Part One
THE CONTEXT
OF SACRIFICE
11
Chapter I
A PARADIGM
OF SACRIFICE:
RECOLLECTIONS
OF THE "TARMAC INCIDENT" OF AUGUST 21, 1983
Prelude to Protest
There
were no advance indications that August 21, 1983 would become a pivotal date in
the contemporary political history of the country. For most Filipinos — even
for most residents of Metro Manila — the day in fact began with no premonitions
of anything tragic or politically significant that was to come. It was like
most Sundays. The traffic in most of Metro Manila's streets was relatively
light — although in this "city of man (holes)" where some diggings
are happening all the time, some of them for public good, most of them for
private gain, "relatively" has to be emphasized when one speaks of
the traffic. The usual Church-goers — and in this country that is steeped in
Christian culture and tradition there are still very many of them — woke up and
went through the ritual of Sunday worship in Church. "Five days of the
week are for work," commented a colleague of mine in the
"Christian" university where I teach, "Saturday is for myself,
and Sunday is for God." And "for God" means going to Church, and
concentrating on and engaging in those activities associated with the Church.
A
neighbor who came home from Church around noontime that day mentioned that
there was an unusually large crowd at the airport when he drove by there after
the Church service, but he gave no importance to it beyond perhaps the fact
that this was the usual crowd of people either welcoming some
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"balikbayans" coming home or sending-off some Filipino
workers who have luckily been able to get slots in the labor markets of the
Middle East or of those other foreign countries which have absorbed a lot of
the cheap labor that the Philippines has become well-known for in recent years.
My neighbor therefore slid right back into the rest of the Sunday ritual — an
afternoon nap, hours of playing "atari" in
front of the TV set, one of the numerous electronic games concocted by the
Japanese which has addicted quite a few of the more well-to-do in the
Philippines lately, and perhaps some more hours later in the evening to watch
the live coverage of the basketball games.
There
have been over the past few weeks news of the
impending return of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., the
popular opposition leader who had been in exile in the
Government
opposition to his return was firm. Philippine embassies were ordered not to
issue him the necessary travel documents, despite the fact that he was travelling only to his country of birth and citizenship. It
was also threatening. National security, the government claimed, made it
imperative that he did not return. There were, it was said, reliable military
intelligence reports that there would be an attempt to assassinate him upon his
arrival and the military could not insure security for
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him. The Communists
who had felt betrayed by him, military intelligence asserted, were out to get
him, and if not the Communists, then there were the relatives of witnesses who
have testified against him during his trials for subversion and whom he had
ordered to be eliminated in reprisal for their testimony who were equally
preparing to kill him if he returned.
A
scenario of political cloak-and-dagger, in short, was projected in which Aquino
was pictured as a totally sinister person who had perpetuated so many crimes
and evil deeds against so many people, as a result of which there were all
sorts of people, seemingly hordes of them, who have suddenly become so itchy to
kill him at all cost so that the security capability of the whole military establishment
could not insure his safety even when it was known beforehand that such threats
to his life existed. Even Imelda Romualdez-Marcos
reportedly got into the act. At a meeting in New York, she purportedly told
Aquino that there were people who were close to the Marcoses
and to the government, who, for some unknown reasons, are not controllable and
who are, also for some unknown reasons, out to kill Aquino if he insisted on
returning to Philippine soil.
The
government, in short, posed some of the most unimaginably stringent and
incredulous obstacles to Aquino's return so that
after the postponement of his initial date of arrival most Filipinos did not
know when he will finally return, if he was to return at all, and more still
did not really believe or expect that an actual attempt on his life would be
made upon his arrival. Despite the very many incredulities and restrictions of
the Martial Law regime that has overcome the country for more than a decade,
Filipinos, including and perhaps especially those who like myself belong to the
relatively comfortable and educated middle stratum of society, continued to
believe in some modicum of civility and decency in our political institutions
and their leadership
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so that it seemed
beyond the pale of our imagination that such a scenario of political brutality
and violence could really occur in our land. Indeed, even Aquino's
wife was to say later that she did not expect that "they" would
really go "that far" in the manner in which Aquino was treated when he
arrived.
Ninoy, as Aquino was fondly and popularly known by everyone
in the country, was after all a "big man," a well-known and
well-connected political figure whose network of friends and influence cut
across the many layers of Philippine society and of the international
community. Though by no means incorruptible, Ninoy
had made it well in the "rough and tumble" of Philippine politics and
had cut for himself a pretty large figure in public life. He must have, in the
process, made many political enemies. Such however is true of many others, and
such, many believed, is not only normal to political life but may in fact be
the substance out of which every new political alliances are forged from which
then new political movements occur.
There
have been instances of political violence in the past, and through the years of
Martial Rule, there have been news of brutal "salvaging" of
undesirable and trouble-some elements in certain remote places in the country. Ninoy however was really not that undesirable and troublesome
(for many, in fact, he provided the one viable leadership to that
"opposition" that gave credibility to our democratic processes), and
he certainly was not unknown. The
For Ninoy, in short, to be shot in broad daylight at the tarmac
of the
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clumsy, or awfully
brutal and callous. And if such a plan succeeds at all then the Philippine military
and the government under which it operates must be awfully incompetent and
irresponsible. Few Filipinos — and maybe even so-called friends of the Filipino
people — could imagine much less believe that such could be the case.
The
years of Martial Law regime has brought home the point to many of us that while
the Philippine military is not the best and the most efficient in the world, it
could be quite efficient and quite competent when it wanted to. Its
intelligence arm and security units have in fact publicly prided themselves to
be among the more reliable in the world. They have after all protected the
President and his family well through all the uncertainties of the decade. Such
incompetence therefore could only be out of character. And while Philippine
society and politics under the New Society may have had its faults and
deficiencies, still many thought that it has not really been that bad. Some as
a matter of fact continued to take the line that in this "city of
man" that is being built under the compassionate hand of the Marcoses on the foundations of the "City of
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Murder in the
Afternoon
If the
premonitions were not that pronounced to most people, and if most did not
believe that such callous brutality could take place under the present
political dispensation — controlled and managed as it is under the militarized
rule of Martial Law — Ninoy obviously felt and
thought otherwise. He had apparently received warnings, as he travelled towards
It was
indeed over in less than a few minutes. Seconds after his plane was parked at
the Manila International Airport, he lay dead at the tarmac of the airport,
felled by a single bullet that was targetted into his
head — from the back of his ear to his chin — while he was under the escort of
military guards from the Aviation Security Command, that unit of the Philippine
military that is tasked to give security to Philippine airports. Ninoy may not have, in fact, set foot on Philippine soil at
all before that shot was fired into his head. After many more shots, a man clad
in the blue uniform of airport maintenance people also lay dead beside Ninoy. The man was later identified as Rolando Galman, until that fateful moment unknown to most people,
but since then a much publicized figure, either as the presumed "hired
gun" or Communist agent who shot Ninoy, or as
the tragic and pathetic "footnote" to the history that was made that
afternoon at the airport's tarmac.
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I had
spent that afternoon in which all of these happened in the lazy and relaxed
manner that most Sunday afternoons are usually spent. I was in fact preparing
to work that night on a series of lectures on the prophetic and pastoral
ministry of the Church that I was to give a few days later at the Founders' Day
Convocation of the Divinity School of Silliman University. I turned on the TV
shortly after early dinner when at around seven o'clock the regular TV program
was interrupted to give way to a news bulletin. I almost did not bother to
listen to the news bulletin. Ever since my return to the
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that the proper authorities
could get at the bottom of the killing and its perpetrators could be brought to
justice. He announced the designation of General Prospero Olivas, the chief of
the Metropolitan Command of the Philippine Constabulary as the chief
investigator of the case.
The
news bulletin, in short, was not that much of news. It was in fact so little of
news, despite the fact that the event had occurred six hours earlier, and
mostly Presidential editorializing. Nothing was said about the hard facts of
the incident, about what had happened in the six hours that had elapsed, about
where the body of the slain former senator had been taken after he was shot,
about who possibly did the shooting, and about so many other things that people
might have wanted to know about so important and crucial an event.
The
prepared agenda of work for the evening have had to be given up naturally. To
go to the typewriter and work on a paper, even if, and perhaps especially
since, the paper was on the prophetic and the pastoral ministry of the Church
at such a time was like going to the proverbial Roman party while Rome was
about to burn. I became glued instead to the TV, hoping and waiting for more
news on the incident. My hoping and waiting was in vain. The news bulletins
continued to come skimpily. By midnight that night the same news bulletin that
was broadcast earlier was being repeated on the hour, with the same
Presidential editorial that was given earlier. What was coming on, in short,
continued to hide rather than clarify, to give unnecessary defensive
editorializing when what was obviously needed were just bare news (I learned
later on that Radio Veritas, the Catholic radio
station had given more extensive news coverage of the event and of the
subsequent happenings in the days and weeks ahead. The only radio in the house
however had gotten out of order, and so I was deprived of that service.
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I was as a result
stuck with what has become known as the "independent but controlled
media").
The
control of the media is one of the salient features of an authoritarian regime,
and constitutes one of the regime's powerful means of ideological propagation
and restriction. It is undertaken quite skillfully and often in a
"creeping" manner so that controlled news — because it is the only
news that one hears — soon becomes normal news and one can so easily be lulled
into thinking that there is nothing else that needs to be known. The medium,
asserted Marshall MacLuhan not so long ago, is the
message, and in an age where technological modes of communication have become
so developed the power of those who control and own media is a matter that is
not as consciously and critically known by many, even, and sometimes I think
especially, in the more technologically developed parts of the world. It is a
matter that has become a truism among those countries in the "third
world" that are under authoritarian regimes.
The
Philippines has not been an exception to this truism, and it was at the moment
of Ninoy's assassination when this truism became so obviously
clear to everyone, when the decadence of what was once touted as among the
freest and boldest press in the world became equally clear, and when finally it
became just as clear that the willful setting up of a counter-media was not
only needed for the "objective" dissemination of news and information
but also crucial for national well- being and redemption. The cost of setting
up such a counter-media is enormous, not only in terms of material resources
but more importantly in terms of the human sacrifice that it entails. The
blooming of what the Minister of Information derogatorily referred to as the
"mosquito press" shortly after Ninoy's
assassination and the boycott of the controlled press that followed are
indications that perhaps the lulling impact of a controlled media may have been
averted.
20
The
days that followed were, as the
As
again the Philippine Daily Express asserted later, the rumors were not
true, at least not all were. What the Express did not say, of course, is that
rumors in fact abound when news is skimpy and controlled, and that in a
situation of controlled media and editorialized news, truth to many has become
a matter of filtering through numerous layers of rumor that circulate,
including and especially the official ones, testing each rumor as it were, and
not taking any chances with them, per chance that they may be reality. Indeed,
in a situation of curtailed information, one rumor may be a "rumor of
angels," to use Peter Berger's words, so that while one is never
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secure in the rumor
that circulates at any given time, it is not at the same time injudicious to
give attention to the sounds and soundings that are "blowing in the
wind." It has in fact been the case in so many instances that such soundings
in the wind have turned out to be more truthful than the news that have been
filtered through the controlled media. Besides, rumors, to paraphrase Erica Jong, who is more known for her sex novels than her
political perception, are the opium of the oppressed, and who can really blame
people for using opiate under the conditions of oppression in which they live?
I had,
the day after the assassination, joined the staff of the National Council of
Churches in a visit to the home of the slain former senator not too long after
his body was brought in from the military hospital where the autopsy was made,
and saw his remains still in the bloodied clothes he was wearing when he was
felled by the assassin's bullet. The crowd that was to swell into the hundreds
of thousands later in the week was only beginning to trickle in at the time.
Brief conversations in the home with various people, and among many friends,
brought out nuances of Ninoy 's return that hitherto
had not been said. His courageous mother, Aurora, had mentioned, for example,
that she had urged him even in their last phone conversation not to return, but
that he had said that "If I am going to die, I would rather die in my own
country" — hinting at news reports that were circulated later that even
while in the United States there were already some indications that his life
was in danger. His last words to his wife apparently were, 'This is something I
need to do for our country." It was also in these conversations that I and
the others who were with me at the time had learned of the great difficulty
that the family had encountered in their effort to get confirmation of what had
really happened and to have a look at the body of their fallen son and brother
after the
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shooting had
occurred. And it was also at this time that we heard of the sad news that Ninoy's wife and children had not been informed long after
the shooting had occurred about what had happened, and that they came to know
about the incident only when reporters began calling them to confirm the
killing. Whatever it was that brought about this eventuality, whether it was
politics, or national security, or just plain oversight, it was sad, and it was
downright inhuman, and it was ugly.
After
the many tense hours of the Monday after, when people were panic-buying in the
stores, when classes were being suspended, and when electrical power was cut
and all lights were out, power and the lights came on finally at around ten
o'clock in the evening. And the very first thing that came on TV, as soon as
power was restored, was the President, surrounded by the members of his
Cabinet, and by the highest officers of the Philippine military. He has come
on, the President said, to assure everyone that the government is intact, that
contrary to rumors that Enrile had been under house
arrest he is in fact here and well, that the military who were all around him
remain faithful to their obligation to be under the civilian government, and
that he, too, and his family were around and well, despite the fact that he
looked awfully sick — almost as If he was being propped up from a sick bed — as
he spoke. He then went on to reassert the hardheadedness of Ninoy
in not listening to government warnings about the danger to his life if he
returned; that responsibility for his death should in large measure be laid
upon those who have advised him to return; that Ninoy
had in fact made so many enemies during his career all of whom would have a
reason to kill him; that Ninoy was returning in fact
as a criminal with so many shady dealings in the past and with a record of
political killings of political enemies and of those who had testified against
him — in short, that Ninoy's own violent record
invited the violence that had now been
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heaped on him. He
then pointed out that only the Communists would have masterminded this awful
killing, either as a way of exacting back grudges they have had against him, or
as a drammatic effort at destabilizing the present
government. One, in other words, must always be wary and conscious of the
Communist conspiracy and of the Communist plot to take over the country, so
that one must not be carried away by the passions of the moment. Above all, he
appealed once more for calm and rationality, and for sobriety in allowing the
government to resolve this "dastardly and heinous" crime.
Few
obviously believed the President not only in his theory of who masterminded the
killing, but also in his assessment of Ninoy as a man
and as a political leader. Hours after the news got around that Ninoy's body had been transferred to his home on Times
Street, the crowd that was beginning to trickle in earlier to see his remains
began to swell into the thousands. After only a few days, hundreds of thousands
had visited the Aquino residence. Not long thereafter, too, banners proclaiming
"Hindi ka nag-iisa" (You are not alone)
began to unfold everywhere, and yellow ribbons, which had become a symbol of
his return, began to float in all parts of the city, put up in the gates of
residences and homes, and in the antennas of motor cars and jeepneys.
People from all walks of life came. Students and youth manned the long line of
people that moved towards his house; old women came, some walking long
distances in order to make the trip; even poor vendors offered drinks and
candies to the tired people who waited hours for their turn to-be able to pay
their respects to the fallen leader, and jeepney
drivers offered free rides to many who were on their way to Times Street. When
the body was moved to nearby
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body from the house
to the Church numbered close to a million. By this time, too, the arrival
statement he had prepared, and which he was never able to read, had been
circulated. Here in this brief but powerfully moving statement, Ninoy laid down the intentions of his return, the
defenselessness of his coming back, the desire to help and to rally the
opposition to the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the hope that
change would still come through peaceful means, and the sacrifice he was
willing to make to bring back freedom and democracy to his people. He had come
to work for reconciliation, he said, but there can be, he emphasized, no
compromise with a dictator. He came in peace, in other words, armed with very
little more than his defenseless body, but he came also to join a battle that
was being waged against a dictatorial rule that he felt had been decadent all
the time, and which, he had consistently affirmed, has oppressed his people.
I
missed his funeral. My wife and daughter, however, witnessed it, and many
friends and colleagues participated in that now historic funeral procession that
took over twelve hours to reach its destination. Many observers claimed that it
was as large as, if not larger than, the funeral procession for Mahatma Gandhi;
some in fact dubbed it as perhaps the largest funeral procession ever in
history. There were, my wife reported, the usual signs of sadness in that large
march. Above all, however, she continued, the signs of protest and struggle
were more dominant. By then, and in the months that followed, the signs of
"Hindi ka nag-iisa" were always noticeably accompanied
by "Marcos, nag-iisa ka na"
(Marcos, you are now alone), and by the still more ominous and militant "Laban" (Fight). Whatever else Ninoy
had in mind in deciding to return, his death, let loose the valves of
resentment and protest that had been simmering underneath the controlled peace
of Martial Law, and unleashed the anger and the anguish of
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all sectors of
Philippine society over the oppressions they have suffered under the present
regime. Controlled anger and quiet dissatisfaction turned into loud
denunciations and increasingly fearless confrontation. The days of quiet rage
were over.
A Paradigm of
Sacrifice
How are
we, in retrospect, to interpret Ninoy's return and
his subsequent death? Ninoy, obviously, did not have
to return. He was in fact urged by people closest to him to remain in the
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return an act of
hardheaded vanity and reckless politics, or was there not in it a sense of
vicarious risk which, whether it intended it or not, brought into the surface
of our consciousness facets of our national existence, for example, its
brutally callous social violence, that hitherto have remained hidden to many of
us even when it has been obvious to so many others for so long? Was the logic
of Ninoy's death the logic of real-politick or
was there not in it the logic of martyrdom? The logic of martyrdom, as we all
know, gave testimony not only to that faith which has been sealed by the life
and death of the martyr but also to the opening up of new expressions of
commitment inspite of and beyond death? In the midst of such social violence,
of whom and for whom are we responsible? Can we be responsible to assassins? If
so, in what way, and what is the responsible word to assassins? What, on the
other hand, is our responsibility to those who are assassinated, or are being
assassinated? Are we responsible in the same manner to assassins and to the
assassinated? I ask the questions really in order to make a point.
The
obdurate decadence and callously controlled pretensions of our current
political life recalls and poses for all of us — not the least for the
Christian community — the challenge of sacrifice as a mode of political
intervention. Pious involvement, civil advice and consent, critical
participation and cooperation, have, I think, ran their course. Something more
costly, and something that is more willfully and decisively chosen to disrupt
the normal drift of political events and pose alternatives rather than simply
offer corrections to the current political dispensation are now needed. 'The
willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful answer to insolent
tyranny that has yet been conceived by God and man," wrote Ninoy, quoting Mahatma Gandhi, in his arrival statement.
What the parameters were of the vision and the alternatives he wanted to
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propose with his
sacrifice are not clear. Political colleagues, friends and admirers continue to
debate up to this moment what these might have been were he alive to explicate
and put them into action. Of his sacrifice however, and of the call that
sacrifice made for the decisive exploration and activation of political interven- tion that goes beyond
the patented and commonly-trod paths, few, I think, can raise questions. Of
what sacrifice are Christians — as believers in Jesus Christ and as members of
His Church — capable of making?
History,
it has been said again and again, is prelude. And the events that deserve to be
put in history are those that have the power to give prelude to other events
that provide new direction and thrust to the flow of the common life. In
attributing a pivotal place to the assassination of Ninoy
in the contemporary course of Philippine political history, I do not mean to
attribute to one man the crucial factor on which the future of our society has
become hinged. There are great men and women in any nation's history; such
however do not make history, they can only serve it. Neither do I intend to
make of Ninoy some sort of a cultic personality — as
some, I think, have tended to do — whose remembrance and adulation becomes the
fulcrum of national redemption. Cultus is never a solution to our religious
predicament, and it is much less an answer to our social and political
problems. I only mean to recognize — as I think it should be recognized — that
his assassination and the willful choice he made to return at this particular
juncture of our political life provided the occasion for the outburst of a new
consciousness among so many of those latent and really determinative historical
forces that are underneath the cacophony of public utterances and display that
have so dominated our social existence in the last decade. Such "sacrifice"
is always well-worth remembering, and reflecting upon.