Aquino's slaying altered psyche of Filipinos

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The heat of the afternoon was beginning to abate that day in August, 20 years ago. Eva Betita, a foreign service researcher, had just left work in Manila when gunshots felled a man and rocked her world.

Benigno Aquino

The bloodless revolution that finally toppled the regime of Ferdinand Marcos didn't follow for another 2 1/2 years, but Betita and most Filipinos today still view the Aquino assassination as the catalyst that made lasting changes in the psyche of the Filipino people, at home and abroad.

"I was on my way home when I heard the news," she said. "It was a real shock to me, and it brought great sadness that such a thing had to happen."

The ensuing and massive rallies the assassination sparked swept thousands of people to the streets, everyone from the upper-crust matron to the leftist radical.

They swirled around Betita, now a vice consul at the Philippines Consulate, which will be closed tomorrow in observance of the anniversary. But in those days, Betita said, she was too caught up in the work of government to do more than watch the uprising in awe.

Benigno Aquino's funeral procession drew an estimated 500,000 marchers in the Philippines. The former senator was gunned down on Aug. 20, 1983, for his opposition to dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Advertiser library photo • Aug. 25, 1983

Luella Costales found herself watching, too. The current executive director of the Filipino Community Center here, Costales was then a 20-year-old native of Los Angeles' South Central district, where she was far more familiar with African-American culture than her own.

Costales said the assassination placed her parents' homeland in the spotlight, illuminating the Philippines for Americans, including herself. "I didn't have a strong connection to the Filipino culture before then," Costales said. "And all of a sudden, people knew about the Philippines. It was a big turning point. People were talking about it. And it wasn't, 'Oh, the Philippines ... where's that?' "

Belinda Aquino — no relation to Ninoy — needed no consciousness-raising, then or now. The director of the University of Hawai'i Center for Philippine Studies was in Manila for all the uproar and witnessed many of the 200 demonstrations held in a year's time.

"There were society matrons in their high heels joining the workers and slum dwellers," she said. "It was the beginning of the end for the Marcos regime. Even those that were supportive of Marcos in the beginning eventually fell out to join the opposition.

"Ninoy's assassination had that broadening effect, to even include the elite classes," she said. "It was a snowballing kind of event."

Silayan Casino, who teaches German, was a globetrotter with her parents but happened to be in the Philippines for Corazon Aquino's "People Power" revolution and sat in on the demonstrations.

"I remember my mom waking us up, and taking us to EDSA," she said. "We were there at 2 or 3 in the morning, and we slept on the median strip.

Waipahu accountant Ron Gregorio, at the Filipino Community Center, says Filipinos today are still willing to exert their political power.

"I didn't have a strong connection to the Filipino culture before then. And all of a sudden, people knew about the Philippines. It was a big turning point, " said Luella Costales, executive director at the Filipino Community Center. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Many people in Hawai'i, Filipino or not, remember both the harrowing moment itself as well as the fallout, since much of it landed here. After Marcos was ousted in 1986, he and wife Imelda fled the Philippines and lived here in exile until the former president died in 1989.

Arlene Gonzales-Macaisa, another Philippine vice consul now based in Honolulu, was the daughter of a diplomat and was in high school in California when Aquino was killed. But she had been born in Manila and until she was 10, stored up memories of martial law.

"When my mother gave birth to my youngest sister, we weren't allowed to take her to the hospital because it was after curfew, so a midwife had to come in," she said. "And I remember my uncles, who were teenagers, being scolded by my grandparents for going out at night."

Ron Gregorio, an accountant in Waipahu, is the son of Consul General Rolando Gregorio and was only 14 at the time. His family lived in Washington, D.C., politics was the family business, and the images of events were seared in his memory.

"In the Philippines, politics is pretty much everywhere," he said. "It transcends age groups."

And since that day, a generation has been born and grown to adulthood, Belinda Aquino said, and many of the optimistic dreams of revolution have faded. Democracy has been restored, but the institutions of military might and the business elite have remained intact, she said, so the country still wrestles with crippling poverty and social problems.

"People are somewhat disappointed that all the hopes that were generated by this revolution may not have been fulfilled," she said. "That leaves me to believe that those hopes and expectations after EDSA may have been unrealistic. You don't change a system that has been there for centuries overnight."

But not all the reverberations of that day have disappeared during the intervening two decades, Gregorio said. Two years ago, he said, Filipinos again demonstrated that they were able to exert their political power, putting an end to the unpopular Estrada presidency as they had with Marcos.

"That was something positive that happened 20 years ago," he said. "The thing that kind of remains is the belief that something violent can end with something nonviolent ... it's basically saying that people will not stand for this kind of thing happening again."