The Seed That Fell 37 Years Ago

 

BIMBO CABIDOG

As mentioned in John 12:24, the Christ speaking to two disciples said: “Unless a grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop.”

Such was the seed that fell on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated in the hands of state security forces, 37 years ago.

The seed was Ninoy’s fight to restore freedom and democracy in the country. A treacherous shot to the head would snuff it as he went down the stairs from his plane under military escorts.

By thus, a noble crusade ended. But shortly after Ninoy’s fight fell to the ground and died, it lived in millions of his fellow countrymen who rose up to end repression and injustice.

The murder of the former senator on August 21, 1983 shook and awakened the nation. Still doubting him until that sacrifice, I myself who was already a hard-core element of the unyielding anti-dictatorship struggle could feel the power of its message.

Many people awoke to the sense that this was not the time to hesitate anymore. Whether or not we believe in each other, this was the moment to collectively confront the evil that seemed so formidable.

The martyrdom at the tarmac would be the single moment that began the end of Ferdinand Marcos who ravaged the country for two decades. In 1986, following three years of relentless political tumult, the strongman fled amidst a citizens’ uprising accompanied by massive defections in the Armed Forces.

Ninoy Aquino was no radical or firebrand. The nearest to his persona may be political maverick. But he was a voluble and mesmerizing speaker whose expositions on the situation of the country as well as imprudent asides against the powers-that-be captivated audiences.

The opposition senator exposed shenanigans in the highest office, above all bringing to public attention the infamous Jabidah Massacre that occurred in the island of Corregidor under a classified operation ordered by Marcos, to secretly train dogs of war and later grab in a commando strike the Malaysian state of Sabah.

Marcos was on his second term as elected president of the republic. Already on course to be the country’s next Chief Executive, then Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. (or Ninoy as he was fondly called) never let the most powerful man in the land off the hot seat.

A charismatic political figure, Ninoy was the hands-down choice to invite to our oath-taking as newly elected officials of the university’s supreme student council. In an evening dinner conference after the induction ceremony, pausing from a sumptuous meal, I asked him about Oplan Sagittarius or Marcos’s dark plot to impose martial law, which he bared in the senate. I followed up with the question: what are you going to do if that happens?

After explaining the reliability of the information and the certainty of the plot materializing anytime soon, the youthful solon’s unblinking answer to my second query was, “I’ll run to the hills.” Was he really going to do that? I just took the answer with a grain of salt.

It was mid-year of 1972, already an apt season for barnstorming by presidential wannabes en route to the elections. Ninoy had a snowballing popular support. His political fortunes were piling up. He was shoo-in for the next occupant of Malacanang.

But the presidency never came. Ninoy would have a different date with history as one of the very first victims of pre-preemptive warrantless arrests by Marcos’s armed minions. He was with other opposition leaders who were nabbed and detained in military camps even before the announcement of Proclamation 1081 that placed the entire country under Martial Law.

Cruel fate would have the promising political figure spend the next seven years in incarceration, at times in long solitary confinement under harsh conditions that made him wish death more than life. A military tribunal would cap those years with a rigged trial that convicted Ninoy for trumped-up charges and sentenced him to death by firing squad.

In a surprise trade-off though, the Marcos regime let him have a heart bypass operation and take self-exile in the United States. He breathed free air in a foreign land. Nonetheless, he would choke at the continuing climate of fear and suppression that gripped his country. For three years, he endured it, then finally boarded a flight back home and met his death.

Run to the hills! Ninoy was no longer able to do that. But I was and that I did, a few years after the declaration of martial law. Fascism drove us to where angels fear to tread. I joined the ones who resisted up to the point of putting our lives in line, up to the offering of the ultimate sacrifice, that is: to die if needed for the rest of fellow countrymen to live free.

I was in my earliest twenties, out of school, impetuous and driven by a sense of patriotism believing, as many contemporaries who joined the struggle did, that taking up arms was the only recourse. I survived the perils and near-death living of those dangerous years to still fight when Ninoy could not anymore, beyond August 1983.  

The lesson in his heroic sacrifice is this: if one has to die, it must make others live. There is no denying that what Ninoy lost in a lifelong struggle, on that momentous day 37 years ago he won in death. And that was because his lot of losing made many others gain. The one thing that was lost radicalized everything.