Category: edsa

butz aquino, my EDSA hero (1939-2015)

 

i knew butz as the BFF of my brother-in-law nick since ateneo days (along with reli german), and i also knew him as a showbiz figure, an actor on stage and in film, and ran into him once in a while when i was writing scripts for june keithley’s sosyal tv talkshow back in 1981.  it was martial law, and he was special, too, for being the bunso brother of the amazing ninoy who spent seven years and seven months in jail, refusing to kowtow ever to the dictator marcos.

those early eighties must have been good times, sort of, for butz and the aquino family — ninoy was finally safe and free in boston, recovering from the heart attacks that forced marcos to let him go into exile in may 1980.  the lull before the storm.

we all know what happened in 1983 when ninoy came home to lead the opposition only to be slayed on the tarmac.  and we all saw how butz rose to the occasion by organizing and leading the august twenty-one movement (ATOM) whose sustained anti-marcos rallies over the next two and a half years enthralled (the yellow-pages confetti in makati always gave me goosebumps!) and emboldened the millions of filipinos who had wept for nation when ninoy died, and who became enamoured of the widow cory.  we all know how that led to the people power ouster of marcos in 1986.

it is good that butz is being remembered now, finally, for the historically critical role he played in EDSA.  in all early accounts of the four days, in the raves across the world, it was cardinal sin who was credited for making the first call over radio veritas that brought the people marching to EDSA in droves to shield the rebels from marcos’s wrath.  in fact, the cardinal only echoed, in two parts (10:40 pm and 12 midnight), butz aquino’s earlier call (10:20 pm), also over veritas.

cory was in cebu.  ATOM’s executive committee decided to await her instructions before making any kind of move.

But Butz was feeling contrary and audacious. Perhaps he was better informed than most, better acquainted with the personalities involved, just because he was Ninoy’s brother. And like the irrepressible Ninoy would have done, Butz seized the day.

Butz disagreed with the majority decision to wait and see rather than go all out in support of Ramos and Enrile. “This is our chance to split the military,” he said. He thought it was “out of character” for Ramos to be “included in a zarzuela to fool the people.” As for Enrile, Butz was willing to take a chance on him: “I don’t know him well but I am convinced that he had nothing to do with the assassination of Ninoy. When it comes to human rights violations, we can’t pinpoint anything on him directly. We also know he’s been powerless for the last several years. It’s General Ver who’s been calling the shots.”

On his own Butz decided to take the daring course of action. He called MP Palma and asked her, “Do you believe in these two guys?” And she said, “I think so. What are your plans?” Butz told her, “I’m going to Camp Aguinaldo and offer our support, whatever support we can give them.”

It was also around 10:00 when Butz got to Camp Aguinaldo and around 10:20 when he made the famous call for people to come to EDSA and shield the rebels from Marcos’s military might.

Butz sought out Enrile. He could feel the tension in the air. The soldiers on the stairway were sweating.  Enrile was “tense, perspiring, perhaps from the heat of his bulletproof vest.” At Butz’s offer of support, Enrile answered, “We need all the support we can get.”

Spying Jun Taña of Radio Veritas on the phone, Butz plugged in and made his call to the people: “I am here in Camp Aguinaldo. I have just spoken to Minister Enrile. He and his men are bracing themselves against an attack. We are here to try and prevent bloodshed. We are going to work for a peaceful solution. … I am calling on all concerned citizens, specially my friends in ATOM, BANDILA, and FSDM to meet me at Isetann in Cubao. There we will decide on the best course of action.”

Butz was on inspired mode that night when he dared advocate a peaceful solution to imminent war between Marcos’s split military. It seemed absurd and foolish, quixotic even, yet it was consistent with the non-violent spirit of Cory’s civil disobedience campaign.

Father Francisco Araneta groaned when he heard Butz Aquino sounding off his call for volunteers to join him in Cubao and from there to march off to support the soldiers at Crame and Aguinaldo. “There goes that fool,” he thought to himself.

ten minutes after butz’s call, marcos went on tv, live, and accused enrile, ramos, and the reformists of a coup aborted.  at 11:30 when that presscon ended, butz made a second call over veritas.

“We are here at Isetann and we will march to Crame and Aguinaldo. Minister Enrile and his men are ready to fight if they are attacked. If they are attacked, we will support them … we will surround the camps and protect them with our bodies. We will do this because Enrile and Ramos wish to follow the will of the people. Anyone who respects the will of the people deserves our help … I call on all our countrymen to join us and increase our number so that we can prevent a bloody confrontation … Only the brave should come!”

as it turned out, it was fortuitous that cory was away.  she had no sympathy for ninoy’s jailer enrile and might have preferred to call coryistas to luneta, there to pray and watch as enrile-led rebels and ver-led loyalists wiped each other out.

and then, again, who knows.   butz might have changed cory’s mind, the promise of non-violence (that ninoy, too, had advocated) may have appealed beyond the desire for revenge.   whatever, butz would have prevailed.  it was destiny.

gringo and joe al, birds of the same feather?

i must confess to some surprise that, like juan ponce enrile’s, joe almonte’s memoir (february 2015) has turned out to be contentious, at least re EDSA, given senator gringo honasan’s instant “it’s a lie!” plus a two-part retort in the inquirer co-authored by fellow-RAM originals felix turingan and rex robles.

i haven’t read almonte’s, not having received a free copy, i’m obviously not on the list, lol, so what else is new.

but i did read enrile’s (september 2012), spent a thousand six hundred something bucks, only because i needed to check out his EDSA story asap, in case he had said anything new, para ihabol sa EDSA Uno the book (2013) na patapos ko na noon.  at buti na lang, dahil tinira niya ako, at si eggie apostol, nang bonggang bongga, at nakasagot ako.  si eggie naman ay ipinagtanggol ni butch hernandez (direktor ng worldwide foundation for people power noon, ng eggie apostol foundation ngayon) sa inquirer, in a 3-part rejoinder.  read resetting the record straight #edsa and eggie apostol laughed #enrilememoir.

siyempre noong mag-react si gringo, binalikan ko ang chronology ko.  ano na nga ba ang sabi ni alfred w. mccoy, the historian, tungkol sa planong pag-atake ng RAM sa palasyo?

Enrile would proclaim himself head of a ruling junta, the National Reconciliation Council, just after rebel troops assaulted the Palace at 2:00 AM February 23, capturing or killing Marcos.

capturing OR killing.  and, just as i remembered, it was about ver that the desired outcome was unequivocal.

At 2:00 AM of the 23rd of February, Sunday, Col. Honasan and his commandos, guided by carefully prepared maps and rebels in the Palace guard, would break into the presidential bedrooms of Malacañang Palace to arrest Marcos and his First Lady, Imelda. Simultaneously, Col. Kapunan’s force would set off a series of massive explosions near the Malacañang armories, signalling three rebel battalions to move in with reinforcements. The first and largest explosion was intended to assassinate General Fabian Ver who would be sleeping inside his home in nearby Malacañang Park.

so yes, kung RAM ako, ma-o-offend din ako.  at magugulat din kay marites danguilan vitug, almonte’s co-author, just as nagulat ako noon kay nelson navarro na nag-edit ng enrile memoir, kasi puwede namang mag-fact-check.  credibility can’t hinge on just who is making kuwento, lalo na kung may edad na, kahit pa kabilib-bilib siya.   kapag pa-historically-significant ang drama, at hindi sensational lang, serious research naman sana, kahit pang-endnotes lang, para significant talaga.

na-interview ko si general joe almonte back in 1991 when FVR was interested in my yet-unpublished chronology to buttress his first-ever account of the four days for his ED SA ’92 campaign.  that’s how i got to interview then defense secretary ramos, first in camp aguinaldo, then in alabang along with his wife ming and three of the kids and some neighbors, then back to camp aguinaldo for interviews with almonte and sonny razon.  natapos ko, at ihinahanda na ni nonoy marcelo ang cover at artwork for an early 1992 launch, ngunit subalit datapwat hindi natuloy, biglang di na type ni FVR.  hinala ko, nagalboroto ang kampo ni enrile.  but that’s another story.

two things i learned from that almonte interview.  one, that the core group of RAM wasn’t all enrile boys, there were ramos boys too, and ramos knew all about the  aborted coup plot set for feb 23, 2:00 a.m. (not feb 22, 12 midnight).  but saturday afternoon, he didn’t rush to  camp aguinaldo to join enrile right away only because, well,  he was busy, dialogue-ing, flirting, with coryistas who wanted to know why he hadn’t resigned yet, like sis letty, from the marcos government.

two, that almonte  wasn’t daw surprised by people power.

Jose Almonte: One of my principal assignments with Vic Batac concerned people power. We reviewed the many social movements in various countries in various periods, in particular, Ghandi’s work and peoples’ experiences in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. At one point I told Tingting Cojuangco na ang strategy against the soldiers of Marcos is to climb the tanks, kiss the soldiers, give them flowers.  http://edsarevolution.com/ day1.htm

yes, ghandi.  even ninoy’s last message quoted ghandi on non-violence.  but in the almonte memoir, according to an inquirer editorial, Who owns EDSA, almonte cites his vietnam experience as the inspiration for people power.

He directly claims that his experience in Vietnam led to a no-casualty outcome in Edsa 1986. “The same principle eventually worked in People Power ’86, where we used it to ensure that there would be no casualties.” In fact, Edsa 1986 is best described as largely peaceful, because several died in the takeover of the government television station. And the animating spirit of active nonviolence behind People Power was definitely not learned from the Vietcong, but from the example of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Above all, he revises history to claim that he knew exactly that People Power would be needed. “It was thus ideal for [Jaime] Cardinal Sin to immediately tell the people to converge where we were to show support.” But in fact the reason the people needed to support the breakaway military faction was because Marcos had found out about the plan, and arrested key participants. The RAM repaired first to Camp Aguinaldo and then to the much more defensible Camp Crame because it was making a last stand.

hay naku.  na kay cardinal sin pa rin.  how about credit where credit is due, like to butz aquino of the august twenty-one movement (ATOM) na unang nagtawag ng people to EDSA to shield the rebel military from marcos’s military might.  cardinal sin hemmed and hawed a while.  people were already marching by the time he got around to asking them, no ifs or buts, to support the rebels.  nothing immediate about it.  read EDSA Uno the book, pages 86, 88-89, 101.

as for gringo et al, i’m only glad they’re now talking about the coup plot that he and enrile denied all through the four days of EDSA and a long time after — enrile admitted to it only in 2000, honasan and kapunan only in 2011.  RAM should really write an EDSA book na, and do it better than enrile and almonte.

people power redux

yes, we are thoroughly appalled by the president’s (mis)handling of mamasapano and distressed by his continuing silence.  it’s as if he’s incognizant of the public outrage, or is he just disdainful of, and so refuses to dignify, the widespread sentiment that he owes the nation an explanation for his actions, and non-actions, and their consequences.

or maybe it’s all deliberate, keeping us in the dark, on fractious mode — the lack of credible information preventing intelligent and constructive discussion that might lead to consensus?

whatever, the fact remains that neither the Left (teddy casino atbp.) nor the Right (norberto gonzales, peping cojuangco, the mitsubishops, atbp.) nor any coalition of anti-aquino forces is capable of summoning the kind of people power it would take to compel the president to step down.  in 1986 anti-marcos forces were solidly behind cory as replacement, and that makes all the difference.

if the Left and the Right truly care about moving the nation forward from mamasapano with some really hard lessons learned, they would be echoing, adding their voices to, the people’s demand that the president come out, come clean, give us a candid account of his role, and america’s, in oplan exodus.

we don’t want the president to step down, we want the president to tell us what really happened and why he couldn’t stop it from turning out so badly.  we don’t want the president to step down, we want the president to empower us with the information we need to ask informed questions and make informed decisions come 2016.  we don’t want the president to step down, we want the president to tell all, now na, or, okay, on feb 25 at the latest.

in EDSA 1986 cory was compelled to reconcile differences with enrile, and vice versa, in order to achieve marcos’s ouster.  this EDSA anniversary seems like a good time for noynoy to reconcile differences with a nation that would forgive him naman.  then, just maybe, history will remember him kindly, warts and all.

on reading The Descartes Highlands

i loved eric gamalinda’s My Sad Republic (2000), but i can’t say the same for The Descartes Highlands (2014).  nothing to do with how different the english is, even if it’s far from the latin american baroque, filipino-english style, of Republic, rather, in the author’s own words, “something completely new, stripped down, and more in-your-face.”

na okay naman, except that the style is new only of him, or maybe of filipino writers in general; otherwise it just sounds and feels, well, american.  and that multiple first-person narrative is gratingly self-indulgent three times over.  where is the tension when all three personalities — american father and two fil-am sons born of different mothers — are similarly flawed and dysfunctional in their separate existences.  sure, there’s the tension in their relationships with the women, who start out fine, but who only get messed up by these self-centered mates in quite depressing ways.  life is just one closed and vicious karmic cycle of sex and drugs, violence (torture, abortion, suicide) and ennui, no recourse, no redemption.

much is made of the moon and mankind’s marks on it, and of the synchronicity (year-wise) of the apollo 16 landing with the birth of the boys and martial law in the philippines, pushing the notion of a shared immortality, but to what end.  in occult thought the moon is a powerful symbol of change and transformation as it waxes and wanes in a 28-day cycle synchronous with a woman’s menses, every new moon offering a new life, a fresh beginning.  instead, “ideas, emotions, themes, characters, and episodes swirl in a cloud of cosmic dust” that fail to coalesce into separate beings, dissipating into nothingness of the mortal kind.

and i get naman the sense of marcos-style martial law’s endless grip.  we’ve been getting the story kasi in drips and drops, or, from recent voluminous memoirs, in floods of whitewash. propaganda posing as truth.  hagiography as history.  almost three decades later, we have yet to get the full unvarnished story of the conjugal dictatorship’s reign of greed and terror.  no post-marcos administration — not cory or fvr or erap or gloria or noynoy — has cared or dared to undertake a documented research study for public consumption (guess why).  so, yes, martial law stories, fictionalized and not, continue to appeal.

however, there are aspects of that grim period that have been told and re-told, in particular, the torture and killing of political prisoners.  and no fiction, even by the greatest writer, could hold a candle to these first-person and eyewitness accounts.

this is not to say that gamalinda’s prose does not impress, and stun, but the story is dated, never moving forward, almost as if to say that martial law hasn’t ended, marcos is still around.  which is true, in a manner of thinking, but certainly not true, historically speaking.

i suppose it is gamalinda’s way of saying that he doesn’t think much of the EDSA revolt of 1986 that saw the marcoses fleeing the palace for paoay and being hijacked by the americans into exile.  even if, as he reveals in an asia society interview (45:37), he was here, among the crowd, in the vicinity of channel 4 on the very day marcos fled.

granted that cory messed up when she enjoined the country post-EDSA to forgive and forget, as gamalinda’s friend lino brocka is said to have lamented (46:47); still, to treat that wondrous event as unmentionable is quite sad for nation, and for the novel, where the people power phenomenon that has gone global, if transitorily and in fits and spurts, could have given the author something current and complicated — like the problematique of non-violent change — to wrestle with, in the process taking the philosophical eklat and existential angst to a higher plane.