindanao. In the 13 provinces of Mindanao, we are going to give them autonomy in those regions, set up their own security forces and they will be able to govern themselves. This was a very good beginning...for awhile there was a ceasefire and there was no killing. Unfortunately, when this agreement was not implemented, instead of discussing this with the Muslim leaders, they broke off and Mr. Marcos went on to implement it unilaterally. Instead of 13 provinces, Mr. Marcos split it into two regions...one is region 9 and region 12 and they removed three provinces. Naturally, our Muslim brothers said that was a violation of the Tripoli Agreement.

We promised our Muslim brothers that if they will come back to the negotiating table, if they will come back to the Tripoli Agreement, then the entire Christian north will support them in the claim and once more we would like to propose affirmative actions on regions in Mindanao...What do I mean by this? If our regions in Mindanao are underdeveloped and they are entitled to only one school, by our definition of affirmative action we will increase your school to four every year so that income between the two communities will be close at the end of the century.

We believe that all Christian troops in Mindanao should be withdrawn from that area. It takes two to fight. If there are no more soldiers, there will be no more fighting and therefore we will be able to disconnect the fighting. All Christian troops will be removed from those Muslim areas and we will let the Muslims police themselves.

We will propose that the Muslims set up their own courts...their own "Shariah" courts, their own schools, their own madrasahs; if they want to use Arabic to teach their children, let them use Arabic to teach their children. Why should we impose English or Tagalog?...Their local autonomy should be Muslim and this should be elected by their own people. The national government will always support them if they are entitled to by way of development. I believe the Muslim community should be allowed to call in their lawyers and set up their own civil code as against our own civil code.

We feel that if our brothers will be united and the hostilities will stop we can set up training camps, educational institutions all over Mindanao so that the products of these institutions can come to the Middle East for better employment and if we appeal to the Organization of Islamic States, I believe the Filipinos now numbering to 150,000 to 200,000 here will increase to more than half a million. For my part, I will be returning to Boston, happy in the thought that our Muslim brothers have finally found unity in their ranks.

Let me tell you, I had been in the United States and I went to the hospital in America. When I woke up there was a Filipina nurse. The one who operated on me was a Filipino surgeon, the one who fixed me was a Filipino attendant. I discovered that there were 600 Filipino employees in that hospital alone. So that if the Filipinos will leave the hospital, the hospital will collapse. And I asked them why? "Because," they said, "the Filipinos are good workers, the Filipinos face any difficulties without complain."

May Ninoy rest in peace!