Ninoy is more than just a dolled-up image of history

My earliest memory of Ninoy Aquino was when my history teacher asked the class to bring bills and coins of different denominations. After giving us time to familiarize ourselves with the faces on each bill, my teacher would ask everyone to stand up. She called us randomly while saying the amount of the money. We were to answer her with names. Everyone who had given the right answers were allowed to sit down while those who failed to do so were made to stay standing until they answered right.

Even then, Ninoy was popular with the students, particularly because the P500-bill was the largest at that time. Teachers would talk about him with pride, eagerness, enthusiasm. His name brought color to discussions on Martial Law. History pictured him as the hero in an environment yearning for heroism.

I remember him simply because he made me sit down.

As someone born after the Martial Law era, I knew Ninoy not from memory, but merely from stories of people who experienced military rule first hand. The limited knowledge I have of Ninoy were snippets, some vague, some vivid.

He was the opponent of Marcos, a staunch critique of Martial Law, the man who inspired the Edsa people power, Cory Aquino’s husband, Kris Aquino’s dad. Yes, he is regaled a hero, a larger than life figure, an icon.

Distant image

But to me, he is a distant image, someone who exists but whose existence could not affect my own. I only know what other people from my generation knew about him.

A quick search in the World wide web produced more than 400,000 links to Ninoy – images, biographies, videos, quotes. Here I learned of his childhood, his life as a journalist, his rise in politics, his sufferings, his death, his legacy.

As much as I want to venerate Ninoy for his accomplishments as a man and Filipino, I cannot seem to grasp his personal meaning for me. I turned to people I know, mostly people of the same age, hoping they have a clearer image of who Ninoy is for them.

Some of my classmates said they see him as a principled man who died for the country. He taught the Filipinos to stand up for what they believed in. After he was shot, people stood against Marcos and united to overthrow the dictator.

He is a catalyst for democracy. But their image of him, like mine, only lies on the surface. There has to be a deeper, more substantial meaning to Ninoy than just being a dolled-up image of history.

Define heroism

Unsatisfied, I asked former colleagues what they think of Ninoy. Since they were born during Martial Law, I anticipated them to answer with the same intensity as my father, teachers, mentors would have answered. Instead, here’s what they told me:


“What has he done for the country that he deserves such adulation?”
“I can’t remember what he did then, but I knew Marcos had done more things than him.”
“He was a vague hero who came at the right time and Marcos had him killed.”
“If you’ll think about it, he really did nothing for the country. It just so happened that the people were fed up with the government’s theatrics.”
These comments prompted me to do a quick search on heroism in the web. Surely, there is a definition of heroism that would fit Ninoy, or else it would be meaningless to hold him in high regard.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, heroism is a “heroic conduct especially as exhibited in fulfilling a high purpose or attaining a noble end” and a hero is a “man admired for his achievements and noble qualities” and “one that shows courage.”

I came across a small yellow book by Teddy Benigno. Reading it unfolded Ninoy’s life from the perspective of someone who was close to him. Despite being exiled, he still believed that a democratic country is what would benefit the society more. No matter how many times Marcos invited him to join his administration, he still remained steadfast.

One of the parts that caught my attention was during Ninoy’s stay in Laur, Nueva Ecija. Stripped of everything, he laid in his cell and thought of what had happened to him.

Life as an inspiration

Dr. Andrew Berstein in his Philosophical Foundation of Heroism, might have defined the heroism that Ninoy had achieved. A hero “may fail in his specific value quest, he may be shot in the back or die, but his principled, uncompromised devotion to the good represents victory in, at least, a moral sense. Because of this, his life is an inspiration.”

Indeed, it had been Ninoy’s life in exile that had defined him. Then I think of the people who were moved with what he did; personalities who continued to support him even in his death, people who rallied their support for his ideals. Like Ninoy, these people moved thousands, united them in what became the EDSA revolution. It was their choices that gave way to “democracy” and united a nation.

In a way, if Ninoy had not been an inspiration to the citizens behind People Power, I would be a different person. I would be unable to party all night (curfew hour was imposed during the early years of Martial Law). I would probably not have taken up Mass Communications. I cannot write and get published without apprehension.

And I would still be standing, waiting for my teacher to call me, to answer either “Ferdinand” or “Imelda Marcos,” referring to the person in my P500 bill.

--This essay was written and published for abs-cbnnews.com in the anniversary of Ninoy Aquino's death.