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Chapter 10 Reviving the Opposition Arrival of an Exile Hero In the New York City borough of Queens, in the Hollis neighborhood, there is a triangular cement island on a street at 184th Place, south of Hillside Avenue. On one side of the triangle is a hair salon; on the opposite side is a pharmacy. Along this street are rows of modest two-story wooden homes, similar in appearance, with small front lawns fenced with iron grilles. At one end of the triangle, atop two tall poles, Philippine and American flags flutter in the wind. Between them is a granite tombstonelike marker with an inscription reading: Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. Man’s Sense of Justice Demands Democracy. Man’s Injustice Makes It Necessary. This marker honors a Filipino political exile known to most if not all of the Filipinos who live on the street. In fact, the site was chosen because census figures say that there is a dense population of Filipinos in this neighborhood. Aquino, better known by his nickname “Ninoy,” arrived in Dallas, Texas, from the Philippines on May 8, 1980, for heart bypass surgery. He returned to Manila on August 21, 1983, only to be gunned down as he descended the plane’s stairs at the airport. When Aquino arrived in Texas, he had spent the preceding seven years and seven months in a military prison. Caught in the dragnet of martial law mass arrests in 1982, he was among the first political prisoners to be rounded up. He certainly was the most famous. In the annals of Philippine political history, his ascent to prominence was stellar. At the age of twenty- 76 . Chapter 10 two, he was elected the youngest mayor of his hometown, Concepcion, in Tarlac province on the northern island of Luzon. Opponents protested that the minimum age requirement for the position was twenty-three. Two years later, a court unseated him. At twenty-six, he staged a comeback as the youngest elected vice governor of the province; four years later, he won the governorship, victorious in all seventeen towns. At thirty-four years of age, he was the youngest senator elected to the national Congress, the lone opposition Liberal Party candidate amid the election sweep of the incumbent Nacionalista Party of President Marcos. During the next four years, Aquino stood in the Senate as the severest critic of Marcos. At the next Senate elections in 1971, his party won six of the eight contested seats. That positioned him as the presidential candidate most likely to replace Marcos, whose third and last term would end in 1973. Martial law dashed that possibility. He refused to take part in his trial before a military commission and went on a forty-day hunger strike to protest what he considered a sham trial. He was found guilty of subversion, illegal possession of firearms, and murder. The sentence: death by firing squad. While in jail, he was allowed to run for a Manila seat against Imelda Marcos in the 1978 elections for the interim Legislative Assembly. Campaigning from his cell as the head of LABAN, he lost. All twenty-one Manila seats were taken by Marcos’s party. Manila residents turned out into the streets, banging on pots and pans, tooting car horns, and chanting “Laban! Laban!” (Fight! Fight!) to let Aquino “hear” of their support for him. While Aquino was in jail, he had a heart attack. Concerned with the consequences for his regime should Aquino die incarcerated, Marcos temporarily released him for medical treatment abroad. His arrival in the United States galvanized the Filipino opposition movement. Not only did he have an impressive record of public service, but he had endured a long prison sentence, isolated from his wife and family; he was a sworn enemy of Marcos; he had an unbroken spirit; and he was a proven fighter and a leader. “Activity picked up when Ninoy arrived. Everybody was euphoric. The superstar,” said Jose “Joey” Ortiz, an MFP member. “There was a qualitative change. I told him we must carry on the campaign. The Americans are telling us that you are in no position to take power, that you do not have the clout. They were comparing us with the Left. If Marcos falls, the only alternative is the Left,” Heherson Alvarez, an MFP officer told him.1 Aquino had promised Marcos that he would not speak out against him while in the United States, but he broke that promise in his first public [18...

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