Category: life and death

a ninoy aquino book

i’ve been writing a ninoy book for a year now.  working title: The life and the death of Ninoy Aquino / A timeline 1932 -1983.

i only meant to come up with a simpler shorter version of EDSA Uno (2013) upon the request of  high school teachers.  maybe four slim volumes, one per day, that students could pass around.  and a first volume, of course, to quickly introduce the main players—marcos  and imelda, ninoy and cory, enrile and ramos—setting the stage for february 1986 and People Power.

it was easy enough coming up with quick factual timelines of ferdinand’s and imelda’s lives, the milestones pre-EDSA being well-documented and pretty much public knowledge, never mind the marcos revisionism.  the opposite is true, however, of ninoy’s life.

except for the broad strokes—major milestones marking the road to martyrdom at age 50—much of ninoy’s narrative has yet to be told from beginning to end in one go, particularly where it clarifies his radical relations with the left that had marcos tagging him a communist sympathizer; where it delves into the pain of imprisonment and the military trial that convicted him to death; and where it tells of ninoy’s last three years, what he was up to in America, and why he decided to come home when he did.

Like Marcos, the 50-year-old Aquino was a complex, contradictory figure who was in flesh-and-blood quite different from the devotee of Gandhian non-violence into which some sectors of the Philippine opposition are now converting him for their own political ends. But of one thing there is no dispute: Aquino was a profoundly courageous man. It was this streak of stubborn courage that earned him a death sentence in 1977, after five years of imprisonment had failed to extract from him a pledge of allegiance to Marcos. And it was this courage, wedded to a driving ambition and a deep concern for the strategic interests of his class, that propelled Aquino toward his appointment with history that dog-day afternoon of 21 August. ~ Walden Bello (1984)

going on four decades later, ninoy is being dismissed as just another ambitious politician who came home from exile and died on the tarmac, and so he became a hero, because he died on the tarmac.  and what about daw his non-record as a senator—twice elected and not a single law attributed to him.  and who daw cares about EDSA now, now that the marcoses are back anyway, and the color yellow has lost its glow, no thanks to the color-blind who choose to see red instead.

meanwhile a young academic has played up ninoy’s role in the birthing of the CPP/NPA brand (as though ka dante and joma would not have met but for ninoy); he has also expressed serious doubt in ninoy’s denial that he was ever a communist because daw ninoy did not live to define his terms.

thing is, ninoy did, define his terms, in Testament from a Prison Cell (1984) and it’s surprising that the young scholar seemed to not know of this primary source.  well, maybe it’s cory’s fault.  post-EDSA, ninoy’s political views were never spoken about, much less discussed, or ever referred to for guidance.  i suppose because cory had her hands full fending off rightist pretenders to the throne; better to play it by ear than to invoke ninoy, because then they’d have pounced and screamed “communist!” too.

in fact ninoy was no communist, no anti-imperialist, for sure.  but he admitted to being a keen student of theoretical marxism, following every twist and turn of local communists, reading practically all the published works of local reds, and interviewing communist intellectuals for first-hand information every chance he got.  in fact, he was a christian social democrat who sought to “harmonize political freedom with social and economic equality, taking the best of the primary conflicting systems—communism and capitalism.” [Testament from a Prison Cell 30-31]

and so a book on ninoy muna, for the record.  nothing quick or sketchy, rather more detailed than usual, in a timeline format that is reader-friendly and easy to add to, delete from, or re-arrange for fine-tuning.

it starts with a quick run through grandfather servillano’s and father benigno’s stories, because patterns repeat.  whenever possible, i let ninoy tell his own story while accommodating too the voices of family and friends, critics and enemies, and local and global media through the years.

sources are cited religiously in tracking his climb and claim to national consciousness as well as his politics and worldview as it evolved from magsaysay to marcos times and from imprisonment in fort bonifacio to exile in america, until he decided it was time to go back home, face death in manila, than be run over, accidentally or not, by a boston taxicab.

happy ninoy aquino day!

Medical Errors and . . . Deaths

Godofredo U. Stuart Jr., MD

This is a response to a commentary that appeared in the Philippine Inquirer editorial page, written by Thaddeus C. Hinunangan, a resident pathologist at the Philippine General Hospital: Are Doctors Allowed to Make Mistakes?

No, doctors are not allowed to make mistakes. Not in the noble intentions of medicine, framed in that motto phrased centuries ago by Ambroise Paré: Guérir quelquefois, soulager souvent, consoler toujours—To cure occasionally, relieve often, console always.

But in the practice of medicine, human error is inevitable. We assuage ourselves with half a proverb: To err is human. But because of medical errors, patients die.

Read on…

What is there

Posted by Daryll Delgado on Facebook
6 Dec 3:48 am

There is a man covered in mud from his bald head to his bare feet, walking towards and waving at my brother, Derek, unaware that he is unrecognizable. Until he and Derek arrive at the same house, A__’s house, then Derek realizes that this is A__’s father who had fought against, swum under, and finally just gave himself up to the muddy ocean that had engulfed his house, his neighborhood, his entire village.

There are two girls, who pass them by, walking barefoot but briskly, their faces streaked with dirty tears, their eyes scared, their bodies rigid. There are many others walking, walking, walking, and picking up pieces from the debris, and then walking some more. My sister, Aimee, and her husband are among them, as they try to get to her husband’s family in a subdivision close to the sea. There is a woman, they say, who is not walking, she is just standing, in the middle of the street, while people walk by her in a daze. She is wailing, damo’n patay, damo hin duro an patay! When they get to the subdivision, there are indeed bodies being moved from the streets to the small chapel. One of the casualties is our dear uncle, a cousin and very good friend to our dad.

There is a woman on the side of the street, but she is not wailing, not moving, not walking. She is lying on her back. She has extraordinarily thin arms and legs, and a very swollen belly. People cover their nose and mouth when they pass her, but they do not cover their eyes. This is one of the first sights we see, when my husband and I arrive in Tacloban City.

There is a child frozen in the act of crawling out of a shelf or a cabinet. His body is upside down, his head is twisted unnaturally to the side, and one hand is missing. There are dogs, many dogs, sniffing the rubble and debris for their masters, or for food, and one of them walks away with a child’s hand between his fangs.

There are men walking out of the mall, helping each other carry an exercise machine, a freezer, a 50-plus-inch led TV screen. There is a woman carrying a mannequin all by herself, and a family of three in Santa hats merrily walking down the street with a shopping cart full of nothing but canned baby formula milk. There are others who scavenge for clothes, my brother Dennis tells us, and they come out of the department store dressed as super heroes and villains, Spider Man, Super Man,and Penguin.

There is a rumor going around, said a friend of ours whose family is taking shelter in our house : Tacloban is gone. Strong winds had sucked out the entire bay and threw it all up very violently onto streets,houses, offices, churches, hospitals, schools, restaurants, hotels. There is another rumor: It will all happen again very soon, and the waves will be much higher, the current stronger and even more ferocious this time.

There are suddenly even more people on the streets, running as fast as they can to the hills, to the hills! By evening, there is a sight no one has ever seen – the mountains are illuminated from the foot to the peak with people’s flash lights, candles, torches.

There is still, for all intents and purposes, a house. There is no roof, no ceiling, no windows, no book shelves or books, but there is still a winding staircase with elaborate balusters and steps made from dark hard wood slabs on which the rainwater cascades like grand waterfalls when itrains. And there is a black granite floor that collects the water into many puddles the kids like to trample and splash on.

There is a room on the ground floor where the family used to congregate every night when the parents were still alive. It is now being slept in by strangers who have traveled from distant lands – Iran, Israel, America,Bolivia, South Africa – to clear the streets, feed the hungry, slowly revive the city.

There are two old trees that used to partly hide the house from the street with its thick foliage, birds’ nests, and intricate branches reaching into the balcony. They are now leafless and branchless, and nestless. The barks have been peeled off and, at night, under a bright moon, the trunks look like the ghosts of two pale, old men stranded between this world and another.

There are firelies all of a sudden, and crickets, but no birds, my sister-in-law, Debbie, notices.

There is a rumor about that other rumor, Dennis tells the strangers who have become friends and family to us now. The city mayor’s daughter, Chona May, had been washed away and her mother, the beautiful city councilor who used to be a movie starlet, had screamed and screamed: “Chona May! Chona May!” Her screams pierced the silence and absolute darkness of the evening, waking people in San Jose from their nightmares. “Chunami daw, chunami!” And that’s how everyone suddenly scrambled to their feet, fled out of the city and into the hills, in fear of a chunami or tsunami.

There is a truth and there is a lie, my brother says. The mayor’s daughter did not really perish, and he doesn’t even have a daughter named Chona May, but it is true that his beautiful wife is the city councilor and she did used to be a star.

There are people who do not like this joke, but some people laugh, for the first time, and a little of the old sparkle return briefly to their weary eyes.

(With reports from Dennis, Derek, Aimee, Dandee, Debbie, William, and random friends and strangers in Tacloban)

Ana’s bonfire (and her father’s portrait of Tacloban)

Facebook Note by Karlo Marko Altomonte
23 Nov 10:07 am

When she noticed that water was flowing ankle deep into their home, she told everyone in the room, her family, that it was time to leave. She made her way to the door and as she opened it, the water started rising and her along with it. She grabbed on to a branch to avoid getting swept away by the current. She recalled how painful the wind was on her face. She stayed floating for a few minutes, and as rapidly as it rose, it started receding. She didn’t let go of the branch and in just a matter of a couple of minutes, from being in danger of drowning in floodwaters, she realized that she was in danger of falling to her death from her perch on the topmost branch up a kaimito tree some thirty feet up. She looked around and was relieved to see most of her family members grabbing on to the branches of the same tree. But not everyone was there.

Soon after the Typhoon Yolanda left, Jun Fernandez received the news in Baguio – his wife, a daughter and two grandchildren who lived in Tacloban were missing, and were presumed dead, according to eyewitnesses who last saw them. There was no way they could have survived after being swept away by a series of storm surges that brought tree-high waves. His younger daughter was determined, she told her father that she will travel to Tacloban that same night to look for her mother, her Ate and the two children, aged six and four. There was news that the body of her AteEva has been found, and Ana wanted to see for herself if the news was true.

Ana would call her father in Baguio after seeing the body of the woman she was told could have been that of her sister. “It’s not her,” she told her father.

After hearing of the situation in Tacloban in the days that followed, and realizing that Ana herself could be putting herself in harm’s way by going there, Jun decided to follow. He has accepted the loss, but wanted to make sure that his daughter Ana was safe. He arrived in Tacloban four days after Ana did. As they prepared to cook some food that night, Ana, together with her aunt who was saved by that kaimito tree, told Jun that the last time they received some relief goods was on the day Ana arrived four days earlier, they have had to stretch that small amount of rice and couple of canned food for four days. A cousin was able to buy rice in between, at P100 per kilo and only after walking for kilometers for hours on end in search of food.

“It was unreal, unbelievable” was how Jun described the scene before him. The dead lay unclaimed, unattended, survivors were preoccupied trying to stay alive to bother with them. The memory of the sight of the bodies of three infants by the road would haunt him forever, he said. One of the infants had an arm missing, along with much of its face. Nobody could ever be prepared for what Jun shared with us, “what can you do? Dogs were trying to stay alive too.”

The story of how one Iglesia ni Cristo church was closed to non-members of this sect. A sister of Jun’s wife was one of those who tried to seek refuge inside one, and was turned away. But not all churches closed its doors, the other non-Iglesia ni Cristo places of worship provided shelter and saved thousands of lives. Even a softdrink warehouse was opened to the people who needed shelter.

“Did that church close its doors on evacuees too?” Jun wondered as he passed a church with its doors closed. He decided to go closer to try to take a look inside and regretted doing so. Peeping through the gap on the church doors, he saw the whole inside of the church filled with lifeless bodies, piled up to three bodies high. That church, filled with evacuees before the typhoon made landfall, turned out to have been inundated in the blink of an eye, drowning everyone inside.

Ninety percent of the population of Barangay 88, according to what Jun gathered on the ground, died. The death toll could very well breach the initial estimate of 10,000 which top government officials have been trying to deny.

For a time, Tacloban was hamleted – nobody in, nobody out. This was due to the alleged infiltration and looting by rebel forces. In one instance, according to news reports, a military convoy bearing relief goods was ambushed by rebels.

Contrary to the picture of inept and uncaring government personnel that the mainstream media have been forcing us to accept, according to Jun, from where he was, he witnessed heroism and selflessness and portraits of self-sacrifice – he saw soldiers, policemen, government workers, themselves exhausted, wounded, hungry, also grieving, who hardly ate or slept to do all they can to ease the suffering of the survivors. There was enough food to go around, that’s true, but there were not enough hands to get them to the victims fast enough. Soldiers would take a bite or two from their own food rations before passing this on to the nearest survivor begging for food. A brief lull in between carrying sacks and boxes of relief goods or people on their backs was an opportunity to close their eyes for a few minutes to rest. On a regular day, we already know how we don’t have enough policemen and soldiers in this country, how we don’t have enough doctors in every town, what more in times like this when many policemen, soldiers are themselves victims? They don’t need to hear every single day how inefficient they were, how badly or wrong they’re doing their jobs. Specially coming from people who saw nothing more than what Cooper or Sanchez or Failon or Enriquez or Tianco chose to show them, in the warmth and comfort of their own homes swiping on a computer screen or clicking on a mouse. What Tacloban needs are extra pairs of hands.

In your opinion, based on what you saw, what could’ve prevented this much destruction, or this many deaths? I asked Jun. Nothing except evacuating whole provinces, he said. There was almost no escape, even those living far inland away from the shores were tossed around by floodwaters and strong winds, overwhelmed by unbelievably strong rains. And Jun points to poverty and the resulting illiteracy of many of our countrymen as an added culprit. The warning they received from the local officials was for a typhoon with potential wind speeds of over “300 kph” and the possibility of “storm surges.” “Kung sinabi nilang parang tsunami, o kaya parang dalawang Ondoy, mas naintindihan siguro naming kung ano’ng klaseng bagyo ang parating,” said one survivor. Tsunami they’ve been hearing a lot on the radio and on television, a “storm surge” is a relatively new concept, if not a totally alien term, for most of them. “300 kph” is just a number. As Jun shared with us, we did not speak to them in a language they could have understood better.

Jun would break down in between telling his story, or would try letting a chuckle out after a rather funny anecdote, or forcing a smile – they were all painful to watch.

Ana wanted to stay longer, stand by the shores of Tacloban in the hope that her mother, her ate Eva and her two children would show up. It would take a long time for anybody who lost a loved one or two, or four, or everyone and everything they had, to accept what happened. Jun and Ana got on the next bus out of Tacloban, and decided to start their own journey towards acceptance and healing.

One particularly cold evening after the typhoon, Ana, gathered some damp wood and started a fire. The soldiers have been trying to get one going, in vain, everything around them was drenched. But Ana, a true Baguio girl who can start a bonfire with her eyes closed, soon had a nice, warm fire going. People started gathering around her bonfire, soldiers gathered more wood and placed them in Ana’s able hands.

For one evening, amidst the destruction, the deaths, the despair and feeling of hopelessness, Ana’s small bonfire lighted up her part of the world, and kept people warm, eased their pain, started the healing of broken hearts. And most importantly, let everyone around her know that they were not alone, that there are people who can help provide some light in this time of darkness, and keep that fire going until the sun rises again tomorrow.