Aquino-Marcos Truth and Reconciliation, Possible, Necessary

This past week every media venue, including Facebook, was awash in tributes and remembrances of the late Ninoy Aquino, and rightly so. Few in our history have given so much for so many. In the darkest days of the Marcoses ‘Conjugal Dictatorship’, when truth and virtue were subordinated to convenience and expediency, Ninoy provided the oppressed and silenced with hope and fortitude.

Of all the pieces I read these past few days, what struck me most was the account written in the Philippine Star by my once-upon-a-time “news source” and friend, Heherson (Sonny) Alvarez. In the mid-70’s Sonny and his wife Cecille Guidote were the visible and active leaders of the anti-martial law coalition in New York. As one of the editors at Philippine News in San Francisco, I often called Sonny for an opinion or viewpoint on current news developments related to the Philippines. He always graciously gave of his time and spoke his mind. We met once when he made a trip to San Francisco. Frankly, I was taken aback by his humility and candor, and his fierce intellect.

Yet this is not a story about him, but what he wrote and revealed in the August 21 issue of the Philippine Star. It seems that Alvarez was one of the few people who had spent quality time with Ninoy Aquino in those days that immediately preceded his fateful departure for the Philippines 27 years ago this past week. And the revelation of what was discussed in those meetings between Ninoy and Sonny, is, to be frank, quite astounding if only because it revealed Ninoy’s mindset in those last few days of his life, which was diametrically different from the image we had of him.

Filipinos, like myself and millions of others, who were old enough and around in the late 1960’s, remember Aquino to be the very embodiment of the “warrior-statesman”, an image that found resonance among the Philippine population. He was going to be the knight atop a white horse and in shining armor, riding to victory and liberating the country from the dark forces of the Marcos administration. His ordeal of incarceration and torture in Marcoses dungeons after martial law was declared in 1972 only reinforced his image as the people’s champion.

After his exile in the early ‘80’s the expectation was that he would be gathering the forces of liberty with every intention of eventually leading a charge to retake the Philippines. Yet Alvarez tells us a story that reveals Aquino’s true, and transformed, outlook. He had become a believer in non violent action, very much influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

At the time that this was taking place, Aquino did not broadcast nor propagate in any way his revised outlook. It seems he wanted the Filipinos to keep faith with the aspirations that his past image conjured. Be strong, be ready for the fight ahead, seemed to be the message he continued to send.

Yet in his odyssey back to the Philippines Ninoy had taken a totally different outlook of the struggle that was to come. No longer was he going to challenge Marcos in a duel to the death, he was now prepared to unclench his fists and offer the dictatorship the open palms of peace and reconciliation. Aquino, it seems, was ready to offer Marcos a face-saving, and tranquil way out of the dark night of martial law into the bright sunshine of democracy without shedding a drop of blood, nor a tear of regret.

What Aquino was planning to do, I am surmising from the account given by Alvarez, was to engage in the very kind of reconciliation that, almost a decade later, Nelson Mandela fashioned out so that South Africa could navigate away from apartheid with the least destruction possible. If he did not reveal this prior to his departure from Boston, it is, I am concluding, because he wanted to do so only after he had had an opportunity to directly address the Filipino people and articulate his new, peaceful vision.

Aquino’s assassination on the tarmac of the airport that now bares his name wrote finis’ to whatever visions he may have nurtured. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But now that Aquino’s only son is the country’s president, is it possible to revisit Ninoy’s revised vision? Can Noynoy now lead the country on the road to reconciliation and balm once and for all the bitter wounds that continue to bleed and thus infect our body politic?

What will it take for the country to forgive the Marcoses and their cohorts?
There must be confession and contrition. We must know who exactly ordered Aquino’s assassination. We must know who perpetrated the decades of torture and abuse of political prisoners in those many camps and dungeons that once held our hundreds of prisoners of conscience. We must know how much of the country’s wealth is still out there in secret accounts and holdings; some of these must be returned to the nation’s coffers so that it can be used to rebuild the country’s aching and decaying infrastructure. What we’ve lost, the horrendous deaths and suffering of hundreds, perhaps thousands, cannot ever be made whole and restored. Yet we must trudge on forward, better served if we no longer have to carry the heavy burdens of rancor and regret.

And Filipinos are exactly the people who can forgive. It is in our nature and culture to absolve the sins visited on us by enemies. We have forgiven the Spaniards, our colonizers for some 400 years. We have forgiven the Americans for the massacres that took place at the turn of the 20th century. We have forgiven the erstwhile much hated Japanese who annihilated our forces on Bataan and undertook the cruel and deadly ‘Death March’. Our country is devotedly Catholic and overwhelmingly Christian, and we harbor religious persuasions that extol the virtues of contrition and forgiveness. So why not try?

I know that this is a 180 degree turn away from our sentiments of the past 3 decades, and it is a major paradigm shift for many, this writer included. Yet if we are to truly honor the memory and spirit of our national hero Benigno Aquino Jr., we need to adopt as our own his revised vision for our country. He would have forgiven the Marcoses. He would have fashioned out an honorable a pact as he could buttress so that the country could be channeled into a more progressive and rewarding future.

And the country needs this, now more than ever. I urge President Benigno Aquino III to be truly his father’s son and act on the inspirational message he left us thru Heherson Alvarez. Forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, progress.

Thank you, Sonny Alvarez, for sharing that enduring moment you spent with
Ninoy. May we hear more from you.

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